History Knox
Mark Sebastian Jordan authors a column each Saturday reflecting on the community's history.
One of the more curious cases I’ve stumbled across in the archives of Knox County history is the robbery of an elderly widow named Alzina Knox in 1899.
Alizina Woodford was born in New York state, but made her way west as a young woman, where she met and married Henry Knox in Erie County, Ohio, before settling down in Knox County, first in Brandon and later in Bangs.
He is of no known relation to the famous Henry Knox after which the county was named, by the way.
Alzina continued to live in Bangs after Henry passed away in 1891 at the age of 79, with her son Logan living next door. Logan operated a harness shop that stood near his mother’s house.
One day in late June, 1899, (newspaper reports don’t tell us exactly which day), a woman and two men came to the door of Alzina’s house. When she came to answer the door, she apparently invited the trio in out of politeness, but they then overpowered her and announced their determination to rob the place.
Under duress, Alzina confessed to having some money secreted away in the family Bible.
The robbers located the Bible and found the considerable sum of $200 tucked away inside the holy book. In today’s money, that’s like having $7,866.84 hidden in the house, so the robbers snagged a significant score.
This sort of crime was common in the 1890s, because there had been a severe financial panic in that decade which caused many Americans to lose faith in banks and hide their money at home.
Home security typically being minimal, though, such stashes of cash were extremely vulnerable to robbery particularly in the case of elderly widows living alone.
But there was an additional wrinkle which brought extra attention to this case.
As the robbery unfolded, Mrs. Knox became convinced that the robber in a dress wasn’t a woman at all, but was instead a third man, apparently dressed as a woman merely to lower their target’s sense of alarm, allowing them to charm their way into the house.
Once inside the house, the robbers had little trouble overpowering Alzina, and also apparently felt no need to continue the ruse that one of them was a woman.
One can’t help but wonder about this detail. Did these robbers really have the nerve to walk through a small town like Bangs, with one of them cross-dressing? Is it possible that Mrs. Knox simply misidentified a particularly masculine woman? Is it possible that it really was a man in a dress who perhaps chose this disguise as a bit of wish fulfillment?
Alas, it doesn’t look like we’ll ever know the rest of this particular story, for the robbers were never caught, and Mrs. Knox, already in her mid-80s, passed away a year later.
What is suspect is why these criminals targeted this particular woman. They somehow knew that she was both a vulnerable target, and that she had some money hidden in the house.
One can’t help but wonder, where the strangers tipped off by someone with close connections to Mrs. Knox?
The Knoxes where well-known, with Logan still running a harness shop, and Henry himself having operated a tavern for a number of years.
Perhaps an insider received a kickback for leading the thieves to a major haul. And with the railroad just half a block away, they would have been able to get out of town quickly.
After a brief flurry of statewide news coverage, the case wilted into obscurity as so many crimes do.
After Alzina passed away, she was buried in the family plot in Miller Cemetery on Miller Road, south of Bangs, across the road from the Knox County Airport.
We’ve visited that cemetery before in researching the heartbreaking story of the lonely death of shy Eddie Berger.
Mr. and Mrs. Knox are buried a little further back in Miller Cemetery, near the tree line.