Sometime before 1993, my friend, Betsy, found a divorce case in the Waldo County Court records at the State Archives in Augusta.  At that time I had written some of this story in the 'Out of The Past' column in 'The Republican Journal'.  The story was intriguing and haunting.  The divorce took place in May 1853, one hundred fifty-seven years ago.  The facts and depositions about events that had happened, sworn to by family, neighbors, and friends, totaled more than fifty pages.

The divorce was being sought by forty-six year-old Jane (Shepherd) Heal, who had come from Jefferson, Me. where she had married Gorham Heal of Lincolnville.  She has supposed that she would 'live happily ever after', never once suspecting what would lay ahead of her in life.

Gorham and Jane had five children who lived to adulthood, Augustus, Roxey Jane, Lucian, Amanda and Roscoe.  Jane stated in a deposition that she "had always conducted herself as a faithful, chaste, kind and affectionate wife."  But, she soon found that her husband was very demanding and abusive. He beat her so badly when Augustus was but a few months old, that she was bedridden for some time.  Gorham was claimed to be a powerful man. Roxey made a deposition that she remembered her father beating her mother one time while she was in bed, pounding her head upon the bedstead until she bled from her nose and ears.  He beat her unmercifully, and at one time she miscarried the child she was carrying after a severe beating, which left her unable to get out of bed for almost a month.  He grabbed her stomach in his fist, twisted and threatened to "Send her to hell".  At this time, a doctor came a couple of times to tend to Jane, until Gorham told him not to come again.  Jane's mother and sisters brought provisions and medicines for her.  Much of this time she was confined to her bed, and could not even get up.  At those times he would command her to get out of bed to do this or that for him, and even dragged her out of bed.  Gorham had often beat her with his fists in her side and stomach, as well as kicking her.  Times like these, she and the children feared even going to sleep in the house.

Gorham kept the food and provisions, including tea, coffee, candles and house staples locked in a chest.  This fact was testified to by neighbors and family.  He kept a lock on the pork barrel and the cellar door, as well as nailing the flour barrel tight.  He kept the keys with him at all times. When he was leaving for the day, he would unlock the chest, taking out the vittles that he wanted for a meal or for the day, locking it up again when he left.  Neighbors testified at seeing him take out his vittles for a meal, perhaps share a little with the children, and refuse Jane a mouthful.

Jane's mother testified that her daughter had written her after the birth of one of the children, asking for help.  Jane wrote her mother that she and the children were  starving.  The family and neighbors would bring in food when they knew that Gorham was not at home.  Jane's mother also testified that Gorham had threatened Jane in her presence, also threatened Jane's sister, Rosalinda, with a horse whip.  Rosalinda stepped between him and his wife, and he backed off, threatening to punish her after they left. He said that he did not fear God, man or the devil.

When Jane complained, asking for food for herself and the children, summer or winter, Gorham would have the boys bring in buckets of cold water from the well, which he would throw over her.  Jane testified that this had happened over thirty times.  Several local people had seen this happen and testified to it.

At one time Gorham's father, Peter Heal, lived in part of the house.   When Gorham's  brother, George, married, Gorham unlocked the chest, and prepared a feast for his guests to be eaten in his father's room.  When young Augustus asked what he, and his siblings would eat, Jane replied, "Indian bread and tea."  Gorham overheard the remark, stepped to coals of the open fire in the fireplace, grabbed the teapot, and threw the boiling tea on Jane, scalding her head.  Both Roxey and Amanda testified that she was blistered, and lost most of her hair.  While she was still bedridden from this incident, Gorham beat her badly one night as she was in bed, then he stood outside of the bedroom window all night, threatening Roxey and Amanda that he would tie them to a post in the kitchen and beat them to death, if they helped her, even though they could hear their mother begging them for help.  They never once doubted that he would beat them.  There were testimonies of other atrocities and depravations that he had committed against Jane and the children.

George would have been Roscoe's, see below, uncle, and they both died in the Civil War.  Roscoe was only sixteen years old when he entered the Service, and died two or three months later.  George Heald was a brother to Gorham Heal.  I do not have pictures of Gorham nor of Jane.  She undoubtedly died before photography was so popular, which came into popularity during the Civil War and after.  There is confusion in the spelling of the name.  The descendants of Gorham Heal spelled their names Heald, but the divorce records were Heal.

Moses Young, overseer of the Poor, and Selectman of Lincolnville testified that Gorham had a well-stocked farm of seventy-five to a hundred acres, always taxed to him, had a good pair of oxen, a fine mare and a two-year old colt, a few cows, and a number of pairs of steers, a decent flock of sheep, at that time all valued about $1500, a fine sum and farm for that time.

In May of 1853, Jane's brother, Lorenzo H. D. Shepherd, brought suit against Gorham for the following goods: Nov. 1850, one black Alpaca dress for Gorham's wife, provisions, boarding, flannel under shirts, three pairs stockings, for money lent to Jane in 1849, 1850, 1851 and 1852, for boarding Jane, and to obtain necessities for herself and Gorham and Jane's family of minor children.  This was posted in 'The Republican Journal' of 5 May 1853.   Jane had testified to the court that she had fled to the neighbors on several occasions in fear for her life, and Gorham had threatened 'to drop her dead with the first blow', at which time she told the children that if she was found dead, to tell what had happened to her.

After the testimonies of her children, mother, friends and neighbors, in May 1853, Jane was granted a divorce from Gorham Heal, at which time she was awarded $300 a month, as part of her dowry.  It is doubtful that she ever received a cent.  About that time, Gorham and son Augustus left for the 'Gold Rush' in California.  Gorham returned to marry a much younger woman, Eleanor Wadsworth, by whom he had eight more children.  He reported that Augustus had died in California in 1853.  There is much in this story that has to be imagined or to read between the lines.  What happened to Augustus?

After the divorce, Jane was forced to live off relatives, friends and neighbors.  She died in Camden, Me., aged fifty-three years, having been bedridden and feeble most of her life, probably from the severe beatings, abuse and malnutrition.

Roxey Jane married and lived in Camden.  Augustus was aged about eighteen years when he had died in California. Lucian went to sea.

Roscoe joined the Army during the Civil War, on Sept. 20, 1862.  He died of fever aboard ship, aged sixteen years.  His Pension files give some interesting information.  Capt. Ansel Wadsworth [who later became Sheriff of Waldo County] made a sworn statement that Roscoe had "taken a severe cold which prostrated him so that he was treated in the regimental hospital, but appeared sufficiently well enough to embark on the Steamer, Matazas.  He was very anxious to go with the company.  The first day at sea, Roscoe was sick with typhoid fever and grew worse until the seventh of December 1862, just three months from enlistment, at which time he died, and was buried at sea."

Now the story gets interesting.  Gorham Heal swore to the following on July 18, 1883, "I have lived on the farm I do now twenty-seven years.  In 1862, my family consisted of my wife, named Jane Shepard Heal who died in June 1862, Augustus Heal, Roxie Jane, Lucian, Amanda, who is a widow in Boston, Mass., and Roscoe.  An infant died in 1862." Gorham had remarried in 1857.

Gorham stated that he never had owned any real estate and never disposed of any before or since his son's death.  His neighbors, the same neighbors who made sworn statements thirty years earlier in Jane's defense, swore that Gorham Heal was old and feeble, walking with a cane.  What Gorham did not report in his first applications for a pension from Roscoe's death, was that he was married in 1857 to Eleanor, a woman thirty years younger than he, and that he fathered eight children by Eleanor, in addition to the six by his former wife, Jane.

In the several statements that he gave proof of his marriage to Jane, he neglected to state that he and Jane divorced in 1853, and that she had died in Camden, not in his home, and they were not man and wife.  Nor did he make a statement that when he and Augustus went to California, that he had given his household and farm goods to a neighbor, while he was physically and mentally abusing his first wife.   Eventually Gorham did mention that he had remarried in his affidavits.

The Pension Records at the National Archives in Washington, D. C. contain a wealth of information.  Roscoe's pension file did reveal that Gorham Heal received a pension of $8 a month, commencing when he first filed in 1882.  If Roscoe's mother has lived, this pension should have gone to her.  In 1882, the date that he applied to the War Department for a pension, the ages of his children by his second wife ranged from six years to twenty-four years.

My father once told a tale that his father had told him. I do not know how old my grandfather was when this event happened, or whether he was alone or with his father.  He told of passing the Heal home in the morning with a horse and wagon on the way to Camden or Rockland.  A large tree stood just beside the house near the road.  As my grandfather came along, a woman was hanging from the tree.  She apparently had tied bed sheets together, and tied them to a limb outside the bedroom window. Who was this woman?

What happened to Gorham Heal?  Neither a death date nor a grave site has not been found for him.  If a man is to be remembered for the good he has done in the world, then if he has done no good, then he should be remembered as evil, or perhaps not remembered at all.

Author's note:   I noticed that I have Heal and Heald spelled both ways.  In the divorce, the name was spelled Heal.  The sons of Gorham Heald spelled their name Heald, and that is what I had put on the pictures.  It is confusing, but it happened in those days.