5-11-2024 12:23am

May 11, 1728: Walter and John Winter Hanged for Murdering Indians

Lesley Misko Editor

By Margaret Leidy Harner from her book One Day at a Time: A Social History of Boyertown, PA.

May 11, 1728: A colonial Justine of the peace, Samuel Nutt reported to Governor Patrick Gordon that he had disagreeable news. Walter and John Winter have murdered “one Indian Man and Two Indian Women without any cause given by said Indians”; the man was shot in the chest, one woman’s brains were knocked out with a rifle barrel, and the other woman was struck on the head with an axe. This was in retaliation for the recent “foreign Indians” attack at the Manatawny Iron Works, and the Winters were asking for a reward from the colonial government for their actions.

Nutt asked the Governor to take care of the matter because “such actions will create the greatest antipathy between the Indians and Christians.” The Governor immediately levied the “Hue and Cry with horse and with foot,” requiring all settlers to assist in apprehending the culprits, who gave themselves up without a struggled, believing they had been justified and had lawfully killed those natives as revenge for the reported incident of the renegades shooting white men.

The Winter brothers were promptly tried, found guilty, and hanged. The Governor invited all of the tribal chiefs to a Council meeting in Philadelphia on June 3 to apologize for the incident and it ended “with great feelings of kinship and agreement.”