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[1884] The Murder at Fort Western

Maine Ghost Hunters — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 22:03:35 +0000

[1884] The Murder at Fort Western

On a cold November night in 1884, tragedy struck the city of Augusta, Maine when Police Officer Rufus R. Lishness, a dedicated servant of the law, was shot and killed while attempting to apprehend a suspect for disturbing the peace at a tenement called “Old Fort” on the east side of the Kennebec River (the old Fort Western). The perpetrator, Harry Burns, was apprehended an hour later and brought to justice. Officer Lishness left behind a grieving wife and four children, robbed of their husband and father by this senseless act of violence. The following is an account of “The Murder at Fort Western”.

Harry Burns and Rufus R. Lishness

At the time of the incident, Harry Burns was a 65-year-old man who was a prior patient at the National Soldiers Home at Togus and was addicted to the use of liquor. On November 11, 1884, he shot and killed Augusta Police Officer Rufus R. Lishness, as previously mentioned. Officer Lishness was responding to a disturbance call with another officer when they went to arrest Harry Burns. When they couldn’t gain access at the entrance, Officer Lishness shoved an unlocked window open and was about to climb into Harry Burns’ bedroom when Burns fired a shot at him, striking Lishness in the head. Lishness was able to walk to the police station with the help of another officer but soon afterward became unconscious, later dying of his wounds. His last words were “I did my duty, didn’t I?” It is unclear what led Harry Burns to murder Rufus Lishness, but his addiction to liquor may have played a role. Dedicated husband and father of 4, officer Rufus R. Lishness was a 45 year old, highly respected, man in the community. He was a table smoother, by trade, but had been put on the overnight police duty in the spring of 1883.

Brief History of Fort Western

Fort Western was built in 1754 during the French and Indian War as a British Colonial Outpost. It was built and maintained by the Howard Family. The fort was primarily built to encourage settlement along the Kennebec River region and to provide stores for the storehouse at Fort Halifax. Fort Western was commanded by Captain James Howard who had a unit of 23 men, including his four sons. In 1969, Fort Western was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and in 1973 it was listed as a National Historic Landmark. By 1767, the military had no use for Fort Western and it was decommissioned. In 1769, Captain James Howard bought Fort Western and 900 acres of surrounding land. He and his sons remodeled it into a residence and trading post. Fort Western was a central meeting point for early residents as far away as Hallowell. On September 23, 1775, Benedict Arnold and his troops stopped at Fort Western on their way to invading Quebec. They spent a week repairing the fort and loading supplies before continuing north. In 1810, William Howard, one of Captain James Howard’s sons, died and the fort was sold out of the family. It was made into a tenement house and the surrounding area became known for illegal activity and low-class behavior.

Breakdown of the Murder

At 3:00am on November 11, 1884, Mrs. Randall, a tenement renter in Fort Western, went to the police station to ask for help. Neighboring tenant, Harry Burns, had been making noise all night and her sick son was trying to sleep. She had already addressed the matter with Harry, but he had rudely dismissed her.

Officers Rufus R. Lishness and Arthur S. Baker accompanied Mrs. Randall back to the Fort. They tried to enter through the front door on the Bowman Street side, but it was locked or blocked. From inside, they heard Harry Burns say “Don’t come in here, Warren!” Warren Bruce was a cop who worked the day shift and was not present that night.

This is a great spot in the story to mention that it was pitch black ‘dark’ outside. It was 1884 and there was no exterior lighting present. Officer Lishness realized the front door was latched so he shimmied over to the window on the right side of the door, opened it up, and quickly popped his head and upper body inside. Without any warning whatsoever, he was shot and fell out of the window onto the ground with blood pouring out of his head.

Officer Arthur S. Baker ran to help him and asked if he’d been shot. It was so dark outside it made seeing the significance of the injury he’d just incurred, almost impossible. He helped Lishness get up off the ground and walk back to the police station. Lishness managed to walk without assistance for much of the way, but soon began to exhibit the effects of being shot in the head at close range. His face and right side of his body became paralyzed.

The last words Officer Lishness uttered before dying were “I did my duty, didn’t I?” A doctor was called and determined that a blood clot was causing issues. Lishness needed to get home as soon as possible, so a carriage was called to take him to his residence at Cushnoc Heights.

Officer Warren Bruce and Marshal Frank B. Farrington were called to arrest Harry Burns. They arrived, kicked in the outside door and then the interior bedroom door. They immediately saw Burns in bed with a gun pointed at the door. They wrestled him hand-to-hand to get the gun away while Mrs. Burns snuck out of bed and out of the room.

Harry refused to get dressed and officers said he was out of his mind with drunkenness and likely hallucinating. They put him in jail.

Officer Rufus Lishness died at 3:40pm the following afternoon.

Harry Burns’ Story

On Saturday, November 8, 1884, Harry made a plan to go to Boston on the following Monday, November 10th. He had plans to see a ‘Dr. Williams’ in Boston and was awaiting a letter from Togus giving him the go-ahead as he was still considered an “inmate” – or ‘patient’ – of the National Veteran’s Home (aka “Togus”). He needed a furlough to go to Boston and it had to be mailed to him. Harry asked Mr. Story, a local shopkeeper in town, to write a letter to Harry’s sergeant asking for the furlough.

Mr. Burns prepared for the trip by getting a haircut at a local place called Gannet’s where he told the barber about his plans to go to Boston, and then to Lowell to spend time with family before returning home to Augusta. He then went home and laid out his ‘good clothes’ in anticipation of the arrival of the requested furlough letter. But the letter didn’t arrive and he was panicking, stressed and anxious. He put his money in the pocket of a pair of pants that he hung on a chair near the window in his bedroom. He also set out a gun to give as a gift to his nephew in Lowell at that same window.

Harry’s reasoning for seeking help from a doctor in Boston was thought to be directly related to pain management regarding the battle injury he sustained during the Civil War, and to get help with detoxing from his alcohol addiction. However, having received no word from Togus that he could leave on furlough, Harry started drinking again at 4:00pm. He drank 2 gallons of his homemade brew between 4pm-12am and ate nothing throughout the entirety of this drinking binge.

At 7:00pm, Harry realized half his keg was gone because he drank it. So, he went to the store, bought 1 pound of hops and molasses and later went out again for tobacco. On the way back, he ran into a small bunch of rowdy teens. They had a verbal exchange regarding a recent election and things got heated. Harry was emotionally invested in this election so he was triggered easily by these kids who were taunting him. They threatened him with chants of “drag him out!” and he feared they would steal his money and kill him because they had threatened him physically during their interaction.

When he was done brewing his homemade beer, he moved the keg he just filled, from one part of the room to another, basically dragging it across the floor and making a ruckus. The sound roused Mrs. Randall in a neighboring apartment and she asked him to quiet down because her son was sick & sleeping. A couple of other close neighbors who shared either a wall, ceiling, or floor heard nothing or were completely unbothered. It was just Mrs. Randall who had a complaint.

By the time night had set in, Harry’s clothes were set out, his $24 was in his pants pocket draped over the chair in front of the window and the revolver was on the stand in front of that same window. Harry didn’t move these items away from the window and was acutely aware of their importance in his life if he were to make a successful trip to Massachusetts and back.

The shooting of Officer Lishness happened on Tuesday November 11, 1884 around 3:00am.

According to Harry, someone knocked on the door and he asked what they wanted. They said they wanted to come in. Harry responded “you shan’t tonight!” and claimed to have never said “Warren”. Harry was quick to clarify he knew Warren Bruce very well, but was also very clear in his messaging he never heard anyone say they were cops.

Harry swore he never thought the people at the door were cops. He thought they were the teenage boys coming to “drag him out”. Harry was scared to find someone opening his window and believed they were going to take his money – literally all of his money was in his pants pocket – which he needed to get to the doctor’s in Boston.

Harry testified he didn’t know Rufus Lishness was the person in the window. He fumbled at the window trying to push the person out and close it but the person grabbed him back, so Harry got away, grabbed for his gun, stumbled to his bed in a panic and shot at the intruder. Harry said he tried to push Lishness back out the window before grabbing his gun in the bureau drawer at the window. He said he shot Lishness while standing away from the window, 2 feet from his bed, not at point-blank range directly at the window.

Mrs. Burns woke up at the sound of the gunshot. It was pitch-black-dark inside, and outside, so neither party could identify each other and neither could see the extent of the injury inflicted on Officer Lishness.

Harry Burns knew Rufus Lishness and all of the other police officers personally. He’d been arrested a few times previously by all. He had never once tussled with the law – and had either paid his fine or did his jail time without any issue.

Harry and his wife had lived in the tenement for the last 5+/- years, or so. He admitted to making and drinking his own beer, which was not illegal. But he’d never been involved with the law outside of drunkenness. The defense – his legal team – reiterated he had never hurt anyone nor intended to hurt anyone in his life and if he would’ve known there were cops at his door he wouldn’t have fired his gun. The Defense was really focused on pushing the “self-defense” angle. However, another cop testified that when he was arresting Harry for drunkenness, not too long ago, Harry threatened to “fix” the next officer who would try to arrest him.

After he shot Officer Lishness, Harry went back to bed thinking he’d scared off the intruders. When Officer Warren Bruce and Marshal Frank B. Farrington broke in through the exterior door and then the bedroom door to Harry’s room, they saw Harry had his gun in his hand, ready to defend his life. The officers had lanterns this time and Harry said the moment he saw their badges he let down his guard. They said they had to wrangle the gun away from him and he was out of his mind with drunkenness, so because of this, he didn’t recognize their badges. Harry said he could have shot them if he wanted to.

Mr. Burns claimed the gun was not cocked, yet the police said it was. He also said his door was not locked but the cops say they couldn’t just open it even though they tried repeatedly, so they determined it had to be locked. Marshal Farrington said Officer Bruce tried to open the bedroom door but it was locked, so they shoulder-slammed it open.

Harry claimed, emphatically and repeatedly, that he hadn’t had a hard liquor drink for around 2 years.

Trial-Wise it’s important to make mention that Mrs. Burns was present when everything happened the night Officer Lishness was killed, but Legal Counsel for the Defense never called her to testify. She could have cleared her husband of accusations made against him if they were lies, or corroborated witness testimony on her husband’s behalf, but she was never given the chance.

After the Shooting and Arrest

The day after the crime, police went to the scene and spoke with Mrs. Burns, who explained that her husband Harry often drank a homemade “hop beer” to excess, sometimes consuming 2 gallons a day. She also mentioned that he’d been speaking loudly about the election before the shooting but by the time the police arrived – directly before the shooting happened – she had already fallen asleep. When police later spoke with Harry in his holding cell, they noted that his breath smelled strongly of alcohol, suggesting he had consumed something stronger than hop beer. Regarding the legal case against Mr. Burns for the murder of Officer Rufus R. Lishness; The jury started deliberations on Tuesday December 23, 1884 at 4:50pm and by 9:15pm it had returned with the verdict. Harry Burns had been found guilty of manslaughter and was sentenced to 7 to 14 years in Thomaston State Prison.

The post [1884] The Murder at Fort Western first appeared on Maine Ghost Hunters.

Governor Selden Connor

Maine Ghost Hunters — Fri, 07 Apr 2023 15:50:04 +0000

Governor Selden Connor

In this blog entry you’re being introduced to Maine’s 35^th Governor. His name was Selden Connor and he was dedicated soldier, successful banker, and popular politician. He was also one of Maine’s finest Civil War heroes, and one tough nut. I’ll tell you why I wrote that in a minute.

Selden Connor was born in Fairfield, Maine on January 25, 1839. He was educated in local area schools, including The Hartland Academy in Hartland and the Westbrook Seminary before heading off to college at Tufts University. After graduating from Tufts in 1859 he moved to Vermont to study law in the law offices of Washburn and Marsh.

In his second year as a law student in Vermont the Civil War broke out. Selden wasted no time. Within just 5 days of the announcement, he had left his schooling to join the cause to preserve the Union by enlisting for a 3 month tour with the 1^st Regiment of Vermont Volunteers. He quickly moved up in rank to Major, and then Lieutenant Colonel of the 7^th Maine.

Selden Connor was involved in many important military campaigns;

In 1862, at the age of 23, he was put into temporary command of the 77^th New York Regiment after the Union Victory at the battle of Antietam.
He was involved with the Peninsula Campaign, which was a direct Union offensive on the Confederate Capitol of Richmond, Virginia. The campaign lasted from April of 1862 to July 1862. The Union was not successful at capturing the city.
He was also present at the Battle of Fredericksburg, where he was wounded, but not so badly he couldn’t continue on with his duties.
He was present at the battle of Gettysburg where the 7^th Maine joined the right flank.
And he led his men to fight in the Battle of the Wilderness. It was in this campaign he was wounded by a musketball that struck his inner thigh, ripped through his quad muscle and essentially shattered his left femur. This leg injury would cause him much grief for the remainder of his life. It ended his field career and relegated him to administrative duty for the duration.

Selden was promoted to Brigadier General after sustaining this leg injury but was mustered out of the service in 1866. In 1866 he fell and fractured his leg again which left him housebound for 2 years, much of which he was bedridden.

In 1868 is when Selden Connor’s political career began when he was appointed to the position of “assessor of internal revenue’ by governor Joshua Chamberlain. Within a few short years he was appointed the “collector for the Augusta district”.

In 1875 he made a successful run for Governor as a Republican and 2 follow-up re-election bids which he also won – serving from 1876 through 1879. In 1876 he appointed James G. Blaine to fill an empty Senate seat when Lot Myrick Morrill was tapped by President Grant to become the US Secretary to the Treasury. In 1882 he was employed as a U.S. Pension Agent, a position he held until 1886 when the office itself was abolished.

From 1893-1897 Connor served as the 23^rd Adjutant General of Maine. The Adjutant General is an esteemed military appointment, responsible for State Level Military. So, in this capacity he was responsible for all facets of the Maine National Guard.

His later life accomplishments included serving as the President of the Society of the Army of the Potomac, the Senior Vice Commander of the Loyal Legion, and the President of the Northern Banking Company.

He was a lifelong member of the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity. He also held memberships in the Maine Historical Society, the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, and was the Senior Vice Commander in Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic (or the G.A.R.).

Selden Connor died in 1917 at the age of 78. His death was determined to be caused by “Nephritis of 22 years and abscess of the kidney”. He left behind a political legacy we all still live by today.

Some things Selden Connor was known for;

He was a Civil Service Reform Advocate – which meant he was opposed to the “spoils system” in Government jobs where incoming presidents would wipe out government employees who weren’t of their political backing only to replace them with big money donors, or political party favorites. In short, Civil Service meant that employees who were ‘civil servants’ wouldn’t necessarily identify with the party of the office of the President.
He pushed hard for a free public school system here in Maine. And he signed an act that led to the building of a teacher’s school in Fort Kent, Maine in an effort to Americanize the state’s French Settlers in the Madawaska Territory. It was originally called the Madawaska Training School but that name morphed over the years to; The Fort Kent Normal School, The Fort Kent State Teacher’s College, Fort Kent State College, and finally, the University of Maine at Fort Kent
He was an outspoken voice in cleaning up the political arena of bribery & forced voting practices – where employers wouldn’t hire employees with opposing political ideologies, and who would also force employees to vote for whomever the boss told them to.
He was an outspoken proponent for the Women’s Suffrage Movement to the point he held the position of Vice President of the Maine Woman Suffrage Association.
And finally, Selden Connor was a mighty fine cook. Being the son of a Lumberman meant he knew his way around a bean pot. Lumbermen of the time had this special way of making Beanhole Baked Beans and Selden had perfected the recipe so deliciously it was darn-near legendary.

The post Governor Selden Connor first appeared on Maine Ghost Hunters.