Rahway County Jane Doe - Was Her Name Annie Primroe?
By: Shane Lambert
The case of the Rahway County Jane Doe is one that I worked on almost five years ago. If you are not familiar with the case, then, in a nutshell, in March 1887 a woman was found murdered in the town of Rahway, New Jersey.
Naming her became a bit of a media circus. She was thought to have been a passenger that had recently alighted a train. However, she was never conclusively given her proper name back, although many had their guesses.
That the Rahway County Jane Doe was thought to have alighted a train certainly made this case difficult back in the late 1800s. It suggests that the woman was not a local. Accordingly, missing persons from anywhere in the world are actually in play since we're dealing with a Jane Doe that was a traveler at the time of her death.
Searching the Classifieds
Back in February 2017, I attempted to find a classified advertisement where someone was looking for a missing woman who was last seen in 1887. Perhaps the Internet has changed things, however, it used to be that if you lost touch with someone that you might take to the newspaper classifieds in an effort to find the person.
Newspaper classifieds have featured in other missing person cases that I have worked on. The case of Beverly Sharpman, last seen in Philadelphia, comes to mind as does the case of The Lady in the Well who was discovered in Saskatoon in modern times but thought to have been dead since the 1920s.
When I originally looked for someone back in early 2017 who might have been searching for the Rahway County Jane Doe, I failed in that effort. It could have been that the exact newspaper I needed was not in the databases I used at the time or maybe my researching skills needed polishing back in 2017. A re-attempt in December 2021 was successful in finding a lead that I can only call tenuous, at this time.
I think I've found a lead for amateur investigators to work on. I'm assuming that they, amateur investigators, are the only people interested in this mystery. Please read the classified advertisement below, which appeared in a Buffalo-area publication in 1902.
Could Annie Primroe be the Rahway County Jane Doe?
Is Annie Primroe the Rahway County Jane Doe? This is something I want to prove or disprove.
Firstly, the year of disappearance matches up to the year that the Rahway County Jane Doe was murdered. The person who placed the classified advertisement, one "J.J.T.", says Annie had been "missing since 1887."
Secondly, there is a question as to whether Annie Primroe may have changed locations: in the final statement, J.J.T. seems to acknowledge that Annie may no longer be in the Buffalo area, the city where this classified advertisement was placed. Furthermore, I do know that the train line that serviced Rahway, New Jersey did service New York state. I read a story in The Morning Call newspaper from February 26th, 1886 that attested to this (Page 8). The first clues, in this case, are very tenuous but there's nothing to contradict a match between Annie Primroe and the Rahway County Jane Doe.
The family tree information can't be discounted. Annie is the cousin of J.J.T, she is the sister of Hattie Lesher, and, very importantly, Primroe appears to be a maiden name. This is actually a small clue that corroborates with the Rahway County Jane Doe.
J.J.T., in the classified advertisement, says "Her name was...Annie Primroe," in 1887 but the statement acknowledges that her name may have changed in the 15 years after that time. The most likely reason for a woman's name to change is through marriage. Thus, we can assume, with debatable confidence, that Annie Primroe was not married at the time of her last contact with J.J.T. in 1887. The Rahway County Jane Doe, coincidentally enough, was actually thought to not be married.
There was some discussion in a newspaper article I read that the Jane Doe, in some circles of gossip, was thought to have been a prostitute. However, during her post-mortem, I inferred they inspected her vagina and concluded that the Rahway County Jane Doe was a virgin. This discounted the notion that the Rahway County Jane Doe was a prostitute and it strongly implies that she was not married. There seems to be some corroboration with Annie Primroe that is, admittedly, tenuous but I felt intrigued enough to look at this lead deeper.
Research Angles and Challenges - Find a Record for Annie Primroe
For me, this is a work in progress that I invite others to look at. If you are interested in researching whether Annie Primroe might have been the Rahway County Jane Doe, then remember one important: the primary goal is to try and disprove it. If you can't do that, then you can look at proving it.
One way to disprove that Annie Primroe was the Rahway County Jane Doe is to find her death record that proves she lived past 1887. She can't be declared dead in absentia or anything like that: in fact, dead in absentia might mean she was the Jane Doe. However, if you can prove that Annie Primroe lived past 1887 then it would mean she wasn't the Rahway County Jane Doe.
I have done some introductory work on this subject with Ancestry records. However, the name Primroe is not very common. I've wondered if it is meant to be "Primrose," however, as soon as you start working on angles like that you are going on often-futile tangents.
But finding Annie Primroe in Ancestry would be a great first step. The challenge is that her first name is the kind that has a lot of derivations, like Anne, Ann, or Anna. If you find someone that might be her, then keep in mind the family tree connections in trying to identify her. She has a sister named Hattie Lesher, with Lesher probably being a married name. "Hattie" can stand alone or it can mean Henrietta or Harriette. Hattie Lesher should be dead by June 18th, 1902. Also, Annie should have a cousin with the initials "J.J.T" that should be alive as of June 18th, 1902.
Any connections to Buffalo and Rahway County, New Jersey would be very interesting, of course. If you build off of this article, then please just be sure to properly cite me and link back.
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