The Poisoned Wedding Feast in Scott County, Virginia

In May 1855, Emory and Henry College in Virginia hosted a grand wedding ceremony. The groom, Henry Solon Kane, Esq., a well-known bachelor from Scott County, married Miss Sarah Anderson, daughter of the esteemed Col. Anderson of Washington County.

The wedding was a spectacular affair, filled with beauty and grace. After the ceremony, the celebration moved to the groom’s ancestral home, “Flat Lick,” in Scott County.

There, among the dishes prepared for the wedding feast, was a custard.

Before the night was over, the celebration had become a nightmare.

The Guests Become Ill

Those who had eaten the custard began falling violently ill, while guests who had abstained rushed to care for them.

Two physicians attending the gathering soon reached a chilling conclusion: the wedding party had been poisoned.

An examination of the remaining custard reportedly revealed the presence of arsenic.

The servants were not immediately suspected because they had also eaten the custard and were among those suffering. Victims experienced similar symptoms, including a burning sensation in the stomach followed by severe headaches.

As the night progressed, the situation became increasingly desperate.

Around 25 guests, including the bride, were reportedly in critical condition.

One man, John Bishop, did not survive.

Who Poisoned the Wedding Feast?

Suspicion quickly began shifting from one person to another.

Initially, blame fell upon an enslaved person. Suspicion later shifted to an unnamed white woman. At another point, a white couple and their servant were implicated.

An enslaved man named Anderson was eventually arrested and held in Scott County in connection with the poisoning.

He was later released.

Despite the accusations, no clear culprit emerged.

Was the Poisoning an Accident?

By late July, several physicians had begun questioning whether the wedding guests had deliberately been poisoned at all.

They suggested the illness might have resulted from the cookware used to prepare the feast, possibly involving contamination from iron and copper vessels. The jaundiced appearance of some victims was cited as evidence against the original arsenic theory.

If the physicians were correct, the poisoning that devastated the wedding celebration may have been a terrible accident rather than an act of murder.

The question was never satisfactorily resolved.

The Bride and Groom Survive

Despite being among those seriously affected, Sarah Anderson survived, as did her new husband.

Henry and Sarah Kane went on to have seven children.

What began as one of the grand social events of May 1855 became instead one of Scott County’s strangest historical tragedies: a wedding feast that left approximately 25 people gravely ill, one man dead, an enslaved man jailed and later released, and a mystery over whether the poisoned custard had been an act of malice or a deadly accident.