A Devilish Temper and Cruel Disposition: The Story of Hade Brown

In early 1876, 18-year-old Susan Parrish of Randolph County, Missouri, left her parents’ home near Cairo to elope with James Hayden “Hade” Brown. Hade was the son of the notorious Bill Brown, who’d killed a man in 1865 and was later killed himself by his brother-in-law for abusing his wife (Hade’s mother). Sue’s parents, Dr. J. C. and Martha Parrish, bitterly opposed her marriage to Hade, who had already earned a mean and rowdy reputation of his own.
Susan was madly in love and wouldn’t listen to her parents, but soon after the wedding, according to the county history, Hade’s “devilish temper and cruel disposition was manifested toward his wife.” On July 21, 1877, while Hade was in neighboring Monroe County, Sue left home with her infant son and came to her parents’ house to plead with them for help in escaping her abusive husband. Despite their initial opposition to Sue’s marriage, the couple had counseled patience when Sue had previously appealed to them, but this time they yielded to their daughter’s entreaties. Dr. Parrish took her and the little boy in a wagon to stay with her older brother in Howard County.
On Monday the 23rd, Dr. Parrish made the return trip, accompanied by Sue’s twin sister, Sarah. As the doctor and his daughter neared their home, Hade rode up from the opposite direction wielding a double barrel shotgun and, after an angry confrontation, shot and seriously wounded Parrish, who was taken into a neighbor’s house. Hade fled but came back a few minutes later, just as Martha Parrish, who’d been summoned to the scene, arrived in a wagon to see about her wounded husband. Hade forced the driver to halt, ordered Mrs. Parrish out of the wagon, and shot and killed her.
Brown took off again and was not arrested until almost a year later, when he was recognized on the streets of Rochester, Minnesota, and brought back to Missouri. His murder trial finally got underway at Moberly in February 1879. Although Hade had killed her mother and shot her father, Susan was beside her husband supporting him throughout the trial. Hade’s lawyers put up a defense of emotional insanity, and the jury could not agree on a verdict, causing a mistrial.
Brown’s second trial began in December 1879 but was postponed twice, because of a suicide attempt by Brown and because one of the jurors got sick. The trial began for real in late January 1880. In early February, the jury came back with a guilty verdict, and the judge sentenced Brown to hang on March 26. An appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court, however, stayed the execution. In early May, the high court affirmed the lower court’s verdict and set Brown’s new execution date for June 25, 1880.
Hade had been moved to Kansas City for safekeeping, and after the supreme court decision, a Kansas City Journal reporter visited him in his cell. Brown said he’d never gotten along with Dr. Parrish but had nothing against Mrs. Parrish. He claimed not to remember shooting her but agreed he must have done so. The only reason he could give for the crime was that whiskey had injured his brain.
Susan came to Kansas City to live so she could be near her husband. As time for his execution approached, Hade enlisted his wife to help him kill himself, and Sue made up her mind to join her husband in a suicide pact. On June 21, she visited Hade at the jail and slipped him some poison. Returning to her room at the home of Belle Fisher, she took her 3-year-old son to a neighbor’s house, came back and wrote out two suicide notes, and then lay down and shot herself in the head with a pistol. She died instantly. The suicide notes contained instructions for the rearing of her son and declared that she loved her husband more than life and wanted to die with him.
As officials approached Hade in his cell to inform him of his wife’s death, he desperately tried to swallow the poison Sue had handed him earlier, but they wrested it away from him after a terrific struggle. Hade was placed under a heavy guard and transferred from Kansas City to Huntsville on Thursday, June 24, 1880. About noon the next day, he was taken from the Randolph County Jail to the scaffold and hanged before a gaping crowd of almost 15,000.
After the body was cut down, it was placed in a double coffin and taken to the train depot. When the train carrying Sue’s body, which had been held in Kansas City, arrived, Hade’s body was placed on the same train. At Moberly, Sue’s body was placed in the same coffin as Hade’s, according to the couple’s wishes, and they were buried the next day at Swindell Cemetery in Monroe County.
This story is condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Show-Me Atrocities: Infamous Incidents in Missouri History.