Difference between revisions of "Mattice, Harold C."
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Revision as of 22:32, 14 January 2013
Corporal Harold C. Mattice
by Harold H. Miller
Corporal Harold C. Mattice, Troop C., was the first NYS trooper to die by a bullet while making an arrest. He was killed on April 28, 1923 at the age of 33 while attempting to arrest a subject for arson.
After investigating a barn fire which occurred in Morris, Otsego County, Corporal Mattice and his partner began to search for the suspect, a man named Yates who was out on bail for rape. At the Yates home, the mother of the suspect sent the trooper upstairs for her son. Yates, armed with a shotgun and a rifle, was hiding in the attic. As Mattice climbed up the man shot and killed Corporal Mattice. Later Yates killed himself. [Euretha Stapleton, in Our Heritage, page 51]
The Mattice family was among a large number of German refugees that settled in the Schoharie valley in 1711. Harold Mattice’s grandfather, Bartholomew Mattice, was a blacksmith. He moved to the hamlet of Berne, Albany County, before 1865 and established a blacksmith shop in what is now [2005] the garage of the John Yarmchuck house. His son Ira Mattice, Harold’s father, was also a blacksmith, and continued smithing into the 1920´s until he became too old and ill to continue. The Mattice family lived in the small house second on the west from the old firehouse.
Harold, born in 1890, learned blacksmithing from his father. In 1910 Mattice was single and working as a barber in Schenectady. About 1913 he married Maud Bellinger. For awhile they lived in Schoharie where he owned a blacksmith shop. They had a son William Ira Mattice born 27 March 1915.
Corporal Mattice joined the Division of State Police at Sidney, Delaware County, in December of 1917. There he worked as a blacksmith under Capt. Fox, Troop C. He later resigned, but subsequently reenlisted as a blacksmith on November 1, 1922. A half year later he was shot and killed.
Three months after Mattice's death his daughter Mary Ella Mattice was born on 22 Aug. 1923. His widow married Homer Frink a widower from Knox, Albany County, who had one daughter, Elsie, born ca. 1913. They lived on Old Stage Road near High Point Cemetery before moving to Worcester in Otsego County, where he managed a hotel.
