Hamilton College's Burke Library will receive the diary of Adirondacks murderer Chester Gillette, whose murder of his lover Grace Brown in 1906 became the basis for Theodore Dreiser's classic An American Tragedy. Marlynn Murray, the grand-niece of Chester Gillette, will donate the diary he kept for the months before his execution to Hamilton College in a ceremony on Tuesday, March 6, at 11 a.m. on the main floor of Burke Library. It will be preceded by a reception at 10 a.m. The public is invited to attend both events.
The diary was started 100 years ago when Gillette was in Auburn prison and contains entries from Sept. 19, 1907, through March 30, 1908, the day he was executed. It has been in the family's possession since then. Marlynn Murray received the diary in 2003 from her father. When she was disposing of some of her father's property after his death, a dealer told her of interest in such things as old diaries. She searched for Chester Gillette on the Web and eventually found Hamilton College.
Marlynn Murray's gift, in addition to the diary, will include nine letters to a friend of his sister who was allowed to visit him in prison, a letter to his sister Hazel, and Chester's red-letter New Testament.
Last year, Hamilton's library commemorated the 100th anniversary of the 1906 murder of Grace Brown at Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks. The case is still studied today for its use of circumstantial evidence in a conviction. The library exhibited its collection of other documents related to the case, including Grace's letters to Chester and other material used by the district attorney leading to Chester's conviction. The library exhibit was made possible by Ward Halverson '92, the great-grandson of the Herkimer County district attorney, who entrusted Burke Library with the preservation of Grace's letters and other materials -- the indictment, autopsy report, a letter from Chester to his mother, the last postcard Grace wrote to her mother, the Glenmore Hotel registry and a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about the murder case.
