American Historical Ephemera & Photography

6 x 3 in. stereoview on cardstock mount (toning, some soiling to prints; edge and corner wear to mount). Title printed on mount recto, "Hanging of Mills, May 6th, 1868." Previous owner's ink stamp on verso. Mills is visible in a white shroud near the center of the photograph. Spectators, including women and children, look upon the gallows from the foreground. 

Samuel Mills was hanged in the public square of Woodsville, NH. The 19 May 1868 issue of the Winona Daily Republican reported on the event: "The hanging of Samuel Mills, last week, is the first case of capital punishment in new Hampshire since 1849, when Rev. Enos G. Dudley, of Grafton was hung for murdering his wife, in order to marry a schoolteacher to whom he had become attached." Mills' hanging was also the last New Hampshire execution held as a public spectacle. He had murdered an elderly farmer named George Maxwell and attempted to steal his money, but was captured by a Boston detective and brought to justice back at the Haverhill jail. His execution was rather gruesome as it took nearly 30 minutes for him to die by strangulation.