Thursday, December 28, 2023

Hamlet Jeweler Arrested for Eloping with Wife of Minister, Dec. 28, 1923

Hamlet Jeweler Elopes with Wife of Carolina Minister

Syracuse, N.Y., Dec. 28—According to The Observer, Eugene Dent Langston, 43, for years a jeweler at Hamlet, N.C., was arrested here Wednesday by Thomas Guilfoyle, department of justice agent, charged with a violation of the Mann act in eloping with Mrs. Gertrude Harrill, wife of Rev. Benjamin Harrill, said to be in a sanatorium at Timberland, N.C.

Langston made a statement acknowledging the charge and making it unnecessary to take Mrs. Harrill into custody as a witness, the customary procedure.

Langston was found at the H.J. Howe jewelry store, the largest here, where he was employed. Mrs. Harrill has a position as a stenographer in the Packard automobile agency. They have been rooming in West Genesee Street, a fashionable residence section, having separate apartments and being known as Mr. Langston and Mrs. Harrill. She paid her own bills. Others in the house believed them only to have become acquainted while dining together there.

Traced by Phonograph

Langston was traced here by a phonograph which he had sent on from Hamlet, first to New York, then to Canastota and then to Syracuse. He told the Syracuse police he had been married 15 years and has a wife and three children. He is said to have disposed of his interest in Langston Brothers jewelry store at Hamlet before leaving, giving his wife the equivalent of $28,000 or $30,000, and taking only about $700 with him.

Langston said he was introduced to Mrs. Harrill in the Hamlet hospital by a physician, and met her again in Charlotte five or six months ago. Their intimate friendship began there. Mrs. Harrill told Langston her husband, formerly pastor of a Baptist Church near Rutherfordton, N.C., was in the sanatorium, and that she had been supporting him six or seven years.

From the front page of the Tri-City Gazette, Leaksville, N.C., Dec. 28, 1923

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