Dark Days in Blicktown: The 1914 Grimm Family Murder

Jessie Grimm met a shocking and brutal end at the hands of her own mother in a crime that, despite its violence, has been all but lost to history.

The Grimm family’s roots in Tuscarawas County began with the arrival from Pennsylvania, before 1820, of John Grimm (1779-1864) and his wife Maria Elizabeth Ruppert (1778-1855). The couple and their family settled at first in Warwick Township before York Township was organized in 1828, after which the family resided there. The family had eight children, seven sons and a daughter, and among them was a son named Enoch Grimm (1821-1885) born after their move to Tuscarawas County.

Enoch married Sarah Ann Speck (1828-?) in 1845, but the marriage did not last long after the birth of two children, including a son named John Grimm (1848-1916). Enoch remarried in 1854, this time to Hannah Simmers (1837-1912), and the couple relocated to Paulding County, Ohio after the Civil War where they raised a large family. John remained in Tuscarawas County, married Elizabeth Ott (1855-1931) in 1871, had ten children (eight of whom survived) and by the first decade of the twentieth century lived in the Dover Township community of Blicktown. One of their ten children was their youngest daughter Jessie Grimm (1895-1914), born in 1895.

Census records and later newspaper accounts give the distinct impression that Jessie suffered from some form of mental or learning disability. She was recorded as not being able to speak in the 1900 census and, in the 1910 census, not having attended school. Later newspapers used the unpleasant terms “deranged”, “helpless”, and “imbecile” to describe Jessie’s condition. John Grimm went deaf sometime in the 1890s and, by 1914, only he, his wife Elizabeth, and their daughter Jessie lived in the family home in Blicktown.

Around the beginning of 1914 Jessie’s condition worsened after she suffered a “nervous breakdown” and Elizabeth allegedly strained under the stress of her daughter’s needs and her husband’s deafness. On the morning of May 11, 1914 Jessie sat in a rocking chair the family’s front room, looking out the window. John Grimm, meanwhile, was outside working in the family garden. Elizabeth took an axe and struck her daughter three times on the head and neck. After Jessie fell to the floor, Elizabeth took John’s straight razor and sliced Jessie’s neck from ear to ear, practically decapitating her.

Elizabeth dragged Jessie to the sofa and laid her down, covered her with a blanket, took the carpet outside, cleaned the axe and straight razor and then locked herself in the springhouse. One of the Grimm’s daughters arrived for a planned visit shortly after the murder and discovered her sister’s body and heard her mother’s cries from the springhouse. She found her father and, as their mother threatened suicide, together they managed to pry open the door. The authorities were called and arrived at the scene shortly after.

After Elizabeth Grimm was taken into custody and housed in the Tuscarawas County Jail, she spoke a great deal to reporters and family. She stated that “she did it for Jessie’s sake” and that “something was inside her” at the time of the murder. Her family, attorneys and judge believed that no person in their right mind could do such a thing to their child and so ordered a hearing on Elizabeth’s mental state. After the hearing, the judge ruled that Elizabeth was indeed insane at the time of the killing and ordered her committed to the Massillon State Hospital for the Insane until such time as she was sane again.

That time was apparently less than a year and Elizabeth returned to her family in Blicktown in the spring of 1915. Almost exactly two years after Jessie’s murder, John Grimm was struck by a freight train less than 200 yards from his home as he walked back from a grocery trip to Dover. Elizabeth Grimm lived her remaining years with the families of her children until her death in July 1931. Jessie, John, and Elizabeth Grimm are buried in the Jerusalem Church Cemetery on Stonecreek Road.

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© Noel B. Poirier, 2024.