Death Comes to Dimock: The Strange Murder of Margaret Harvey
Six miles south of Montrose, in Susquehanna County, is the rural community of Dimock. Settled in the early 19th century, this agricultural oasis amid the fabled Endless Mountains has existed for over two hundred years without much attention from the outside world. The village did find itself in the national spotlight about twenty years ago after residents drew attention to the environmental ravages of fracking and natural gas exploration. But almost sixty years before the first gas well was drilled in the area, Dimock made headlines for another reason-- it was the scene of a sensational and brutal crime. In a modest white farmhouse west of the village lived a middle-aged blacksmith named Charles Henry Gesford. Charles had never been a man of many words, but was even less so after two tragedies upended his world in a span of just eight months. In June of 1944, his wife, Blanche, died of heart failure at the age of 42. In January of the following year, his second born son, Edward, was o...
