Frederick Mock & Barbara Stambaugh

Frederick C Mock was born in 1817 in Bedford County, PA, the son of Peter Mock Jr. and Catherine Garn.  He grew up farming but learned the shoemaking trade.  In the late 1830’s he married Barbara Stambaugh, the daughter of Frederick Stambaugh and Rosanna Dively.  Barbara was 15 or 16 when they married and Frederick was several years older.  Together the couple had four daughters – Rosanna in 1838, Catherine Ann in 1841, Sarah in 1849, and Mary Amanda in 1863.

The family lived in St. Clair (Clairsville) on Covered Bridge Road near what is now Freedom Lane and they attended the local Lutheran and Reformed churches.  First the Old Log Church at Osterburg, later the German Reformed Congregation at Bobs Creek.  They resided on 25 acres and had a horse and a cow.  Frederick was a shoemaker by trade and in 1860 he was listed as a master shoemaker in census records.  That census record also shows a Malachai Mock (possibly a nephew) living with them, also a shoemaker.  It is likely that Malachai was apprenticing with Frederick to learn the shoemaking trade.  As a young man, Frederick would have learned the trade by apprenticing with a master shoemaker.  Prior to the automation of shoemaking during the industrial revolution, shoemaking was a highly specialized trade.  Frederick likely would have had a shop set up at his house and area residents would have traveled to him for a pair of shoes made just for them.

In 1864, America was a nation divided.  Union and Confederate troops battled on the field and citizens argued politics with their neighbors at home.  Everyone was on edge and large events were veritable tinderboxes on the verge of explosion.  It was in this fractured environment that President Abraham Lincoln ran for a second term.  Although a Union state, local politics were split and many local residents resented the war and believed the draft to be unconstitutional and illegal.  During the October election, Federal Troops were stationed at most polls in Bedford County ostensibly looking for drafted men who had failed to report.   

According to reports, Frederick went to the St. Clair poll to vote that fateful October day.  Many remained after the close of the polls to hear the results.  An altercation occurred during which tempers were heated, things were said, and Gideon Trout, a local, was insulted within earshot of his family.  Gideon’s son James Alem took exception to the insult and rushed one of the insulters whereby a fight ensued and he was terribly beaten.  At some point during the ruckus, Frederick hit James in the face with the butt of his rifle with enough force to knock him backwards several steps and fall down with a broken nose.  It was at this point that the soldiers, who had no authority to do so, decided to intervene and asked James who had assaulted him whereupon he identified Frederick Mock as the perpetrator.  According to court reports, two soldiers decided to keep the peace and Frederick drew his rifle upon one of them and threatened to shoot.

Shortly after, Frederick headed home and the soldier reported the altercation to their commanding officer  who ordered three of his men to go after and arrest him.  Using James’s younger brother Richard, as their guide, the soldiers made their way the two miles to Frederick’s house where they found his wife and two daughters at home.  Barbara, no doubt intimidated by their appearance, informed the soldiers that Frederick wasn’t home and had gone to the polls.  After looking in the windows and calling her a liar, they left.  Barbara sent their daughter Sarah to the neighbors house to seek assistance.  The group overtook Frederick on the road and they informed him he was under arrest and that they must take him to Bedford.  They made it as far as Alum Bank where he attempted to escape, prompting the soldiers to draw their rifles and fire four shots, one of which hit him in the breast, killing him.  Sarah, crossing the buckwheat field on her way back from rousing the neighbors to go assist her father, heard the report of the four gunshots.  Scared, she returned home where, later that evening, her father’s body was brought.

It was a murder without provocation or cause and the family tried for years to bring the perpetrators to justice to no avail.  The three soldiers had been found not guilty during a military court martial and could not be subsequently tried in the local courts.  James Trout was tried as an accessory to murder and found not guilty in the local courts.  During the case of James Trout, the general sentiment was that the soldiers, young and inexperienced, had no authority at the polls beyond identifying and arresting deserters and conscripts who had failed to report for duty.  However, upon finding themselves in a tense situation surrounded by locals with guns touting that they could do as they pleased, they forgot their duty and acted under imagined authority.  They had no authority to arrest Frederick who was neither a conscript or desserter, yet because he had pulled his rifle on them, their blood was up and they felt justified pursuing him and subsequently firing when he attempted to run.  

After Frederick’s death, Barbara was left to raise her young daughter on her own.  She remained in the area and never remarried, passing away forty years later in 1905 at the age of 83.