New Hampshire Magazine March-April 2021

Page 32

603 informer / what do you know?

Who carried this mysterious granite block to the woods of Pembroke and why?

A Place to Pick Strawberries And the site of a bizarre murder story and photos by Marshall Hudson

I

was working alone one snowy morning, following a brook in the northeasterly corner of Pembroke when an object that didn’t fit the surrounding environment suddenly caught my attention. Perhaps it was the grayness of the object contrasted against the stark white background of freshly fallen snow, or maybe the sharp-cornered squareness of the object situated within a stand of round hemlock trees that made it look out of place. Whatever the reason, it called out to me as I was passing by. Curious, I detoured from my route to investigate it. The 2- to 3-foot-tall granite block was not something naturally occurring. It had been quarried, brought in and erected by a human. In these remote woods, someone had labored to put it here and must have had a good reason for doing so, as there would have been too much effort involved to have done it on a whim. Not being near any property lines, I

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ruled out boundary markers and town line corner stones. A grave headstone perhaps? If it were a headstone, I would expect an inscription of names, dates or maybe a brief epitaph. I saw nothing obvious on any of the four sides. Exploring the rough and pitted granite surface with my fingers, I thought perhaps I felt a shallow engraving. Using a soft lumber crayon, I explored the grooves that perhaps I had felt. “1833” emerged. Nothing more. Probably not a headstone, I reasoned. If someone had gone through the effort of carving a year, either birth or death, into this stone, they likely would have also carved the name of the deceased. Hmmm ... perhaps “1833” wasn’t a year? Maybe it was a numerical marker for something, and there was a number 1834 nearby? Didn’t seem likely. So what had I stumbled onto? Turns out that what I had found was a place to pick strawberries and the site of a

bizarre murder that took place in 1833, the year carved on the granite. This unusual story is well told in the book, “I Have Struck Mrs. Cochran With a Stake” by Leslie Lambert Rounds. Rounds describes the true story of Mrs. Sally Cochran, who was murdered at this very spot while picking strawberries. The murderer, Abraham Prescott, was asleep and sleepwalking at the time he committed the murder. At least, that is what his defense attorney claimed at trial. The murder took place on a Sunday afternoon, June 23, 1833, when 28-year-old Sally Cochran decided to go strawberry picking. Her husband, Chauncey Cochran, stayed behind with the couple’s children and his mother who also lived with them. Eighteen-year-old hired farmhand Abraham


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