Dallas Morning News
May 1,1889
page 5

A Case of Kidnapping
The victim, a little girl, persuaded away from her father,
Supposed to be in Dallas
Her mother who is separated from her father, believed to have had it done.

Sherman , Tex, April 29 - J. L. Woolsey, a farmer who lives in the southern suburbs of the city ward whose little daughter mysteriously disappeared last evening, said today in a conversation with a NEWS reporter:

"My name is J. L. Woolsey and I live on the Hutchcraft place, just below the Houston and Texas Central section - house. I was married the first time Feb 27, 1869, at Raleigh, Phelps County, Mo. to Miss Mattie Giddens. We lived together until 1884, having in the meantime moved to Dallas, Tex. At that time we separated, disagreements having arisen and in 1886 I received a divorce from my wife granting me possession of the children. Frederick Andrew, aged 12, Charlie aged 11 and Maudie Louise aged 6. The youngest boy and the little girl were with me when my wife left me in 1884 but the oldest boy was with her for nearly a year.

On the 13 of May, 1885, my wife returned to Dallas and came to me and asked that the little girl be allowed to stay with her a few days. This was on Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday I went to the address given by my wife and found that both she and the little girl were missing. I got a letter out of the post office addressed to my wife from the man with whom she is alleged to have run away the first time, and in this he told her to get the little girl and met him at McKinney. When I got to McKinney I learned that the man had heard that the officers were on the trail and had warned my wife to leave, and she had done so. I went from McKinney to Dallas, and from there I went to Fort Worth.

June 1, 1885, I reached Gainesville, it was not until November that I found her, at which time she was with a sister of the man in question, near Gainesville. About that time she was arrested for living in adultery, as alleged, with a man in Dallas and carried back to that place. She left the girl at Gainesville. I went to the house and got her. I returned to Dallas, before I got back to Dallas my wife had been liberated and gotten with both my boys and had persuaded them to go to Missouri. As soon as I got back I sent for them and they came home. To go back a little, I will here state that on Aug. 1, after my wife had run away from me, I received a letter from a man dated at Fort Worth, which stated that my wife was dead, and as far as the boy was concerned I had better keep my distance.

Aug. 20 I was married a second time to Miss Mary Jane Alsup in the courthouse in the city of Sherman. I believed that my wife was dead. I am still living with my second wife. When I learned that my first wife was not dead, I, at once, set about to get a divorce, and March 1887 was remarried to my second wife in East Dallas. I worked about Dallas for some time. I left Dallas in August 1889 for Duck Creek and picked cotton, and my wife and three children went with me. We also had a small babe, my second wife's child. In November 1888, I located on the Kirk farm, between Sherman and Whitemound, seven miles out of town. I stayed there until about last Christmas, when I moved to Sherman. Some time since I heard that the man with whom my wife ran away was dead, and once afterward I saw my first wife and she showed me a certificate of her marriage to another man in McKinney, but I also heard afterward that they too were parted.

Yesterday morning my little girl went out to secure some flowers and has not returned home and I have it from good authority that she was taken off on a southbound train on the Central list evening. My first wife is of medium height, has blue eyes, the left eye is smaller than the other and she has large freckles on her face. Her hair is very dark, nearly black, and she will weigh probably 140 pounds. She was in her 15th year when we were married and is now about 34 years old. My little girl, Mandie, has blue eyes and light hair. She weighs probably sixty pounds and is about the average height. She has a scar on the under lip, about midway, and another on her back near the shoulder blade which is the size of a quarter of a dollar. At the time she left to gather flowers she had on a striped calico dress and a red shawl. She wore dark stockings and buttoned shoes.

Since the above written complaint was filed before Justice Campbell, charging R. P. Hill, a night watchman at the Alliance mill, with kidnapping the girl, Maudie Woolsey, Constable Spence this morning called at Hill's home and calling him out, requested him to go to Lyon Station with him to find the little girl. Hill gave himself away by telling the constable that there was no use to look for her in Lyon. Further close questioning developed the fact that Hill had received letters from the girl's mother in Dallas, in which had been enclosed $2 to buy a ticket for the little girl from Sherman to Dallas. He claims that he did not give the little girl the money but that he sent the money by a third party and that the little girl was more than glad to get a chance to go.

He did not deny having been at the depot when the train went south, and says the little girl went to Dallas. He was immediately arrested by Officer Spence, and after being warned made substantially the same statement recited above. On his person were found two letters dated at Dallas and from the girl's mother, in which she asks him to get her little girl, and promises to pay him for the trouble just as soon as she can get the money. Hill claims to have been a member of a secret detective association until a short time since and has not renewed them. He was taken at once to the Houston Street prison and locked up.

The first intonation that the officers had that Hill knew anything of the case was the statement of one of the Woolsey's boys that a man answering Hill's description had tried to get him to get his little sister out of the house for a walk, but which he had refused to do.
It is also alleged that Hill told some friends after Woolsey had first told of his daughter's absence that he would not find her where he was looking.

Hill has lived in Sherman for quite a while and is about 21 years of age.

Dallas Morning News
May 1, 1889
page 4

R. P. Hill , who was put in jail yesterday by Constable Spence on the charge of kidnapping Mandie Woolsey, was taken before Justice Campbell today and released from custody, the attorney for the state giving it as his opinion that the testimony was insufficient to warrant his being held any longer.

Dallas Morning News
May 2, 1889
page 6

Kidnapped Girl Recovered
Sherman, Tex, May 1-

W. T. Woolsey. sic J. L., who alleges that his little daughter was kidnapped and taken to Dallas, arrived this morning in charge of the little girl, whom he found at Dallas in possession of her mother, his ( Woolsey's) divorced wife. Woolsey showed The News reporter has a certified copy of the decree of divorce granted to him from Martha Woolsey in the district court of Dallas county, and in which he, the plaintiff, is given possession of the little children, among whom is specified the little girl in question. He does not deny that the little girl seemed to like to stay with her mother, but he claims the court gave him possession of the child for justifiable reasons and that he intends to reserve that right to himself.

Dallas Morning News
Aug. 26, 1892
page 3 (near Ft. Worth)

Remains identified: J. W. Woolsey of Denison came here tonight and positively identified the mutilated remains of the young boy who was found on the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railroad last Tuesday morning as his son. The father recognized the clothing that (was) worn by his
son and will take the body home for burial.

The census of 1900 shows J. L. Woolsey living with his wife and five children and a Allsup relative.  Obviously his insanity plea worked well. He did not stay in jail.  I would say he was rather a scoundrel.

George Sabin was no doubt uneducated - or mostly so.  Most of the family was.

Let me tell you briefly about his family background.

George W. Sabin Sr. married in Indiana to Margaret Godwin and they had five children.  Geo. W. left to fight in the Civil War.  Margaret took the children to Iowa to her family.  Geo. W. was injured and returned to Indiana.  There he hooked up with Mary Dilworth who was the widow of a
fellow soldier of Geo. W.  She was young!  They had three children.  Geo. Jr. was the oldest of those three.

During that time they moved from Indiana to Missouri.  Either the same year or the following year of the birth of their third child Geo. W. Sr. married my Great Grandmother - Mary Catherine Chandler.  They married (with court records) in June 1870 at the home of Mary C.'s uncle Lorenzo Dow Chandler.  They moved to Wright Co., MO and she was 17 and he 41 according to the census.  Geo. Jr. was 5 at this point.  They started having children.  Cora Estelle Sabin was their first.

Family lore says that Mary C. began to have an affair with a doctor.  She was run out of town.  She loaded all the kids into a wagon and went to Denison (and into Indian territory).  Geo. W. was to follow.  He did not.

He remarried again and then died in 1900.  He is buried in Webster, Co.

Cora married John W. Kinney and began to have children.  She was pregnant with child number two when Geo. Jr. was shot.

In the same time period Mary C. remarried (divorce?  who knows.  Legal marriage?  who knows) to Alexander Hayes and had another daughter.

What a family.  What history.  It gets better and better!