On 10 January 1887, Joseph Lehmann and Sarah Murch were married in Buffalo by a civil judge, T. S. King. The Buffalo Sunday Morning News printed the marriage two weeks later. Nearly thirty other couples married that week — every one of them a church wedding officiated "by Rev." except this pair.24 A contributing factor may have been that Joseph was a Roman Catholic and Sarah raised as Anglican, but there's no record confirming this.
Neither is there a document in this collection that shows James Murch's first marriage to Sarah ever having been legally ended, by divorce or by his death. What became of him after March 1879 is not known at all, and whether Sarah was free to remarry in January 1887 is not established by anything found so far.
Shortly after their marriage, Sarah and Joseph Lehman moved back to Akron.
Joseph re-conveyed a half-share of family land (originating from his mother Theresa), giving his new wife the undivided one-half of the remaining two-thirds of Lots 99 and 101, southwestern Akron, "as tenant in common with myself" for the consideration of "Natural love and affection and One Dollar."25
A deed recorded 14 November 1887 solidifies the couple's return to the city. Joseph and Sarah purchased 25 acres in Coventry township, a rural area about five miles from the heart of the city.26
Joseph made a career change, from moulder in a factory to farmer. For six years, he toiled at this career, regularly transporting his produce and dairy products to sell at market — a long trek in a wagon to the heart of the city.
His daughter Annie later described the farm and her father's trade directly. Writing in her own testimony, reprinted in the Barberton congregation's newsletter in 1975, she recalled: "My father was a gardener by trade. He raised many different kinds of vegetables and sometimes had 6 or 7 boys working for him while they scrubbed and tied the vegetables. Sometimes on Saturdays he left our house at five o'clock in the morning with his loaded wagon of vegetables which he peddled to customers and others who came out to buy in Akron. I can remember very well how nice and fresh his wagon full of vegetables looked as he would leave with them for Akron. He rented a stall for Saturday evenings. He also kept 7 cows and supervised a dairy, which made his income during the winter months when he couldn't sell vegetables."27
And then came the breakdown.
On the morning of 10 January 1894, Joseph's brother Louis signed an affidavit as to Joseph's insanity in Summit County probate court.
The Akron Evening Times covered it under the headline "Afraid of Witches": Dr. Hitchcock, who examined him, gave his opinion that "the moral cause of the insanity was jealousy but that the physical cause was a certain bad habit."28 Joseph, the paper reported, "computed his family troubles by the number of dry spots on his wagon axle and was continually telling his wife that he would live one day longer than her." He believed, the doctor said, "that his barn was full of witches and that the only way to get rid of them was by fire."28 Judge Stuart adjudged him insane that same day.
The next morning, the same paper reported that Joseph had been sent to the county infirmary rather than the jail, under the headline "Too Violent for the Jail": "Lehman is very violent and the facilities for the accommodation of dangerous insane patients are much better at the infirmary than at the jail. The officers had a hard time getting Lehman into the wagon which was to bring him to jail Wednesday noon. The man fought furiously."29 Two days after that, on Saturday, 13 January, a short notice ran: "Sheriff Williams Saturday afternoon conveyed Joseph Lehman, recently adjudged insane by Judge Stuart, to the asylum at Cleveland."30
The hospital had already gone through five names since its 1855 founding on land donated by the family of future president James A. Garfield, and was eventually to be known as Cleveland State Hospital. When Joseph was sent there, it was called Newburgh, after the small community where it was located, a short distance from Cleveland. It held hundreds of patients, increasingly court-committed and poor.31
He was dead within two weeks.
The Akron Beacon Journal, 25 January 1894: "Joseph Lehman of Bowery street died yesterday of congestion of the lungs. He was 47 years old and leaves a wife and two children. The funeral services will be held tomorrow morning at 8:30 o'clock from St. Bernard's church."32 The Billow's funeral home ledger agrees almost to the day — 24 January, age 47 years, 7 months, 22 days — and states he "died at Newburgh."33 (A second probate death record disagrees on nearly everything: 26 February, age 48, cause "hemorrhage of the lungs."34)
Family historian Karla Tipton has raised one further question about this death, and holds it only as her own speculation:
Fifteen years before Joseph's sudden decline, Sarah's first husband had publicly accused her of two attempts on his own life. Was Joseph's fast collapse — sudden hallucinations, a same-day committal, death inside two weeks — something other than natural illness?
No accusation, autopsy, or toxicology report exists for Joseph specifically, and nothing in the documentary record points toward foul play.
Within days, Sarah was standing in the same probate court under her own name. On 5 February 1894, two Akron papers reported her appointment as administratrix of Joseph's estate, with a bond of $600; on 27 February she filed its inventory.35 Four weeks: husband declared insane, husband committed, husband dead, widow in charge of the estate.