Worst Employee Ever Kills Family in Mt. Pleasant (1917)

On June 7, 1917, a surly farm hand set fire to the Holland Township home of the Queen family and killed them with an ax.

The farmstead, including the house, barn and wagon house, burned to the ground, but it had been near where Route 519 turns west toward Milford from the Mount Pleasant-Little York Road.

In a 1980 interview with Delaware Valley News reporter Peter Zirnite, Mount Pleasant native Clarence Parker, on the occasion of his 100th birthday, recalled the tragedy.

Parker heard the church bells ringing at about 11 p.m., a signal that something bad had happened. His part-time work for the county sheriff gave him some official standing, and “when I heard that church bell, I got out of bed as if I was shot out of a cannon,” he recalled. There was a fire at the neighboring Queen farm. Parker didn't mention it, but the schoolmaster's son had also fired several shots into the air to help rouse the village.

When Parker arrived at the farm, he found two men standing outside the burning farmhouse “scared speechless.” They had found the bloody bodies of William and Emma Queen, ages 61 and 52, and their 24-year-old daughter Eleanor, whose nightgown was on fire – either because she'd run through the burning house or because her body lay so close to the inferno.

Fearing the burning house would collapse on the bodies, the three men dragged them away from the flames. “Blood was all over our shoes and trousers. It was worst thing I ever had to do,” he recalled 63 years later. “It's something I'll never forget. Never.”

The June 13, 1917, issue of the Frenchtown Star tells the story:

A Lithuanian immigrant named Paul Maywoon (also known as Maywood and Maywoern) had been convicted of carrying a concealed weapon in Jersey City. John Queen, a former judge, arranged for Maywoon to be put on probation and hired by his ailing brother, William, to do farm work for him in Holland Township.

William Queen “did not like the man when he arrived from the city to go to work, but as he needed help badly, decided to try him for a few days. The man talked rather brokenly and grew sullen and morose as the days went by, frequently swearing even in the presence of the women folk, when he was ordered to do different tasks.”

The Crime

On the day of the murders, after Maywoon had been on the job for almost a month, “it is supposed that Mr. Queen either discharged him or reproached him for swearing and refusing to work, and that hatred grew in him until he... set the barn (and house) on fire. Mr. Queen, seeing the fire, rushed out – to be met and crushed down by the crazed brute, who had secured the axe from the wood pile to defend himself after firing the house.” Maywoon then killed the wife and daughter as they ran out of the burning building, and then ran off, gory ax still in hand.

The couple, still dressed, apparently hadn't gone to bed. But Eleanor had been awakened either by the fire or by the sounds of murder in the dooryard. Before she fled the house, she had the presence of mind to grab her savings. Her pocketbook, containing $400, was found with her body.

Just outside the house, with the flames providing illumination, “it was a ghastly sight, the innocent faces of these helpless ones, making the stoutest hearts quail and causing men as well as women to shed tears over a scene that seemed too terrible to be true. Far removed from help, they all three perished with only the sight of the fiendish work left to tell what had been enacted.”

Three horses perished in the burning barn. The Star had the cattle breaking loose and escaping, but the Hunterdon Republican's report had them dying with the horses.

The Manhunt

For four days, police and private detectives conducted a manhunt for Maywoon, who was described as age 28, 5-foot-4, 160 pounds, broad-shouldered and bow-legged, with black hair, dark complexion and a scar across his nose.

At 7 p.m. on Monday, June 11, two young men fishing near Finesville (a hamlet straddling the Musconetcong River between Holland and Pohatcong townships) “were startled by the sight of a man emerging from the woods bareheaded and carrying an axe.” The fashion-conscious Hunterdon Republican adds that “he was without a collar and cravat.”

Maywoon “started after them, brandishing the axe. They ran for help to a nearby house and all returned with guns and other weapons,” the Star wrote. But the Republican reported that after the fishermen saw Maywoon “skulking on the woods” in a swampy area associated with the river, they then “notified the Warren Paper Mills nearby, and employees of the plant surrounded the swamp.” The posse found Maywoon and chased him across the Musconetcong. The Republican says, “He had with him an axe with a broken handle, which he flourished, and with which he sought to keep the crowd from taking him. Before he was arrested, he was shot twice, once with a shot gun and once with a revolver. Neither shot was very serious.”

The Star credits Earle Andrews of Riegelsville with one of the shots, which hit Maywoon in the hip, adding, “The crowd then jumped in and took the fight out him with fists and feet.”

The posse meanwhile was augmented by additional armed men, and when Hunterdon Deputy Sheriff Broderick arrived, “the man lay in the road with probably 250 excited persons all trying to hammer him at once.” Broderick and his companions “fought their way to the man, and for a little while were pushed and hammered around by the crowd in their endeavor to string (Maywoon) up,” the Star wrote.

He had “a bullet wound in his back, also peppered with gunshot inflicted by his captors,” according to the Republican. Maywoon was taken to the county jail in Flemington where many of the shotgun pellets were removed, according to the Star, which said he was “in critical condition from his wounds and hunger.”

Maywoon told authorities that he had been fired on June 7 and then left the farm at 6 p.m. He said he knew nothing about any murders, the Star reported.

The Milford Leader wrote, “Caught red-handed, looking more like a human vulture than a man – after a four-day lease of his worthless life – Paul Maywoern is behind the bars, and the good people of this and surrounding communities are resting easier.”

The funeral of the Queen family was held at the Alexandria First Presbyterian Church of Mount Pleasant, attended by a crowd estimated variously at 1,000 or 1,500. The family was buried in the Mount Pleasant Cemetery, which is just across the road from the church.

The Queens were all natives of the Milford area. Mrs. Queen's maiden name was Beckman. Eleanor was a graduate of Phillipsburg High School and Trenton Normal School, now known as The College of New Jersey. She had been teaching school in the Mount Joy area of Holland Township, and had been engaged to a Mr. Bellis.

Trial and Punishment

In July Maywoon was tried for the murder of William Queen. In case of an acquittal, the state would be able to try Maywoon for the murders of the women. The trial took place in the old county courthouse in Flemington with Judge Thomas Trenchard presiding. The venue and the judge would receive worldwide attention in 1935 during the trial of Bruno Hauptmann, kidnapper of Charles Lindbergh Jr.

The Republican reports that during the trial “Maywoon maintained an indifferent or stolid demeanor for the most part, except that now and then he would break out into a laugh for which there seemed to be no reason.” The mirth is a mystery, but his unresponsiveness may have been a result of his poor grasp of the English language.

Maywoon was found guilty and, just 68 days after the crime, was executed on Aug. 14 in Trenton, according to the Republican. The Star wrote, “With the electrocution of Paul Maywoon for the murder of the Wm. Queen family at Mt. Pleasant, there passes into history the final act of one of the worst tragedies ever enacted in the County of Hunterdon.”

The crime that once horrified Hunterdon County has been largely forgotten. But casual visitors to the Mount Pleasant Cemetery might wonder about the identical date of death engraved on three headstones in the Queen family plot.