Teen daughter's arrest in 1908 leads to Pittsnogle family woes
Newspapers had a field day and law enforcement made a federal case when 14-year-old Riley Pittsnogle, who'd just lost her father, stole mail from a neighbor. She landed in a juvenile center hours away
In 1908, Anna Sharff Pittsnogle of Falling Waters was left with eleven children — the youngest just 3 years old — when her husband, a prominent farmer, died.
Allen Hammond Pittsnogle was 54 when stomach cancer took his life despite having undergone surgery to remove a growth. His obituary in the Martinsburg Evening Journal newspaper referred to him as an “upright and respected citizen.”
Anna, who had lost a newborn daughter eight years earlier, and her surviving offspring scrambled to get by without their patriarch but experienced many difficulties in the decades to follow.
Anna and Allen’s firstborn, Allen Jr., 22, took over to run the Charles A. Wever farm where they lived on Warm Spring Road, a few miles north of Martinsburg. Brothers Daniel, Owen, Charles and Harry — all in their late teens to early 20s at the time — pitched in as well.
The family also had two daughters, Riley and Carrie, who were 14 and 12 when their father died. The girls undoubtedly spent their days helping run the household: cooking, cleaning, mending, washing clothes, fetching water, and caring for the youngest children: Howard, Porter and Ernest.
Around the time of Allen Sr.’s death, the older daughter, Riley, got in trouble with the law. The girl was accused of stealing mail from a neighbor, George Freeze, on Dry Run Road. Two other area neighbors said they witnessed her breaking into the rural delivery mailbox, and they turned her in.
Law enforcement made a big deal out of the alleged theft, and the feds came down hard on the girl. Riley’s mother couldn’t afford the $500 bail (the equivalent of over $15,000 today), and the teen was imprisoned at the Wood County Jail, several hours away on the other side of the state.
The case against the teen was all over the local newspapers. Editors, eager to sell copies, sensationalized the crime with the unusual twist of a teen girl perpetrator. They played the story with the same prominence and urgency as though Riley had committed murder.
Although several news reports said Riley was 16, she was only 14 years old at the time.
“Pretty 16-Year-Old Arrested for Theft,” a headline in the Staunton Daily Leader declared.
“A Girl’s Bad Step,” the Cumberland Evening Journal shamed.
Riley’s mother, still in the throes of grief over losing her husband weeks earlier, was distraught over worry for her daughter, as well as ashamed over the public humiliation on her family.
Several months later, as a federal grand jury convened, Riley pled guilty to the crime and was sentenced to a year in the newly opened West Virginia Industrial Home for Girls in Salem, WV, about 200 miles from home.
Riley’s mother Anna, not long after this ordeal, …
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