Note: This post contains some inaccuracies. A correction is appended below.

The Rev. Herbert Hezlep, pastor of Hyde Park’s Knox Presbyterian Church, received a most unusual communication early in April of 1924. A woman who was not a member of his congregation had recently died. Pastor Hezlep was informed that she left the bulk of her substantial estate, estimated at $50,000, to his church. Knox was then located in a small brick building that still stands at the corner of Shaw and Erie, but had purchased a parcel of land on Michigan Avenue at Observatory on which to erect a much more ostentatious stone edifice.

In the fine print of the bequest, Rev. Hezlep discovered a somewhat irregular condition attached to this generous gift. The donor demanded to be buried inside a wall of the new church. Although her tomb was to be unmarked, she requested a plaque in the nave which would note her gift and her eternal presence “until the day break and the shadows flee away.” All of this could be accommodated, agreed the good pastor.

And then the newspaper reporters started calling to ask about the curse.

The donor of this large and unusual endowment was Nettie E. Chaffin of Washington Court House, Ohio. She was the widow of Franklin A. Chaffin, who predeceased her. It was her late husband who pronounced a curse on his money, which had become her money and was soon fated to become the church’s cursed money.

Mr. Chaffin was an attorney and he apparently disliked Mrs. Chaffin’s relatives, or Mrs. Chaffin herself, or the whole lot of them. Determined that not a penny of his hard-earned estate should reach the greedy fingers of his wife’s family, the Creeds of Hillsboro, Mr. Chaffin drafted his will so that the majority of his estate would go to his brother in Columbus. A small slice of his estate would constitute a trust fund, to be managed by this brother, from which his widow would receive nothing except an annual allowance of $400.

On his death in 1919, Mr. Chaffin’s executor discovered that the decedent’s will contained a curse. To guarantee that his wishes would be carried out, Mr. Chaffin included this codicil:

“May a blight settle and rest upon the life of the one who in any manner evades, or attempts to evade, knowingly, the provisions, directions or requests made by me in this item. To such may their days be gloomy, their nights sleepless and their life one of agony, until he, she, or they, as the case may be, complies with my directions as expressed in this item, as well as my wishes and requests therein expressed.”

There is scant evidence concerning the root of Frank Chaffin’s antipathy for his in-laws. Nettie was the youngest of eight children born to Bennett Creed and Nancy Shup Creed and almost all the Creeds seem to have lived their lives as four-square farmers. The Presbyterian congregation of Hillsboro was deeply invested in the movement to prohibit alcohol but there’s nothing to suggest Frank Chaffin was an especially committed “wet.”

Curse or not, the Widow Chaffin, undeterred by her husband’s post-mortem threats, sued to void his will and was rewarded with a munificent lump sum. Having successfully thwarted her husband’s bequest, it is not clear why she believed her own relatives would honor her own intentions. Some news reports even expressed the belief that Nettie’s death was caused by the curse. Here is the Dayton Daily News [2 April 1924]:

“Worry over a curse contained in the will of her late husband, Attorney Frank A. Chaffin, is believed by some to have been indirectly responsible for the death here Tuesday of Mrs. Nettie Chaffin, who a week ago was stricken with paralysis and failed to rally. Belief has been expressed that worry over the clause in the will had much to do with bringing on her affliction, and resulting in her death.”

It is also not entirely clear why Nettie Chaffin was so entranced by Hyde Park and its Presbyterian church. She never lived in that neighborhood, spending the entirety of her life in Ohio farm country, dividing the decades between Highland and Fayette counties. One of her brothers lived in Madisonville and it is known that she visited him. Whatever the reason, she was dead set (so to speak) on being buried in Hyde Park and specified that, if Knox Presbyterian was unable to accommodate her earthly remains, she authorized the Cincinnati Presbytery to assign her bequest, and her bones, to another Hyde Park Church.

Some news reports suggested that Mrs. Chaffin was only protecting her relatives by carving them out of her will. Had she left any money to them, she feared, they would fall victim to her late husband’s curse. She left her relatives a variety of small bequests totaling not more than $1,000, presumably from her own money and not her husband’s.

What goes around, comes around, as they say, and Mrs. Chaffin’s relatives, despite her efforts to shield them from the curse, marched into the courthouse to challenge her last will and testament. After a year’s litigation, the case was settled out of court. Whatever wasn’t eaten up in lawyers’ fees went to the relatives, with just enough residual to bury Nettie near her parents in the Hillsboro Presbyterian cemetery.

There is no record of any of Nettie’s relatives being afflicted with gloomy days, sleepless nights or agonized lives.

Knox Presbyterian did not, apparently, receive any significant share of Nettie’s endowment, cursed or not. The congregation dedicated its brand new church on Michigan Avenue in 1929 – five years, almost to the day, after Rev. Hezlep received word of Nettie Chaffin’s accursed bequest.

Frank Chaffin, by the way, is buried with his parents and kin at Washington Court House in Fayette County, a good 25 miles north of Nettie’s burial location. No word on whether visitors can hear him spinning in his grave because his curse was ignored.

Correction: Your proprietor has been informed that this post includes a significant error. While she may have been temporarily interred at Hillsboro, Nettie Creed Chaffin is indeed buried inside the walls of the Knox church. She was reinterred from one part of the building to another about 13 years ago, and at that time, Knox had to provide proof of the burial to the City of Cincinnati to obtain approval to move the remains. A plaque within the church acknowledges her presence. While Nettie’s relatives challenged her will in court and managed to siphon off most of the estate, a $10,000 bequest to Knox was honored. Thanks to a diligent reader from among the Knox congregation for providing the correct information.