National Life's First Claims: Claim #3

Claim #3 was on the life of James W. Lawrence of Vergennes, Vermont. Like Rowland Allen, Lawrence lost his life in California during the Gold Rush. Lawrence had been issued policy #79 on April 6, 1850.

Lawrence and others had made camp for the night on Nelson’s Creek near Independence, California on Saturday, September 7, 1850. What happened next wasn’t known in Vermont or to National Life for many months due to long delays in mail service back to the eastern U.S.

A fellow prospector, A. Delano, wrote to Lawrence’s brother in Vermont on a piece of blue onionskin paper and now fading black ink. Eventually, the letter made its way to National Life and remains in the corporate archives today. Delano wrote, “It has become my sad duty to inform you of the death of your brother. He was most foully murdered while sleeping in his tent on Saturday…as was also J.W.B. Luther of Addison in Vermont.”

According to Delano, Lawrence, Luther and William O. Ward were sleeping between 9 and 10 p.m. when Ward woke up and “saw a man with an uplifted hatchet in the act of striking one of his companions.”

In the process of escaping, Ward saw a second person standing behind the murderer. Delano’s letter continues, “He run (sic) out to give the alarm & was followed a short distance by the second man, who did not overtake him.”

Ward ran to the nearby camp of Captain Moses Jewett to summon help. They returned shortly thereafter and found the bodies of Lawrence and Luther in the stream “horribly mangled and quite dead. The object of the murderers no doubt was for their money…they had each about $400.” Delano wrote that each man’s pockets had been slashed open and all money and gold taken.

In an attempt at frontier law enforcement, Delano wrote that a “jury” of miners could “arrive at no conclusion that would tend to fix suspicion on anyone, or that would authorize us to say by whom the foul murder had been committed.”

Due to long delays in obtaining witness statements to prove Lawrence’s death, it wasn’t until June 9, 1851 when the claim for $1,000 was paid. Corporate records seem to indicate that by this time, the company had well more than enough assets to pay the claim comfortably.