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The Lost Clue:
In Francis Blake's History of Princeton, the primary source in my fact gathering for this site and my research in writing the screenplay, Blake admits to not being able to find the original letter of confession from Tilly Littlejohn (see "A Dying Man's Confession of Murder"). He relys on the following remembrance dated 1859 of a letter dated 1827 which was a retelling of the original confession dated 1815. In Blake's history he goes to great lengths to disprove the murder scenario based on the following letter which is dated 44 years after the death of Tilly Littlejohn and over 100 years after the disappearance of Lucy Keyes. In my research however, I was able to find the original letter, thanks to the internet and the Cornell University archives. Had Blake had access to the original letter, it is my feeling that he would have been far less likely to refute it's authenticity.
- John Stimpson, Screenwriter, The Legend of Lucy Keyes.
The simple story of the loss of the child and the search made for her was told by one to another and rehearsed by parents to their children, and would have gone down through the generations unchanged but for an incident which occurred at the centennial celebration in 1859. The poet of the day, Prof. Erastus Everett of Brooklyn, N.Y., having made reference to his poem to the loss of a child, was subsequently shown a letter written in 1827 by a native of Princeton, which placed the matter in an entirely different light.
The letter of 1827 I have not been able to find, although Mr. Everett succeeded in finding the writer of the letter, who confirmed the statements previously made.
- From, "The History of Princeton" by Francis E. Blake, pub. 1915
Dear Sir,
To give publicity to the confession of a crime, with mere supposition for its basis, demands an abler pen than mine, while to stigmatize the dead or give unnecessary pain to the living betrays a character more abandoned than I wish to possess.
Be that as it may, I believe the circumstances as narrated to me in 1827, to be authentic; nor have I heard anything since by which I have doubted their authenticity. I gave more credence to the report from the fact that all the years of my girlhood were spent within half a mile of Patty Keyes, sister to the child "Lucy" and one of the two sisters who "went to the pond for sand"; and I have many times listened as she related the sad story of the child's disappearance, together with other incidents that in my opinion have corroborated the truth of the statements of a Mrs. Anderson of Deerfield, N.Y.
Mrs. Anderson witnessed the confession, told it to Mrs. Whitmore and she gave it to me. The name of the man, to whom the allusion is made, was Littlejohn. I was told that Mr. Littlejohn was thought to be dying for three days -- at length he arose and had confessed a murder that he committed many years before -- said he was formerly a neighbor of Robert Keyes of Princeton, Mass., there was a misunderstanding between the families. A reconciliation was attempted, but the enmity of Mr. Littlejohn had not subsided. He sought revenge, and afterward seeing the little daughter alone in the woods, to avenge himself on the parents, killed her by beating her head against a log, and then placed her body in a hollow log, and went to his house.
When neighbors were solicited to assist in searching for the lost, he was among the first, and being familiar with the forest, he volunteered to lead the party, carefully avoiding the hollow log until night. After dark he went to the hollow log, took the body and deposited it in a hole which had been made by the over-turning of a tree. He said, the next day as a party were passing the hollow log, they found a lock of hair, which the family identified as that of Lucy's and he knew it to be hers, for as he was taking the body in the dark her hair caught and in his hurry he left this lock.
After the search had ended, he felt ill at ease there and sometime after left town. He gave the locality of the stump and requested someone present to write his confession to Princeton, adding that the stump might still be in existence and, by digging, the bones of the child might be found.
- From a letter from the Rockford Bourbon Co., Kansas Territory, December 8, 1859, to Erastus Everett, Esq.
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