Whoever said truth is stranger than fiction was on to something. In this blog, I tell the true story of a local family man and farmer who felt compelled to resort to cattle rustling. Because there may be ancestors of this man still living in the area, I will refer to him by a Dutch word, Van. He has no association with anyone with that name, and this story is not intended to defame anyone with that name. This blog is based on a newspaper account of the event from the Somerville Bureau of the Courier News.
This complex became Carrier Clinic.
The Scene of the Crime
In 1938, most of the land in Montgomery Township was used for farming. People lived on farms or in the small villages of Blawenburg, Harlingen, Skillman, or Belle Mead. Two large areas of the township were used for treatment centers.
The State Village for Epileptics just north of Blawenburg was the older and larger of these facilities. It housed people with epilepsy, believing that they needed to be separated from society. Today, that area serves as Skillman Park.
The other facility, known as Belle Mead Farm Colony and Sanatorium, also known as the Sanatorium, was located four miles north of Blawenburg on Belle Mead—Blawenburg Road, near the Hillsborough border. As the name suggests, it was both a farm and a treatment center. Its purpose was to help people suffering with nervous and mental diseases as well as alcohol and drug addictions. It still flourishes today as Hackensack Meridian Health/Carrier Clinic. The crime occurred at the Sanatorium in the wee hours of the morning on October 29, 1938.
The Crime
Halloween is a time for scary ghosts, monster costumes, and pranks. It is also a time for parties. However, on October 28, 1938, there was more than partying going in a pasture at the Sanatorium. One of its employees, Van, felt compelled to steal a six-month-old Holstein heifer from the Sanatorium farm.
A six-month-old heifer
Sometime after midnight, Van, who was a farmer and part-time employee of the Sanatorium, drove his sedan up to the field where the young heifer was supplementing its usual diet of hay, grain, and silage with some fresh grass. The young female weighed about 400 pounds and was tethered by a 50-foot chain that was easy to release from its post. Van somehow squeezed the protesting heifer in the back seat of his car.
Van’s sedan may have looked like this 1937 Ford.
By this time, it was 1:30am, and Van was driving the heifer toward Blawenburg. Everett May Sr., a local storekeeper, and his wife Dorothy were driving home from a night out when they passed a car driven by Van. Everett couldn’t help but notice the unhappy heifer in the back seat. Van stopped at May’s store near the intersection of Belle Mead—Blawenburg Road (Route 601 today) and Georgetown—Franklin Turnpike (County Route 518 today).
May approached the car with a flashlight and talked with Van. He wrote down the registration (license plate) number of the vehicle and asked Van why he had a heifer in the back seat of his car. He said he was taking the heifer to a nearby farm, but didn’t explain why or how he acquired the heifer. May reported the strange situation to NJ State Trooper Edwin Wallace and gave him the registration information.
The Sanatorium manager, James Gillette, reported the missing heifer to the State Police of South Somerville, who provided police services to Montgomery Township at the time. They quickly connected the car with the heifer and had Van’s name.
Percy Van Zandt of Broad View Farm in Blawenburg was surprised when he woke up the next morning to find a heifer with a long chain around its neck wandering on his farm. Apparently, Van realized he was in trouble and tried to get rid of the evidence or maybe this was the intended destination for the young bovine all along. The unharmed heifer was returned to the Sanatorium more comfortably than it arrived, and Van was arrested.
The Trial
Van’s trial was held in the Court of Quarter Sessions in Somerville with Judge Ralph Smalley presiding in February 1939. During the trial, May was called as a witness and identified Van as the person in possession of the heifer at his store. In his own defense, Van claimed to have been home from 9pm on October 28 until 8am on October 29. His wife and two grown sons backed up his story. A neighbor said he was at a Halloween party at Van’s house the same night as the heist, and Van was there. In a further attempt to convince the jury, the defense counsel said Van would not have been able to lift the heifer by himself. He suggested that this was just a Halloween prank carried out by several people.
Despite the defense witness’s testimony, the jury was unconvinced. It was hard for them to believe that Van was innocent when a reliable witness saw the heifer in the back of the car. Van was convicted of stealing the heifer from Belle Mead Sanatorium, but the jury added a recommendation of mercy for his sentencing. Perhaps it was because he was the father of 10 children!
Cattle rustling was not a common offense in New Jersey, even in 1938, when there were many more farms than there are today. Van’s crime would have been treated as a felony, and he could have been fined and sentenced to up to five years in jail. Given Van’s home situation and the jury’s recommendation of mercy, it is likely that he received a fine. If he received any jail time, it would have been a matter of days or months rather than years. Unfortunately, we don’t know the sentence Van received, but we hope Van learned a lesson that the wild idea to steal the heifer was not worth the effort.
FACTS
1. Before the 1850s, Belle Mead was known as Post Town because it was a location to drop off and pick up mail. It then became Plainville and had a school, hotel, store, and blacksmith shop, all of which are long gone. Finally, it became Belle Mead, which means beautiful meadow.
2. If you would like to read more about the history of the Carrier Clinic, visit, https://cnhillsborough.blogspot.com/2021/03/belle-mead-farm-colony-and-sanatorium.html
3. Heifers are bred to be food or milking cows. When they are about six to nine months old and weaned from their mothers, they weigh about 500 pounds. It appears the stolen heifer was weaned, but not ready to be bred.
4. While it is obvious Van took the heifer, perhaps with some help, the witnesses could have been telling the truth with their testimony. Van could have hosted the Halloween party and then slipped out of bed and left the house after midnight. Maybe he wanted to leave it at someone’s house as a Halloween prank. Whatever his motivation was, he was caught and paid a price for his crazy idea.
FLASHBACK
This picture of Blawenburg was published after Blog 16 as a separate picture, no blog. It shows Blawenburg in 1938, the same year as the botched heifer heist. The aerial shot was shared by Larry May.
SOURCES
Information
The Courier News, February 1939
Pictures
Belle Mead Colony postcard–Wikimedia Commons
1937 Ford–Wikimedia Commons
May Store–Larry May
Blawenburg aerial–1938
Editor—Barb Reid
Email: blawenburgtales@gmail.com
Blog website: http://www.blawenburgtales.com
Author site: http://www.dcochran.net
Copyright © 2024 by David Cochran. All rights reserved.
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