Mt. Pleasant

This is a story that I might entitle, If It's Too Good To Be True, It Probably Is.

As a Realtor with Prudential Connecticut Realty, a 1929 Middletown Press article titled “SUPPOSED REALTOR ALARMS DISTRICT” caught my attention. Apparently, a strangely acting man terrorized folks in the Mt. Pleasant section of East Hampton leaving residents alarmed and disappointed, after visiting the homes of Mrs. Axel Cornelisson, Arthur, Einar and John Jacobson and John G. Johnson.   Mt. Pleasant is the area along RT 16, Cochester Avenue, Flatbrook Road, Tartia Road, Markham Road and now Jacobson Farms Road. 

Claiming to be from Massachusetts, the real estate man bargained to purchase their farms at prices asked by the owners, agreeing to return Friday to close the deals.  In the meantime, the sellers, who believed they had sold their property and were about to reap a small fortune, made preparations to move out and look for rents in town.  Friday came but the real estate man didn’t.  That evening, he showed up in the Flanders area and bought two cows from Mike Daley, Dairyman, and bargained for the Gates Farm. 

Witnesses report at no time did he appear to have money.  On Saturday morning, he returned to Mt. Pleasant, stopping at the home of John Johnson. Appearing excitable, he brandished a long knife and pointing a large caliber revolver to his forehead while drawing the back of the blade across his throat murmuring all the time in a foreign language thought to have been Polish.  Mr. Johnson became alarmed and notified Deputy Sheriff Ray Youngs and Constable Ellery M. Flood, who motored to Mr. Pleasant in hopes of capturing the man. The officers scoured the woods for several miles and learned from the Dill family on Waterhole Road that the man had stopped there for a time but had not been seen for several days. Late that Saturday, he reappeared in Mt. Pleasant, but without  consummating the purchase, left, never to be seen again.