This is a reprint of a “From the Local History Room” column that first appeared in January 2015, before the launch of this weblog.
The murder of Rudolph Myers
By Jared Olar
Library Assistant
Chapter VI of Charles C. Chapman’s 1879 “History of Tazewell County” makes for some grim and at times even grisly reading. Given the chapter heading of “CRIMINAL RECORD,” the chapter does not tell of just any crimes, but specifically is a compilation of the murders that had taken place in the county since its formation in 1827.
The chapter begins with Tazewell’s first murder indictment in April 1844, when John Wood was charged with the murder of his infant son, and concludes in 1877 with the violent death of Rudolph Myers (also spelled Meyer and Meyers). This week we will recall Rudolph Myers’ death.
Myers was a resident of Sand Prairie Township, south of Pekin. Born Oct. 8, 1848, in Illinois, he was the son of Swiss immigrants Alois and Fanny Myers. The U.S. Census returns for Pekin Township on June 19, 1860, show Alois and Fanny farming in Pekin Township with their sons John, 22, and Rudolph, 12, as well as 13-year-old Mary Kimble living in their house as a domestic servant.
By the late 1870s, Rudolph had married a Missouri native named Mary M. Miller, and had begun farming in Sand Prairie Township. They had two children, Frances and Laurence, and in late 1877 they were expecting their third child. It is at this point in their lives that Chapman’s tragic account begins:
“Rudolph Myers, of Sand Prairie township, left Pekin on the night of Dec. 22, 1877, for his home. About 10 o’clock he returned to the city and went to the Central House. There he told of his assault about half a mile below the city, — how three men approached him in a threatening manner; that one had a dirk, another proceeded to gag him, and the third did the robbing; that he told them to take everything if they would not harm him; that after robbing him they brutally and violently kicked him and fearfully maltreated him; that his watch and chain and money were stolen, and then how he made his way back to Pekin. Medical aid was summoned, and it was discovered he was seriously injured internally. At one o’clock, P.M., Sunday, he died.
“Some time elapsed before any apprehension of the murderers was made. On Wednesday, April 17, 1878, at the instigation of Christopher Ropp, of Elm Grove, Jacob and David Hudlow were arrested as being the offenders. They were clearing timber in Spring Lake township at the time. They were tried at the May term of the Circuit Court, found guilty of manslaughter, and sentenced to the penitentiary for fourteen years.”
Jacob and David Hudlow were brothers, sons of David and Ruth Hudlow. The younger David’s full name was James David Hudlow. The 1870 U.S. Census shows David and Ruth farming in Quiver, Mason County, with a family of several daughters and sons, including Jacob, 24, born in Ohio, and James D., 17, born in Indiana. Ten years later, of course, the census shows Jacob and James David as inmates of the state penitentiary, while James David’s wife Nancy E. Shay Hudlow lived with their daughter Anna, born 1874, in the home of Nancy’s parents.
Rudolph Myers was buried in Old Sand Prairie Cemetery, South Pekin. His widow Mary delivered a baby boy on April 21, 1878, just four days after the arrest of the Hudlow brothers. She named her son John Rudolph after the father he would never know. John Rudolph Myers would grow up to become an attorney. He died in Pekin on Dec. 21, 1932, but is buried in Calvary Cemetery, Kansas City, Mo.
