Since 1998 - Historical and Genealogical
Resources
for the Upper New River Valley of North Carolina and Virginia
These materials have been made available by the courtesy of the Historical Society of Southwest Virginia and Rhonda Robertson.
THE APPALACHIAN EXPERIENCE
HANGING IN RUSSELL COUNTY
HANGIN'S IN SCOTT COUNTY
ANDREW TAYLOR STILL FOUNDER OF OSTEOPATHY
THE VERSATILE DRAYTON S. HALE
THE CHARLES FAMILY IN BUCHANAN COUNTY
By Cratis Williams
Southern Appalachia begins with the southern border of Pennsylvania and extends like a huge thumb into the heart of the South, terminating in northern Georgia and northeastern Alabama. It includes West Virginia and parts of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. As Harry Caudill has pointed out, it is one of the richest regions in natural resources in the world and at the same time has more poverty in it than any other region in America.
Approximately thirteen million people now living were born in Appalachia. Nine million are living in the region now, and four million born there have migrated, mostly to northern industrial cities where they have tended to gather in ghettos of poverty but, according to observers who live along the highways leading out of Appalachia, try to get back "down home" every weekend. Of the thirteen million Appalachians, approximately 94% of them are descended from ancestors who were living along the border at the time of the American Revolution. It has been estimated that not more than 30 million of our country's total population of approximately 220 million are descended through all lines from pre-Revolutionary American ancestors. Of these, 43% are natives of Appalachia.
Appalachian people, while far from being homogeneous, are much like one another throughout the region. The Eastern Kentuckian is more like a North Georgian than he is like a native of the Bluegrass region of his own state. The North Carolina mountaineer is more like a West Virginian or an Eastern Kentuckian than he is like a North Carolinian from east of Greensboro. Not only do Appalachian people think, speak, and act like one another throughout the Southern Highlands, but they also look much like one another. The average mountain man is taller than the average American. Appalachian people more often are blond and fair of complexion, have blue or gray eyes, balanced facial features and body proportions, than natives of other sections of the states in which they live.
How may we account for the Appalachian person? What is his background? Why is he different? What has been his experience? Hardly anyone who has acquainted himself with the history of the region and its people doubts that the "character" of Appalachian people was determined by the presence of the Scotch-Irish among the early settlers in the mountain country. They were more numerous than the considerable number of Germans, Swiss, Huguenots, Welsh, and English. In the process of border acculturation, others surrendered their own language for the old-fashioned Northern English dialect spoken by the Scotch-Irish as they married into the large Scotch-Irish families and accepted their ways. Thus, the Appalachian experience has been a continued chapter in the story of the Scotch-Irish experience.
The label of "Scotch-Irish" was given to those migrants from Northern Ireland who began in ever increasing numbers for over 50 years to arrive in the colonies about 1720. Strictly speaking, they were neither Irish nor Scots. A more accurate label would have been Anglo-Celts. However, of those who came, most of them bore Lowland or Scottish Border family names, many beginning with "Mc" rather than "Mac". Others had English, Welsh, and Huguenot names. Only a few had Irish names. Regardless of the name, one who came from Northern Ireland was called Scotch-Irish, but he identified himself as "Arsh," as many mountain folk continue to do.
The story of the Scotch-Irish within historical times began in 55 B. C. with the invasion of Great Britain by Julius Caesar. The hereditary leaders of the Britons, who were Celts and of the same stock that had spread across Europe prior to the rise of the Greek and Roman civilizations, who escaped murder or capture by the Roman armies fled northward or westward toward Scotland and Wales. The Scots, struggling for survival in an inhospitable highland country beyond the mountain rim, had no room among them for migrants. The fleeing Celts, unable to get over the rim into the Highlands, hid and later settled as small farmers in the hilly country along the Scottish Border. Far removed by blood kinship from the Scots, also the Celts who had moved over from Ireland to the rugged hills and mountains centuries before, these newcomers to the Border were resented and often attacked by the fierce Highland clans. The Romans, finding Scotland of little value, considered it not worth conquering and built a wall across Great Britain to prevent the "Picts", or pointed-headed Scots, people with pin-heads, long noses, thin upper lips, and lantern jaws from raiding Northern England. The Romans occupied England for over 400 years. In the meantime the descendants of the former hereditary rulers struggled with the inhospitable climate and sterile land north of Hadrian's Wall and suffered depredation and outrage from the Picts who swept over the lands from time to time robbing, murdering, and destroying crops and homes.
As the Roman legions were withdrawn from still Celtic Britain in the fifth century, struggles for power within the country kept it weak. Soon it was invaded again, this time by the Germanic Angles and Saxons. Again, those who occupied positions of hereditary leadership fled northward and joined their kinsmen along the Scottish Border. Few of the peasants, who belonged to the land as did the sticks and the stones, fled.
The Anglo-Saxons reached the height of their civilization in the reign of King Alfred at the end of the ninth century and knew relative peace and contentment for over two hundred and fifty years before a political entrepreneur, William of Orange, known as the Conqueror, the illegitimate son of a prince by a shoemaker's daughter, gathered an army of adventurers and cutthroats, sailed across the English Channel and defeated the Saxon armies at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Again, those people of importance who feared for their lives, fled toward Scotland, this time people with Germanic blood in their veins, and joined their predecessors on the Border. Many Welsh princes and dukes, dispossessed by the Conqueror, also fled to the Border.
Also joining those along the Scottish Border were Scandinavians from the northeast coast of England who fled ahead of other Scandinavian raiders and conquerors. These "fragments of forgotten people," predominately Celtic, mixed and melded into a common type in the struggle to survive in a land sandwiched between the bloody- lusty Scots lairds to the treacherous English lords to the south. Following an open-country mode of settlement, they were independent and fiercely proud freemen possessing small holdings. They learned that neither the Scots nor the English could be trusted in the sometimes bitter contentions for power that finally led to the union of England and Scotland under one monarch. Often caught in the cross-fire of Border feuds, they came in time to distrust constituted authority. Their distrust was so deeply a part of their view of the manner in which men are governed that their descendants in Appalachia today are likely not to place much faith in state government and those who represent it nor in "that courthouse crowd" in the county seat.
When introduced to John Calvin's Institutes of Religion in the sixteenth century, the Scottish Border people found in Calvin's harsh doctrines an interpretation of man's relationship to man and God congenial to their experience. That man is in the image of God and deserving of respect for that image caressed their personal independence and pride. That man is depraved and unworthy of God's grace they did not find it necessary to look far to see. The fatalism that had become a part of them was easily translated into the doctrines of predestination and election. God's sovereignty they could respect and the supreme authority of the Scriptures they could accept as inquiring persons in their own individual rights but not from a prince as the arbiter of sacred matters. The promise that God elected in his grace and predestined at the creation a few unworthy mortals to share eternal bliss with Him offered more felicity than had been the lot of the Borderers on earth. Small wonder that they should have become the most ardent supporters of the Protestant Reformation in the British Isles.
Their enthusiasm for reform soon marked them as trouble-makers. They met in defiance of authority. They set up secret printing presses and assailed their literate countrymen with pamphlets supporting extreme measures that threatened the Established Church of England and enraged the Highland Scots, who remained sympathetic with Rome. Queen Elizabeth I and Archbishop Whitgift organized a far-flung secret service to flush out the rabid dissenters, destroy their printing presses, arrest their leaders, and burn their seditious publications.
Following the defection of the Earl of Tyrone to Catholicism and his flight to France, it was decided about the time that Jamestown was being settled in Virginia that Northern Ireland would be cleared of its Catholic population and resettled by the Borderers and those of similar religious stance, who could be depended upon not to compromise with the Catholic Irish. The Border Scots were promised land and titles. Thousands moved to Ireland, along with disaffected Welsh and people from the northern counties of England. Highland Scots, still sympathetic with Catholicism and their Irish cousins, and English from the southern counties, passive in religious disputes and comfortable in the Anglican Church, were not to be trusted in Northern Ireland.
The Scots who removed to Ireland prospered. They carried with them to a colony-like situation, their Border culture, which included a great body of popular ballads, folk music, dance, proverbial lore, superstitions that might have been rooted in ancient Druidism, a manner of speaking, and an old-fashioned Northern English dialect about a hundred years in development, or about half way between Chaucer and Shakespeare, behind that of centers of polite society in Southern England. Clever in making do with what lay at hand, they were frugal and industrious. They carried with them to their new home, skills in agriculture, animal husbandry, and woodwork, leather making, metal work, textiles and making excellent whiskey in pot stills. In their new land, the earth responded to their husbandry and they developed the finest textile industries in Europe. Permitted also to have their own Presbyterian churches, they established schools attended by both sexes and taught by the university-trained ministry, for they believed that it is incumbent upon one, male or female, to learn to read the Scriptures in search of truth, to write, and, since man lives in a practical world, to cipher. Their schools became the model for American public schools after they arrived in the colonies.
Accustomed to hilly country and lovers of animals, they followed the open settlement pattern of the Scottish Border and built homes within clusters of out-buildings settled comfortably in dales and valleys, as they had done in Great Britain. The architecture of homes was essentially the same as that along the Border, including oblong rooms with fireplaces at the end.
Although the English did not keep their promise to give them hereditary titles and tried from time to time to bring them into the Established Church, they nevertheless flourished for a century. Then the London merchants, jealous of their textile industries, exerted pressures to have such high taxes imposed upon them that the industries were killed and the people were reduced to poverty. Families were large and the population had grown beyond the capacity of the land to support it. To compound their problems, potato famines came and left them hungry. Although their educational system had made them literate, and many of them were theologians, teachers and classical scholars, they found it necessary in the early years of the eighteenth century to leave for America, most of them as "redemptioners" for they did not have money needed to pay for passage.
In the colonies they found good land along the coast already taken up, so as they met the terms of their indentures, sometimes by tutoring in the homes of the well to do, for they appear to have been the best educated large mass of migrants ever to come to America, they moved in search of land to the western border, sometimes carrying with them into the wilderness copies of Greek and Roman classics in the original language and the English poets in leather bindings. Most of them entered through ports in the Middle Atlantic States, and large numbers of them moved to the western Pennsylvania border. Because treaties with the Indians restricted white settlement to lands east of the Appalachian Mountains and the French were continuing to hold the Ohio Valley, the so-called "Scotch-Irish" began in the 1730's to move southward in a steady stream into Virginia, the Carolina's , and Georgia. Finding the good lands in the Valley of Virginia already occupied by German religious dissenters who had also moved out of Pennsylvania, the Scotch-Irish either settled in mountain coves and high meadows along the valley or pushed on through the Dark Hollow (near Mt. Airy, North Carolina) toward Salisbury, from whence they moved into the hilly country east of the Blue Ridge to claim land and build homes.
It has been estimated that as many as 200,000 Scotch-Irish came to America prior to 1775 and that they increased their numbers to 600,000 by the time the American Revolution began. The total population of the original thirteen colonies did not exceed three and a half million by 1775. Thus, one of every five or six colonials was Scotch-Irish, a high percentage for easy assimilation into the older population groups.
Well suited by disposition, native shrewdness, and hardihood for pioneering, the Scotch-Irish were welcome buffers between the older English settlements along the coast and the Indians in the mountains. In effect, they became a second line of colonies between the coastal settlements and the mountains. They learned much from the Indians, including their methods of warfare. They resented the high taxes imposed by the colonial governments, for they lived largely in a subsistence economy and bartered skins and pelts and products of the forest for those things they could not produce for themselves. When Governor Tryon's tax-gatherers in the colony of North Carolina went among them they were rejected and abused. The Regulators were defeated in 1771 in a battle with Tryon's forces at Alamance. Following the battle, many of the Regulators moved as far west as they were permitted to move.
Hungry from lands and freedom from the tax-gatherers, the Scotch-Irish backwoodsmen of Virginia and North Carolina, in defiance of treaties with the Indians, bought land themselves from the Cherokees and established in 1772 the Watauga Association, the first English-speaking governmental entity independent of Great Britain. They set up in the wilderness "over the mountains" and with the first wave of settlers a democratic form of government based on the Articles of the Watauga Association, in effect actually the first "declaration of independence," for neither colonial Virginia nor colonial North Carolina would accept their Settlements. Later the Watauga Settlements became the State of Franklin, which with John Sevier as President, behaved much like a sovereign state.
When the American Revolution came, the Scotch-Irish, with their many grievances against the British government, joined the colonial armies in great numbers. Residents of the State of Franklin, referred to as Overmountain Men, and those of like mind in the upper Piedmont and hills of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, rose nobly to the patriot cause when the British brought the War to the South in 1780. The disastrous defeat of Patrick Ferguson's army at King's Mountain on October 7, 1780 was the knockout blow that led ultimately to Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown a year later. Thus, the mountaineers, dressed in their coonskin caps, fringed shirts and buckskin pants, did for the patriot cause near the end of the Revolutionary War what the Minute Men had done at Lexington and Concord at its beginning.
Following the Revolution, the Scotch-Irish soldiers from the Piedmont and the hills east of the Blue Ridge claimed their land bounties in the mountains as the land was made available for settlement and in time spread throughout Appalachia. Although they were joined by others, it was the Scotch-Irish who determined the character of mountain folk and shaped their culture, a culture that stems from origins different from those of the Plantation South surrounding Appalachia. One of the tragedies of Appalachia, parceled out as it is among southern states, is that the South has not been willing to admit that culturally, socially and politically Appalachia is not a part of the South. At first overwhelmingly Presbyterian in religion, the rural mountain folk abandoned the Presbyterian churches for old line Baptist and Methodist persuasions following the evangelistic revivals along the mountain border in the early 1800's, but their descendants have retained the Calvinistic doctrines of their ancestors even into the present generation.
The Scotch-Irish did not believe in slavery, a position that had characterized their remote Celtic ancestors, but isolated mountain communities far from markets and centers of commerce were not suited for plantation life in any case. The grandsons of many of the sons of Virginia planters who had established plantations in wide river valley in Appalachia had either freed or sold their slaves before the Civil War began, for slavery had not been profitable in the mountains. But mountain folk in the mass had done well. They had established schools, retained their literacy, and related themselves in comfortable ways to the land on which they lived in the open settlement pattern of their ancestors. Basically "country people", Appalachian folk, had few towns and cities of any size. Travelers through the mountains, however, reported that there was more evidence of culture, industry, and even gracious living among mountain folk than there was among the average of plantation owners in Alabama and Mississippi.
Generally, the mountaineers shared neither the culture not the concerns of the plantation South. They had helped to forge a new nation in which they had enjoyed for three generations, more freedom and independence that their ancestors had known for a thousand years, and they had rushed to the support of that nation in the War of 1812 and the War with Mexico. It is not surprising that when the Civil War came, large numbers of mountain men refused to join the armies of the Confederacy and either hid in cliffs and caves in the mountains or slipped through the forests at night and joined Union armies in East Tennessee or Kentucky. That mountain folk were supporting the Union was not generally understood during the War by either the North or the South.
By the time political power in the South had been restored to antebellum leadership following the Period of Reconstruction, however, the position the mountain men had taken was known. Although they had not supported Abraham Lincoln for president in 1860, they joined the ranks of the Republican Party and supported him in 1864, thereby becoming political minorities in states controlled by the Democratic Party. From the point of view of Southerners, the mountaineers had been traitors to the "noble cause."
Prostrated in anguish and poverty, the South was unwilling to share any of its meager benefits with the traitorous mountain folk. Such road funds and "literary" funds as the states sharing Appalachia had were spent to reward the faithful. Mountain folk, unable to pay taxes on land of little value and with no other tax base, could no longer support schools. Roads became worse than they had ever been. In many mountain counties, schools that closed in 1861 did not open again for twenty-five years. As population continued to grow in the hills, poverty and illiteracy increased. By 1890 up to 90% of Appalachian people could not read or write. Animosities generated by the confrontation of two sets of "home guards" and by their depredations and raids inflamed the feud spirit. Upwards of 200 feuds had developed in the region by 1900.
Echos of the bloody feuds reverberated across the nation. Writers and newspaper reporters came gathering information about them. Mountain folk, unacquainted with the word feud, referred to the vendettas as "troubles" or "wars", but seldom revealed any knowledge of them to outsiders. Unable to learn much about the feuds, writers turned to the old-fashioned mountain folk themselves as subjects for their quaint journalism. They reported the crude pioneer conditions in the mountains; the social habits, manners and behavior patterns of the archaic people who lived there; the religious beliefs and practices of the hardline church congregations, the curious dialect spoken in the region, and the poverty, health problems, and illiteracy of the over-crowded population struggling for survival in a subsistence economy.
Moved by compassion and pity for the mountain folk who had fated their doom by supporting the Union during the Civil War, church leaders in the North declared the "Appalachian South" a missionary region, thereby identifying it as a geographical entity apart from the "South" and relegating it to a colonial status, the first of many ruinous efforts in Appalachia. Up to 200 church-related "collegiate institutes" had been established throughout the region by the time the mountain counties were able to maintain their own public high schools in the 1920's. Literature used in the appeals for the financial support of the "institutes" often magnified and emphasized poverty, ignorance, immorality, disease, and degeneracy in the over-populated and deeply isolated coves and hollows. Over selectiveness of material for public relations of the institutes, together with quaint journalism and the overblown fiction of sentimental "realists," effectively established stereotypes, more caricature than real, or mountain folk that have survived even into our own generation.
The missionaries, dedicated and capable, brought enlightenment and aid to people no longer able to help themselves. Many thousands of Appalachian young people received education that proceeded from a base of rejection of their Appalachian identity to preparation for life as successful middle class people outside the region, for the education they received qualified them for jobs that did not exist in the mountains. Methods of instruction began with rejection of hard-shell religion, mountain music, country dance, oral traditions. Appalachian speech and manners, and the Appalachian identity. The teachers, mostly from the North, proceeding from the assumption that only they spoke correct English, excoriated mountain boys and girls who spoke the Appalachian dialect. Thus, in time, mountain people came to feel ashamed of their traditions and to resist the incursion of outsiders who might laugh at their old-fashioned ways and write unpleasant things about them.
By the time institutes were fairly well established, other invasions had begun. Industrialists from the outside, including ruined plantation owners from the South and Northern and British capitalists, began to buy timber rights and broad deeds for mineral deposits for an infinitesimal fraction of their worth from illiterate landowners to whom every fifty cents an acre seemed like wealth. By working in collusion with political leaders from outside the mountainous regions of the states that share Appalachia and by corrupting county governments, the outsiders were successful in preventing the imposition of local taxes on minerals extracted or timber removed that might have supported educational and social programs in the counties being exploited. The industrialists invaded Appalachia and exploited it as if it were a colony imbedded within the nation itself and left its people demoralized and in poverty.
Until the 1930's most of those who spoke for and wrote about Appalachia were outsiders. Tending to present in stereotypes the visible aspects of mountain folk, their homes and institutions, they represented spittle- bearded mountain folk, as dressing in homespun, carrying long-barrel rifles and toting jugs of moonshine whiskey, living in log cabins, engaging in feuds, and speaking the prototypical dialect long after such things were representative. Beginning with such native writers as Jesse Stuart, James Still, and Harriette Arnow, Appalachian folk began to be presented as real persons with cultural identities, traditions, problems, and concerns that are peculiarly their own. Individuals rather than pasteboard cutouts, characters rather than caricatures, occupy the stage, no longer hung with those strings of shucky-beans and festoons of pepperpods that were the perennial props of the outsiders who wrote about us.
In recent years we have as a nation become concerned about our subculture. Our media threatened to destroy our dialects and reduce our national speech to that strident nasal inflection, sometimes touted as the Great American Dialect, spoken by people of the Midwest. Our American grammar provided few options for the rich, colorful idiom of some of our sub-cultures. Rhetorical styles of Appalachian oral traditions became an endangered species. Cultural traditions of our mountain folk were becoming subsumed by television culture. Our school curricula, established by and dictated from central offices in our states, were providing no room for cultural pluralism.
Now, that cultural pluralism has been recognized and accepted, we are in position to save our culture, to learn and write our history, to define our identity, to write our own books, compose our own music, develop our own art, solve our own social problems, manage our own institutions, and build our own economy. We can achieve these things best, not as the Appalachian South but as Appalachia, and not as a people subservient to the outside exploiter or the greed-impelled Judas within our own ranks but as Appalachians who have risen from out long fast int he mountains, the agony of our neglect and abuse, and the sharp thorns of perfidy that have been our anguish, and are now shaking our hides and flexing our muscles as we reach for the control box that determines our destiny.
Pages 1 to 9
THE YEAR WAS 1873, THE PLACE LEBANON, RUSSELL COUNTY, VIRGINIA
John Hurt was missing from his home near Lebanon, and had been for several days. It now seemed certain he had met with foul play. Arch Johnson, a six-foot four-inch negro farm worker, was suspected of having killed him, but no evidence actually existed that he had done the killing.
It is related that a group of men searching for the body asked Arch to assist in finding Hurt in the hope that he would in some way reveal his guilt. The story as told over the years, is that the group or posse stopped on a hillside to scan the distant terrain. While there, Arch is said to have exclaimed, "There he is behind that log on yon hillside." It was the mistake the searchers were hoping Arch would make. The distance was so great, it was impossible to have seen an object the size of a man's body, and neither could they see behind the log. A closer search revealed Hurt's body behind the log, where only the killer himself could have known it was hidden.
According to court records, John Hurt was slain in the month of January 1872. Arch Johnson was brought to trial the 29th day of April, 1873. Russell County's first courthouse was destroyed by fire earlier in the year 1873 and Arch's trial was held in the Lebanon Methodist Church. Below is the exact transcript of the second day of the trail as taken from the court records of Russell County.
April 10, 1873 - At a Circuit Court continued and held for Russell County at the Courthouse thereof on the 30th day of April, 1873.
Present, Same Judge as on yesterday - Archy Johnson who stands indicted of a murder by him committed in this County and within the Jurisdiction of this Court in this that on the...day of January 1872 in and upon the body of John Hurt in the piece of the Commonwealth, then and there being feloniously willfully of his malice aforethought did make and assault, and the said Archy Johnson a certain gun of the value of $5.00 he then and there in both hands, then and there had and held, then and there feloniously, willfully, and of his malice aforethought did discharge and shoot off to against and upon the body of the said John Hurt; and that the said Archy Johnson with the leaden bullet aforesaid out of the gun by him discharged and shot off as aforesaid then and there feloniously, willfully and of his malice aforethought did strike, puncture and wound him the said John Hurt in and upon his body, giving to him the said John Hurt and then and there with the leaden bullet aforesaid so as aforesaid discharged and shot out of the gun aforesaid by the said Archy Johnson in and upon the body of the said John Hurt one mortal wound of which said mortal wound he then and there instantly died. And further that the said Archy Johnson him the said John Hurt in the manner and by the means aforesaid feloniously, willfully, and of his malice aforethought did kill and murder. Was this day again set to the bar in custody of the Sheriff and thereupon came the Jury sworn in the case on yesterday pursuant to their adjournment to wit: Abram Salyer; Richard L. Smith; Elijah Rasnake, Sr.; Nelson H. Fraley; Samuel Burk; William Litton; Thomas M. Gibson; Samuel B. Owens; James M. Lark; Aaron Cumbow; William H. Mead; and Martin P. Barrett, and after having heard all the evidence and arguements of counsel, withdrew from the bar to consult upon their verdict and after some time returned into court, and upon their oaths do say, "We the Jury find the prisoner Archy Johnson guilty of murder in the first degree." Whereupon the prisoner by his counsel moved the court to set aside the verdict of the Jury and grant him a new trial, which motion was opposed by the Attorney for the Commonwealth and the Court took time until tomorrow morning to consider the motion aforesaid, and thereupon the Jury was discharged and the said Archy Johnson was remanded to jail. John A. Kelly, Judge
The following day exactly as recorded on court records Russell County:
May 1, 1873 - Archy Johnson who stands convicted of murder in the first degree was this day again set to the bar in custody of the Sheriff, and the Court having maturely considered the motion made yesterday to set aside the verdict of the Jury and grant the prisoner a new trial is of the opinion that the verdict of the Jury is sustained by the testimony, the motion is therefore overruled. And thereupon it being demanded of the prisoner if anything for himself he had or knew to say why the Court should not now proceed to pronounce judgement and execution against him according to law, and nothing being offered or alleged in delay of judgement, it is considered by the Court that the said Archy Johnson be taken to the jail of this County and from thense to the place of execution; on Friday the 13th day of June between the hours of 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. and there be hanged by the neck until he be dead. And thereupon the said Archy Johnson was remanded to Jail.
On motion of James J. Henritze, jailor of Russell County an dit appearing to the Court that it is necessary for the safekeeping of Archy Johnson who is now confined in jail under sentence of death, that a good and sufficient guard be kept at said jail. The said jailor is therefore ordered to summons and keep at said jail a good and substantial guard until the day of execution.
Signed: John A. Kelly, Judge
The hanging took place as ordered on Friday the 13th day, June 1873. The scene was a hastily erected scaffold just north of Lebanon, in a small valley resembling an amphitheater. More than 5,000 men, women and children (white and colored) were said to have jammed the crowded hillside overlooking the place of execution from dawn that day until the trap was sprung on the huge Negro.
The streets of this small southwest Virginia town were crowded with the curious who had come for miles from other counties of Virginia and adjoining states to see this once in a lifetime event. Officers had to clear the way as the wagon bearing Arch sitting atop his coffin wended its way from the jail to the hanging site. It is said that Arch puffed on a long black cigar as he made his triumphant entry into the hollow that was to bear his name ever after.
Exactly at high noon on that fateful day, the trap was sprung and Arch fell through the trapdoor, his neck broken, his debt to society paid. As the trap was sprung, the story goes, a small Negro boy standing on top of the hill fainted and tumbled end over end to the bottom, where he quickly recovered at the foot of the scaffold and scampered back into the crowd.
It is not known just where Arch was buried. The older citizens of Lebanon say they recall the scaffold standing for many years afterwards - perhaps as Arch's only tombstone. The scaffold is gone, the story almost forgotten. The hillside amphitheater remains - only a few minutes walk from the business section of Lebanon. It has been almost one hundred years since Russell County's last and perhaps only legal hanging.
Information from old newspaper accounts and Circuit Court Records of Russell County.
Pages 10 to 12
Introduction
One could spend an entire lifetime writing and compiling the more pleasant historical records and events of the people of Southwest Virginia. However, we, as well as people in all parts of the world had dark and gloomy times; and today they are forever imprinted in the record books of the Courts, and on the pages of history, as solemn reminders that the past was not always as pure and undefiled as we would like. These unsavory happenings have therefore become a part of our history.
Certainly, we are not sadists in our curiosity as to how the Courts dealt with the criminal element in the pioneer days. In Southwest Virginia we had on the benches of our Courts, and at the Bar, some of the most brilliant legal minds in the entire United States. It is indeed unfortunate that some of the criminals hold a more prominent place in history than does these judges, lawyers, and other law enforcement officers.
In the early days hanging was the method widely adopted for the infliction of the death penalty upon those convicted of first-degree murder. It was at one time considered necessary to have executions public in order to impress evildoers. The time and place was fixed within limits by sentence of the Court, between specified hours, on a certain day. Friday was customarily the day set because of its association with the Crucifixion of Christ.
Hanging the condemned was the responsibility of the County Sheriff, who in most cases was not a skilled executioner, and there were instances when the job was horribly botched. Nevertheless, he was compelled by law to perform the distasteful task to the best of his ability.
It was not until the 1908 General Assembly the Legislators became alarmed by the spectacle of public hangings, and proposed that executions be performed in "quiet dignity", with only those required by law as witnesses to be in attendance, and that all public hangings in the Commonwealth should cease.
In this article we turn back the pages of time, to a period many years prior to the General Assembly of 1908, and reflect on the Court records of hangings that took place in Scott County, as follows:
At a Circuit Superior Court of Law and Chancery held for Scott County at the Courthouse thereof, on Monday, the 9th day of April 1832: Present: Benjamin Estill, esq. Judge. Isaac C. Anderson, Foreman. Zechariah Hensley, James Bevins, John Wolfe, Cornelias Fugate, Henry Wood, Sr., Abraham Lane, George Wineyard, James Jett, William Agee, Isaac Hickam, William Smith, Reuben Pendleton, William Ervin, Samuel Estep, John Strong, John Powers, Joseph Salling, John Pendleton, Zehariah Fugate, Nimrod Taylor, Jr., James Donalson, and John Harris were sworn a Grand Jury of Inquest for the body of the County, and having received their charge, withdrew, and after some time returned into Court and presented:
An Indictment against John Tumms and George Wright for murder, a true bill.
(Called as Witnesses)
Stark Jett, Elizabeth Jett, Julia Ann Jett, George Vineyard, Paschal Jones, Goldman Davison and John Pearson were sworn in Court to give evidence to the Grand Jury upon a bill of Indictment against John Tumms, and George Wright for murder and sent to them.
(On the same day) Arraigned
John Tumms and George Wright both late of the County of Scott labourers, who stand indicted of murder, were led to the bar in custody of the jailor of this Court, thereof arraigned, and severally pleaded not guilty of the indictment. Whereupon, on the motion of the said John Tumms and George Wright, and for reasons appearing to the Court, this trial is postponed till the next Term. And the said John Tumms and George Wright are remanded to jail.
(Appearance bonds given by the following)
Stark Jett, George Vineyard, Paschal Jones, Goldman Davison, and John Pearson came into Court and acknowledged themselves to be severally indebted to John Floyd, Esq., Governor or Chief Magistrate of this Commonwealth in the sum of one-hundred dollars each, of their respective lands and tenement goods and chattels to be levied, and to the said Governor and his successors for the use of the Commonwealth rendered, yet upon this condition, that if the said Stark Jett, George Vineyard, Goldman Davison, Paschal Jones, and John Pearson shall severally make their personal appearance before the Judge of this Court on the first day of September Court next, to give evidence on behalf of the Commonwealth against John Tumns and George Wright, and shall not depart thence without leave of the said Judge, then this recognizance shall be void.
(Appearance bonds)
Stark Jett as the next friend of his wife Elizabeth and daughter Julia Ann (an infant) came into Court and acknowledged himself to be indebted to John Floyd, Esq., Governor or Chief Magistrate of this Commonwealth in the sum of two-hundred dollars, of his lands and tenement goods and chattels to be levied, and to the said Governor and his successors for the use of the Commonwealth rendered; yet upon this condition that the said Elizabeth Jett and Julia Ann Jett shall severally make their personal appearance before the Judge of this Court on the first day of September next, to give evidence on behalf of the Commonwealth against John Tumms and George Wright, and shall not depart thence without leave of the said Judge, then this recognizance is to be void.
(This one did not appear for the arraignment)
David Wright who stands bound by two recognizances entered into before the Court of Scott county, in the penalty of one-hundred dollars each, to appear here this day to give evidence on behalf of the Commonwealth against John Tumms and George Wright, was solemnly called and came not, which default was ordered to be entered on the records.
The Trial September 10, 1832
At a Circuit Superior Court of Law and Chancery, held for Scott County thereof on Monday, the tenth day of September, 1832.
Present: Benjamin Estill Esquire, Judge.
John Tumms late of the County of Scott, who stands indicted for murder, and was heretofore arraigned thereof and pleaded not guilty to the indictment, was again led to the bar in custody of the jailor of this Court, and thereupon came a Jury to wit: David Wininger; William Hensley; William Haynes; Stephen Epperson; Amos Templeton; Edward Pace; William Slone; Burgess McKinzie; William Harris; Martin Shelton; John Conn and Joseph Lane, who being elected, tried and sworn the truth of and upon the premises to speak, and having heard the evidence, upon their oath do say, that the said John Tumms is guilty of murder in the first degree in manner and form as in the indictment against him is alleged. And thereupon he is remanded to jail.
The Trial September 11, 1832
Benjamin Estill: Judge presiding.
George Wright late of the County of Scott who stands indicted for murder and was heretofore arraigned thereof and pleaded not guilty to the indictment, was again led to the bar in custody of the jailor of this Court, and thereupon came a jury to wit: John R. Carter; Oliver Powers; William Bond; Henry Frazier; John Easterling; Peter Dennison; James Moore; David Nelson; Abraham Phipps; Nimrod Elam; John Proons, and William Allen, who being elected, tried, and sworn the truth of and upon the premises to speak, and having heard the evidence, upon their oath do say, that the said George Wright is guilty of murder int he second degree and not guilty of murder in the first degree, and they do ascertain the term of his imprisonment in the public jail and penitentiary house to be seven years. And thereupon he is remanded to jail.
From the Clerk's Office, Scott County, Virginia dated, September 13, 1832.
John Tumms (Tumns) late of the County of Scott, who stands convicted or murder in the first degree, was again led to the bar in custody of the jailor of this Court, and thereupon it being demanded of him if anything for himself he had or knew to say, why the Court here to judgement and execution against him, of and upon the premises, should not proceed he said he had nothing but what he had before said; therefore it is considered by the Court, that he be hanged by the neck until he be dead. And execution of this judgement be made and done upon him the said John Tumns by the Sheriff of Scott County, on Friday, the ninth day of November next, between noon and three o'clock in the afternoon of the same day, at the usual place of execution or some convenient place for execution. And thereupon the said John Tumns is remanded to jail.
George Wright, late of the County of Scott, who stands convicted of murder in the second degree, was again led to the bar in custody of the jailor of this Court, and thereupon it being demanded of him, if anything for himself he had or knew to say, why the Court here should not proceed to pronounce judgement against him according to law, and nothing being offered or alleged in delay of Judgement, it is considered by the Court that the said George Wright be imprisoned in the Public Jail and Penitentiary house of this Commonwealth, for the term of seven
years, the period by the jurors in their verdict ascertained, and that he be kept in a solitary cell in the said jail and Penitentiary house, on low and coarse diet, for the space of one-twelfth part of the said term. And it is ordered that the Sheriff of Scott County do, as soon as possible after the adjournment of this Court, remove and safely convey the said George Wright from the jail of this Court to the said Public Jail and Penitentiary house, therein to be kept imprisoned, and treated in manner directed by law. And the Court doth under it to be certified to the director of the Public Jail and Penitentiary. That George Wright indicted as principal in the second degree, of the murder of John Wright, was tried and convicted of murder in the second degree and sentenced to confinement in the Penitentiary for seven years. Tumns the principal int he first degree having been previously convicted of murder int he first degree and sentenced to be executed. (The Judge continues)
The principal circumstances attending the case are as follows: The prisoner came to the still house of Stark Jett in Scott County inquiring for Tumns, John and David Wright (who were his cousins, Tumns by marriage and the others by blood). That Tumns, John and David Wright shortly afterwards came to the still house aforesaid, Tumns carrying a rifle gun which he set down near the still house, which they entered and procured brandy and cider and drank until the prisoner was intoxicated, and the others considerably excited with liquor, that they frequently went out of the still house appearing to consult together, and came back Tumns with a butcher knife in his hand repouring with it, and saying what he could do with it, could kill people with it, etc. The prisoner also boasted of having formerly dirked a man, saying he could whip, throw down and outrun any person present, could whip a nation of hell cats, etc. Stark Jett became alarmed at their conduct and threats, supposing them aimed at him and left the still house going about 60 yards to his dwelling house. Tumns and the prisoner were soon afterwards seen to fall on John Wright prostrate and beat him. David, the brother of John, who was sitting on the fence apart from the others, immediately interfered and tried to pull Tumns off his brother, but not succeeding, seized an axe and struck Tumns several blows, perhaps three or four with the pole and side of the axe on the shoulders, which knocked Tumns off his brother, Tumns and the prisoner instantly ran from David who pursued Tumns with the axe, and not overtaking him threw it at him, but did not hit him. Tumns called to the prisoner to shoot him (meaning David as is supposed). The prisoner asked where the gun was. Tumns made no answer but seized the gun himself. David said: "Run John or he will kill one of us." John and David Wright immediately ran from Tumns and the prisoner, pursued by them. The prisoner asked Tumns to give him the gun and he would shoot, saying "you are too bad hurt to shoot him." Tumns said no; "You are too drunk. I will shoot him myself." They accordingly pursued John and David Wright about eighty yards, the prisoner and Tumns running side by side, when John who was considerably intoxicated finding Tumns likely to overtake him, leaped a fence and turned around, Tumns laid the gun on the fence about three steps distance from John Wright who threw up his hands and said: "Oh John! Don't shoot!" He instantly fired and John Wright fell mortally wounded, and died soon afterwards. The prisoner, who was standing at Tumns' elbow when the gun fired, immediately ran on the course he had been running, and passing through the gap of the mountain about a half a mile along the main road, was soon afterwards found eighty yards from the road in a state of beastly intoxication, brought to town and committed for trial. The body of John Wright, on a post-mortem examination, exhibited bruises and scratches in the face inflicted, as is believed, by the prisoner and Tumns when they first prostrated him at the still house. No evidence of the prisoner's character was introduced at the trial, nor did it appear what character he bears, other than is to be inferred from the foregoing facts, which show all the aid, counsel, or advice he gave Tumns to perpetrate the murder. It did not appear nor is it known or believed that the prisoner has heretofore been convicted of any felony or other infamous offense. And thereupon the said George Wright is remanded to jail.
Benjamin Estill - Judge (Circuit Court)
George McConnell, Sr., was sheriff 1831-1832 and was the man who hanged John Tumns. John D. Sharpe was Commonwealth Attorney from 1829 to 1853.
It must here be noted that the Jett family was in no way involved in the murder of John Wright, but the crime was committed in their presence and they were called as witnesses. Nor was Stark Jett engaged in illegal activities in the operation of a distillery. At that period the manufacture of alcoholic beverages was legitimate enterprise. Breweries, distilleries, and saloons were numerous throughout the country. No attempt is made here to discuss the moral, social, economic and scientific aspects of the use and restriction of alcoholic beverages, but it is thought since the Jett family is mentioned so prominently, in this case, it is only fair they be placed in proper perspective. The Jetts had large land holdings along the north fork of Holston River near the juncture of the Washington and Scott County lines, not far from where Mendota now stands. From bits of information gathered here and there, one cannot help but believe that the murder for which John Tumns was hanged took place in that area.
Hanging No. 2
According to Court records the second hanging in Scott County was on Friday, June 25, 1858, and was a man by the name of McDaniel Rhea.
I have checked with some of the most brilliant historical minds in Southwest Virginia, and have been unable to find anything pertinent to this case, other than Court records. The history books written of Scott County, I have been privileged to read make no mention of a McDaniel Rhea, however, it can readily be assumed Rhea was executed, since there is no further order on the books following his sentencing.
In C. A. Johnson's book titled JOHNSON'S HISTORY OF WISE COUNTY, on page 266, Chapter 23, there is recorded the hanging of Baxter S. Pate at Estillville, VA, Scott County, on the exact date as that set for the execution of McDaniel Rhea, and is shown as "Scott County's first public Hanging". Pate, it is said, took the life of John Lutterel, in a drunken brawl over a card game in a hotel at Estillville. Mr. Johnson says further: "While not an event of Wise County, it however connects with it two of Wise County's prominent pioneer citizens - Rev. Reuben Steele, who spoke the last rites for Pate, and W. D. Nottingham, Scott County jailor, who was later Gladeville's beloved Postmaster, whom everyone called "Uncle Billy."
Pate was described as being between 30 and 35 years old, of commanding appearance and very intelligent. Just prior to his execution he made a 40 minute talk in which he attributed strong drink as to the cause of his ruin, and urged others to refrain from its use.
Certainly there is no inference intended to in anyway discredit or disprove Mr. Johnson's article, but it would be next to impossible to prepare a paper on the hangings in Scott County without mentioning this chapter in his book. Secondly, it is hoped that someone will be able to clarify the mystery of two hangings on the same day at Estillville, when only one is recorded in the Court order books of Scott County, that of McDaniel Rhea.
With the assistance of the County Court Clerk, the records were thoroughly searched and there was no one by the name of Pate mentioned.
It appears from the article that Mr. Johnson got the details of this hanging from an old newspaper account, found by a lady, in the bottom of an old family trunk. And it would seem through some error in passing the story down through the years, the names of Rhea and Pate have become confused, and are perhaps one and the same person.
Could this man have been McDaniel Rhea, alias Baxter S. Pate? The actual Court records follow:
From the Court records of Scott County, Virginia
The Indictment, Trial, and Sentencing of McDaniel Rhea
At a Circuit Court, begun and held for Scott County, at the courthouse thereof on Monday, the 17 day of May 1858.
Present the Honorable Samuel V. Fulkerson, Judge.
James P. Carter, gentleman foreman; William Mitchell; Benjamin B. Taylor; George W. Powers; Nathan Daugherty, Sr.; William B. Spencer; David McKenny; William F. Templeton; Andrew J. Neil; Nathan Whitaker; Levi Baker; William C. Barker; James C. Larkey; Andrew France; Alexander Willis; Green C. Fields; Thomas Williams; John B. Agee; Andrew Williams; and George H. Kindrick were sworn a grand jury of inquest for the body of this County, and having received their charge, were sent to their apartment and after sometime returned into the Court and presented.
An Indictment against McDaniel Rhea, For Murder, A True Bill
At a Circuit Court continued and held for Scott County at the Courthouse thereof on Monday, the 24 day of May 1858.
Present: The same Judge as on Saturday.
McDaniel Rhea, late of the County of Scott, Labour, who stands indicted of murder, was led to the bar in custody of the Sheriff of this County, whereupon came a Jury to sit: Joshua Smith, Reubin Finney, John M. Kizer, Wilson Evans, George Finney, Charles C. Dickinson, George Banner, James Kelly, James Artrip, Jessee Fuller, William N. Selle, and George C. Gose who were elected, tried, and sworn in conformity with the provisions of the act of assembly for the trial of the said McDaniel Rhea upon the indictment aforesaid (the said McDaniel Rhea having perentonly challenged 8 jurors summoned for the said trial) and the jury sworn as aforesaid, having fully heard the evidence were with the consent of the prisoner, committed to the Sheriff of this County, who is directed to keep them together without communication with any other person, and to cause them to appear here tomorrow morning at 8 o'clock. Whereupon an oath was administered to Thomas W. Carter and William D. Nottingham, Deputy Sheriffs of this County, to the following effect, "You shall well and truly to the best of your ability, keep this jury, and neither speak to them yourselves, nor suffer any other person to speak to them touching any matter relative to this trial, until they return into court tomorrow. And the said McDaniel Rhea is remanded to jail.
At a Circuit Court continued and held for Scott County at the Courthouse thereof on Tuesday the 25th day of May 1858;
Present: The same Judge as on yesterday.
McDaniel Rhea, late of the County of Scott, Labour, who stands indicted of murder was again led to the bar in custody of the Sheriff of this County, and the jury sworn on yesterday, for his trial were brought into Court in the custody of the Sheriff of this County, and upon their oath do say, that the said McDaniel Rhea is guilty of murder in the first degree, in manner and form as in the indictment against him is alleged. Whereupon it being demanded of him if anything for himself he had or knew to say why the Court here to judgement and execution against him of and upon the premises should not proceed, he said nothing but what he had before said. Therefore it is considered by the Court that he be hanged by the neck until he be dead, and the execution of this Judgement be made and done upon him the said McDaniel Rhea by the Sheriff of Scott County on Friday, the 25th day of June next, between the hours of ten in the forenoon and two in the afternoon of the same day at the usual place of execution. And thereupon the said McDaniel Rhea is remanded to jail.
Judge Samuel V. Fulkerson served in the Constitutional Convention of 1851. He was a colonel in the Confederate forces, but had not resigned as Judge when he was killed in the Battle of Gaines Mill. During his time in the army, Circuit Court was held by Judge Gideon Camden of Harrison Co., WV. Rufus B. Fugate was sheriff of Scott County 1857-1858.
The Story of the Daniel Dean Case
Perhaps one of the most interesting murder cases ever tried in Southwest Virginia was the case of the Commonwealth against Daniel Dean in Scott County.
It was on a Monday morning, June 25, 1877, Henry Fugate was shot in the back while plowing near his home located about midway between Gate City and Nickelsville. From the wound he received on Monday, Mr. Fugate died the following Wednesday. Daniel Dean, who lived near the Fugate place was indicted for the murder at the July term of Court of Scott County 1877.
The case was tried three times in the Scott County Court. The first two trials resulted in mistrials, both the juries being unable to reach a unanimous verdict. A jury was brought from Washington County for the third trial, which took place at the May term of the Scott County Court, 1878, and the prisoner Daniel Dean was found guilty of murder int he first degree and sentenced to death by hanging.
There are many unusual and strange occurrences in connection with the trial of the Daniel Dean case. For instance, the witness who received fifty dollars from his lawyer uncle to swear falsely, and was sentenced to three years in the penitentiary for perjury. His lawyer uncle jumped out the window of the courthouse, mounted his horse and made for the Tennessee line, and was not seen in Scott County again for twenty-five years. Then there is Sheriff J. R. S. Wilhelm, who was one of the jurors at the first trial of Dean. At this trial Wilhelm had voted for acquittal of the accused. Wilhelm had not as yet been elected Sheriff for Scott County; however, prior to the actual hanging of Dean, Wilhelm was elected Sheriff of Scott County and it became his official duty to execute the prisoner whom he believed innocent. It is told that Wilhelm offered one of his deputies $300 if he would execute Dean, but the deputy declined. Shortly after the hanging of Dean, Wilhelm vanished and was never seen again or heard from by any Scott Countian.
From the Court Records Scott County - September 23, 1878
Virginia:
In the Clerk's office of the Circuit Court of Scott County on the 23rd day of September 1878. The following is a copy of the Order of the Supreme Court of Appeals, in the case of the Commonwealth against Daniel Dean to wit: "Virginia: In the Supreme Court of Appeals, at Staunton, on Wednesday the 11th day of September 1878. Upon the petition of Daniel Dean, a writ of error to operate as a supersedeas, but not to release the petitioner from imprisonment is awarded to a Judgement of the Circuit Court, rendered on the 27th day of August 1878, affirming a judgement of the County Court of said County rendered on the third day of June 1878, in a prosecution in the name of the Commonwealth against the said Daniel Dean, indicted for murder, by which is was considered by the Court that he be hanged by the neck until he be dead, and the execution of this judgement, be made and upon him, the said Daniel Dean, by the Sheriff of Scott County, on Friday the 12th day of July next; between the hours of ten in the forenoon and two of the afternoon of the same day, at the usual place of execution, the execution of which judgement was by the said Circuit Court suspended until the 9th day of October next.
And on the motion of the counsel of the Attorney General, it is ordered that this case be removed to Richmond, there to be heard and determined, and that this order be certified to the Clerk of this Court at Richmond, and also to the said Circuit Court of Scott County.
A copy teste: Joseph A. Waddell, Clerk
A copy teste: W. S. Rhodes, Deputy Clerk
October 13, 1879
Virginia:
In the Clerk's office of the Circuit Court of Scott County, in Vacation, on the 13th day of October 1879, the following order was received and entered to wit:
"Virginia: At a Supreme Court of Appeals held at the Courthouse of Wythe County in the town of Wytheville, on Thursday, the 31st day of July A. D. 1879."
Daniel Dean, Plaintiff in Error, "against" The Commonwealth, defendant in Error. Upon a Writ of Error The Commonwealth Defendant in Error to a judgement of the Circuit Court of Scott County, rendered on the 27th day of August 1878, affirming a judgement of the County Court Wythe County in the town of Wytheville, on Thursday, the 31st day of July A. D. 1879."
Daniel Dean, Plaintiff in Error, "against" the Commonwealth, Defendant in Error to a judgement of the Circuit Court of Scott County, rendered on the 27th day of August 1878, affirming a judgement of the County Court of said County, rendered on the 3rd day of June 1878 in a prosecution of The Commonwealth against the Plaintiff in Error for murder, whereby it is considered that the said Plaintiff in Error "be hanged by the neck until he be dead."
This day came again as well the Plaintiff in Error by his counsel, as the Attorney General on behalf of the Commonwealth, and the Court having maturely considered the transcript of the record of the said judgement and the arguments of counsel, is of opinion for reasons stated in writing and filed with the record, that there is no error in the said judgement. Therefore it is considered that the said judgement of the said Circuit Court of Scott be affirmed. Which is ordered to be certified to the said Circuit Court of Scott County.
A copy teste: Joe W. Caldwell, C. C.
A copy teste: W. S. Rhodes, D. C.
The decision handed down by the Supreme Court of Virginia on the Dean case, according to any number of attorneys is said to be a classic and a final word of law on circumstantial evidence. This famous opinion was written by Judge Christian, at the time a member of the Supreme Court of Virginia. In the opinion, Judge Christian observes that a line of circumstantial evidence is sometimes compared to a chain of many links. A chain is no stronger than its weakest link. A more fitting comparison declared Judge Christian, would be a rope. A rope is made up of a number of filaments or strands, which taken singly would not be strong enough to bear the stress, but when all these filaments or strands are twisted together the rope has strength more than enough to bear the stress laid upon it.
So in the Dan Dean case, there are circumstances, which taken alone, would not bear the wright of conviction, but when taken together, and considered in their relation to each other, must preclude upon the mind a moral certainty of the guilt of the accused. So reasoned Judge Christian.
The eminent judge disposes of the case by declaring there was no error to warrant a new trial, that the judgement of the lower court was affirmed and that Dean must pay the penalty of his crime: to be hanged by the neck until dead.
To name a few of the personalities of the Dean case:
Chief counsel for the defense was Patrick Hagan, said to be one of the best lawyers and one of the finest men ever produced by Scott County.
Commonwealth's Attorney was Rufus A. Ayers, who later became Attorney General of Virginia. He was assisted in the prosecution by Attorney John P. Corns and Attorney Burns.
The County Judge was H. S. K. Morrison, the Circuit Judge John A. Kelly. At the time of the killing of Henry Fugate, the Sheriff was William C. Fugate; he was succeeded in office by J. R. S. Wilhelm, whose painful duty it became to execute Dan Dean.
Wayne Powers and George Gibson pay the supreme penalty by hanging for the murder of Will Gibson.
The morning of Friday, February 6, 1885, the day appointed for the execution dawned cool and clear. The night previous, a large number of citizens had arrived, and the streets of the village of Estillville (now Gate City) presented a somewhat animated appearance. From early dawn until late at night people on horseback and in wagons had been pouring into town.
At about ten-thirty on the morning of the sixth, the crowd surged toward the Courthouse, and the cry was taken up that the prisoners were at the hack that was to carry them to the place of execution. Very soon afterwards, Sheriff W. C. R. Strong with Wayne Powers and Deputy Sheriff R. H. Cowden with George Gibson, took their seats in the hack. The guards were stationed under the direction of J. S. King and Martin Godsey, and the cavalcade took up its solemn march to the place of execution at the cedars (near where Gate City High School now stands). It was a sight never before seen in Estillville. The streets were densely packed with horsemen and people on foot from the village to the grounds.
The place selected for the hanging was a little north of the Cedar Schoolhouse, in a hollow. As the hack neared the scaffold, the hills surrounding the spot were covered with faces, all watching with breathless interest in the entire proceedings.
The hack reached its destination, and the prisoners, guards, officers, and a few spectators took their positions inside the guard rope, but outside the building in which the scaffold was erected. It was here the condemned men were allowed to make their last statements. Within a short time both men were conducted inside the building and were hanged by the neck until dead in accordance with the sentence of the Court. Thus they paid with their lives for their dastardly crime.
Events leading up to the crime are as follows: Wayne and Jonas Powers two brothers, George and Will Gibson, the latter cousins, had been absent from Scott County from some months, residing in West Virginia. In the spring of 1884 they concluded to visit their homes, and in company, started on their journey. On Saturday evening April 20, 1884, they stopped at the house of John Ramsey and purchased brandy, then started for Chestnut Ridge, lying close to the Russell line, where a quiet spot was chosen for the crime.
We here take a portion of the confession and statement of George Gibson: After telling of his boyhood and other events leading up to his leaving Scott County and going to West Virginia, he tells of the crime as follows: "We started for Scott County, Virginia, on April 14, 1884. Before starting, Wayne and Jonas Powers made known to us their wish to come with us (George and Will Gibson), but we endeavored to avoid them as we supposed they would want us to bear their expenses, but they fell in with us and after a journey of six days, we arrived at John Ramey's on Clinch River (near where Dungannon now stands) about dark on the 19th day of April 1884, and it is here the history of this sad calamity begins. Leaving Jonas Powers and Will Gibson in Broad Shoal Gap, a short distance from John Ramey's, Wayne Powers and I went to John Ramey's and bought six pints of brandy, returned to where they were, built up a fire and being weary and footsore, remained there drinking the liquor and resting for near three hours. Will Gibson had my pistol and loaded it while there. Wayne Powers also loaded his pistol.
We then crossed Clinch River in a canoe: William Gibson fell out into the river and then handed my pistol back to me. We all traveled along together until we got near Charles Horn's at the foot of Chestnut Ridge. Here Jonas Powers left us and went in the direction of Charles Horn's. I saw him no more until I saw him under arrest after the murder. Myself and the other two went along together until we arrived near the top of Chestnut Ridge. Wayne Powers and Will Gibson were five steps in advance of me and were quarreling. Wayne stepped back and shot Gibson in the back of the head; he ran and cried out "Run here George, your friend Will Gibson is shot. I (George Gibson) pursued after and fired two shots at him (Will Gibson), one of them, and I think only one, hit him. He fell and I sprang upon, and cut him three times, once on the hip, once in the side, and then cut his throat. Wayne run up at this time, cocked his pistol and wanted to shoot him again, but I told him not to do that. He asked, "Has he got enough?" I answered yes, for he was then dead. We then considered as well as we could in our drunken condition, what we should do with the body, and decided to burn it. We piled rails on it and Wayne then pulled sage grass and put under them, and I fired it with a match. We did not kill him for his money or clothing. But after he was dead we thought it was useless to destroy his money and clothes, so we divided the nine dollars and twenty cents between us, which was all he had. I took his clothing and we burned his satchel and some clothing. We parted about an hour and a half before day." (End quote)
The next morning smoke was seen rising from the spot by S. P. Porter and his wife while on the way to preaching. They investigated the cause and fond portions of the unconsumed body. The news of the murder spread rapidly, and on Monday, Richard Hager, Ambrose Taylor, and Alex Austin had the three men (George Gibson, Wayne Powers, and Jonas Powers) arrested on the charge of having killed Will Gibson. They were taken to Sinking Creek Church and an examination before Justice Ramey was held. They were bound over, brought to Scott County and lodged in jail on Wednesday, April 23, 1884.
The were indicted by the grand jury of the May term of the County Court. Judge Martin B. Woods presiding, and on being arraigned upon the indictment of murder, plead not guilty. They all elected to be tried in the Circuit Court and were remanded back to prison.
At the August term of the Circuit Court, Judge John A. Kelly presiding. Jonas Powers was placed on trial. The trial lasted several days, and the jury, after deliberating for twenty-four hours, failed to agree and were dismissed.
The cases of Wayne Powers and George Gibson were continued until the November term of the Circuit Court.
At the November term of the court the three men were tried, each separately and by a different jury. Jonas H. Powers was first to be tried, the verdict was murder in the first degree. Wayne Powers was next and the verdict was the same. Last was George Gibson, whose trial lasted from Saturday of one week until Friday of the following week; however, the verdict was the same as the other two. Together, the three trials lasted almost three weeks. Judge John A. Kelly presided at each. The people were represented by Commonwealth's Attorney H. W. Holdway, who unassisted, labored with a conscientious desire to uphold law and order and the protection of society. The Powers boys were represented and ably defended by the law firm of Richmond and Duncan. Attorney John P. Korns, along with Richmond and Duncan, defended George Gibson.
The Sentencing
When asked if either had anything to say before sentence was passed upon them, Jonas Powers declared he wanted to say he was not guilty. Wayne Powers said he had nothing to say. Gibson said he did not get justice. They took their seats and Judge Kelly, with impressiveness and solemnity, pronounced the following death sentence against them. He started by first repeating their names: Jonas H. Powers, Wayne Powers, and George Gibson. "Such a scene as we now look upon is seldom witnessed in a Courtroom. Under our mild and human laws, a single convict is rarely at the bar of the court awaiting the sentence of death. In my service on the bench of this Circuit Court of more than fourteen years, I have had only three times to pronounce such a sentence. Now you three stand before me convicted, each of murder in the first degree, to which the law affixes the death penalty. It would be useless to review the details of your crime, if the juries have not been mistaken in their verdicts, that crime is without parallel. It is shortly this - that for a few dollars and two or three suits of wearing apparel of the victim, you deliberately killed your associate traveling with you in the confidence of friendship, and in the attempt to conceal the evidence of your guilt, spent hours of the night in which the deed was done standing around his body, heaping fencing rails upon it until it was almost wholly consumed. But the effort at concealment failed. It is almost always the case that the circumstances attending the murder press so closely upon the heels of the murderer that he can not escape them. So the circumstances surrounding this murder pointed to you and led to your arrest, and you have been brought to trial. A separate and different jury of twelve honest men have passed upon each of your cases and have found you guilty. As the evidence is in most of its features the same in each case, it is the equivalent to the judgement of thirty-six jurymen. (Here the paper is worn and was unable to read well enough to copy, RLS.) The Judge continues: The three former occasions in which I have been called to pronounce the death sentence, though but one unfortunate prisoner was to be doomed, my heart recoiled from it. I shuddered at the thought. But how much more trying when I see three unfortunate human faces looking upon me awaiting their sentences. I hesitate to pronounce them. But an unavoidable duty, the imperative mandate of the law compels me to do so. But before I do, I would admonish you to use the time given you to make all possible preparation for death. Though this Court can see no relief which can be legally extended to you; though no other human tribunal may be able to grant you relief, yet so infinite is the mercy of God, that even the darkest of crimes do not close the door of hope to those who appeal to Him. Forgiveness and pardon He freely gives to those who are about to perish on account of crime, if they approach Him in true contrition and repentance. And with most profound regret that so terrible a duty devolves on me, I must pronounce upon you each the judgement of law, which that each of you be taken to the jail of the county from whence you came, and from thence to the place of execution, on Friday the 6th day of February next (1885), and there be hanged by the neck till you are dead, and may God have mercy on your souls.
(The three men were sentenced November 28, 1884, Judge Kelly's lengthy discourse is not incorporated in its entirety in the court records of Scott County. The above sentencing was carried in The Progressive Age, a newspaper printed at Estillville, Scott Co., VA, of December 4, 1884, and reprinted in the February 5, 1885 issue of the same paper, a copy of which is owned by Mr. S. D. Bledsoe, Superintendent of Natural Tunnel, and to whom I am grateful for his assistance in helping me on this article on Gibson and Powers). (The entire court proceedings of this case may be found in Law Book, Number 3 of the Circuit Court of Scott County.)
During the passing of sentence and the discourse of Judge Kelly in his delivery of the judgement. Jonas Powers chewed his tobacco without visible emotion. Wayne fixed his gaze upon the floor and remained unmoved to the close. Gibson was nervous and pale, and occasionally looked at the Judge.
Counsels for Jonas Powers made a motion to set aside the sentence in his case and grant him a new trial. The Court, in a feeling manner, denied the motion and ordered the proceedings to be spread upon the Court records. The counsel for Jonas carried his case to the Governor, who, after hearing the statement of counsel, granted a stay of execution for thirty days.
In addition to the confession and statement of George Gibson, made previous to the day of execution, he also addressed the huge crowd gathered for the hanging for some 20 minutes. Near the end he said, "I acknowledge the crime. I killed Will Gibson. Wayne shot him first, and I shot and killed him. I then helped to burn his body. I had nothing against him! It was not for the nine dollars and twenty cents and his clothing that I did the deed, but it was because I was drunk and didn't know what I was doing, until it was too late. I want to say that Jonas Powers was not with us when we did the killing. He knew nothing of it, and is as innocent of that crime as any man or woman I see before me, and in God's name I ask you all to assist in setting Jonas Powers at liberty, for he is an innocent man." Gibson further states, "Society would do well to banish forever liquor from its midst. I who have been decoyed to my ruin by it, might with some show of just reproach turn upon that people whose laws license this most deadly and dangerous of all agents and say, "shake not thy gory locks at me."
Wayne Powers also made a statement from the gallows exculpating his brother Jonas, and said that there were none on the ground at the time of the murder except the two Gibsons and himself.
So the hideous nightmare of the Gibson and Powers case that started the night of April 19, 1884, ended on that cold clear day of Friday, February 6, 1885, on the fallows near the Cedars Schoolhouse.
These old stories are to some better to be forgotten, yet violence has always played a part in man's survival, and as we preserve the good things in life, we must also hold on to the unsavory events that went to make the good things come to pass. And so it is with historians to hold on to the past, fragmentary though some stories may be, they will always be preserved in the archives of our country.
I am indebted to Court Clerk Harry Penley, Scott Co., VA, and his efficient staff for their interest and assistance. The items of public record were filed in such a manner that the information needed was immediately available. I appreciate the discussion and correspondence with a number of historians and old timers, such as: Roy V. Wolfe, Sr., of Gate City, Luther F. Addington of Wise, Earl Broadwater of Salem, Emory Hamilton of Wise, Rev. Hampton Osborne of Clintwood, and many others.
Pages 13 to 27
When we think of Lee County we are reminded of Dr. Thomas Walker, the first white man known to have penetrated the area, of Ambrose Powell for whom Dr. Walker named a mountain and a river, of Daniel Boone whose son was here slain by Indians, of Thomas Lovelady who was here before the American Revolution, of the Yocums who settled in the Dryden area, of Vincent Hobbs who ended the existence of the ravaging Chief Benge, of Fannie Dickenson Scott, an Indian captive who courageously made her escape, of Edward Pennington who allegedly traded a bridle and flintlock rifle for a portion of Pennington Gap, of Vastine Stickley who left the Shenandoah Valley to establish a little village that bears his name, of prominent military men like Col. A. L. Pridemore, Major Hyatt, and Col. Campbell Slemp; of devout ministers such as: Noble Burkhart, Andrew Baker, Reuben Steele, James Shelburne and Isaac S. Anderson; of native statesmen such as: C. Bascom Slemp and Lloyd M. Robinette.
We think of the deep red clay soil, limestone springs and verdant bluegrass along its south and east borders, and the deposits of coal along its north and west rims, which brought great prosperity to the county, as its dark wealth clouded our vision of the vast resources of agriculture, and the native sons and daughters who left the area to become useful citizens of other places.
Today I would like to call attention to one of Lee County's natives of whom little is known in the county of his birth. On October 9, 1972, a commemorative postage stamp went on sale to honor the profession of Dr. Andrew Taylor Still who is known as the founder of osteopathy. The stamp was first released at the national osteopathic convention then in session at Miami Beach, Florida.
Andrew Taylor Still was born near Jonesville, VA on August 6, 1828. At that time his father, Dr. Abraham Still, as a Methodist circuit rider, and also a medical doctor, who had married Mary Poague Moore of Tazewell Co., five years earlier. The Stills lived in Lee County for ten years during which time Dr. Abraham assisted in the erection of a permanent arbor at the Methodist Camp Ground west of Jonesville.
The idea of a commemorative stamp was conceived by Mrs. Ella Whitten Akers of Lynchburg, VA, who had once served as a public health nurse in Lee County and who attended the 1972 convention in Miami. She had requested an old friend of that county to procure for her a quantity of grapevine, which was cut into short lengths to serve as mementos, and were presented to the convention speakers.
The grapevine was symbolic of a story often related concerning Dr. Still who, as a lad, was said to have relieved a headache by suspending his head and neck in a grapevine as he lay prone on the ground.
From the autobiography of Andrew Taylor still, it is possible to present some of the highlights of his life, and events that had led to the discovery of osteopathy. In keeping with his individualism, his religious convictions, and disdain for exaggeration, he spurned the idea of allowing a professional biographer to compile his life story, and wrote it himself.
His first school was conducted by a stern schoolmaster who was more concerned with discipline than instruction. In 1834 the Stills moved to New Market, TN where he and his two brothers attended a school conducted by the Methodist Conference under an efficient instructor.
About 1837 their father was appointed as a missionary to Missouri, where Andrew and his brothers soon found themselves in an area where there were neither schools, churches, nor printing presses. So their education was discontinued until 1839, when their father and a few settlers hired a teacher for their children during the winter of 1839-40.
The spring of 1840 took them from Macon County to Schuyler County, MO, where there was no more school until 1842, when in the autumn, they felled trees and built a log cabin 18 by 20 feet, without a floor. There a school was conducted 90 days for $2.00 per pupil.
In 1843 Andrew attended another term of 3 months taught by a Virginian, then returned to the old log schoolhouse for a term of 4 months in Smith's Grammar.
In 1845 he entered a Presbyterian School in Macon County. He and a friend boarded with a Gilbreath family to whom they became devoted. They lived as members of the family. Both split rails, milked cows, and assisted with the housework.
In 1848 Andrew attended a school taught by a noted mathematician. Even in his persistent search for knowledge, he admitted that like other boys, he was "a little lazy and fond of a gun."
Early in the 1840's people in the Stills' area became much concerned about the Judgement Day and its impending calamity, due to the prophecy of a man named Miller. Later the story of the Judgement Day gave way to the news of a wonderful invention called the sewing machine "that could make over a hundred stitches a minute." Dr. Still wrote: "I know it must be so, for I read it in the Methodist Christian Advocate."
About the same time he heard of another wonderful invention. "Sister Stone", just 4 miles from them had told him she had bought a cook stove with her from the East. Andrew was determined to go and see this stove so he could tell his friends about it. Later he mounted Old Selim, telling his father he was going in search of some stray cattle. He "put the bud" to Selim until they had traveled 4 miles. (He had known all along where the cattle were.) "Hello, Sister Stone," he said, "have you seen any of our stray cattle for a day or two?"
"No," she said, "but get down and come in." He asked for a drink of water, then watched Mrs. Stone bake some corn bread in the new stove. After stuffing himself with milk and bread, he thanked his hostess, mounted Selim, and rounded up the cattle. His father never knew of his detour of curiosity.
Andrew Still's frontier experiences varied widely. His father was trained to do all types of work. He was a minister, doctor, farmer, and a practical millwright. His mother wove cloth, made clothing, and could make pies to perfection. She believed to spare the rod was to spoil the child.
In concluding the narratives if his boyhood experiences he related an incident that, simple as it was, may have been his first discovery in the science of osteopathy. Early in life he began to disapprove of drugs. One day when he was about ten years of age, he suffered a severe headache. He made a swing (not of a grapevine, as was later believed, but of his father's plow lines) between two trees. However, his headache increased with the swinging. So he lowered the rope to about 8 or 10 inches from the ground threw the end of a blanket over it, and lay down on the ground, using the rope as a swinging pillow. Soon he "became easy," and fell asleep. When he awoke he rose to his feet and found that the headache had disappeared. As he knew little of anatomy, he had no idea how a rope could stop a headache, and the nauseated stomach that accompanied it. Afterward he used this method when plagued with attacks of "sick headache." Later he said, "I followed that treatment for twenty years before the wedge of reason reached my brain, and I could see that I had suspended the action of the great occipital nerves and given harmony to the flow of the arterial blood to and through the veins, and ease was the effect...I have worked for more than fifty years to obtain a more thorough knowledge of the machinery of live, to produce ease and health. And today, (1897), I am fully established in the belief that the artery is the father of the rivers of life and its impure water is first in all disease."
On January 29, 1849 Andrew Still married Mary M. Vaughn and took her to their new home on 80 acres of land near his old home. He worked early and late on 60 acres of fine corn, but on July 4 a dark cloud rose and showered 3 inches of hail over the 60 acres, not leaving a stalk nor blade of corn. Nor did it leave a bird or a rabbit on the farm. All were gone. He taught school that winter at $15 per month.
In 1853 they moved to the Wakarusa Mission in Kansas, occupied by the Shawnee tribe. Little English was spoken outside the mission. Mrs. Still taught the papooses that summer while Andrew plowed 90 acres with oxen. Then with his father, he doctored the Indians - erysipelas, fevers, pneumonia, and cholera prevailed among them. He stated that some of their treatments for it were no more ridiculous than those of so-called scientific doctors. As curatives they made teas of blackroot, lady's thumb, mucksquaw, etc. and many died. He learned their language and gave them such drugs as white men used, and cured most cases, and was well received by the Shawnee and other tribes.
In 1859 Mary Still died, leaving Andrew with 3 small children. In November 1860 he was married to Mary E. Turner. They had 4 children.
Then came the slavery dispute. He chose the side of the Union, as he entered all combats for abolition of slavery, and soon acquired a host of political enemies. It was dangerous for a "free-state" man to be found alone. So he usually traveled roads he knew to be safe. By 1855 the territory was involved in civil war. Skirmishes and assassinations occurred daily. On one of his medical rounds Dr. Still rode a freshly shod mule. To avoid hostile territory he took a detour home. On approaching a ravine with steep banks of 10 feet he saw that the only way of crossing it was by way of a cottonwood log hewn flat on top, and only 14 inches wide. As he took his feet out of the stirrups and clutched his saddle bag the mule cautiously walked the log. When he reached his friends they refused to believe that he had crossed the log on a mule until they returned to the stream and found the mule's shoe prints on the log.
In 1857, Dr. Still was elected to the Douglas Co., KS legislature as an ardent free-state supporter. He was chafed to learn that his old state of Missouri, his home for 20 years, had 150,000 acres of school lands, on which not a dollar was applied to school purposes, when he had striven for an education in his youth. Over a million dollars was being used to buy mules and slaves, while he paid for his education by mauling rails. As a legislator, he was determined that such would not happen in Kansas.
He returned home to practice medicine and saw lumber until 1860. In 1861 he enlisted in the Kansas cavalry where he rose to the rank of major. He had numerous and interesting experiences, but his subsequent discovery was born in Kansas under even more difficult circumstances.
In the quiet of the frontier he sat down to review what he had learned in medical school. He began with the skeleton and familiarized himself with the bones of the body.
In 1864 the thunder of war was retreating, but a new enemy hovered over the land in the form of spinal meningitis, which took two of his children and one adopted child.
Afterward Dr. Still began a more serious study of the human mechanism. He concluded that illness and disease are only effects. He wrote: "On June 22, 1874 I flung to the breeze the banner of osteopathy. For 23 years it has withstood the storms, cyclones, and blizzards of opposition."
After having established the science in his own mind he sought to draw the attention of thinking people in his home town of Palmyra, KS to it. Baldwin & Baker University was located there by 3 commissioners, one of which was his father. The town requested that the University he built there, and thereafter accepted by the committee. Both Dr. Andrew Still and his brother, Thomas, were on the committee to select a site. They donated 480 acres for it. They, with two others, purchased and erected a forty horse-power stream saw mill. (They gave the 640 acres all in one tract); and sawed all lumber for the buildings, during which time he was engaged for five years in sawing, building, and doctoring the sick through smallpox, cholera, and all the fevers, plus serving in the Kansas Legislature.
He was known as "a good doctor, faithful legislator, sober, sound, and loyal man", but alas, when he asked the privilege of explaining osteopathy in Baldwin University, which he had helped build, the doors were closed against him.
He remained in Kansas for a while, then made his way to Kirkville, MO. After three months he sent for his wife and 4 children. Mary resolved to stand by him. He did not tell her that he had found a letter from his brother, James Still, which stated that "Andrew was crazy, and had lost his mind." However, after 18 years, James ceased praying for his "deranged brother", and said: "Hallelujah, Drew, you are right..." I want to study osteopathy". And he did.
During the winter of 1878-79 Andrew Still was called by telegram to his old home in Kansas to treat a former patient, which he did partially by drugs, as before, but he also gave osteopathic treatments. She recovered.
From there he went to Henry County, MO where he built a large practice with an office. There he cured a patient who had pneumonia in both lungs. Later he conquered a case of "purulent sore eyes" without drugs, as well as cases of erysipelas by the same law.
From Henry County he went to Hannibal, MO, where he was confronted with cases of asthma. An Irish woman came and asked him to "make her shoulder easy". Although she had a bad case of asthma, Dr. Still found that she had a section of the upper vertebrae out of line. By setting the spine and a few ribs, he stopped the pain. A month later she returned with no trace of asthma, but with her superstitious nature, she asked if he "hoo-dooed her". "Me pain is all gone from round me shoulder..." she said.
Later, a well-dressed lady wearing diamonds came to inquire about his method of treatment. She had heard it was a "faith cure," Christian Science, etc. She said: "I want you to tell me the truth. Isn't this mostly hypnotism?" He replied: "Yes, Madam, I set 17 hips in one day." While in Hannibal he also practiced painless obstetrics. During the autumn he had an opportunity to test osteopathy on fevers, dysentery of hemorrhaging nature, and cured about 17 cases without use of drugs. Then he again became the victim of a crusade against him in which he was labeled a crank, infidel, and lunatic. He left that area in 1875, and went to Kirkville, MO, where he found a few "thinking people" who welcomed his osteopathy. In the course of time Andrew Still had found enough work to feed his family and pay rent. Finally it became so plentiful that he decided to remain in one place and let the patients come to him. In 1887 he resolved to remain at Kirksville to teach and build an institution. Until 1892 he worked alone with the help of his 4 sons. Patients came in numbers, and his practice yielded considerable money, as he trained other interested men, and a few women.
On October 30, 1894 the state of Missouri signed a charter for the American School of Osteopathy, to be located at Kirksville in Adair County. It was signed by: A. T. Still, Henry M. Still, Blanche Still, and Thomas A. Still. The first instructors were Dr. A. T. Still and Dr. William Smith (of Glasgow, Scotland).
The word osteopathy is compounded of two words - osteon (meaning bone) and pathos, pathine (to suffer). "It really means bone usage". Webster states that an osteopath is one who treats bodily ailments by manipulating bones, joints, and nerve centers.
In a lecture in College Hall in 1895 Dr. Still made these remarks: "I am from Virginia, but I came west at an early date, and am practically a western man. My father was a missionary...Those were the days of small things. My father's salary the first years was the munificent sum of $6."
Dr. Still died about 1917. Later the log cabin in which he was born (west of Jonesville) in Lee Co., was moved by his descendants to the campus of the American School of Osteopathy in Kirksville, MO.
The science of osteopathy is now recognized in many states of our nation. Lee Co., VA may well be proud of a native son who in the face of formidable opposition, conceived and established a new philosophy in the art of healing, which was lent impetus through his devout Christian life.
Sources: Autobiography of Dr. Andrew Taylor Still, Powell Valley News and Other news periodicals
Pages 28 to 33
Drayton S. Hale according to his marriage record was born in Russell Co., VA, January 25, 1839. His enlistment record into the Union Army states that he was born January 25, 1840 in Scott Co., VA, but in his application for pension he states that he was born January 25, 1839 in Russell Co., VA and moved to Scott Co. in 1845. The Bureau of Pensions states that Drayton S. Hale had been dropped from the roll because of death which occurred January 22, 1916, and that he was last paid December 1915.
His tombstone record gives his birth date January 25, 1839 and his death date January 22, 1915. We can safely say that his death date on his tombstone is not correct, and as you will see later, he could not have been born in 1840.
What kind of a man was Drayton Hale? And why do we wish to talk about him today? He lost his mother to illness very soon after he was born and she spent the rest of her life in an institution. He was reared by an Uncle, Jim Vermillion, who had the nickname of "Captain," which was passed on to Mr. Hale and most people later in his life thought he had been a Captain in the Army.
His teacher as an aunt, Ruth Dougherty, who was a teacher in Russell County, but she was persuaded by a Dr. Sallings to come to Scott County to teach his children and school was held in his home.
Mr. Hale attended this school, and being a very bright student and eager to learn, asked for and received extra instructions from his aunt.
After this school term was completed, school was held at night for some of the boys in the neighborhood at the home of his aunt, Ruth Dougherty. As times were very hard and he had to work on the farm, there was not time for day school.
He was a great reader and read on every subject from books, newspapers and magazines. One of the first books that he learned to read was the Bible and with the help of his aunt, Ruth Dougherty, acquired a vast knowledge of the scriptures at a very early age. He was also a great student of history and had studied the Constitution and debates of the great statesmen. Having been taught by his teacher and aunt to be a great patron of his country, and long before the union began to be dissolved, he like Daniel Webster believed in, "Liberty and union now and forever more, one and inseparable."
He was married in 1859 to Ruth C. Frazier by Rev. Charles C. Addington in the vicinity of Estillville, now Gate City, and to this union were born 8 children, some of which became quite famous. (1)
He became of legal voting age in 1860 prior to the big presidential election of 1860. If he had been born in 1840, he would not have been of legal voting age in 1860.
Mr. Hale was a strong union man and believed the Southern states should not be allowed to leave the union. He had followed very closely the speeches and writings of Candidate Lincoln, so he cast his first Presidential ballot in November of 1860 for Abraham Lincoln. As you know, Lincoln was not the popular candidate in these parts at that time at the polling place at Peter's Precinct in Scott Co. Since there were no ballots available for the Republican Party. Mr. Hale wrote his choice on a piece of paper and signed his name. There was no such thing as a secret ballot in those days and a vote was cited by the election officials "Drayton S. Hale for Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin." This created quite a stir on the election grounds. Later on that evening, a friend came and warned Mr. Hale that a group of the more impetuous men of the area were forming a neck-tie party for him and they had already obtained a rope. He eluded the neck-tie party and escaped into Kentucky that night.
In Kentucky, Mr. Hale began making preparations to bring his family to that state. He mentions in a letter to his cousin, C. D. Vermillion, that on May 27, 1861, when he returned to this area to bring his family back to Kentucky, that the sentiment about his politics had in no way cooled. If anything, it had been brooded upon by his absence. His journey back to Kentucky was punctuated by rifle balls.
In his personal recollection Hale states, "On my return to Kentucky I resumed working a crop of corn. As soon as the corn was laid by I got up a school on the Kentucky river some two miles from Whitesburg. The term of the school was three months. I taught the school about half out. When the political atmosphere got so high in the area, I soon determined to join the Union Army and assist in my humble way to settle the trouble."
He was sworn in at Camp Burns in Estill County, Kentucky for three years. After drilling with the Eighth Kentucky Infantry, he came down with the measles. After his recovery, he was sent to Harrodsburg and assigned to Company D, 19th Kentucky Infantry.
He served with the Union forces over three years, from November 1, 1861, to January 1, 1865, participating in the capture of Cumberland Gap, and in the retreat of General Morgan from Cumberland Gap in 1862. He served under Sherman during his seven days fighting before Vicksburg, and in the following month, January, 1863, was in the battle of Arkansas Post. At the second battle of Vicksburg, he was carried off the battlefield with typhoid fever and sent in a hospital boat to Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, MO.
After he was discharged from the Army, he, with his family, moved to the new state of Minnesota. He acquired a tract of 160 acres and was instrumental in organizing Todd County, where he served as a Commissioner of Revenue and Land Assessment. (2)
The end of the war could not immediately change people's way of thinking. Some bitterness and resentment were bound to linger and this, of course, led to the assassination of President Lincoln, of which Mr. Hale wrote about in a letter to his cousin, C. D. Vermillion, from Minnesota in May 1865.
The infernal devils killed our President. It will do them no good. I never felt so bad about it in my lief. Some have rejoiced at him being shot down. I know one thing, if any person abuses him before me I will hit him with an axe or anything else I can find. Any other man would do the same thing that has served in the Union Army. Poor old Abe, I feel so bad about this, Abraham Lincoln stands side by side with George Washington.
I have an honorable discharge from the United States Army and would not give it for their whole Confederacy. I want to tell those rebels if there was but ten acres left of the United States I would claim my part and help to defend it.
I can't forget some of those Hell Hounds of secession. I intend to go to Virginia some day, and some of the people who waylaid me on the road to shoot me four years ago the 27th of this month, had better look out. They had the advantage then, but Providence and time brings things on my side. (3)
After his return from Minnesota to Scott County in 1871, much of the bitterness and hatred had died out. No one in the community seemed to bear him any ill will. The "Hell Hounds", he wrote about from Minnesota never showed up, and he was left in peace to carry on his business as a farmer and miller.
He bought a farm on Copper Creek and built his first mill. This mill did not meet his needs, so he set about to look for a farm with a better mill site.
He later bought the farm which is now known as the "Hale Spring". This spring is an extremely large one, and having a rapid fall, produces tremendous water power. A dam was constructed, and a mill was built for grinding corn and bolted wheat flour. To this day, some of the foundation stones still stand. (4)
His farming and milling operations had proved to be very successful so he built a fine home with a stone foundation and two stone chimneys cut from limestone by two local stone masons. Stone was also cut and laid around the huge spring to a height of about four and one-half feet. The house and stone were torn down in the late thirties, moved to Kingsport, Tennessee, and rebuilt.
The mill on the spring branch did not meet the growing needs of the community. In 1897, he began to have a tunnel dug through the narrow part of the ridge that separates a bend in Copper Creek. This bend is known as the "dog's tail," because of its shape.
This tunnel was dug by men using only picks, shovels, and occasionally dynamite. The soil and rock were wheel barrowed to the outside. The tunnel is approximately three-hundred-thirty feet long, six and one-half to seven feet high, and six to seven feet wide.
It took about seven years to dig the tunnel and build the dam. In the meantime, carpenters had built the mill house, and workmen had installed the mills. This included a corn mill, a roller mill, and a saw mill. These mills were ready for service when the tunnel was completed, and they were in use up until about the time of Mr. Hale's death. After his death, the farm was divided and the mills were sold. (1)
He was instrumental in getting a post office established in his community in the 1800's, and it was named Hale's Mill in honor of Mr. Hale. This post office was in use until 1916 when it was discontinued and moved to Nickelsville. (4)
During this time he took an active part in political campaigns, especially Presidential campaigns, speaking at schools and churches in behalf of Garfield in 1880, Harrison in 1888, and in the election of McKinley in 1896. (5) He also did some writing on various subjects which he contributed to the local paper. One of these that merits mentioning is an obituary which he titled "A Tardy Obituary of Rev. John Strong." Rev. Strong died in 1852, but he did not write the obituary until 1910. He must have made a great impression on Mr. Hale, for in the obituary he says "as a boy of 12, I loved him, being so often in his home. His fine collection of books I had free access to, and I borrowed and returned." As further evidence of the deep impression left on him by the Rev. Strong, he mentions the last sermon he heard him preach, and the text he used. (6)
So a useful and well-lived life comes to an end. Mr. Hale passed away January 22, 1916, and was interred in the family cemetery on his farm. After the death of his wife in 1921, she was interred in the Mt. Pleasant Church cemetery. His body and those of other members of his family were exhumed and reinterred in the Mt. Pleasant Church cemetery.
Perhaps an appropriate close to this narrative would be this quote from the obituary of Rev. Strong by Mr. Hale:
"It is a matter of regret that in our country here, no records are kept and few epitaphs written above the sleeping dust of our ancestors. Who, if true as I have often thought, we need never be ashamed of. Thoughts of those examples of citizenship and christian examples could see us as I view them in memory's hall. It seems they would weep, even in that land where weeping is unknown. May they all rest in peace till the time comes when all that knew them will be gathered with them."
"Don't, don't let the pride of ancestry die out. It is a noble thing." (6)
Footnotes: (1) Interview with I. D. Vermillion, March 12, 1977; (2) Hale, Nathan Cabot: Gate City, Virginia Sesquicential Speech, August 17, 1965; (3) Letter written to C. D. Vermillion from Minnesota, May 6, 1865; (4) General Service Administration National Archives and Records Service; (5) Interview with Ezra Addington, March 12, 1977/ (6) Hale, D. S.: A Tardy Obituary of Rev. John Strong (Clipping from Gate City Herald, 1910).
Pages 34 to 37
In 1787 George Charles (Ger) and Christian Michael were married in Salisbury District, Rowan County, North Carolina.
Later research in the Orange Co., NC records disclose a power of attorney from George Charles of Russell Co., VA to Joseph Gibson of Guilford Co., NC to collect his part of the estate of "my father, Michael Charles, lately deceased of Orange Co., NC" dated July 22, 1813. Michael was mentioned as among Nicholite settlers from Maryland to Guilford Co., NC by Kenneth Carroll in his book about the Nicholites. Michael was naturalized in Rowan Co., NC in 1763, being of German birth.
In the 1790 census of Rowan Co., he and Christean had one son. The next record of George that has been found is in the 1810 census of Russell Co., VA, when he had a family consisting of four boys and a girl. In the 1820 census of Russell Co., he and his family are still there. Michael Charles, with a wife and two children, is living there also. Neither of the two families appear in the 1830 census of Russell Co.
In the section of Floyd Co., KY that later became Pike Co., Sally Charles, daughter of George, was married in 1818 to Harrison Harper. In 1820, Peggy Charles was married to John King and John Charles was married to Nancy Thompson. They were daughters and son of George Charles. Later census records list North Carolina as John's place of birth and Virginia as Nancy's. Pike County marriage records show that during the next few years, George Charles, Jr., David, Frederick, and Caty Charles were married. George Charles is named as father of all four. The first record of Michael in Pike County is in the 1828 tax list. George, Jr., is not on the Pike County tax list after 1826. He and his family are on the 1830 census of Russell County. In 1835, George Charles, Sr., married Charlotta Chaney, who was born in Russell Co., VA. Evidently Christean, his first wife, had died and this was a second marriage.
According to Pike County tax records, George, Sr. and his son, Frederick, remained on Raccoon Creek. But Michael, John and David established homes on Peter Creek. No record of children of John has been found though he was married twice. His will, filed 20 March 1870 in Pike County, does not mention any children but leaves his property to his second wife, Elizabeth, her daughter Keziah, and to George Charles, son of David Charles.
In the 1830 census of Pike County, Michael and his wife Elizabeth, had two sons and four daughters, no names given. The 1840 census of Pike County is not available to the writer at this time, but the 1850 census lists and gives names of five daughters only. Margaret married Richard Daniels on 28 October 1842; Pricey married William Coleman 19 June 1855; Elizabeth married Elijah Dotson 19 May 1853; Mary married Sam Jurley 7 May 1860, and Nancy married Keenis Morris 2 March 1865 - all in Pike County. There is a Pike County record of the death of David Charles, age 30, on 15 January 1857, naming Michael and Elizabeth as parents. Identification of their other son has not been made. It is possible that he married and established a home in some other area than Pike Co., KY, or Buchanan Co., VA.
David Charles married Sarah Cline on 8 December 1823 in Pike County and made their home in the Hurley section of Buchanan Co. Their children were: John, who married Sally McCoy; Moses, who married 1st Sally Hurley and 2nd Florence Coleman; George, married twice; Betty Stacy being his second wife; Frederick (Fed) married Martha Hurley; Mary married James Davis 9 January 1845; Nancy married Sam Kennedy 26 March 1846; Betsy Jane married Preacher Conley Blankenship; Peggy, who married Mose Mounts, lived in West Virginia and was killed by a train near War Eagle. David, Jr., married 1st Delilah Blankenship 4 March 1855 and 2nd Margaret Reed 4 August 1910; Moses, Frederick and David, Jr., are the only heads of household listed by the name of Charles int he 1860 census of Buchanan County.
David and Delilah's children were: Rebecca, who married Robert Hurley; Adam married Polly Jane Justus; Hiram married Mary Davis; Armedia married Epson Stacy; Arinda married Henry Stacy; Nancy married Ellis Stacy; Rosetta married Ellis Justus; Sarah (Sally) married Harrison Justus and Betty married Harrison Davis; Margaret (Peggy) married Asbury (Tom) Hurley. Two other children, Clarinda, twin of Arinda, and George, died in infancy.
Moses and his first wife, Sarah Hurley, were parents of the following children: Celia, who married Mahlon Francis; Harvey George who married 1st Peggy Charles, soon divorced, and 2nd Minnie Scott; Jonathan married Lena Coleman; Victoria married Larkin Justus; Clara married James Robinson Hurley; Causby married Joseph Preece; John Sherman married Lorena Justus; Mary married William Walker; Thomas married Sarah Elizabeth Dawson. Moses and his second wife, Florence Coleman, were parents of four children: Tilda, who married Clark Hylton, now lives near Jacksonville, FL; Ernest married Caroline Taylor; Lundy married Telia Taylor, sister of Caroline; Moses B. (Shack) who was married twice. His first wife was Martha Norman and his second wife was Lena McCoy.
Frederick and his wife Martha were parents of eight children: Cecilia (Sissy) born ca 1855, married Wes Griffey; Sarah, born ca 1858, married George W. Estep; Elizabeth, born ca 1860, married Jasper Canady; Armedia married George Lewis Allen; Polly married John C. McCoy; George Washington married Lydia Lester; Frederick, Jr., and Jonathan (Bud) married sisters, Leandra and Cora Hurley.
Frederick (son of George, Sr.) and his wife Elizabeth McColley, were parents of eleven children. Andrew Jackson, who married Eliza Ramey in Pike County in 1856, was the fifth son. They lived on Raccoon Creek in Pike County until 1870, when they and their eight children moved to Buchanan County, where five more children were born to them. Eliza had inherited land on the right fork of Rock Lick Creek from her parents, Pricy Elswick and James Madison Ramey, Sr., which became their home for many years, and later was known as Jack's Creek.
At the time Andy and Eliza moved to Buchanan Co., their children were as follows: Pricy, age 14; Greenville, age 12; David, age 10; Jack (Andrew Jackson, Jr.), age 8; twin, James Madison and Grederick, age 5 named for their grandfathers; John (Bud), age 3; Paris, age 1. The other five children born in Buchanan Co. were: Mary Gusta, Miles, Arminda Alifair (Sissy), Florence and Vicy Caroline.
As the large family matured, their father acquired substantial real estate, consisting of mountain farm and timber land with mineral rights. He operated a large general merchandise store near the mouth of Rock Lick Creek for many years and this was continued by his son, Green and his family. After most of the children were married, Andy and Eliza returned to Pike County, locating on a fertile farm at Millard, about ten miles from Pikeville.
Pricy Charles married John L. Elswick, son of Henderson and Catherine Looney Elswick. They built a home and lived for several years on Grassy Creek near Breaks Interstate Park, then sold it and went to Montana. They did not like living there so came back to Wurtland, near Ashland, KY. There they lived the remainder of their lives.
Greenville, or Green as he was known, married Jane Belcher, daughter of John S. and Mary Polly Elswick Belcher. They lived at the forks of Rock Lick Creek, where he operated the store established by his father, and acquired extensive real estate, consisting of virgin timber and coal lands, both in Buchanan Co. and West Virginia. After his family reached maturity, he and Jane moved to Pikeville, KY, where they spent the remainder of their lives. They are buried in the family cemetery at Millard.
David Montville married Nancy, daughter of Thompson and Sarah Hackney Elswick, and made their home on Rock Lick Creek. They acquired a sizeable estate of timber and coal lands, some owned jointly with his brother, Green. Their children were: Arthur, James, Stella, Ellis, Eliza, Albert, Mae, Hester and Dixie. During their later years, David and Nancy moved to Grundy, where they died and are buried.
Andrew Jackson, Jr., (Jack or J. C.) married Mary Jane, daughter of Miles and Vicy McClanahan Elswick. They lived for several years on Jack's Creek, but later bought the John Wesley Elswick property opposite the mouth of Conaway Creek where they built a home and established a small general merchandise store. Over the years, Jack bought mountain farm land as his brothers did, eventually owning several thousand acres of valuable coal and timber lands. Their children were: Cosby, Callie, Florence, Alice, an unnamed infant girl, Vicy, Rudolph, Louise, Maud, John, Clell, Hassel, Ethel and Opal. When it became known that the railroad would be constructed so close to their home, Jack and Mary Jane moved to Elkhorn City, KY, where they bought a home and had business interests. They are buried in the family cemetery at Millard, KY.
The twin son, Frederick, died during his first year but James, the other twin grew into manhood and married Rose Witten, member of the prominent Witten family, who were early settlers of Tazewell County. Jim served a term as sheriff of Buchanan County, during which he had the grave responsibility of carrying out a public hanging of a convicted murderer. Afterwards, for many years he was connected with the lumber industry, both in Virginia and North Carolina. He and Rose spent their later years in Gate City and are buried in that area. Their adopted daughter, Jean, and her family live in Kingsport, TN.
John Wallace, or Bud as he was called, married Florence Lambert and lived in the Rock Lick area until he was killed in an altercation on election day when about thirty years old. They were parents of two daughters, Mae and Pearl.
Paris, the seventh son, married Amanda Hibbitts and lived in Grundy. He had an important part in the development of the lumber industry in this area. He and Amanda were parents of five children: Mamie, Trixie, Fay, Mildred and Jack.
Gusta, the second daughter, after seven sons, married Thompson Elswick, brother of Mary Jane, wife of her brother Jack. They lived at the mouth of Rock Lick Creek where they operated a large store and later the post office. Their children were: Kenis, James, Elmer, Rose, Bud and Ethel.
Miles, the youngest son, married Hester Ann Waldron and lived in Grundy. He was a lumberman and well known for his work in that industry. Their children were: Llewellyn, Beulah, Ron Keith, Mavis, Miles, Jr., Roger and Doris. He and Hester are buried at Grundy.
Arminda Alifair, or Sissy as she was known, married Alex Ratliff and for many years lived on Rock Lick Creek near A. J. Charles' old home place. Later they moved to Elkhorn City, KY, where they owned and operated a general merchandise store for many years. Their children were: Clyde, Fern, Mavis and Homer. They are buried in the family cemetery at Millard, KY.
Eliza Florence married Luther Damron of Pike Co., KY, and lived on the Charles farm at Millard until her death in 1974. Luther had preceded her in death a few years earlier. They had two daughters: Gladys and Hazel, who married and reared their families on the home place at Millard and still live there.
Vicy Caroline died September 12, 1876, at the age of two years.
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