Calvary Cemetery in Whitewater is the final resting place of Nellie Horan, the 19th-century Whitewater woman accused of poisoning her entire immediate family with strychnine. The Horan family moved to Whitewater from Koshkonong around 1880 with about $5,000, a substantial sum at the time. Within a few years, Nellie’s mother, father and younger sister Agnes had all died under unusual circumstances. Her father, Joseph Horan, reportedly suffered terrible spasms and convulsions before his death, while physicians had noted symptoms consistent with poisoning in earlier family deaths. At the time, however, there was no investigation capable of establishing who, if anyone, was responsible.
The mystery returned in 1884 when Nellie’s sister Anna became violently ill and died after suffering symptoms of poisoning. A witness reported seeing Nellie purchase strychnine from a Whitewater drugstore shortly before Anna’s death, and chemical analysis of Anna’s stomach confirmed the presence of the poison. Nellie was charged with her sister’s murder and went on trial in Elkhorn in February 1885. She testified that she had purchased the strychnine to kill rats at the office of the Whitewater Register, where she worked. After deliberating for only 12 minutes, the jury acquitted her because the evidence was not considered sufficient for a conviction. Nellie subsequently married John Byrnes, lived for decades after the trial, and died in 1938. She was buried in Calvary Cemetery with members of the family whose deaths had made her one of Whitewater’s most enduring murder legends.
The Horan family plot overlooks the UW-Whitewater sport complex, which sits on the land that once was home to another poison murderer, Whitewater’s “Poison Widow” Myrtle Schaude.
