Book details former Rensselaer County deputy sheriff killed in the line of duty
Deputy Sheriff Willard Griggs was killed in 1869
EAST GREENBUSH, N.Y. >> During National Police Week and particularly on Peace Officers Memorial Day, May 15, law enforcement agencies and their communities pay tribute to the local, state, and federal peace officers who have died in the line of duty.
In Rensselaer County, this national holiday brings to mind the memory of Deputy Sheriff Willard Griggs, who died on Aug. 2, 1869, following injuries sustained during an Anti-Rent incident on a farm at the base of Olcott Hill in East Greenbush.
“He was out there trying to execute a lawful eviction,” said Rensselaer County Sheriff Patrick Russo, explaining that Griggs paid the ultimate sacrifice for enforcing a law that was unpopular with the general public at the time because it was tied into the Anti-Rent Wars.
Though many historians consider the Anti-Rent Wars to have ended much earlier, this particular dispute was related to its lingering effects. A story published in the Troy Times on July 27, 1869, the day after the incident, called the event “The AntiRent War Renewed.”
Since the inception of the Rensselaer County Sheriff’s Department in 1791, Griggs is the only Rensselaer County Deputy Sheriff to ever die in the line of duty, and his death is remembered annually by the department.
“He did die in the line of duty, and that’s why we honor him every year,” Russo said.
For National Police Week in 2014, Griggs’ name was added to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C.
The local memorial at Griggs’ grave in Sand Lake Union Cemetery reads: “To the memory of Willard Griggs, who was shot in the fearless discharge of his duties as Deputy Sheriff in executing process and died Aug. 2, 1869, aged 58 years.”
In the same incident, which some describe as a brawl, several persons were seriously injured including a second deputy.
Five suspects were arrested as a result of this incident. They were farmer William Witbeck, of East Greenbush, his two eldest sons, his son-in-law and a young farm worker from Illinois.
When local resident Jill Witbeck Knapp started researching her family history, she wasn’t expecting to find that her ancestors were at the center of a major local Anti-Rent dispute.
Growing up Witbeck Knapp never knew that her family was involved in this matter. “My father never mentioned anything about this incident,” she said, though she’s sure he was aware.
Throughout more than a decade of digging up facts from over a century ago, Witbeck Knapp compiled and wrote the true account of her great-great-grandfather, William Witbeck, along with the roles of Deputy Sheriff Willard Griggs, and landlord Col. Walter Stewart Church, whom the author considers to be the real villain of the story, in this late stage of the Anti-Rent Wars in Albany and Rensselaer counties.
The book, released in 2017 and titled “The Time for Redemption,” details the events that led up to the incident where Griggs was fatally wounded, the numerous twists and turns of getting an indictment for murder, and finally the trial.
It took three grand juries for the men, who resided at the Troy Jail during their detention, to be charged with Griggs’ murder.
Though the story starts in Albany and Rensselaer counties, it makes its way north into Saratoga County when the trial was held in the summer of 1870 in Ballston Spa.
Because the incident captivated the Capital District in 1869 and 1870 as documented in over 300 pages of newspaper articles, the prosecution asked for a change of venue in order to assemble an unbiased jury, claiming the pretrial publicity generated sympathy for the Witbecks.
Once underway, “It was a spectacular trial,” Witbeck Knapp said.
Even after all five men were acquitted of the charges, William Witbeck fought for the East Greenbush farm, until he was told by the Court of Appeals that the time for redemption had passed.
“It’s really a wacky story,” Witbeck Knapp said, noting the many interesting connections she discovered. “It’s not just a simple ‘He shot the sheriff, and then he was tried.’”
The Time for Redemption is available through interlibrary loan at many of the local libraries. It is also for sale at Market Block Books in Troy the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, and on Amazon.