So back in January when I was working on our exposé on the Hatchetman Murders, I discovered to my chagrin that I had never taken pictures of the tombstone of Henry Hellman, old Andy’s son. Recently, we went back there and did that, and I thought, well, hey, might as well put something together that reviews the cemetery itself in official Headstoner style. So I’m back on it.
As I described in my final Hatchetman post, “Harrod Cemetery is of a decent size, was established in 1898, though it has graves dating from before then, and is still in use. Some graves go back into the trees, but I don’t recommend poking around because the cemetery is fiercely bordered by poison ivy. It is well-maintained . . . Common last names include the eponymous ‘Harrod,’ as well as ‘Abel’ and ‘Oder.’ There is only one road through the cemetery, with two exits (or entrances, or one exit and one entrance), and the side closest to the twp. road is where the more modern burials are/continue to take place.”
It is one of the early Headstoner cemeteries, to be sure, and a lot of our research on the Andrew Hellman case influenced us in the founding of this website and our Headstoning cause of, well, you know, Headstoning (vb. To go from cemetery to cemetery to look at headstones). We go there a lot, frequently to kill time, or just as often to eat pickanick style. So I got to thinking that Herrod deserves a more thorough writeup of its own merits apart from the presence of the urban legendary Andrew “Hatchetman” Hellman.
But before we move away from the Hellmans entirely, I would like to dedicate a moment to dear Henry, dear Henry. Henry Hellman is one of my favorite dead guys. My surprise that I had previously never taken a picture of his tombstone before was partially fueled by the fact that it’s one of the neatest. His name (there’s a closeup in the gallery at the end) is all cool and wavy.
Just to recap the story briefly, Henry managed to escape the fate of his brother and sister (if, indeed, they were poisoned; Andrew repeatedly denied that he had murdered his children, but Henry himself asserted that poison was involved in his siblings’ deaths). The day his father killed his mother, Mrs. Hellman had sent him to her brother’s house (one of the Abels in the area), and this was how he avoided that fate as well. Check out my other posts on the Hellmans if you want more of the story. There’s a really fascinating anecdote about the young Henry (age 12, as I recall) being brought to the jail to see his father. Just because I don’t want to do the whole thing a third time, I’ll sum up with Henry living a good, full life, having married and had a daughter. On to the rest of the cemetery!
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Or just go watch The Haunting.
