On April 27, 1860, a crowd assembled at the corner of State and First Streets at the Mutual Bank Building, later the National Bank Building.

A young 28-year-old man, runaway slave, named Charles Nalle, reported as “light skinned and wore a beard,” and who had escaped from Virginia on October 19th, 1858, had been hoodwinked by Horace F Averill, of Sand Lake, called by the Troy Times a “penny-a-liner, shyster lawyer, awhile a seventh rate reporter for a seventh rate paper.”

He also served time in Tombs prison for being an embezzler. Ouch.

Anyway, Charles made the mistake of confiding to Averill, who occasionally wrote letters for Nalle, about his status, and Horace, being the shyster he was, notified Nalle’s owner back in Culpepper County, Virginia. Averill decided to cash in and arranged to have him arrested under the Fugitive Slave Act and shipped back to his owner, which by the way, was his brother (half brother Blucher W. Hasbrough).

Nalle had moved to Troy in 1859, via Columbia, PA and the Underground Railroad. He was arrested at a bakery by Deputy US marshal J.W. Holmes and taken to the U.S.........

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