In the spring of 1874, the friends of Herbert M. Blanchard posted an announcement in the Greenfield Recorder to reassure the public that, contrary to rumor, Blanchard had not been lynched:

WEST HAWLEY — The friends of Herbert M. Blanchard of Savoy send in this notice to contradict the rumor of his being lynched in California for shooting a man, having received a letter from him dated April 2nd. The man lynched was Geo. Blanchard, no relation, and it was also in February last that said lynching took place.

In three years, though, Herbert Blanchard would be sitting in a solitary cell in the Pittsfield, Massachusetts county jail, likely wondering if those reassurances had been premature, as he pondered the looming prospect of the hangman’s noose, for the crime of murder …