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Massena author pens 'Wicked Northern New York,' historic tales on the dark side

Posted 8/16/11

MASSENA -- The friendly, relaxed ambiance of the North Country belies a dark and sordid history, filled with criminal mischief, depravity, and scandal. In Wicked Northern New York (just released by …

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Massena author pens 'Wicked Northern New York,' historic tales on the dark side

Posted

MASSENA -- The friendly, relaxed ambiance of the North Country belies a dark and sordid history, filled with criminal mischief, depravity, and scandal.

In Wicked Northern New York (just released by The History Press), Cheri Farnsworth, the author of the Haunted Northern New York series and Murder & Mayhem in St. Lawrence County, takes us back to a time when it seemed that every town had its red-light district and every hamlet its brothel, like the Pine Grove district of Massena which had several houses of ill repute that were being run “full blast” in 1923.

Our ancestors lived next door to celebrated horse thieves, hookers, and body snatchers; and if that wasn’t enough to keep the local authorities busy, they also had mysterious abductions, pistol duels, terrifying “wild men,” lawless gypsies, assassin-turned-hermits, “tramp camps;” and white slavery to contend with.

A particularly shameful incident in St. Lawrence County’s history prompted the Courier & Freeman of August 14, 1895 to exclaim: “It is something for the whole country to hide its head in shame over—that mob of men who stripped a woman’s clothes off her and held her while a mob of women in men’s clothes and with blackened faces applied tar and feathers to her naked body.”

No less alarming was the Potsdam man who literally scared his wife to death or the little girl taken by gypsies, sold for fifty cents to a man of disrepute, and traded to an abusive couple for a half a dozen chickens.

Signed copies of Wicked Northern New York are available exclusively at Time Quest Mini Golf on State Rt. 56 in Massena for a limited time.

Stop by and pick up your copy today.

You may also order online at www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, and www.historypress.net or ask for it at your local independent bookstore.

For more information on Farnsworth’s titles, visit www.cherifarnsworth.com.