In a small Brown family cemetery on Jacks Mountain, the surviving stones mark a tragedy that unfolded on a Huntingdon County farm in 1840. The cemetery is a physical reminder of a family story that local residents have continued to research and retell.
William Brown lived in Cromwell Township, roughly four miles southwest of Shirleysburg, with his wife, Rosannah, and five children. Later newspaper accounts described a farm of about sixty acres, but deed research reproduced by Titus R. Wingert records two payments of $50 in December 1832 for joint interests in a 130-acre tract. Wingert also reports that Brown described his holding as 120 acres during the trial. The surviving evidence therefore does not support treating sixty acres as the farm's settled original size.
Albert M. Rung's 1947 and 1970 accounts identify the children as John, 19; Betsy, 18; George, 16; Jacob, 14; and David, 11. The 1887 newspaper instead names the victims as Rosanna, John, Elizabeth, George, Jacob, and Daniel, while its narrative also uses David. The arrest-paper transcription names Rosanna, John, Elizabeth, George, Jacob, and David. These variations show why the family's names still require confirmation from the original court, cemetery, and genealogical records.
William worked as a carpenter and was sometimes away from the farm. His eldest daughter, who lived elsewhere, had married Robert McConaghy. The 1947 account says McConaghy helped manage the farm during William's absences; the 1887 remembrance says the family treated him like a brother.
The Huntingdon Journal, looking back forty-seven years later, dates the murders to May 20, 1840. Rung's 1947 and 1970 histories and an obituary notice reprinted in 1965 give May 30. The later accounts place the crime on a Saturday. All agree that William was away from home and that he was attacked after returning, but survived and raised the alarm.
The 1887 article supplies a much fuller narrative. It says John was killed near the barn; Elizabeth was attacked after she saw McConaghy leaving it; two younger boys were lured into the woods under the pretense of searching for a horse; and Rosanna and the remaining child were killed at the house. William arrived home, survived a gunshot and a close struggle, and escaped to raise the alarm. The article characterizes the crime as deliberate and says it was committed to obtain the family's small home.
McConaghy was captured after a search and tried during the August 1840 court session. Wingert's transcription of the arrest examination says Robert McConaghy, his brother John, and William Brown were initially detained on suspicion. William and John were discharged on June 1, while Robert was committed to the Huntingdon jail. The same compilation identifies Randall Alexander as the justice of the peace, Nathan Ricketts as the deputy sheriff who conveyed Robert to jail, and John Price as the Shirleysburg constable whose home held the prisoners.
A separately transcribed charge alleges that Robert fired a rifle at William Brown on May 30 with intent to kill him. Wingert's trial account identifies Alexander Gwin, assisted by George Taylor, for the Commonwealth and James Bell, A. Porter Wilson, and Samuel Calvin as court-appointed defense counsel. A jury found McConaghy guilty of first-degree murder. These assignments differ from some later newspaper retellings and should ultimately be checked against the original court papers.
Judge Thomas Burnside imposed the death sentence, directing that McConaghy be returned to jail and hanged within the jail walls or yard. Governor David R. Porter issued a warrant setting the execution for November 6, 1840. The 1887, 1923, and 1947 accounts, as well as Wingert's compilation, describe the rope breaking on the first attempt. The reason is not established: later tradition suggested tampering, but Wingert acknowledges that no written evidence proves that explanation.
After the fall, McConaghy made a confession witnessed by the Rev. George S. Brown and the Rev. John Peebles, who also supplied a preface to its published form. The sentence was then carried out a second time. Wingert notes that declarations attesting to the execution were published in the Huntingdon Journal on December 2 and December 9, 1840. McConaghy's burial place remains unknown.
A local death notice quoted by Rung in 1970 states that William died at his Cromwell Township residence on February 2, 1865, aged nearly 85. The notice identifies him as a veteran of the War of 1812 and recalls that he survived the attack that killed his wife and five children. William's burial location remains unknown.
The story returned to print on June 24, 1887, when the Huntingdon Journal published it as Number XXI in a reminiscence series titled “Notes and Anecdotes of Good People and Bad — The Wise Guy and Personal Reminiscences.” The writer said the account marked forty-seven years since the crime and presented the Browns as a close, peaceful family whose ordinary day was shattered without warning.
This newspaper feature is substantially closer to the event than the modern retelling, but it was still written nearly half a century afterward and contains at least one apparent inconsistency in a child's name. It is therefore valuable evidence, not a flawless contemporary record.
When Rung revisited the site for his 1947 article, he described and photographed the remains of the Brown homestead in Hill Valley. The house had been a modest structure, about twenty by twenty-two feet, with a spring roughly one hundred feet away. He also described the family's graves and a plain memorial stone, warning that the site was becoming overgrown and arguing that it deserved preservation.
Rung said his reconstruction drew on local visits and interviews, including information associated with Thomas Campbell Greene and Greene's grandson, Clyde. That makes the article an important record of what local residents still remembered and what remained visible more than a century after the murders, although it was not a contemporary account of the crime.
Wingert's study adds maps, deed research, building descriptions, and photographs of the surviving house depression and foundation stones. It describes the main house as approximately twenty by twenty-two feet and records a barn, springhouse, outbuildings, and a small dwelling used by the McConaghy family. Those findings help reconstruct the physical setting, but they were made long after the crime and should not be confused with contemporary testimony.
The recreated edition also gives detailed walking directions to the remains. BrickTownPA does not reproduce those directions here out of respect for the cemetery, archaeological traces, surrounding property, and the need to preserve the site.
The 1923 Altoona Mirror recalled the case while profiling Judge George Taylor. Rung's 1970 column printed an older oral reminiscence attributed to “Grandfather Long” and then compared it with published history. Rung explicitly corrected the remembered name “Bob McConche” to Robert McConaghy and cited Sherman Day's 1843 Historical Collections of Pennsylvania, which described McConaghy as age 36 and recorded his execution on November 6, 1840.
These layers are useful because they show how the story survived locally, but memories recorded decades later can blend fact, family tradition, and dramatic detail. This page gives greatest weight to details repeated across independent sources and marks the remaining conflicts.