Jim Fisk's business associate Edward S. Stokes,…
January 1872 CE
Fisk gives a dying declaration identifying Stokes as the killer, and Stokes will serve four years of a six-year prison sentence for manslaughter.
Fisk is buried in the Prospect Hill Cemetery in Brattleboro Vermont
Fisk had been vilified by high society for his amoral and eccentric ways and by many pundits of the day for his business dealings, but he is loved and mourned by the workingmen of New York and the Erie Railroad.
He was known as "Colonel" for being the nominal commander of the 9th New York National Guard Infantry Regiment, although his only experience of military action with this unit was an inglorious role in the Orange Riot of July 12, 1871.
Fisk had married Lucy Moore in 1854, when he was nineteen and she was fifteen.
Lucy, an orphan, raised by an uncle from Springfield, Massachusetts, had tolerated Fisk's many extramarital affairs and lives with a woman friend in Boston, suggesting she may have been a lesbian.
Regardless, they had remained close, with Fisk visiting her every few weeks and spending summers and vacations with her every chance he could.
In New York, Fisk had had a relationship with Josie Mansfield (1842?-1931), a showgirl.
Fisk had housed Josie in an apartment a few doors down from the Erie Railroad headquarters on West 23rd Street, and had had a covered passage built linking the back doors of the headquarters and her apartment building.
Fisk's relationship with Mansfield had scandalized New York society.
Mansfield had eventually fallen in love with Fisk's business partner Edward S. Stokes (1840–1901), a man noted for his good looks.
Stokes had left his wife and family, and Mansfield had left Fisk.
In a bid for money, Mansfield and Stokes had tried to extort money from Fisk by threatening the publication of letters written by Fisk to Mansfield that allegedly proved Fisk's legal wrongdoings.
A legal and public relations battle had followed, but Fisk had refused to pay Mansfield anything.
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