Pennsylvania State Constable, Stewartstown
End of Watch: January 30, 1907
Andrew Jackson Hedrick was born September 22, 1837.
Hedrick was a long time Constable for the Stewartstown area in southern York County.
On Tuesday evening, January 29, 1907, a horse and buggy were stolen from downtown Stewartstown around 8:30 p.m. This was the latest in a rash of horse thefts in the Stewartstown area. Ivan Thompson drove the horse and buggy into town to attend an event, and noticing that they had disappeared, sounded the alarm. Residents of the borough quickly ran into the streets. As the telephone system had not yet been shut down for the evening, alerts were telephoned to many locations, including to New Market, Maryland, the likely route that the horse thief was headed, with a description of the horse and buggy. Constable Hedrick hastily formed a posse of local citizens, and the group headed toward New Market.
At New Market, a crowd of about 200 residents awaited, armed with revolvers, rifles and shotguns. The residents were prepared to stretch a rope across the road to stop the thief. As the thief approached the crowd, he lashed the horse, which resulted in the buggy overturning and the thief thrown to the ground. The thief tried to resist capture, but was overwhelmed by the crowd. The residents of New Market were prepared to administer swift justice to the thief, but the thief was taken into custody by Constable Mayes of New Market and taken inside of a store for protection.
As news reached Stewartstown of the thief's arrest, Thompson headed to New Market to identify the horse and buggy. Residents of Stewartstown were worked into a frenzy, and had fully prepared to lynch the thief when he was brought back to town.
As Constable Hedrick and his posse arrived in New Market, they tried to get Constable Mayes to turn the thief over to them. As the thief was arrested in Maryland, Mayes refused to allow the thief to be removed without proper extradition. As the mob demanded the thief be truned over to them, the excitement reached a fevered pitch, and along with the wrangling with the Maryland authorities, Constable Hedrick, 69, suffered a cardiac event. The constable was loaded into a buggy and was rushed to his home in Stewartstown, but sadly passed away during the journey.
Constable Hedrick was buried in Stewartstown Cemetery on February 1, 1907.
The thief, William A. Bond, was taken by Constable Mayes to the jail in Towson, Maryland. He was later extradited to Pennsylvania where he was charged with eight different counts of horse theft. He was found guilty and was sentenced to ten years at Eastern Penitentiary.
