Criminal cases · Hanover Furnace, Burlington County
The Foulks parricide at Hanover Furnace
Trial transcript reviewed in a contemporary newspaper index
Mark Anthony Foulks was convicted of second-degree murder for the drunken clubbing death of his father, Joseph Foulks, outside their homes at Hanover Furnace on June 28, 1861.
A drunken evening among three men
According to the New Jersey Mirror's report of July 4, 1861, Mark Anthony Foulks, his brother Thomas, and their father Joseph had gone to Wrightstown on Friday, June 28, to collect their week's pay and had bought liquor for a planned weekend "frolic." Drinking on the way home, the three arrived at Hanover Furnace considerably intoxicated. A fight broke out between the brothers; Mark, described as "from thirty to thirty-five years of age," threw Thomas down after a hard struggle, then went to his house for an axe. He did not find one. On his way back he encountered his father, picked up a piece of slab wood, and struck him on the head, "knocking him down, killing him almost instantly." The paper called it "a most unfortunate occurrence" attributable to drink and reported that Mark said afterward he had no memory of striking his father.
The account already in hand at the time was secondhand and sympathetic to the accused. The fuller record came three months later, when the case went to trial.
The trial: witnesses and testimony
The New Jersey Court of Oyer and Terminer took up "The State vs. Mark Anthony Foulks" on a Friday morning, immediately after the neighboring trial of William Riker for the murder of Joseph C. Williams in Cinnaminson. The Mirror, a Thursday weekly, carried the Riker testimony in its issue of September 26 with a note that the Foulks trial was "set down for Friday," and reported the Foulks trial itself in the issue of October 3; the Friday in question was therefore September 27, 1861, with sentencing the following morning. Attorney General Frederick T. Frelinghuysen assisted the prosecution in both cases; Ewan Merritt appeared for Foulks. The jury was composed of Josephus Sooy Jr., John C. Milbine, Amos W. Hueston, Samuel W. Evans, William W. Leeds, Charles Wallace, William Glover, Joseph W. Adams, Shreve Antrim, Amos Keeler, Oliver L. Jeffries and David Rogers.
Samuel Rhubart, a neighbor who had tried to separate the brothers, testified that after the first scuffle Mark went to his woodshed "asking for his axe," then set off alone with his father following; Rhubart walked behind and was about 25 steps away when he saw Mark strike the fatal blow with a club, saying afterward, "You go back and stay there." Thomas Foulks (a nephew of the deceased, distinct from the defendant's brother of the same name) gave a similar account of the men moving toward the company store and hearing "a crack, as if a blow was struck." Nathan F. Bishop, the manager at Hanover, neighbors Elizabeth Campion and Rebecca Carr, and the defendant's brother Thomas all testified to the quarrel, the drinking, and words attributed to Mark at the scene ("Lay there till I pick you up" or similar). A doctor, Aaron Read, found the fatal wound on the left side of the neck and that the neck was broken; a witness who had shaved the body, John Barbford, said hair on the recovered club matched the deceased's neck. The defense's efforts, the paper reported, "were directed to showing that by the law and the evidence in the cause, the prisoner could only be convicted of Manslaughter, or at most Murder in the Second Degree."
Verdict and sentence
The case went to the jury at 7 o'clock on Friday evening; within half an hour they returned a verdict of guilty of murder in the second degree — the same finding the jury in the Riker case had reached two days earlier. At 8 o'clock the next morning both prisoners were brought in together for sentence by Judge Elmer: "Riker was sentenced to confinement in the State Prison, for six years — Foulks for seven." Addressing Foulks, the judge said the court had weighed "the bad example which had doubtless been set him, from his earliest youth, by him against whom he had raised his parricidal hand," and attributed his situation to "the habitual use of intoxicating drink." The Mirror noted that both men had "conducted themselves in an exemplary manner" in jail awaiting trial, with Foulks "especially evidencing deep penitence and contrition," and that the verdicts "appeared to give general satisfaction."
This is a distinct case from the Decatur cannonball legend also associated with Hanover Furnace on this site, which concerns a local folk tradition rather than a documented crime.
Sources and research limits
- Burlington County Library System, New Jersey Mirror index, keyword search "Foulks" — Reviewed the full-text index entries for the New Jersey Mirror of July 4, 1861 (p. 3, col. 1, "Local Facts and Fancies / HOMICIDE"), September 26, 1861 (p. 3, cols. 2–3, trial-calendar notice naming Foulks "the Hanover Furnace Parricide"), and October 3, 1861 (p. 3, cols. 1–2, "COURT OF OYER AND TERMINER... TRIAL OF FOULKS, THE PARRICIDE" and "SENTENCE OF THE HOMICIDES"). The index supplies transcribed text rather than page images, and for these three records the transcription runs to the full length of the newspaper's own items; the quotations above are taken from that transcribed newspaper text, not from editorial summary written by the indexer, and the one plainly editorial insertion in the record (a bracketed gloss supplying the date "June 28, 1861") has not been quoted. The transcription has not been checked against the original microfilm, which is held by the Burlington County Library in Westampton. The search is keyword-driven with no permanent per-record link, so the query above reproduces the result set rather than linking a single record.