That Strange Elopement
Title
That Strange Elopement
Subject
Description
In November of 1880, newspapers from Kingston NY to Seattle Washington and beyond ran a sensationalized story about a young White heiress who eloped with a Black farmhand who was working on her uncle’s farm in Gardiner, NY, under the memorable title “A New Use for Burnt Cork.” A week after this story broke, The Sun, one of New York City’s penny papers that specialized in crime and scandal, sent a reporter up to Lapala in Lamontville to track down the couple.
Creator
Date
November 14, 1880
Abstract
THAT STRANGE ELOPEMENT.
Did Carrie Deyo Blacken Her Face to Marry a Colored Man?
The Miserable Hovel to which her Husband Took her from a Home of Comfort-Impressions that she Married for Revenge.
The sensation and excitement that the elopement and marriage Miss Carrie Doyo caused have by no means subsided either In Gardner where she lived or In Marbleton, where she now lives or In Kingston where she and her negro husband did some shopping on Monday last. The story was told in The Sun of Wednesday last, and it was then intimated that legal complications might arise. But there seems to be more serious trouble in store for this couple even than legal proceedings. On no less authority than one of the counsel it is I asserted that Miss Deyo’s (now Mrs. Sampson) brother has laid that he will shoot both her husband and herself on sight. It seems that when Miss Deyo was wandering about for miles and miles on foot with the man she meant to marry and seeking for somebody to pronounce the ceremony, she met an aged colored woman. This woman was, as it happened, a relative of the prospective husband. “Miss,” said the old woman, “don’t you go an’ do it. Listen to Wesley’s old aunty. There’s a heap of trouble for married folk always anyway but if you does this there’ll be nothing but trouble for you all your days.”
But the girl was set on the marriage, much more than the man. They tramped for mile and miles rebuffed by this clergyman and that, expelled from the office of a Justice of the Peace and finally accomplishing their purpose at the house of an aged clergyman who had no sort of idea at the time of ceremony that he was marrying a white woman of good social standing to one of the Lapello negroes. There Is still some mystery about it all. The girl insists and did to the writer, that she married the man of her choice and that she will stick to him; but It is evident that there are some reasons connected with the man, which induced her to do as she has done. When seen yesterday in the midst of the most appallingly abject surroundings, she seemed not only contented but also unwilling to listen to any suggestions of quitting the place. She was brought up In a roomy farmhouse In New Paltz. Her adopted father who is also her uncle by marriage stands as well as any one in the community. He Is rich – at least rich in comparison with his neighbors. She was educated. even better than her mates. She had to all appearances, a pleasant home and this is the picture her present place of abode as seen yesterday by the writer. Away back ten miles from Kingston on the mountain Is a little settlement - a cluster of hovels and log cabins. The place would be lonesome in summer In the chilliness of fall it while most dismal and dreary. Negroes occupy these hovels except that one house better than all the rest is the home of the superintendent of a stone quarry. The cleared spaces are stony. Nothing but plantain and weeds, and here and there a cabbage appear to thrive on the soil. The nearest church is miles away and a low stone shanty Is used for a schoolhouse and occasional negro preaching of a Sunday. Absolute chilly Isolation is entailed on everyone who dwells there excepting the sorry Intercourse they have with each other. One of these hovels Is built on the side of stony ledge. That made a basement possible for a story and a half superstructure, and It Is for this damp dark basement that this girl has gone for a home. One window lets in not only light but air, for the glass Is nearly ail gone. But if it was dreary outside the most dismal prison could not be more gloomy than the single room. There was a cook stove with a pot on, but no fire in it. There were two chairs and a rude table; there were one or two pots, a tin plate and cup, and in one corner a bed on the floor. Some old shoes and boots, muddy, and moldy, a block for kindling wood splitting, were all the other furniture of this place. The floor was of stone, the walls were of stone, and it was to such a place that a girl who had been brought up in one of the neatest, coziest places who had a piano and books and newspapers had come to live. The basement was entirely deserted: but a colored boy, who stood with great staring eyes as the writer looked, said that Mr. Sampson had gone to a funeral with his wife. The funeral was that of a colored baby and the screams and wails of the negroes were heard a long way from the schoolhouse. The services were over just as I approached. Sampson the husband, came out when I asked for him. He Is a small man and seems to be less than 20 years old. His complexion is copper-colored, and he seems to be a good-natured, easy-going fellow. His lips are thick, and his nose as pronounced as that of a full-blooded African.
“Have you any intimation of legal proceedings?” the writer asked. Instantly all the colored people ceased their mourning, even leaving the white sexton to attend to the little coffin alone and crowded around me. Some of those men would not be pleasant people to meet If they were ugly and It might have fared hard with me If I proved to be what they suspected I was - an officer come to arrest Sampson.
“What can they do?” Sampson answered. “I married her. They can’t arrest me for that. I have never done any wrong. She was willing, and so was I. They can’t separate us in that way. If they want me, they needn’t send an officer here; I’ll go right to Kingston and give myself up.”
Just then there came from the schoolhouse a lot of negro women, and with them one white girl. She was trying to soothe a negro child that was crying, and she paced up and down the plot hushing the child by singing to it and swaying it in her arms. Suddenly her eye fell on me and the expression that came over her face seemed fierce almost. She too suspected that I was an officer. Shut put the baby into the arm of an old negress, and lost no time In taking her place by her husband’s side, and did so with a defiant look. She was clad in a dark dress, over which was drawn a blue knitted shawl, neatly pinned at the throat and she had a decidedly jaunty-looklng hat on her head. She Is larger than the man she Is married to, and is well formed. Her face is rather pleasant, eyes reddish-brown and large, the forehead low, and the features regular. She seamed to have an abundance of dark-brown hair, loosely gathered together at the back of the head.
“What’s the matter?” she said quickly. “Go away, Carrie,” Sampson saId hastily, the man is all right.”
“If you come from John Deyo (her adopted father) you have come on a useless errand.” She continued.
“Is It true that you blackened your face with burnt cork before you could get a minister to marry you?”
“What difference does It make?” If I did It I did It knowing what I was doing. If I smeared my face with green, that don’t break a marriage does it?”
“But It is said there was fraud perpetrated?”
“Who say so?” That is one of John Deyo’s lies. How could there be any fraud? I did it of my own free will and I am content. They can’t take me away. They can’t break this marriage, I have my certificate, and I sent a copy of it to John Deyo. He’ll see that I am married.” “How long have you been married?”
“Five weeks, and I am not sorry a bit. John Deyo has been telling lies about me. He has been trying to frighten my husband and me. He wants to get me away from my husband and to send me to Cincinnati to boarding school. But he can’t do it. I am just as well capable of taking care of myself as he Is. I know precisely what I am about, and even if I am only 19, still, I as I got married he can’t break It. That was why I got my certificate all in good order and I got it framed.”
“It is said that you charged your adopted father with ill treatment.”
“It’s true.” My Iawyer Mr. Brlnnler knows It. But he can never put me out of doors again nor abuse me as he has done. I’ve got some one lo protect me now.”
When asked for the particulars of the elopement and the attempt tp get a clergyman to marry her, she said with decided vim that was nobody’s business but her own, but she denied having put burnt cork on her face to deceive the clergy man.
Sampson had stood, listening attentively while his wife was speaking. He would look at her closely and when she finished would turn and eye the reporter to see what effect her remarks had.
“I mean to support my wife.” He said at length as well as I can and just as soon as I can better our circumstances without getting into debt, I shall do so.”
Then she took him by the arm and led him away, and I saw them going up the stony road arm in arm, she seemingly in earnest conversation, her blue shawl the only bit of brightness in the dreary landscape. The picture seems to affect the white superintendent of the quarry, for he touched my arm and, pointing to them, said:
“that’s the saddest sight I ever saw in all my life. It’s an outrageous shame, and my wife feels like crying every time she sets eyes on that poor unfortunate creature.”
“But she seems fully to realize all that is before her.”
“Yes, she does sir, and that’s what makes it harder to understand.”
It was with plain from the conversation that the surmises of her lawyer, Mr. W.D. Brinnier, are correct. He says that she has deliberately married this negro to spite her adopted father. What happened in the Deyo house no one outside knows, but something happened which caused this girl to do this thing in the hope of tormenting and disgracing the family. Mr. Deyo will not speak of the matter.
“I never want to hear her name again.” He said. “I have utterly renounced and cast her off, and she must abide by the consequences.”
Thus, Carrie Deyo cast away a prospective inheritance of something like $50,000 to marry a negro.
Papers were served upon Mr. Deyo demanding $15 in cash, a feather be, and one or two trinkets that the girl claimed as hers. He delivered up the articles, excepting that the feather bed sent was not live feathers. The girl instructed her lawyer to replevin the live feather bed or to sue for the amount.
Mr. Vannetten, Mr. Deyo’s lawyer says that Mr. Deyo is disposed to let matters stand just where they do now, unless Sampson and the girl are troublesome. If they force themselves upon his notice he shall take certain measures. Mr. Vannetten did not say precisely what those measures would be, but he intimated that a way might be found to annul the marriage. The girl, being underage, left the house in the night time and joined this negro. Then, as alleged, she blackened her face and deceived the clergyman who married them. These facts, with others that Mr. Vannetten does not care to make public now, he believes would make a case by which her adopted father and guardian could secure an annulment of the marriage.
The girl, however, told her lawyer, that even if they broke the marriage because she was underage, yet she would wait until she was of age and then marry Sampson.
The Rev. Dr. Huriburt, the aged clergyman who married them, is greatly grieved. He would never have married them had he supposed they were not of the same race. He will not say that the girl’s face was blackened. They came to his house and asked to be married. He asked the usual questions, and supposed he was marrying two colored people. It seems almost impossible for the clergyman to have been mistaken, unless her face was stained at least, for, though her complexion is rather dark, no one could ever even at a distance suppose her to be a mulatto.
Did Carrie Deyo Blacken Her Face to Marry a Colored Man?
The Miserable Hovel to which her Husband Took her from a Home of Comfort-Impressions that she Married for Revenge.
The sensation and excitement that the elopement and marriage Miss Carrie Doyo caused have by no means subsided either In Gardner where she lived or In Marbleton, where she now lives or In Kingston where she and her negro husband did some shopping on Monday last. The story was told in The Sun of Wednesday last, and it was then intimated that legal complications might arise. But there seems to be more serious trouble in store for this couple even than legal proceedings. On no less authority than one of the counsel it is I asserted that Miss Deyo’s (now Mrs. Sampson) brother has laid that he will shoot both her husband and herself on sight. It seems that when Miss Deyo was wandering about for miles and miles on foot with the man she meant to marry and seeking for somebody to pronounce the ceremony, she met an aged colored woman. This woman was, as it happened, a relative of the prospective husband. “Miss,” said the old woman, “don’t you go an’ do it. Listen to Wesley’s old aunty. There’s a heap of trouble for married folk always anyway but if you does this there’ll be nothing but trouble for you all your days.”
But the girl was set on the marriage, much more than the man. They tramped for mile and miles rebuffed by this clergyman and that, expelled from the office of a Justice of the Peace and finally accomplishing their purpose at the house of an aged clergyman who had no sort of idea at the time of ceremony that he was marrying a white woman of good social standing to one of the Lapello negroes. There Is still some mystery about it all. The girl insists and did to the writer, that she married the man of her choice and that she will stick to him; but It is evident that there are some reasons connected with the man, which induced her to do as she has done. When seen yesterday in the midst of the most appallingly abject surroundings, she seemed not only contented but also unwilling to listen to any suggestions of quitting the place. She was brought up In a roomy farmhouse In New Paltz. Her adopted father who is also her uncle by marriage stands as well as any one in the community. He Is rich – at least rich in comparison with his neighbors. She was educated. even better than her mates. She had to all appearances, a pleasant home and this is the picture her present place of abode as seen yesterday by the writer. Away back ten miles from Kingston on the mountain Is a little settlement - a cluster of hovels and log cabins. The place would be lonesome in summer In the chilliness of fall it while most dismal and dreary. Negroes occupy these hovels except that one house better than all the rest is the home of the superintendent of a stone quarry. The cleared spaces are stony. Nothing but plantain and weeds, and here and there a cabbage appear to thrive on the soil. The nearest church is miles away and a low stone shanty Is used for a schoolhouse and occasional negro preaching of a Sunday. Absolute chilly Isolation is entailed on everyone who dwells there excepting the sorry Intercourse they have with each other. One of these hovels Is built on the side of stony ledge. That made a basement possible for a story and a half superstructure, and It Is for this damp dark basement that this girl has gone for a home. One window lets in not only light but air, for the glass Is nearly ail gone. But if it was dreary outside the most dismal prison could not be more gloomy than the single room. There was a cook stove with a pot on, but no fire in it. There were two chairs and a rude table; there were one or two pots, a tin plate and cup, and in one corner a bed on the floor. Some old shoes and boots, muddy, and moldy, a block for kindling wood splitting, were all the other furniture of this place. The floor was of stone, the walls were of stone, and it was to such a place that a girl who had been brought up in one of the neatest, coziest places who had a piano and books and newspapers had come to live. The basement was entirely deserted: but a colored boy, who stood with great staring eyes as the writer looked, said that Mr. Sampson had gone to a funeral with his wife. The funeral was that of a colored baby and the screams and wails of the negroes were heard a long way from the schoolhouse. The services were over just as I approached. Sampson the husband, came out when I asked for him. He Is a small man and seems to be less than 20 years old. His complexion is copper-colored, and he seems to be a good-natured, easy-going fellow. His lips are thick, and his nose as pronounced as that of a full-blooded African.
“Have you any intimation of legal proceedings?” the writer asked. Instantly all the colored people ceased their mourning, even leaving the white sexton to attend to the little coffin alone and crowded around me. Some of those men would not be pleasant people to meet If they were ugly and It might have fared hard with me If I proved to be what they suspected I was - an officer come to arrest Sampson.
“What can they do?” Sampson answered. “I married her. They can’t arrest me for that. I have never done any wrong. She was willing, and so was I. They can’t separate us in that way. If they want me, they needn’t send an officer here; I’ll go right to Kingston and give myself up.”
Just then there came from the schoolhouse a lot of negro women, and with them one white girl. She was trying to soothe a negro child that was crying, and she paced up and down the plot hushing the child by singing to it and swaying it in her arms. Suddenly her eye fell on me and the expression that came over her face seemed fierce almost. She too suspected that I was an officer. Shut put the baby into the arm of an old negress, and lost no time In taking her place by her husband’s side, and did so with a defiant look. She was clad in a dark dress, over which was drawn a blue knitted shawl, neatly pinned at the throat and she had a decidedly jaunty-looklng hat on her head. She Is larger than the man she Is married to, and is well formed. Her face is rather pleasant, eyes reddish-brown and large, the forehead low, and the features regular. She seamed to have an abundance of dark-brown hair, loosely gathered together at the back of the head.
“What’s the matter?” she said quickly. “Go away, Carrie,” Sampson saId hastily, the man is all right.”
“If you come from John Deyo (her adopted father) you have come on a useless errand.” She continued.
“Is It true that you blackened your face with burnt cork before you could get a minister to marry you?”
“What difference does It make?” If I did It I did It knowing what I was doing. If I smeared my face with green, that don’t break a marriage does it?”
“But It is said there was fraud perpetrated?”
“Who say so?” That is one of John Deyo’s lies. How could there be any fraud? I did it of my own free will and I am content. They can’t take me away. They can’t break this marriage, I have my certificate, and I sent a copy of it to John Deyo. He’ll see that I am married.” “How long have you been married?”
“Five weeks, and I am not sorry a bit. John Deyo has been telling lies about me. He has been trying to frighten my husband and me. He wants to get me away from my husband and to send me to Cincinnati to boarding school. But he can’t do it. I am just as well capable of taking care of myself as he Is. I know precisely what I am about, and even if I am only 19, still, I as I got married he can’t break It. That was why I got my certificate all in good order and I got it framed.”
“It is said that you charged your adopted father with ill treatment.”
“It’s true.” My Iawyer Mr. Brlnnler knows It. But he can never put me out of doors again nor abuse me as he has done. I’ve got some one lo protect me now.”
When asked for the particulars of the elopement and the attempt tp get a clergyman to marry her, she said with decided vim that was nobody’s business but her own, but she denied having put burnt cork on her face to deceive the clergy man.
Sampson had stood, listening attentively while his wife was speaking. He would look at her closely and when she finished would turn and eye the reporter to see what effect her remarks had.
“I mean to support my wife.” He said at length as well as I can and just as soon as I can better our circumstances without getting into debt, I shall do so.”
Then she took him by the arm and led him away, and I saw them going up the stony road arm in arm, she seemingly in earnest conversation, her blue shawl the only bit of brightness in the dreary landscape. The picture seems to affect the white superintendent of the quarry, for he touched my arm and, pointing to them, said:
“that’s the saddest sight I ever saw in all my life. It’s an outrageous shame, and my wife feels like crying every time she sets eyes on that poor unfortunate creature.”
“But she seems fully to realize all that is before her.”
“Yes, she does sir, and that’s what makes it harder to understand.”
It was with plain from the conversation that the surmises of her lawyer, Mr. W.D. Brinnier, are correct. He says that she has deliberately married this negro to spite her adopted father. What happened in the Deyo house no one outside knows, but something happened which caused this girl to do this thing in the hope of tormenting and disgracing the family. Mr. Deyo will not speak of the matter.
“I never want to hear her name again.” He said. “I have utterly renounced and cast her off, and she must abide by the consequences.”
Thus, Carrie Deyo cast away a prospective inheritance of something like $50,000 to marry a negro.
Papers were served upon Mr. Deyo demanding $15 in cash, a feather be, and one or two trinkets that the girl claimed as hers. He delivered up the articles, excepting that the feather bed sent was not live feathers. The girl instructed her lawyer to replevin the live feather bed or to sue for the amount.
Mr. Vannetten, Mr. Deyo’s lawyer says that Mr. Deyo is disposed to let matters stand just where they do now, unless Sampson and the girl are troublesome. If they force themselves upon his notice he shall take certain measures. Mr. Vannetten did not say precisely what those measures would be, but he intimated that a way might be found to annul the marriage. The girl, being underage, left the house in the night time and joined this negro. Then, as alleged, she blackened her face and deceived the clergyman who married them. These facts, with others that Mr. Vannetten does not care to make public now, he believes would make a case by which her adopted father and guardian could secure an annulment of the marriage.
The girl, however, told her lawyer, that even if they broke the marriage because she was underage, yet she would wait until she was of age and then marry Sampson.
The Rev. Dr. Huriburt, the aged clergyman who married them, is greatly grieved. He would never have married them had he supposed they were not of the same race. He will not say that the girl’s face was blackened. They came to his house and asked to be married. He asked the usual questions, and supposed he was marrying two colored people. It seems almost impossible for the clergyman to have been mistaken, unless her face was stained at least, for, though her complexion is rather dark, no one could ever even at a distance suppose her to be a mulatto.
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newspaper article
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Citation
The Sun, “That Strange Elopement,” Hurley Mountain Stories, accessed January 24, 2026, https://hurleymtnstories.omeka.net/items/show/102.