Nancy Woodin – Garrett County’s Most Noted Widow
Nancy Woodin may never have intended to outlive all of her four husbands, but she did. And if three of them died young and in rather unusual circumstances, was that really her fault? OK, so yeah, she did face murder charges for the death of poor Mrs. Engle, but she was acquitted for that, and she never faced any other charges, right?
Some History about Nancy Woodin
Nancy Woodin, born about 1803, was the daughter of William and Sally Woodin. She married her first husband, John Yeast, about 1826. John was one of the earliest tavern keepers in the area, running an old tavern or inn on the crest of Red Ridge, east of Grantsville on the old National Pike. John was good at his job and well-liked, but died suddenly in 1833 .1The Republican – 2/18/1886
“John Yeast is dimly remembered as a man of splendid physique and genial nature, new, but suited to the business; enjoying perfect health and strength, yet death came in early manhood – in 1834, and with it grave suspicions of foul play, insidious poisons supposed to be the cause of his sudden death, the wife in after years strongly suspected of being the author of this death as well as other similar ones.”2John’s gravestone shows his death date as being July 22nd 1833
The inn that John ran until his untimely demise came to be known in later years as the “Spook House” When it succumbed to an accidental fire in 1899, it was probably a relief to the folks in the area.
Quite soon after the death of John Yeast, Nancy married on March 6th, 1834, another tavern keeper, John Layman. John was one of the early keepers of what became the National Hotel in Grantsville. John didn’t last very long either – he died in 1845, supposedly of cancer.
Husband number 3 was Samuel Hufford. They were married 2/9/1848. Samuel died, supposedly after eating a slice of pumpkin pie, on October 1, 1849. By this point, it seems, folks were beginning to suspect less than stellar motives for Nancy.3 The Baltimore Sun – 3/26/1852
Probable Death from Poison – The body of Mr. Samuel Hufford, a respectable citizen of Berlin, Somerset Co., Pa, who died about three years ago, after a short illness, was disinterred last week, and an inquest held over it by Charles Heffley, Esq. The jury, on the testimony of Drs. Berkey and Kimmel, and others, brought in a verdict that he died from poison, administered by some person unknown. It is stated that the stomach of the deceased, and the intestines in connection with it, and the part of the backbone on which it rested, were found in a good state of preservation, which was considered positive proof of the presence of poison. Mr. Hufford was the husband of Mrs. Nancy Hufford, acquitted in Cumberland, Md., last fall of the the charge of poisoning Mrs. Elizabeth4Her first name was actually Rebecca Engle, of Grantsville district. The former has had three husbands, it is said, all of whom are dead. The stomach of Mr. Hufford is to be analyzed, and steps will be taken to ferret out the guilty party.
Nancy Woodin Goes To Trial
Rebecca Engle, second wife of Samuel Engle, was in the late days of her pregnancy, and was having a tough time of it. Nancy stepped up to help out, but the poor girl passed away shortly after giving birth. Almost instantly, fingers were being pointed at Nancy, as many folks were sure that Rebecca had been poisoned. During the trial, there was lots of testimony for and against Nancy, to the point that the jury ended up acquitting her.
During the trial, Samuel Engle testified that he and Nancy had courted at one point and he said she had asked him a number of times to marry her. Nancy, on the other hand, claimed that Mr. Engle was the one doing the asking about marriage, and that she would not have him. Either way, it sounds like there were feelings between the two, but were those feelings strong enough to be a motive for murder?
After the trial ended, Nancy must have behaved herself for there is nothing more about her that I could find in the newspapers. She married Holmes O. Wiley in 1862, her fourth and final husband. She died in 1880, having outlived Holmes by about a year. They were both buried on the WIiey property in a private, with only field stones to marks the spots