USA > North Carolina > Western North Carolina; a history, 1730-1913 > Part 29
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ESCAPE OF RAY AND ANDERSON. In the summer of 1885 several prisoners escaped from the county jail on Valley street in Asheville. They were J. P. Sluder, charged with the mur- der of L. C. Sluder; C. M. York, also charged with another murder; and E. W. Ray and W. A. Anderson of Mitchell county, who had been convicted in Caldwell county-Ander- son of murder and Ray of manslaughter, for the killing of three men in a struggle for the possession of a mica mine in Mitchell county. The last two men were members of prom- inent families. On the night of July 3, 1885, these men with an ax broke a hole in the brick wall of the jail, and escaped. They had forced the sheriff, the late J. R. Rich, and J. D. Henderson, the jailor, into the cage in which the prisoners were confined, when they were tied and gagged. The military company was called out to recapture the prisoners, but with- W. N. C .- 20
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out result. Proceedings were instituted against Rich and Henderson for suffering these escapes, but both were acquitted in January, 1886.
PHENOMENA NOTED AND EXPLAINED. In his "Speeches and Writings" (Raleigh, 1877), Gen. Thomas L. Clingman has described and explained many phenomena, among which was the meteor of 1860 (p. 53), which was originally published in Appleton's Journal, January 7, 1871; the falling of several destructive water-spouts in Macon and Jackson counties (p. 68) on the 15th of June, 1876; and what he terms "low volcanic action" in the mountains of Haywood, at the head of Fines creek, which he visited in 1848 and 1851, and which had caused "cracks in the solid granite . . chasms, none of them above four feet in width, generally extending north and south" where large trees had been thrown down, hillocks on which saplings grew obliquely to the horizon, showing they had attained some size before the hillocks were elevated. He again visited this place in 1867, when he saw evidences of further disturbances, a large "oak tree of great age and four or five feet in diameter having been split open from root to top and thrown down so that the two halves lay several feet apart" (p. 78 et seq.). This was first published in the National Intelligencer of November 15, 1848.
A CRIME NECESSITATING LEGISLATION. It was on the Cher- okee county boundary line that on the 11th day of July, 1892, William Hall shot and killed Andrew Bryson. He stood on the North Carolina side of the boundary line between the two States and, shooting across that line, killed Bryson while he was in Tennessee. William Hall and John Dickey were tried with Hall as accessories before the fact, and all were convicted of murder at the spring term of the Superior court of Cherokee county in 1893. But the Supreme court granted a new trial at the February term of 189411 on the ground that Hall could not be guilty of homicide in Tennessee. This decision was immediately followed by efforts on the part of the State of Tennessee to extradite the defendants under the act of Con- gress, but the Supreme court of North Carolina held on habeas corpus proceedings 12 that no one can be alleged to have fled from the justice of a State in whose domain he has never been corporeally present since the commission of the crime. The prisoners were discharged and have never been tried again in
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North Carolina. These decisions were followed by remedial legislation embodied in the Acts of 1895, Chapter 169, making similar homicides crimes in North Carolina as well as in Ten- nessee.
THE EMMA BURGLARY. Following are the facts of a sensa- tional burglary which occurred in Buncombe county Febru- ary 8, 1901, as taken from the case of the State v. Foster, 129 N. C. Reports, p. 704:
"Indictment against Ben Foster, R. S. Gates, Harry Mills and Frank Johnston, heard by Judge Frederick Moore and a jury, at June (Special) Term, 1901, of the Superior Court of Buncombe County. From a ver- dict of guilty and judgment thereon, the defendants appealed.
"The facts are substantially as follows :
"D. J. McClelland was the owner of a store at a place called 'Emma', a few miles from the city of Asheville, in the county of Buncombe. Samuel H. Alexander is his clerk, and had been for more than three years boarding in the family of McClelland and sleeping in the store. There was a room in said store building fitted up and furnished with a bed and other furniture as a sleeping apartment, in which said Alexander kept his trunk and other belongings, and slept there, and had done so regularly for three years or more. On the night of the 8th of February, 1901, he closed and fastened all the windows and outer doors of said store building, and between eight and nine o'clock he went into his bed- room, but, thinking some customer might come, and not being ready to retire, he left a lamp burning in the store-room. There was a partition wall between his sleeping-room and the store-room, in which there was a doorway and a shutter, but the shutter was rarely ever closed and was not closed that night. Soon after he went into his sleeping room, he heard a noise at one of the outer doors of the store building, and, think- ing it was some one wanting to trade, he went to the door and asked who was there. Some one answered 'We want to come in; we want some coffee and flour.' He then took down the bar used in securing the door, unlocked the same, and when he had opened the door about twelve inches, still having the knob in his hand, two men forced the door open, rushed in the house, covered him with pistols, told him to hold up his hands, that they had come for business. With the pistols still drawn upon him, they marched him into his bed-room, where they searched him and the things he had in his room, taking his pistol and other things. They then carried him into the store-room and made an effort to break into the postoffice department, there being a postoffice kept there. But not succeeding readily in getting into this, they abandoned it for the present, saying they supposed there was nothing in it, except postage stamps, and they would attend to them later. They then turned their attention to an iron safe and compelled him to assist in opening it, one of them still holding his pistol on him. After the safe was open and one of them going through it, taking what money and other valuables he found, a cat made a noise in the back part of the store, and the man
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with the pistol bearing on him turned his attention to that; and, as he did so, Alexander seized his own pistol they had taken from his room and which the man who was robbing the safe had laid on the end of the counter, and shot the man robbing the safe, and also shot the other man, but, in the meantime, the man whose attention had been attracted by the cat shot Alexander. They were all badly shot, but none of them died."
This testimony was that of Alexander alone, neither prisoner going on the stand. Henry Mills and R. S. Gates, indicted as being present, aiding and abetting, were tried with Ben Foster and Frank Johnston, charged as principals. All were convicted of burglary in the first degree. The judgment was sustained and Ben Foster and Frank Johnston were hanged at Asheville, the governor having commuted the sentence of the two others to life imprisonment in the penitentiary.
NANCY HANKS TRADITION. For a hundred years a tradi- tion has persisted in these mountains to the effect that between 1803 and 1808 Abraham Enloe came from Rutherford county and settled, first on Soco creek, and afterwards on Ocona Lufty, about seven miles from Whittier, in what is now Swain county; that he brought with his family a girl whose name was Nancy Hanks; that this girl lived in Enloe's family till after his daughter Nancy ran away with and married a man named Thompson, from Hardin county, Ky. An inti- macy had grown up between Nancy Hanks and Abraham Enloe, and a son was born to her, which caused Enloe's wife, whose maiden name had been Edgerton, to suspect that her husband was the father of Nancy's child. Soon after the birth of this child, the tradition relates, Mrs. Nancy Thomp- son came to visit her parents and on her return to Kentucky or Tennessee took Nancy Hanks and her son with her, much to Mrs. Enloe's relief. Abraham Enloe is said to have been a large, tall, dark man, a horse and slave trader, 14 a justice of the peace and the leading man in his community. Thus far the tradition as given above is supported by such repu- table citizens as the following, most of whom are now dead: Col. Allen T. Davidson, whose sister Celia married into the Enloe family, Captain James W. Terrell, the late Epp Ever- ett of Bryson City, Phillip Dills of Dillsborough, Abraham Battle of Haywood, Wm. H. Conley of Haywood, Judge Gil- more of Fort Worth, Texas, H. J. Beck of Ocona Lufty, D. K.
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Collins of Bryson City, Col. W. H. Thomas and the late John D. Mingus, son-in-law of Abraham Enloe.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN TELLS OF HIS PARENTAGE. That the child so born to Nancy Hanks on Ocona Lufty was Abraham Lincoln is supported by the alleged statements that in the fall of 1861 a young man named Davis, of Rutherford, had, during the fifties, settled near Springfield, Ill., where he became intimate with Abraham Lincoln and "in a private and confidential talk which he had with Mr. Lincoln, the latter told him that he was of Southern extraction; that his right name was, or ought to have been, Enloe, but that he had always gone by the name of his step-father."14 After the Civil War a man representing himself as a son of Mrs. Nancy Thompson, a daughter of Abraham Enloe of Ocona Lufty, called on the late Col. Allen T. Davidson, a lawyer, in his office in Asheville, and told him that President Lincoln had appointed him Indian agent or to some other office in the Indian service "because he (Lincoln) was under some great obligation to Thompson's mother, and desired to aid her, and at her request he made her son Indian agent." 15 Col. Davidson as a lawyer had settled the Abraham Enloe estate, had heard of this tradition all his life and had no doubt as to its truth. There is another version to the effect that the child Abraham was not born till after his mother had reached Kentucky and also that Felix Walker, then congressman from the mountain district, aided Nancy Hanks in getting to Ten- nessee, where Thompson lived.
"TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION." The above facts or statements have been taken from a small book of the name given, by James H. Cathey, once a member of the North Carolina legislature, and a resident of Jackson county. It was published in 1899. The various statements upon which the tradition was based are set forth in detail, accompanied by short biographies of each person named. No one can read these accounts without being impressed with their air of truthfulness.
EVIDENCE SUSTAINING THE ENLOE PARENTAGE. The late Captain James W. Terrell refers to an article in Bledsoe's Re- view "in which the writer gives an account of a difficulty between Mr. Lincoln's reputed father and a man named Enloe" (p. 47) and states, as one of the reasons for sending
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Nancy Hanks to Kentucky, the fact that at that time some of the Enloe kindred were living there (p. 49). On page 54, a Judge Gilmore, living then within three miles of Fort Worth, Texas, told Joseph A. Collins of Clyde, Haywood county, North Carolina, that he knew Nancy Hanks before she was married, and that she then had a child she called Abraham; that she afterwards married a man by the name of Lincoln, a whiskey distiller, and very poor, and that they lived in a small house. 16 Col. T. G. C. Davis of St. Louis, Mo., a native of Kentucky, a cousin of President Jefferson Davis, a lawyer who once practiced law with Mr. Lincoln in Illinois, is quoted as saying that he knew the mother of Lincoln; that he was raised in the same neighborhood; and that it was generally understood, without question, in that neighborhood, that Lincoln, the man that married the Pres- ident's mother, was not the father of the President, but that his father's name was Enloe" (p. 78). The foregoing are the most important facts alleged; but there is one statement, on page 55, to the effect that a man named Wells visited the Enloe home while Nancy Hanks was there and witnessed a disagreement or coolness between Enloe and his wife on her account. This man said he had gone there while selling tin- ware and buying furs, feathers and ginseng for William John- ston of Waynesville. This could not have been true, as Wil- liam Johnston did not emigrate from Ireland to Charleston till 1818. Soon after the appearance of this book the writer visited Wesley Enloe at his home on Ocona Lufty for the pur- pose of learning what he could of his connection with Abraham Lincoln; but, like the correspondent of the Charlotte Observer of September 17, 1893 (quoted on pages 63 et seq.), I did not observe any likeness between him and the pictures of Mr. Lincoln which I had seen, as Mr. Enloe was blue eyed and florid. He also stated to me that he had never heard his father's name mentioned in his family in connection with Abraham Lincoln's, just as he stated to that correspondent, on page 70.
CLARK W. THOMPSON. Col. Davidson was a man of such unquestioned integrity that any statement from him is worthy of belief; and in the interest of truth a letter was written to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Washington, on March 8, 1913, asking "whether a man named Thompson was ever
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appointed by President Lincoln to some position in the Indian Service," and on the 25th of the same month, Hon. F. H. Abbott, acting commissioner, wrote as follows: ".
. You are advised that the records show that Clark W. Thompson, of Minnesota, was nominated by President Lincoln to be Su- perintendent of Indian Affairs for the northern superintendency on March 26, 1861, and his appointment was confirmed by the Senate on the following day. There is nothing in the rec- ord to show reasons influencing this appointment. . ." Of course this does not prove that Clark W. Thompson was a son of Mrs. Nancy Enloe Thompson, and is merely given for what it may be worth. In "The Child That Toileth Not," Major Dawley, its author, says (p. 271): "Where Mingus creek joins Ocona Lufty, in a broad bottom, is an old, partially demolished log-house, used as a barn, in which tradition says that Nancy Hanks, the mother of Lincoln, served as a house girl," etc.
THE NANCY HANKS HISTORY. As opposed to this tradi- tional evidence we have the voluminous history of Nickolay and Hay, Mr. Lincoln's secretaries, called "Abraham Lin- coln," in which the fact that the immortal President's mother was married to Thomas Lincoln June 12, 1806, by Rev. Jesse Head, at Beechland, near Elizabethton, Washington county, Ky., and a copy of his marriage bond for fifty pounds, as was then required by the laws of Kentucky, is set forth in full, with Richard Barry as surety. In addition to this, there was published by Doubleday & McClure Co., New York, in 1899, by Carolina Hanks Hitchcock, "Nancy Hanks, the Story of Abraham Lincoln's Mother," giving in detail the facts of her birth in Virginia, her removal to Kentucky with her family, and her marriage to Thomas Lincoln on the date above given, and many other facts which, it would seem, place this date beyond all doubt. Col. Henry Watterson, in an address, presenting the Speed statue of Lincoln to the State of Ken- tucky and the Nation, November 8, 1911, said: "Let me speak with some particularity and the authority of fact, tardily but conclusively ascertained, touching the . . maternity of Abraham Lincoln. Few passages of history have been so greatly misrepresented and misconceived. Some confusion was made by his own mistake as to the marriage of his father and mother, which had not been
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celebrated in Hardin county, but in Washington county, Kentucky, the absence of any marriage papers in the old court house at Elizabethton, the county seat of Hardin county, leading to the notion that there had never been any marriage at all. It is easy to conceive that such a discrepancy might give occasion for any amount and all sorts of partisan falsifi- cation, the distorted stories winning popular belief among the credulous and inflamed. Lincoln himself died without surely knowing that he was born in honest wedlock and came from an ancestry upon both sides of which he had no reason to be ashamed. For a long time a cloud hung over the name of Nancy Hanks, the mother of Abraham Lincoln. Persistent and intelligent research has brought about a vindication in every way complete. It has been clearly established that as the ward of a decent family she lived a happy and indus- trious girl until she was twenty-three years of age, when Thomas Lincoln, who had learned his carpenter's trade of one of her uncles, married her, June 12, 1806. The entire record is in existence and intact. The marriage bond to the amount of 50 pounds . was duly recorded seven days before the wedding, which was solemnized as became well-to-do folk in those days. The uncle and aunt gave an 'infare', to which the neighboring countryside was invited. Dr. Christopher Columbus Graham, one of the best known and most highly respected of Kentuckians, before his death in 1885, wrote at my request his remembrances of that festi- val and testified to this before a notary public in the ninety- sixth year of his age." (The affidavit is set forth in full.) 17
WHY THE TRADITION PERSISTS. After reading the foregoing article, a feeling of indignation naturally arises that anyone should longer doubt or discuss the legitimacy of the Great Emancipator, and it was that feeling which led to an exami- nation of the "authority of fact tardily but conclusively ascer- tained touching the maternity of Abraham Lincoln." Nat- urally, too, the story was ascribed to "partisan falsification." Nicolay and Hay's account seemed to fix the date of the mar- riage as in June, 1806, since the marriage bond is dated on June 10th; and Miss Tarbell has settled the exact date as of June 12th of that year. So far, so good. But Miss Tarbell states (Vol. I, 7) that Mrs. Caroline Hanks Hitchcock had compiled the genealogy of the Hanks family, which, "though
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not yet printed, has fortunately cleared up the mystery of her birth." This little book, now out of print, 18 was obtained after great trouble, and what was found? That instead of clearing up the mystery of Nancy Hanks' birth, Mrs. Hitch- cock has only made confusion worse confounded. In fact, she shows that Thomas Lincoln married an altogether differ- ent Nancy Hanks from the one the President remembered, the one Dennis Hanks knew, and the one Herndon has so particularly described in his carefully prepared work on the origin of Abraham Lincoln. She also discredits every sub- sequent statement by trying to show that Thomas Lincoln was not "the shiftless character" he has been represented as being (p. 54). After that, one naturally looks with suspi- cion upon every statement of fact in the little volume.
THE LINEAGE OF LINCOLN'S REAL MOTHER. Almost imme- diately after the death of Mr. Lincoln his former law partner, Wm. H. Herndon, Esq., set out to interview every member of the Lincoln and Hanks families then living. He kept up this investigation for years. What did Abraham Lincoln himself have to say as to who his mother was? Herndon says (p. 3) that in 1850, while they were in a buggy together, going to Menard county court, Lincoln told him that his mother "was the daughter of Lucy Hanks and a well-bred but obscure Virginia farmer." Who that farmer was is not stated; but Lucy Hanks, after the birth of Nancy, married a man named Henry Sparrow, and Nicolay and Hay say that Nancy Hanks was sometimes called Nancy Sparrow (Vol. I, p. 7). Hern- don also says with exactness (p. 10) that "Nancy Hanks, the mother of the President, at a very early age, was taken from her mother Lucy-afterwards married to Henry Sparrow- and sent to live with her aunt and uncle, Thomas and Betsy Sparrow. Under this same roof the irrepressible and cheer- ful waif, Dennis Hanks, also found shelter." Now who was Dennis Hanks? He was the illegitimate son of Nancy Hanks and Friend. Which Nancy Hanks was this? The sister of Lucy Hanks (p. 10). Miss Tarbell calls him Dennis Friend (pp. 14 and 25) and says misfortune had made him an inmate of Thomas Lincoln's Indiana home.
THE LINEAGE OF MRS. HITCHCOCK'S NANCY HANKS. Her father was Joseph Hanks and her mother Nancy Shipley, and was born February 5, 1784, (p. 25) and came with her parents
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from Virginia to Kentucky about 1789, and settled near Eliza- bethton in what is now Nelson county (p. 40). Her father died January 9, 1793, and his will was probated May 14, 1793, by which her brother Joseph got all her parents' land and she herself got a pied heifer, although there were eight children- Joseph Hanks, Sr.'s widow and his son William being executors (pp. 43-45). Miss Tarbell adopts the same lineage for her Nancy (p. 8), and they both place this Nancy in the home of Lucy Shipley, wife of Richard Berry, when Nancy was nine years old.
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLN'S REAL MOTHER. Herndon says (p. 10) that "at the time of her marriage to Thomas Lincoln, Nancy was in her 23d year. She was above the ordinary height in stature, weighed about 130 pounds, was slenderly built, and had much the appearance of one inclined to consumption. Her skin was dark; hair dark brown; eyes gray and small; forehead prominent; face sharp and angular, with a marked expression of melancholy which fixed itself in the memory of everyone who ever saw or knew her. . "
PHYSICAL FEATURES OF MRS. HITCHCOCK'S NANCY. "Bright, scintillating, noted for her keen wit and repartee, she had withal a loving heart," is Mrs. Hitchcock's (p. 51) notion of Nancy Hanks' manner. "Traditions of Nancy Hanks' appearance at this time [of her marriage] all agree in calling her a beautiful girl. She is said to have been of medium height, weighing about 130 pounds (p. 59), light hair, beauti- ful eyes, a sweet, sensitive mouth, and a kindly and gentle manner." In another place (p. 73) she says that when Nancy Hanks went to her cousins', Frank and Ned Berry, the legend is that "her cheerful disposition and active habits were a dower to those pioneers." Frank and Ned were sons of Richard Berry.
HERNDON'S THOMAS LINCOLN. "Thomas was roving and shiftless. He was proverbially slow of movement, mentally and physically; was careless, inert and dull. He had a liking for jokes and stories. At the time of his marriage to Nancy Hanks he could neither read nor write (p. 8). He was a carpenter by trade, and essayed farming, too; but in this, as in almost every other undertaking, he was singularly unsuccessful. He was placed in possession
1
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of several tracts of land at different times in his life, but was never able to pay for a single one of them" (p. 9). He hunted for game only when driven to do so by hunger (p. 29).
MRS. HITCHCOCK'S THOMAS LINCOLN. "Thomas Lincoln had been forced to shift for himself in a young and undevel- oped country (p. 56). He had no bad habits, was temper- ate and a church-goer" (p. 54). She quotes an affidavit of Dr. C. C. Graham to the effect that he was present at the marriage of Thomas Lincoln, but he says nothing more of him, except that he had one feather bed, and when the doctor was there, Thomas and his wife slept on the floor. This same Dr. Graham is quoted as saying that it is untrue that Thomas kept his family in a doorless and windowless house. But Miss Tarbell (p. 19) and Herndon (p. 18) say that Thomas Lincoln kept his family in a "half-face camp" for a year, and that after the cabin was built it had but one room and a loft, with no window, door or floor; not even the traditional deer-skin hung before the exit; there was no oiled paper over. the opening for light; there was no puncheon floor on the ground . and there were few families, even in that day who were forced to practice more make-shifts to get a living"; and that sometimes the only food on the table was potatoes (p. 20). And yet Mrs. Hitchcock says he was not shiftless!
ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND HIS PARENTS. Mr. Herndon says (p. 1) that if Mr. Lincoln ever mentioned the subject of his parents at all it was with great reluctance and with sig- nificant reserve. "There was something about his origin he never cared to dwell upon." To a Mr. Scripps of the Chi- cago Tribune, in 1860, Mr. Lincoln communicated some facts concerning his ancestry which he did not wish to have pub- lished then and which Scripps never revealed to anyone" (p. 2). In the record of his family which Mr. Lincoln gave to Jesse W. Fell, he does not even give his mother's maiden name; but says that she came "of a family of the name of Hanks." (Footnote on page 3). He gives but three lines to his mother and nearly a page to the Lincolns. And "Mr. Lincoln himself said to me in 1851 that whatever might be said of his parents and however unpromising the early surroundings of his mother may have been, she was highly intellectual by nature, had a strong memory, acute
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