The mother who forced her 5 children to breed — until they chained her up in the “breeding” barn.

Parish records held at the Milbrook Historical Society meticulously document the community’s outpouring of solidarity toward the McKenna family. Neighbors organized to help with the heavy work in the fields, and local merchants extended indefinite lines of credit. However, beneath the surface of this collective solidarity, the seeds of an unfathomable darkness were already sprouting.

The Reverend Isaiah Thompson, a highly respected local clergyman, kept a private diary that was only discovered decades later, during the church’s renovation in 1943. His entries from the winter of 1884 reveal the first chilling signs of Delilah’s descent into madness. Within weeks of her husband’s burial, she began frequenting the reverend’s study with alarming frequency. Initially seeking what she called “biblical guidance” for raising children, her questions soon took a dark and obsessive turn. Thompson noted her intense fixation on obscure Old Testament passages regarding lineage and the absolute duty of children to honor their mother above all earthly concerns.

Delilah vehemently maintained that the outside world was filled with spiritual contamination and that her children were in imminent danger. She claimed to have had vivid dreams in which God directly commanded her to preserve the purity of her children from worldly corruption. She quoted Scripture with a feverish intensity that deeply disturbed the reverend. When Thompson gently pointed out that her interpretations of the Bible were decidedly unconventional, Delilah’s attitude instantly changed. Her eyes, they wrote, lit up with a “fanatical fire that chilled my soul.” Finally, Delilah told the reverend that earthly religious institutions were no longer necessary for her family’s salvation. That was the last time she sought his advice.