CalendarZ

  1. Home
  2. On This Day
  3. July
  4. 11
  5. Murder of Grace Brown

Events on July 11 in history

Murder of Grace Brown
1906Jul, 11

Murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette in the United States, inspiration for Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy.

Grace Mae Brown (March 20, 1886 – July 11, 1906) was a young American woman who was drowned by her boyfriend, Chester Gillette, on Big Moose Lake, New York, after she told him she was pregnant. The events and trial of the suspect attracted national newspaper attention.

Brown's life has inspired such fictional treatments as Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel An American Tragedy, and Jennifer Donnelly's 2003 novel A Northern Light. The murder was analyzed and explored in two non-fiction books, both published in 1986: Adirondack Tragedy: The Gillette Murder Case of 1906, written by Joseph W. Brownell and Patricia A. Wawrzaszek, and Murder in the Adirondacks: An American Tragedy Revisited, by Craig Brandon.

References

Choose Another Date

Events on 1906

  • 8Apr

    Alzheimer's disease

    Auguste Deter, the first person to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, dies.
  • 7Jun

    RMS Lusitania

    Cunard Line's RMS Lusitania is launched from the John Brown Shipyard, Glasgow (Clydebank), Scotland.
  • 18Sep

    Tsunami

    A typhoon with tsunami kills an estimated 10,000 people in Hong Kong.
  • 20Sep

    RMS Mauretania (1906)

    Cunard Line's RMS Mauretania is launched at the Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson shipyard in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
  • 9Nov

    Panama Canal

    Theodore Roosevelt is the first sitting President of the United States to make an official trip outside the country. He did so to inspect progress on the Panama Canal.