Blogs by Dave Tabler
Best place in Delaware for a duel?
2/6/2023 2:24:56 AM
If you want to hold a duel that avoids the prying eyes of the law, you go to a contested border area, causing confusion between competing jurisdictions.
Marydel, Delaware’s claim to fame is that the last duel in the state was fought there on January 8, 1877.
The town was easily accessible by railroad from Philadelphia for ‘duelists’ from major east coast cities (the train station stood on the town’s modern fire department site). Marydel was (still is) a quiet rural hamlet far from the prying eyes of curious parties or media. Most importantly, the town is half in Maryland, and half in Delaware. If one duelist stood on the Maryland side of the state line, and one duelist stood on the Delaware side, it caused confusion over jurisdiction in the respective court systems.
Which is why James Gordon Bennett, publisher of the New York Herald, and Frederick May, a wealthy New York socialite, chose Marydel to have at it.
Bennett was engaged to May’s sister, but broke off the engagement and spoke badly of her in public. This incensed May, who felt his family’s name had been besmirched. He horsewhipped Bennett as the latter came out of NY’s Union Club one evening in early January, and Bennett in turn challenged May to a duel.
What was the outcome?
Bennett slightly wounded May in the arm, and both men felt honor had been restored. Neither was pursued by the law, as the duel had not been witnessed by anyone outside each man’s “seconds” (attendants). The two left Marydel on separate trains, and never spoke again after that.
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• Why is the 2nd Thursday of August ‘Big Thursday’? - Wednesday, February 8, 2023
• What could be less controversial than naming your estate “Buena Vista” - Tuesday, February 7, 2023
• Best place in Delaware for a duel? - Monday, February 6, 2023
• Murder by Chocolate - Saturday, February 4, 2023
• Quimby's quagmire of an airqaft - Thursday, February 2, 2023
• Noise like that of an earthquake - Wednesday, February 1, 2023
• Red Demons, Green Flyers, and Knock-a-Bouts - Monday, January 30, 2023
• Strange trauma reaction from a jilted fiancé - Friday, January 27, 2023
• The Robin Hood we know today - Thursday, January 26, 2023
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