Built some 25 years before H.B. Smith's arrival in Burlington County , the Greek Revival mansion symbolizes in its buildings and gardens the complexity of its most famous owner.
The Murder of Lizzie Peak and the Smithville-Mt. Holly Bicycle Railroad
Among the thousands who attended the Great Mount Holly Fair on Thursday, September 15, 1892, was Lizzie Peak. She was about 23 years of age, pretty and “well-formed.” She had returned to her parents’ home in Mount Holly a few days before the Fair after spending two to three years in Brooklyn with Wesley Warner of Burlington.
Lizzie and Wesley had quarreled. Lizzie returned to Mount Holly. Wesley also returned.
The entire Peak family was at the Fair on Thursday. Lizzie and one of her sisters met two girls from Burlington and started to walk around the Fair Grounds. Wesley Warner was also at the Fair, keeping an eye on Lizzie. Once, when the girl stopped to talk to some boys from Burlington she hadn’t seen for three years, Wesley “scolded her terribly.”
That night, as Lizzie and her sister prepared for bed, Wesley Warner went to the Peak home, burst into the girls’ room and started another quarrel with Lizzie.
The Peaks got rid of him somehow and they did not see him the following day, Friday, September 16, the final day of the Great Mount Holly Fair.
On Saturday evening, September 17, Lizzie and her two sisters went to the Mount Holly Opera House. After the performance they met three boys. The boys suggested they go around to the bicycle railroad. The girls had not as yet seen the new railroad in operation, so the three couples proceeded toward Pine Street. The time was about eleven o’clock.
At about the same time, Wesley Warner went to the Peak home. He asked if he could stay all night. The idea did not meet with the approval of Lizzie’s parents, but it was finally decided that Warner would be permitted to “bed downstairs.” Mr. and Mrs. Peak retired, leaving Warner sitting downstairs with a light burning.
Some minutes later, Warner went to the kitchen, took a carving knife which he found under some dishes in the sink and left the house without bothering to close the door behind him.
At the bicycle railroad, Lizzie, her sisters and their escorts were having a good time riding the bicycles and “cutting up.” They remained at the railroad for thirty to forty-five minutes. Shortly before midnight they all started to walk out Pine Street toward the girls’ home. As they crossed the railroad train tracks on Pine street they began to laugh and sing. They joked with Joseph F. Bryan, who was walking in their direction.
Bryan reached the gate in front of his house as the carefree group turned the corner into a narrow path along the South Pemberton Road.
The path was narrow and the group walked single file. One of the boys went first. Lizzie was second in line.
Bryan stood by his gate for several moments, wondering if they were going to walk all the way to Pemberton.
Approximately 120 yards from Pine Street, Wesley Warner was lying in a small clearing next to the path. As the boy in the lead came into view, Warner raised himself to a sitting position. The boy stopped to see “what the man was going to do.”
“He got up very cool and passed by me about half way on our line. He passed through then as if he went to go out in the gutter.”
Warner lunged at Lizzie and she screamed and ran into the road. He ran after her, caught her about the waist and plunged the carving knife into her throat. One of the sisters pulled at his coat tails and he turned about, making a sweep at her with the knife, but missing. Then he ran toward Mount Holly, passing Bryan, who had heard the screams and was on his way to investigate.
Lizzie ran several yards down the road and fell. One of the boys chased Warner, but could not catch him.
The girl died within a few minutes. Warner was arrested the next morning, on Water Street, after he had unsuccessfully tried to hire a team at Vansant and Bowker’s livery stables so he could get to Burlington.
Warner was tried and convicted after several months, was hanged for his crime.
The murder and the trials were given more space in the Mount Holly newspapers of that day than any other event which occurred in the early 1890’s and included much, if not all, of the actual testimony given by the witnesses who saw the crime committed.
One of Lizzie’s sisters testified:
“… we did not come right straight home; when we came out of the opera house we went to the bicycle track there. The young fellows wanted us to go see it, we had not seen it before and we stopped there. I could not say just how long we were there; I suppose something like a half an hour, and then we started from there up on home…”
One of the boys said: “I met the young ladies, I suppose, about eleven o’clock; went to the bicycle railroad and we were over there cutting up, riding on the bicycles, and got off and was sitting there cutting up a while, I suppose about half or three-quarters of an hour.
From there they said, ‘Let’s go home.” We started home, cutting up, laughing and talking until we got up above the railroad… Then we turned around the corner and started to go single file…”
Another of the boys said: “… we all started out and went to the bicycle track and stayed there about half an hour, somewhere around there, and then we took a ride on the bicycles. Then the girls says, “Let’s go home’ … and after we go over the railroad we commenced to sing…”
The third boy stated: “We met the girls after the Opera House was out and we walked around to the bicycle track and rode around on that awhile and we sat down there a while and then we started home, going out Pine street laughing and talking…”
In the many years which have passed since then, the three events – the Great Mount Holly Fair, the opening of the bicycle railroad, and the murder of Lizzie Peak – have in some tales merged into one story. Lizzie Peak, the legend toes, was murdered while she was riding home from the Great Mount Holly Fair on the bicycle railroad.
The facts, however, show that the fair closed the day before the murder and that Lizzie Peak was not riding the bicycle railroad, but was walking home after riding on the bicycle railroad when the murder occurred.
The legend that the murder took place on the bicycle railroad is responsible for the idea written a few decades later, that one reason the railroad fell into disuse was because a murder had been committed on it. As a matter of fact, the bicycle railroad business was booming and (except for a cold winter ahead) continued to boom for at least another year after the crime and was still enjoying a respectable, but diminishing, business at least two years later.
On Saturday, September 24, 1892, in the same issue which carried the news of “A Brutal Murder,” the Herald acclaimed:
