The Mystery of Martha Polk

Now that we are well into Fall and as Halloween nears, let’s look at a bit of true crime hidden in the Joseph Wickes papers.

Now that we are well into Fall and as Halloween nears, let’s look at a bit of true crime hidden in the Joseph Wickes papers. Joseph Wickes was a prominent lawyer on the Eastern Shore, thus he had dealings with most of the families in the area and helped them with both civil and criminal matters. In the collection of his papers, there is a series of depositions regarding the disappearance of Martha Polk, a local landowner and hay farmer. One morning in April of 1836, Martha Polk and her dog walked out of her house in Fair Hill, Cecil County. Later that afternoon her dog returned home but Martha did not. Her body was never found, and no one was ever arrested over the disappearance. FYS students in the Magpies of the Archives class were given this document as a prompt to research and explore the possibilities of what might have happened to Martha. Two students have taken on this project and, after transcribing Wickes’ sometimes shaky cursive, traveled to The State Archives and The Cecil County Historical Society to see if they could find out the truth.

While their research has led to some suspects, why don’t you look at the deposition for yourself and either hunt a killer or wonder if a séance might tell you what really happened?