Troubled Inheritance: The Life of Jason Lewis Stiles
📜 UNEARTHED — This story has been reconstructed from scattered reports and archival fragments.
— A Southwick Time Machine Original
This
story continues the account of the Stiles family of Southwick,
Massachusetts, following the life of Jason Elbridge Stiles’s son, whose
name briefly appears in Criminal Intimacy: The Southwick Scandal of 1888.
Troubled Inheritance
The Life of Jason Lewis Stiles
Jason Lewis Stiles, the son of Jason Elbridge Stiles and Hattie (Stevens) Ladd Stiles, was born on October 5, 1893, in Southwick, Massachusetts. Like his father, he became a carpenter and was connected with the Berkshire Ice Company. His adult life, however, was repeatedly marked by legal trouble and violence.
On November 30, 1912, Miss Lillian M. Elsey of Southwick brought a statutory action against Stiles. A Westfield District Court judge ordered him held for the superior court.
When his father died in 1915, Jason L. Stiles - still a young man - was given his father’s horse.
In early 1917, the Southwick community was outraged by an act of cruelty that would become one of the most talked-about incidents involving Stiles, reviving memories of the widely publicized adultery case involving his father in 1888.
After riding out to Connecticut with a young woman believed to have been Mrs. Mabel Samson, Stiles returned with the horse in a catastrophic condition. The animal was badly crippled, bleeding, and near death. Witnesses reported that Stiles had ruthlessly thrashed and whipped the horse during the ride, beating and slashing it so badly that it could barely stand, let alone walk or pull a wagon.
The exhausted animal collapsed in the road. When further whippings failed to force it to its feet, Stiles abandoned it where it lay.
The brutality of the attack enraged neighbors, who were incensed at the suffering inflicted on the horse.
Only about seven years old, the horse died later that evening from the horrific injuries it had sustained, further inflaming the community, with many Southwick residents openly threatening to take matters into their own hands.
When his neighbors rose up against him, Stiles surrendered himself to Deputy Sheriff Timothy Malone of Southwick, claiming he had great remorse for his actions.
The woman believed to have been with Stiles during the ill-fated ride, Mabel Samson, was herself undergoing a dramatic change in circumstances. Weeks earlier, in March 1917, she had filed for divorce from her husband, Napoleon Samson. A Superior Court judge, citing gross intoxication, granted the divorce on April 17, 1917.
On April 20, 1917, Stiles appeared in Westfield District Court and pleaded guilty to severe animal cruelty. He was fined $50—reported at the time to be a substantial penalty—which Stiles was unable to pay. Stiles was also charged with driving the animal beyond its limits and failing to provide proper care. The judge allowed him a short period to raise the money, warning that failure to do so would result in a jail sentence.
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Stiles married several times during his life. On October 30, 1917, he married Mabel Samson. In December, the couple moved from the center of Southwick to Congamond Lake. Mabel died in Noble Hospital on February 6, 1919.
Late in the evening on June 8, 1919, Stiles was involved in a head-on collision on East Main Street in Westfield. Both vehicles were badly damaged; Stiles automobile was rendered undrivable. A passenger in the other vehicle was injured but refused treatment. In July of that year, Stiles was
admitted to Noble Hospital in Westfield, Massachusetts, for a lacerated
scalp, which he suffered while working for the Berkshire Ice Company at
Congamond Lake.
On August 14, 1920, Stiles and two Westfield men were arrested and charged with drunkenness.
In addition to Mabel, Stiles married Mrs. Julia Agnes (Tatro) Knox of New York City on August 24, 1921, in East Granby, Connecticut. She was approximately twenty years his senior. (She died in their Westfield home on January 27, 1931.)
Stiles’s legal troubles continued through the 1920s.
On December 1, 1923, Stiles was arrested in Westfield as he prepared to drive to Southwick. He was charged with drunken driving and intoxication.
On November 9, 1929, Stiles was arrested again and charged with drunkenness and operating an automobile under the influence of liquor. It was his second offense within the statutory six-year period. Appearing in Westfield District Court on November 16, 1929, Stiles changed his plea from guilty to not guilty. However, Judge Willis S. Kellogg found him guilty on the driving charge and sentenced him to thirty days in the Hampden County House of Correction; the drunkenness charge was filed. On November 29, 1954, George A. Parker, registrar of the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV), announced that he had revoked both Stiles’s driver’s license and his vehicle registration.
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| Hampden County House of Correction |
Though often before the courts as a defendant, Stiles also appears in the record in another capacity.
On April 5, 1933, during a violent episode at Congamond Lake, Wesley Gillett took a knife from John Tomasini, who had slashed his abdomen. Gillett locked Tomasini in a barn and ran home, where he summoned his father, Edward Gillett, and Jason Stiles. The two men rushed to the barn while Wesley ran to a nearby store to summon Dr. Samuel Finsen.
Dr. Finsen called Special Officer Hastings and hastened to the scene. Meanwhile, Edward Gillett and Stiles found the barn empty and proceeded to Tomasini’s house. They discovered him in the kitchen, armed with a knife. He had slashed his abdomen again and soon died from his wounds.
Little is recorded of Stiles’s life in the years that followed, but by the early 1940s, he again came before the courts in a case involving a married woman—an echo of the scandal that had once surrounded his father.
In the early morning hours of September 16, 1941, police went to the home of Mrs. Nettie E. Greene. They arrested her and her lover, Stiles, for lascivious cohabitation. Stiles told the court that he had been residing at the Greene home. He was ordered to post bonds of $300, but Mrs. Greene was released on her own recognizance.
Stiles later married Nettie. The couple lived in Westfield, Massachusetts.
On August 8, 1954, Jason Lewis Stiles called the Westfield Police Department, complaining of difficulty breathing. The city ambulance was dispatched to his home on Bates Road. Resuscitation was administered while he was en route to Noble Hospital, where he was admitted.
Despite medical efforts, Stiles died there on August 18, 1954. He was sixty years old.
Jason L. Stiles had lived much of his life in and around Southwick and Congamond Lake, the same community in which his father’s name had once stirred controversy and scandal. In many respects, his own life followed a similar pattern—public scrutiny, troubled relationships, and repeated appearances before the courts.
Like his father, he was buried in Southwick, Massachusetts.
The story of Jason Lewis Stiles stands as a continuation of the complicated legacy of the Stiles family—one marked by industry and connection to the community, yet shadowed by controversy, legal entanglements, and acts that left lasting impressions on those who witnessed them.
— Uncovered and preserved by the Southwick Time Machine
Jason Lewis Stiles
October 5, 1893 — August 18, 1954
October 5, 1893 — August 18, 1954
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Walter Chipman Wheaton: March 7, 1857 - January 9, 1914
Emma Julia (Stiles) Wheaton: March 4, 1861 - March 22, 1914
Mabel (Smith) (Samson) Stiles: January 22, 1896 - February 6, 1919
Nettie Elizabeth (Barnes) Greene Stiles: April 9, 1889 - November 13, 1967
Irving Anson Ladd: July 23, 1885 - October 8, 1918
Lillian M. (Elsey) Baines: March 16, 1894 - March 17, 1927
Julia Agnes (Knox) Stiles: 1872 - January 27, 1931
Charles M. Greene: April 9, 1874 - March 19, 1944
Mabel was previously married to Napoleon J.P. Samson. They wed in 1913. At the time, she was a whipmaker, and he was a machinist.
Jason Stiles had relatives in Connecticut.
Some records state that Mabel was born on January 23.
In 1913, Napoleon Samson married Mabel Smith.
After her husband died, Hattie lived with her son Jason.
In 1919, while employed by the Berkshire Ice Company, Stiles suffered a lacerated scalp and was treated at Noble Hospital.
Jason Stiles was very good at playing pool.
Lillian M. Elsey and Frederick Baines wed in 1913. She filed for divorce in 1926 and passed away in 1927.
Napoleon married Mabel shortly after his wife divorced him on the grounds of abuse, intoxication, and non-support.
One of Napoleon’s daughters was going through a divorce when her husband was found murdered.
On August 14, 1920, Jason Lewis Stiles and two Westfield men were arrested and charged with drunkenness.
On December 1, 1923 (sometimes incorrectly listed as December 3), Stiles was arrested in Westfield as he was about to drive to Southwick. He was charged with drunken driving and intoxication.
Nettie Elizabeth (Barnes) Greene was buried with her first husband, Charles M. Greene (born April 9, 1874).
Nettie and Charles Greene had approximately nine children.
Irving Ladd is buried with his stepbrother, Jason L. Stiles, and Jason’s wife, Hattie.
Hattie Elizabeth (Stevens) (Ladd) Stiles died at Noble Hospital on March 20, 1929.
Jason Lewis Stiles had a brother, Daniel Stiles, who lived in New York.
Hattie Elizabeth (Stevens) (Ladd) Stiles died at Noble Hospital on March 20, 1929; she was born in East Canaan, Connecticut.
The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV) is equivalent to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) in most other states.
Nettie Barnes (Greene) Stiles was born in Granville, Massachusetts.
Mrs. Nettie Greene was riding in a car when it turned over on October 18, 1929. She suffered shoulder injuries. Her son was driving at the time the car flipped over.
A Note on Napoleon Samson
Napoleon Samson was born on May 8, 1893.
Long before his marriage to Mabel, Samson’s life was marked by repeated legal difficulties involving intoxication and violence. Those troubles continued after their union.
In 1906, Samson married a woman who was later charged with bigamy. She had previously married a man named Napoleon Brothers and was still legally wed to him at the time of her marriage to Samson. In 1910, the matter came to public attention after a confrontation at a social gathering, where her first husband appeared with his married companion. Words were exchanged, and the incident ultimately resulted in the arrest of all four individuals. Samson maintained that he had been a victim of circumstance.
On February 13, 1909, Samson attacked his bedridden wife with a knife and fled, becoming a wanted fugitive. On April 29 of that year, he appeared intoxicated at the boarding house where she was staying and threatened to kill her. Police were summoned, and he was arrested.
His legal difficulties continued. In 1911, he was arrested for drunkenness.
In 1912, Samson was accused of assaulting his stepdaughter. A police officer responding to a drunkenness complaint found the young woman unconscious after having been struck in the mouth. In court, she testified that she had seized a kerosene stove to throw at Samson after he pushed her, but that he had taken it from her and then punched her. Samson again claimed to be the injured party. The judge sentenced him to thirty days in jail on the assault charge, imposed a similar sentence for drunkenness, and added an additional thirty days on a prior complaint.
In 1913, Samson was arrested again for drunkenness. On April 4, 1914, he was arrested once more. A judge fined him six dollars on a disturbance charge and placed him on probation for drunkenness.
Despite this record, Samson later married Mabel. That marriage ended in divorce in April 1917, when a Superior Court judge granted Mabel a decree on the grounds of gross intoxication.
Napoleon Samson died in Rhode Island on February 5, 1943.
Napoleon Samson
May 8, 1893 — February 5, 1943
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