He married Eliza Maloney on May 13, 1862 in Freetown, Massachusetts. She is the daughter of James and Bridget Maloney.

The engraving on the stone does not match the death record. The engraving indicates he was 29 years and 3 months when he died. The record indicates he was 31 and single.

He was 17 when placed in prison, calculated to the time of death he was 31 not 29. The dates I listed as birth on his memorial is calculated information from other facts I have found..

Obed seemed to be a trouble young man, married young and was not living with his wife of one month, likely because of money. As the information that has been presented, in several articles on this, he was walking around with a sawed off shotgun for a couple weeks. One day, he had drank a concoction of liquor and gunpowder to give himself "courage".

He laid in waiting for a peddler who route was along Slab Bridge Road (in those days, so named). The peddlers name was John Bullock.

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A teenager, under the influence of a controlled substance. A robbery. A shotgun blast to the face.

Murder, the kind of murder people today might associate with the bloody streets of any city.
John Bullock was murdered that way. On June 19, 1862. On what is now Bullock Road in Freetown.

The boy behind the gun was Obed Reynolds, 17 years old and drunk on a concoction of liquor and gunpowder, which he told investigators he drank to give himself courage.
Wednesday night at the Fall River Public Library. Diman Regional Vocational Technical High School English teacher William Goncalo turned sleuth and told the Fall River History Club what he knows about Bullock’s murder and about Obed Reynolds, the liquored-up boy who shot Bullock.

Bullock, a New Bedford saloon keeper, had come to Freetown to deliver a 20-gallon keg of liquor to what some at the trial described as a “parlor bar,” Goncalo said, the terminology indicating the bar may not have been a legal one.

“He’d been walking around town for a couple weeks with a sawed-off shotgun,′ Goncalo said of Reynolds, whose family was described in the local papers as a “combination of scoundrels.”
Obed Reynolds was married was married to a Freetown servant girl, Goncalo said. Her name was Eliza Maloney, but she lived with the family she served and he lived on his family’s farm.
“He may have been trying to get money to live with his wife,” Goncalo said.

At 6 AM on June 19, Bullock headed for Freetown, sold his liquor and spent the rest of the day in the parlor bar.

“Probably having a few drinks,” Goncalo said.

On his way out of town, about 7 PM, Bullock met Reynolds.

“He shot him in the face,” Goncalo said.

Bullock, a big man, was tougher than Reynolds might have suspected.

“It did not kill him.” Goncalo said.

Somehow, Bullock got off the wagon and grabbed Reynolds in a headlock.

Reynolds drew a dagger and stabbed Bullock, then bludgeoned him with the sawed-off shotgun.

“When they cleaned up Bullock, they found 23 stab wounds,” Goncalo said. “Reynolds broke the stock of his gun hitting Bullock.”

Reynolds went through Bullock’s clothes, taking his watch and wallet, but missing $11 in Bullock’s vest pocket.

“It was probably the money he got for selling the keg of spirits,” Goncalo said.

Reynolds stripped naked and ran home through the woods to the farm of his father, William Reynolds, who, according to Goncalo, was a good father and a good farmer, plagued by unruly children.

The outcry was loud. The murdered man’s brother put an ad in a New Bedford paper, offering $100 for information leading to the arrest of his brother’s killer.

It didn’t take long.

“He told his father, ‘I killed a man,’” Goncalo said of Obed Reynolds.

Obed Reynolds’ father wanted to turn his boy in to the police. Other family members threatened to kill him if he did. William Reynolds fled his own farm for a relative’s home in Dartmouth, stopping on the way to cut his own throat with a straight razor.

He lived to testify against his son.

“It wasn’t a very good razor,” Goncalo said.

Trackers followed footprints and blood tracks from the spot where Bullock was killed to the Reynolds farm.

Obed Reynolds was tried in Superior Court in Taunton. His father gave evidence against him.
Obed Reynolds was represented by Louis Lapham and James Madison Morton, two lawyers from Fall River.

“I’m innocent, O Lord, I’m innocent,” Obed Reynolds cried as the jury handed down a verdict of guilty to the charge of murder in the first degree. In those days, the penalty for first degree murder was hanging.

Obed Reynolds went to jail in New Bedford to await sentencing. There, he learned to read and write, writing letters to newspapers admitting the crime but saying he’d been driven to it by the combination of rum and gunpowder and by drinking in general. His letters referred often to god and demon rum.

“If Obed Reynolds wanted to save his life, he was saying the right things,” Goncalo said.

It worked. In 1864, Massachusetts Gov. John a. Andrew commuted Obed Reynolds’ sentence to life in Charlestown State Prison, where he died in 1876, possibly from tuberculosis.

“He is buried in a small cemetery on Pine Island Road,” Goncalo said. “It’s not far from where he lived.”

Obed Reynolds’ father is buried next to him.

“His father’s testimony was the most damning at the trial,” Goncalo said.

On Bullock Road, Goncalo said, a sickle-shaped piece of granite juts from the ground where

John Bullock was murdered. It appears to be a natural outcropping of rock.
It is not.

It was erected by those who lived along the road, not long after John Bullock died, to mark the spot of his murder.

For over 100 years, Goncalo said, unknown parties have from time to time splashed red paint on the stone.

No one knows why.

...Marc Munroe Dion, Fall River Herald News 2009