George Chislett’s killing at Elwood

What happened at Elwood

A 1938 township centennial book says Chislett was summoned from his house and shot without warning. John F. Hall’s 1899 Daily Union History of Atlantic City and County places the killing at Elwood and describes a robbery motive. Its grim reported result was “an old pocketbook containing one cent.” These are retrospective accounts, not the trial transcript. The pocketbook’s reported preservation in the County Clerk’s office describes its claimed location in 1899; its survival today has not been verified. Mullica Township Centennial Committee, Mullica Township, 1838–1938, p. 7; Hall, Daily Union History, “Important Trials” (1899).

Both histories name Hill, Fullen and Dayton. Hall says Hill and Fullen were convicted together at the September 1876 term; Dayton was tried separately, convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to twenty years. The centennial book says Dayton supplied the gun and testified for the state. Its language about the defendants’ character is an author’s judgment, not independent evidence about the crime.

The date problem

The 1938 book gives November 26, 1877 as the date Hill and Fullen were hanged. That year cannot describe the original crime chronology: a Warren County library index locates a George Chislett death notice in the August 11, 1876 Belvidere Apollo, and a September 14, 1876 Wilmington Daily Gazette listing identifies a report of Dayton’s confession in the case. Hall’s older county history gives October 7, 1876 for the executions. A digitized November 1, 1876 Deseret News telegraph column appears to report Hill and Fullen hanged in a dispatch dated October 27. Because the full page image and court warrant have not been reconciled, the exact execution day is left open here; the defensible year is 1876.

A New Jersey state treasurer’s report later records payments for National Guard service at the execution in Mays Landing. That official record supports the military-presence account but its payment dates do not establish the hanging date.

What the map can show

Hall places the crime at Elwood; the township book only says Mullica Township. Neither provides a road, property boundary or address for Chislett’s farm. The map therefore shows an Elwood locality area, not his house or the place he was shot. The execution took place at Mays Landing and is a separate point in the case narrative; it is not represented by the Elwood marker. The most useful next geographic source would be the 1876 indictment, trial testimony or a contemporary property map naming the farm.