On September 14, 1814, after watching British warships bombard Fort McHenry, Francis Scott Key, a successful attorney and amateur poet, penned a poem about the experience. Originally entitled “The Defence of Fort M’Henry,” the poem would eventually be set to music and become better known as “The Star Spangled Banner.” The song was adopted by the U.S. Navy in 1889, and became the official national anthem of the United States in 1931.

Mostly because of that one poem, Francis Scott Key became a household name throughout the nation. His son Phillip Barton Key, also an attorney, is not quite as well known, but he did get his fifteen minutes of fame in 1859, for a far less laudable act – his murder at the hands of a sitting U.S. Congressman in a crime with a distinct Sullivan County connection.

In broad daylight in February of 1859, in Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House, New York Congressman Daniel E. Sickles shot and killed Key, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and the lover of Sickles wife, Teresa. Despite dozens of witnesses to the incident, Sickles was later acquitted of the crime, his attorneys successfully employing a temporary insanity plea for the first time ever in an American courtroom.

Sullivan County’s own George B. Wooldridge was Sickles’ chief aide at the time, and was not only an important witness during the trial, but had been the man who followed Teresa Sickles to her assignations with Key and then informed the Congressman of his wife’s infidelity. His testimony, as well as his ongoing interviews about the trial in Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated magazines, made him an instant celebrity.  

Alan Barrish, former Director of the Ethelbert B. Crawford Public Library in Monticello and a former Thompson Town Historian, became interested in the Wooldridge story after reading a footnote in James Eldridge Quinlan’s “History of Sullivan County.” It is now likely that he now knows more about the man than anyone else alive.

In the footnote to a brief passage that mentions “the Sickles Affair,” Quinlan writes that “Mr. Wooldridge was an illiterate man, and yet a paid contributor of several NY publications. Among them was the Leader and Bonner’s Ledger. He was also a protege of General Sickles. While in Washington, he discovered the infidelity of Sickles’ wife, and gave Sickles the information which led to the murder of her seducer.”

The incongruence of Wooldridge being illiterate and yet a paid contributor to several publications was enough to get Barrish started.

He discovered that Wooldridge was far from illiterate, and suspects that the unflattering comments Quinlan makes about him were the result of a longstanding political feud between the two, as Wooldridge frequently wrote satirical pieces about characters that were thinly disguised versions of Quinlan and his close friend and political ally, Monticello’s A.C. Niven.

Wooldridge, Barrish discovered, was active in New York City politics from an early age, and later became a well-known member of what was known as “the flash press” in the city.

“Woodridge’s first appearance in politics is in an article in the April 9, 1838, New York Evening Post,” Barrish said. “His name appears on a list at the end of an article entitled ‘Sixth Ward.’ I am not at all sure what this article is about. But he does seem to have been involved with the Democratic Republican party, which evolved into the Democratic party.”

Wooldridge and the Quinlan/Niven faction, both active in Democratic party politics, would have come to loggerheads in the years leading up to the Civil War over the question of slavery and Southern secession, Barrish reasons. Both Quinlan and Niven were vocal Copperheads, or “Peace Democrats” while Wooldridge was an outspoken “Union Democrat.”

Barrish has also uncovered many references to Wooldridge’s work in the flash press, which was a term for the prolific low brow, scandal sheets of the day. For all his investigating, however, Barrish has never been able to pin down the story behind Wooldridge’s often referred to disability.

“He is often described as ‘a cripple’ or as using crutches,” he said. “But there doesn’t seem to be a satisfactory explanation for how he became disabled, or even a consensus about the extent of the disability.”

The two most popular books about the Sickles case, Nat Brandt’s 1991 “The Congressman Who Got Away with Murder,” and Thomas Keneally’s “American Scoundrel” (2002), both feature references to Wooldridge’s use of crutches, but their explanations for how that came about differ greatly.

Kenneally claims that Wooldridge suffered from “infantile paralysis” while Brandt writes that “George B. Wooldridge was a tall, resolute man whose powerful build resulted from his use of crutches because he had lost the use of his legs in an accident.”

Barrish has found some references to a railroad accident Wooldridge might have been involved in, but isn’t convinced that his resulting injuries left him permanently disabled. That detail is something he hopes to be able to clarify with further research.

It is known that while Wooldridge faded from the national spotlight almost immediately after the Sickles trial. He turns up in White Lake again in 1866, when he opened the Grove Hotel.

“He died at the hotel in December of 1868,” Barrish says. “He is buried in the Union Cemetery in Mongaup Valley.”

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian and a founder and president of The Delaware Company. Email him at jconway52@hotmail.com.