The Ghosts of Christmases Past

The Ghosts of Christmases Past 

I am haunted by the ghosts of Christmases past.   The Christmases of my mother, Ruth.  Mama loved Christmas.  She wanted the most exciting experience for her two little girls.  I can remember coming down the hall on Christmas morning, rounding the corner to find half of the living room floor covered in beautiful, shiny, packages way out into the center of the room from the tree.  Two bicycles over to the side, a babydoll in a tiny rocking chair, stockings bulging on the mantle.  Of course our house was a small house, a typical “30s bungalow.”  But by today’s standards, it was very small, so it didn’t take a lot to “cover half the living room floor.”  Still, to a child’s wide open eyes, it was   splendorous! 
(Did I just make up a new word?  I tend to do that.)

Memories of Christmases Past

We were not wealthy.  We were ordinary, average.  But my mother insisted we have a “big” Christmas.  It didn’t matter about the money, how much a present had cost.  It was about having many, many, many beautiful packages to open.  This was before the days of the ubiquitous bags or sacs used today to wrap gifts.  Bags - you can just throw something in, stuff in a piece of tissue paper, stick on a pre-made bow, and you are through.  Back in the day, everything had to be put in a box, then wrapped with beautiful paper being sure to fold under the ends properly to make a neat package, then bringing around twice (once in each direction) a piece of shiny ribbon, and finally tying the finest bow you could muster!  It took time, and effort, some slight talent, but mostly it took    . . .   love!  

This practice endured until we were grown.  A wonderful morning, sitting in a circle around the room, one by one we went through our stockings.  We took turns around the circle and you had to observe as each one pulled something out of their stocking, laughing till our sides hurt.  It was always something fun, a joke, a game, something useful or sometimes a tiny box so small it might have been lost under the tree with the big boxes, holding a lovely piece of jewelry.  Sometimes it was so large it had to stand on the floor  under the stocking.  Cost was the defining thing here – usually stocking stuffers were cheap, but fun! 

Note:   DEER WITH CANDLE
bottom right

One time my brother-in-law gave me a piece of wire sculpture shaped like a deer with a candle, almost three feet tall!  It fit the requirements –  he found it on sale, so it was “cheap,” it was fun, and he thought I would like it.  I did and it resides in a place of honor in my living room until this day.  Our stocking stuffers became such a hit that they almost took precedence over the “real” gifts, tucked under the tree.  They finally  would not fit into the stockings at all, so we had to resort to placing a basket, a box, or something large underneath  each stocking to hold the overflow!  They finally evolved their own name – stuffin stockers.  We still call them that today.

My sister Billie and I were married the same year, she in February, and me in October.  So that year we both celebrated Christmas with new husbands.  These two husbands both came from familes where there was not much made of Christmas day in the home.  My husband’s mother and step-father got up on Christmas day, they all exchanged one gift with each other, and then went off to his big family’s home up country to hunt.  My sister’s husband’s family got up on Christmas day and took off on a trip to Florida – every year – not much going on at that home.   

I can see them now, their first Christmas with the Haywoods, Harvey and Jan both sitting on the piano bench watching the  "theater"  taking place before them with their eyes wide open and their mouths

dropping!  There was “the spectacle of the stockings,” the never-ending parade of gifts from under the tree passed out by My Dad Bill (you would have met him before,) {the job later was passed to my niece Cathy in her little red elf’s hat,} and then the banquet which followed all that.  Neither one of those men had ever experienced anything like that in their whole lives.  Talk about   shock and awe!!

We got up and had coffee and finger foods while we explored our stockings.  Then while everyone “played” with whatever they had, the women adjourned to the kitchen to get the food started.  When everything was ready, the turkey came out of the oven (it had been cooking from early morning) and

Billie working hard

Dinner is Ready!

the dressing was put in, the broccoli and sweet potatoes awaiting their turn. The gravy was made, the collards heated up, and wonderful smells began to drift through the house.  The ladies returned to the group, and we began in earnest opening the “real” gifts.  This also went one at a time around the circle so that everyone could see what everyone else got – with descriptions and explanations!.  This always provoked much laughing and joking (read: ridicule!)

Hiding from the chaos

Doggies love Christmas too!

Absolute Chaos-we LOVE it

And then the dinner!  The dinner menu was set in stone and was NEVER changed.  We wanted what we wanted, and we didn’t want any “new-fangled” greenbean casserole, or any current experimental “fad” de jour.  Our menu was tried and trusted.  It had been that way for as long as we could remember.  It would stay that way, and it has persevered even until this very day.  There would be turkey, of course, with tons and tons of gravy to go on the Cornbread-Sage dressing (a recipe we know is over 100 years old – never changed,) candied sweet potatoes, collards, perhaps broccoli with cheese sauce, cranberry sauce (no lemon or orange was added so that the true taste of the berries shown brightly,) fruit salad (ambrosia) always cut up by My Dad Bill until it was finally taken over in later years by Billie’s husband, Jan.  Then there were the deserts: an assortment of cookies, a pecan pie, a variety of cakes, Orange Cake, Applesauce Cake, Chocolate layer cake, Coconut cake.  These were allowed to be changed, alternated.

Our dressing recipe went back as far as anyone could remember.  It came from my grandmother Blanche Arant Parker, Ruth’s mother.  She had a German background on one side, and a Welsh one on the other.  As I think about it, it  could have come down from the English Parker side!  So we don’t know which one developed the Cornbread-Sage dressing recipe.  It was different from most in that it was made from 4 kinds of bread – primarily cornbread, but also biscuits, saltine crackers, and some loaf bread.  It had onion, green pepper, celery, and pimentos.  It had two eggs beaten with some of the broth used to moisten it.  It then had lots of broth, a lot of sage, salt and pepper, and two chopped boiled eggs.     Nobody touches this recipe!  

(If you are interested,  you can find this recipe on the INFO page,  see tab at top.)

Aaron 2013

Times have passed.  Those are ghost memories of a time gone by.  Mama is gone,  Daddy is gone.  The two young husbands are now gone.  There is no one to remember those Christmases except my sister and me.  Those memories are now overshadowed by memories of Christmases  present.  Our once large circle has reduced to only five of us – my sister and myself, her daughter Cathy and husband Wally, and their son Aaron (who now passes out the gifts, but, being a   teenager,  refuses to wear the elf  hat!)  
Yes, we do still have the little  red elf hat!

Cathy and Wally

We have all agreed on new rules:  The stocking stuffers have been restricted to only 1 or 2 each to each person.  (My sister and I, with memories in our heads of Christmases past find it hard to abide by this rule, so we sneak more in with no names on them of who they are from!  It’s our little revolt!)  Gifts under the tree are restricted 

Billie and Me

also to one big and possibly two little ones.  I tend to break this rule also because I do a lot of crafting, making jewelry, etc.  So I slip them in under the premise that  they don’t count, they didn’t cost anything! 
                                                              I made them!     

I know all the excuses:  things cost so much today, money is always short (Heaven knows I know all about that one!)  everyone buys what they want when they want it (ergo:  they already have everything!)  It all makes sense.  I understand the logic.

But Ruth wouldn’t have understood.  And you would have   never  held her down!  She would have had her magnificent Christmas. 

I’m with Ruth !       If only in my head 
  (full of Ghost Memories of Christmases Past)

Remember

Memories of Christmases Past

and

Merry Christmas

There was a Feud in the County .......Part 3

                              The Feud

In my first blog about this story,  (Dec  4th)  I related the beginning of a tragic story in my family, the story of the murder of Robert Parker and how it affected the Parker Family down to this day.  This blog will continue that story. At the end of Part 1, Frank Stack had shot and killed Robert Parker (1889) and had been captured and jailed.  At the beginning of Part 2 (blog Dec 11th), Stack was abducted out of his jail cell by a masked mob, taken to a nearby train trestle, and was lynched. This lynching was followed up in print until current times by newspapermen in Burke County.  There was a continuing interest.  Part 3 is about the feud which resulted from these tragic events and how they affected the family down through the following years.

I hope you enjoy                                       Part 3

After the lynching of Frank Stack, things began happening in Union County.  Small incidents at first, damages around the farms of the Parkers, as well as the Smiths, Nelsons, and others who had been the defense witnesses at the time of the murder  of Lee Stack in 1879.  According to Miles Garrison in his book, Murder, Mayhem, and Mischief in Lancaster, Kershaw, and Chesterfield Counties, it then escalated to larger, more troubling problems.  Crops were burned.  Animals were killed.  A barn was burned.  It turned very serious and lives were endangered. ²⁸

Amos C. Parker (8 Jun 1849 – 29 Aug 1925) a brother of Robert Parker, and Grandfather of my mother Ruth Parker, who had a large family of eleven in Union County,²⁹ decided that to protect his children from this deadly violence, he had to move away.

Friday, April 11, 1890, THE CHARLOTTE DEMOCRAT (Mecklenburg County, NC)    Abstract

-Some one (sic) set fire to the barn of Amos C. PARKER, of Buford township, last night. All the contents, which were two tons of fertilizer, a wagon or two, and a considerable amount of corn, fodder, etc., were entirely consumed

Thursday, April 24, 1890, MONROE ENQUIRER AND EXPRESS (Union County, NC)  Abstract

Mr. Amos PARKER has sold his farm, consisting of about 300 acres, lying in Buford township... Mr. Parker will go west.  (Author’s note: He went to Reidsville, GA)

So in the early part of 1890s the whole clan packed up and moved to Reidsville, Tattnall Co., Georgia and nearby Claxton, Evans Co., Georgia.³⁰     Many of the members of the other families targeted by the violence decided to go with them.  Cindy Brown reports in her history of her Nelson family³¹ that one woman was very far along in her pregnancy, and could not have withstood the rough wagon trip to Georgia.  So she was floated all the way by raft on connecting waterways!

It is unknown if my Grandfather Harvey Madison Parker (2 Jun 1871 – 23 Apr 1946,) second child, oldest son of Amos, father of Ruth, went with the group or not.  He was about 25 years old

Maggie's Grave

at this time, and courting Blanche Elizabeth Arant.  It is thought that he did not go then.  He married Blanche in 1896 and they had baby Maggie in 1897, but Maggie died within a month and is buried in the Walter’s family cemetery (Blanche’s mother was a Walters) in Union Co. 

Perhaps they decided to get away from the sad circumstances, and go join the family later in Reidsville.  For on 21 Aug 1898 they were in Reidsville when their second child, Ruth, my mother, was born, and still there in 1901 when son Dwight was born.  But they were back in Charlotte in 1903 when Floyd came along.  In 1905 they were in Reidsville again when Walter was born, but back in Charlotte in 1908 when Vera was born.  This coincides with Ruth’s remembrance of riding the train from Reidsville when she was about 10 years old.  After that they stayed put.  But from then on they were isolated from the rest of their Parker family.

It is very strange and interesting that a feud begun in 1879 affected the Parkers who had remained in North Carolina so much down to current times.  There were no Parker aunts or uncles, no cousins.  Harvey M.’s family was completely cut off from all their relatives, and no connection was maintained in later years.  The children of Harvey M. and Blanche hardly knew about their cousins in Georgia and the next generation didn’t even know the story of why!

The final result of moving to get away from the violence of the feud produced some interesting results.  Amos was a well-respected man in his new home. He owned over 700 acres of land and had a sawmill business, a planing mill, and a store which were all very profitable.  Harvey Madison, is noted in the 1900 U. S. Census as working in the mill and also the store.  Amos was a founder of his Claxton First Methodist church in 1892, and provided the lumber to build the building.  There are several stained glass windows and other memorials to the Parkers there.  He also owned Parker Springs which was a recreational park around a lake, with a pavilion, camp houses and boats.  Picnicking, hiking, and swimming were very popular.  School groups and political rallies met there.  By 1920 Amos had moved to nearby Claxton, Ga. where several other family members already lived. ³²

In 1927 Amos’ grandson Albert (son of Ira David, son of Amos) at age 11, went to work sweeping floors and doing chores for an Italian baker in Claxton who had started The Claxton Bakery in 1910.³³   In 1945 when he was 29 years old, Albert bought the bakery from Savino Tos who was retiring.  He changed the name from The Claxton Bakery to the Claxton Fruitcake Company and developed the famous Claxton Fruitcake which is now known and sold all over the world.³⁴

         


     *               
I think this is a fitting climax to this tragic story.  A story of overcoming, of hope and success, with a yummy sweet prize at the end.  If you want to know more about the marvelous Claxton story, you can find it at their website.  Paste this address into your search box: https://www.claxtonfruitcakecompany.com.  

I hope you have enjoyed my story of The Feud.  Let me know what you think by putting a note in the “Comment” box.

In Part 1, I promised you some interesting sidebar information on this story:

       1.   The judge for Robert’s trial in 1879 was Ralph P. Bruxton from Fayetteville, NC.  He was the same judge who presided over the trial of Tom Dula ( of Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley fame) several years earlier in 1866.

   2.  When Frank Stack was lynched, Sam Ervin was his lawyer.  There was a rumor that Ervin, being advised that the lynching was happening, was sent to the wrong train trestle so that he wouldn’t arrive in time.  Ervin, of course, went on to prominence in the US Congress.

  3.  Robert Parker’s daughter Della Jane married Frank Coulter.  He was a direct descendant of Catherine Rosanna Boone, a first cousin of Daniel Boone.  Their fathers were brothers.  She was Frank Coulter's  G G Grandmother.

*  Logos used with the permission of Dale Parker,  Claxton Fruitcake Company.

FOOTNOTES  (which relate to Part Three only)

ADDITIONAL FOOTNOTES ON AMOS’S BARN BURNING     found after the original publication of The Feud  

Friday, April 11, 1890, THE CHARLOTTE DEMOCRAT (Mecklenburg County, NC)    Abstract

-Some one (sic) set fire to the barn of Amos C. PARKER, of Buford township, last night. All the contents, which were two tons of fertilizer, a wagon or two, and a considerable amount of corn, fodder, etc., were entirely consumed

Thursday, April 24, 1890, MONROE ENQUIRER AND EXPRESS (Union County, NC)  Abstract

Mr. Amos PARKER has sold his farm, consisting of about 300 acres, lying in Buford township... Mr. Parker will go west.  (Author’s note: He went to Reidsville, GA)

28.  Further Tales of Murder & Mayhem in Lancaster, Kershaw, and Chesterfield Counties

      Miles Gardner,  2006      Page 149

29.  1880 CENSUS  AMOS C. PARKER

Source Citation:    Year 1880; Census Place: Buford, Union, North Carolina; Roll: 983; Family History Film .  1254983;

                                   Page 377A;    Enumeration District:  211; Image: 0673

30  1900 CENSUS  AMOS C. PARKER

Source Citation:    Year: 1900; Census Place: Reidsville, Tattnall, Georgia; Roll: 222;

                                Page: 22A;          Enumeration District: 0127; FHL microfilm: 1240222.

31.  DOWN THE WAXHAW ROAD  Cindy Brown, Union County History Room, Library, Monroe, NC

32.  PARKER FAMILY TREE,     Work of Darlene Parker Smith     –Geneology.com

33.  THE CLAXTON STORY.  A history of how the Claxton Fruitcake Co. came to be.   CLAXTON CORP.

www.claxtonfruitcakecompany.com     Accessed March 30, 2013

34.  Ibid

THE CLAXTON FRUITCAKE COMPANY TODAY,  CLAXTON CORP   Accessed  March 30, 2013

*  Logos used with the permission of Dale Parker, Claxton Fruitcake Company.

There was a Feud in the County................Part 2

The Lynching

This is a story about a tragedy in my family which covered the time period from 1879 to 1889 to mid 1890s.  I call it There was a Feud in the County.  I have broken it into three parts so that each blog will not be too long.  It was originally published in the September edition of The Gaston-Lincoln Genealogical Society Quarterly, Footprints in Time, Robert Carpenter, editor.

In my first blog (There was a Feud Part 1 - Dec 4th)  I related the beginning of a tragic story in my family, the story of Robert Parker, and how it affected the Parker Family down to this day.  This blog, Part 2, will continue that story. At the end of Part 1, Frank Stack had shot and killed Robert Parker ( August 1889.)  He was captured back home in Union County and was returned to Burke County, was indicted, and as of September 1889, was in the Morganton jail awaiting trial.  He had been bound over to the Superior Court, scheduled for the 3^rd day of March 1890 - Spring Term. Frank Stack was in a cell with a black man named Dave Boone who was not connected to Stack, but who had also killed a man and was awaiting trial.  They had been put in the same cell for some reason.  Perhaps they only had one jail cell.  In Part 2 we examine what happened to Frank Stack and how Robert Parker’s family survived.  In Part 1 you saw a picture of the Court Docket entry showing the indictment of Stack.  I mentioned that someone later had written Nol Pros (Not Prosecuted) by that entry.  Now you will find out why this case was never prosecuted.  This story was followed up until current times in print by newspapermen in Burke County.  There was a continuing interest

I hope you enjoy                               Part 2

On September 11^th between 2 and 3 o’clock in the morning, a mob of over 115 heavily armed

and masked men, broke into the jail, demanded the keys from the jailor at gun point and took Stack and a black man, Dave Boone,¹⁴  who was there for unrelated charges, from their cell.  They proceeded to a nearby railroad culvert and hung both men from the trestle.¹⁵ 

The reason for the mob action given at the inquest was that they were tired of “murderers” from Union County coming through Burke County and killing people (there had been another incident some 12 years before,) and they resented having to pay for the trials.  They claimed it had cost Burke County $7,000.00 that first time, and in the end, the culprit went free.  And that if left to the “juries and lawyers” this one would go free also.¹⁶   After the bodies were cut down, Stack’s lawyers sent funds so that Frank Stack’s body could be returned to his counsel Messers Covington & Adams of Monroe.¹⁷  He was buried at the Presbyterian Church in Zoar, in a grave marked only by a big rock.

There is a file in the History Room at the Burke County Library in Morganton named LYNCHING  which contains much information on this case.  It seems that this was the “one and only” mob lynching in Burke County.  They must have learned their lesson from this miscarriage of justice.  They never did it again.  No one was ever brought to trial on this murder.   Some

people said that was because, as was usual in those days, there were probably some prominent local men in that mob which was described as “heavily masked, and some wearing dresses!”

The first newspaper article in the Morganton paper seemed to lean toward support for the mob and the lynching.¹⁸  However as more was written, editorials, letters to the editor, articles picked up from around the state, the attitude changed and the lynching was condemned far and wide.  Lynching seemed to have been a favorite way of carrying out justice at that time.  According to the Morganton Star, at the very same time as all this was happening in Morganton, there was a big lynching trial going on in Lexington, NC, and a recent event in Shelby, NC, and also in Union County, NC.¹⁹  In an interesting side note, shortly after the lynching (and the unfortunate first article,) The Morganton Star was put up for sale, and by the middle of November it had been sold and the name changed to The Herald and the attitude was definitely against the lynching. ²⁰  This story has remained of interest to the people of Burke County.  In the aforementioned LYNCHING file in the Burke County Library, there are many newspaper articles over the years discussing the subject, one as late as 2005.

I was very curious about the future of Robert’s wife, Margaret, and the child Della Jane.  It would have been a harrowing past 10 years for this poor family from the time of the first shooting in 1879, the several attempts on Robert’s life, and the move away from family in Union County to Burke County. 

I wondered if she went back to Union County, or home to her family in South Carolina, or did she just fade away into history?  To my relief, I found that after the murder of Robert in 1889, Margaret Jane stayed in the Connelly Springs/Rutherford College area.  She raised her daughter Della, and she was living with Della and her husband, James Coulter, in the 1900 census²¹  in Lovelady Tnshp, Burke Co, NC.  She was 46 years old.  She was in the same place in 1920²² at 64 years.   In the 1930 census²³ she is listed at Rutherford College, Burke Co, NC and was 76 years old.  .She died in 1936 at Hickory, Catawba Co., NC.^{24, 25}  She was 83 years old.  So she seems to have had a long life surrounded by her daughter and grandchildren.  From Della Jane and her husband James Coulter, Robert and Margaret Parker eventually had 4 grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren.²⁶

Robert and Margaret Jane, and Della Jane and James Coulter are all buried at Abernathy Methodist Church Cemetery, Rutherford College, Burke Co., NC.²⁷

Watch for my next and final blog on this story (There was a Feud Part 3 – Dec 18.)  It will be about the consequences of this deed done so long ago and how it endangered whole familes and caused their removal to another place to escape the turmoil.  It has affected the Parker family up until this very day!

But Part 3 ends with a “sweet surprise!”

 

                                                 

     

FOOTNOTES  (which relate to Part Two only)

14.  12 September 1889       THE MORGANTON STAR    The Eli Holder Murder Case Again    

                                                (Dave Boone’s story)

15.  12 September 1889        THE LANDMARK, STATESVILLE, NC

                                               Short Shrift for Murderers  The Lynching with backstory and much current

                                                Information

16.  Ibid

17.  Ibid

18.  11 September 1889        THE MORGANTON STAR           The Execution of Franklin  Stack

19.  25 September 1889       THE MORGANTON STAR

                                              1.     LYNCHING  What’s the matter with Burke?

                                              2.    A Sensible View of the Case

                                              3.    A picked up article  from THE STATESVILLE NEWS

20.  14 November 1889        THE HERALD  (The Star had changed its name from  STAR to HERALD)

                                               Resolution from the Burke County Farmer’s Alliance in rebuttal to a 

                                                Proclamation received from the Jenkin’s Cross Roads Farmer’s  

                                               Alliance in  Union County.

21.   1900 CENSUS   MARGARET JANE NEAL  age  46

Source Citation: Year: 1900; Census Place: Lovelady, Burke, North Carolina; Roll: 1185; Page: 12B; Enumeration District: 0010; FHL microfilm: 1241185.

22.  1920 CENSUS   MARGARET JANE NEAL  age 64

Source Citation: Year: 1920; Census Place: Lovelady, Burke, North Carolina; Roll: T625_1287; Page: 6A; Enumeration District: 15; Image: 684.

23.  1930 CENSUS   MARGARET JANE NEAL  age 76

Source Citation: Year: 1930; Census Place: Rutherford College, Burke, North Carolina; Roll: 1677; Page: 2A; Enumeration District: 10; Image: 239.0; FHL microfilm: 2341411.

24.  NC DEATH COLLECTION 1908 – 2004  MARGARET JANE NEAL 

Source Citation: Number: 242-84-2984; Issue State: North Carolina; Issue Date: 1966.

NC State Archives. North Carolina Deaths, 1908-67

25.  North Carolina, Death Certificates, 1909-1975

Margarette Jane Hale (NEAL)

26.  . Family Descendent Sheet for Robert Parker

27.  Burial at Abernathy Methodist Church   verified by Ancestry.com - FIND A GRAVE

Robert   #24749364      Margaret Jane   #86749190    Della Jane   #84264049   James    #84263951

There was a Feud in the County.................Part 1

There was a Feud in the County

This is the beginning of a story about a tragedy in my family which covered the ten-year time period from 1879 to 1889 to mid 1890s.  I call it There was a Feud in the County.  I have broken it into three parts so that each blog will not be too long.  It was originally published in the September edition of The Gaston-Lincoln Genealogical Society Quarterly, Footprints in Time, Robert Carpenter, editor.

When I began my genealogy study years ago, I learned of a tale of murder in my family, but I didn’t know any facts and what I had heard was vague.  In 2013 I was in an Advanced Genealogy Class at Gaston College in Dallas, NC, and we were required to write a paper suitable for publishing.  I decided to research this rumor of murder.  I had never explored the section in Ancestry.com called Publications and Periodicals.  My people never found themselves in newspapers!  They were too busy out in the field behind the mule.  But one day I thought “why not give it a try,” and I did. 

STATESVILLE NC LANDMARK NEWSPAPER
15 AUG 1889

Up popped two newspaper reports from the Statesville, NC newspaper (of all places) which started me off. This story was real!  There was something there!  On a class research trip to Raleigh I found a treasure of newspaper articles.  I found that this case had been the subject of a fierce “Letters To The Editor” battle across the state, both pro and con.  I found that lynching was a favorite way to get rid of troublesome court cases in that day.  My friend Helen Whisnant discovered a thick file folder in the Burke County Library at Morganton entitled Lynching which was entirely about this case.  She copied the whole file and brought it to me.  From that file I discovered that a local writer had included this story in a book he had written.  All of this information had been out there all the time and I had no idea.  It reminded me to NEVER assume.

It turned out to be fascinating journey.  In a short frenzied period of time, it was as if I was being led to all this information to get the story told.  This story wanted to be told!  As I learned about these previously unknown (to me) people, I became obsessed with them, their tragic story, the tragic life they led for ten years, and the tragic outcome of the tale.  I felt so sorry for the wife Margaret Jane who was left behind with a child.  She must have had a sad and tormented ten years and I wondered how she had endured.  I was glad to find out that she did survive and lived a long life surrounded by her daughter and grandchildren.  I traced her to make sure she didn't just fade away into history.

MARGARET JANE NEAL MARKER

PARKER HEAD STONE
Abernathy Methodist Church

There are a few interesting sidebars to this story which I will tell about at the end of the series in Part 3.   I hope you enjoy:

There was a Feud in the County  

                                                (Part one)

The murder 

How the implications of that fact affected a family

down through the years

by

Shirley Haywood Taylor

It is fascinating to me how history through the years changes everything.  How one incident, however isolated, can affect the lives of many people over a long period of time.  I have one such incident in my family tree.  This incident called out to me as a story that wanted to be told.

FED CENSUS 1860 UNION CO, NC

Robert Parker was born to Zachariah Parker and Martha Davis Parker 8 JUN 1855 in Buford Township (near Monroe,) Union Co, NC.  He was the 10^th of 11 children^.1  In 1877 when he was 22 years old, he married Margaret Jane Neal of Gills Creek, SC.²  They had

a daughter Della Jane in 1877. ³  Robert was a brother to my Great Grand Father, Amos Parker, so he would have been my Great Grand Uncle.

(Shirley Haywood, Ruth Parker, Harvey Madison Parker, Amos C. Parker, Zachariah Parker.)

In 1879 when he was 23 years old, coming home from Court Day in Monroe NC, he got into an altercation with Lee Stack another local young man.  Miles Gardner, ⁴ who seems to be related to both the Parkers and the Stacks, and has “family” information on this episode in his book Further Tales of Murder & Mayhem in Lancaster, Kershaw, and Chesterfield Counties, explains how it all came about.  They were friends, had known each other all their lives.  Lee Stack challenged Robert Parker to a horse race.  Parker didn't want to race, but finally gave in.  During the race Stack’s hat flew off and he went back to retrieve it, thus Parker “won” the race.  Stack was infuriated.  Both men were intoxicated and carrying guns.  Stack was a large heavy man and a bully, Parker was a small sickly man.  Stack came at Parker in a rage, and in defense of his life, the witnesses said, Robert shot and killed Lee Stack.  He admitted it – said that as small as he was, and as large as Stack was, he just knew he would be killed in a fight with Stack.  He was tried and sentenced to a two-year term in the penitentiary for man-slaughter.   But after serving only 18 months he was released and the Judge pardoned him and he returned home.  At that point in time Frank Stack, older brother of Lee, stated that “if it took ten years, he would kill Robert Parker.” ⁵

Very shortly after returning home from prison, Robert was shot and nearly killed by someone unknown. ⁶   After his recovery he went “west” (most likely western North Carolina) to escape the vindictiveness of his unknown assailant and he stayed away for two to three years. He came home again to live at Mathews Station (Matthews) and soon another attempt was made on his life severely wounding him. ⁷

He then decided to take his family and move west again and to attend Rutherford College, a seminary sponsored by The Methodist Church, and to dedicate his life to the ministry.  He moved to the small town of Connelly Springs in Burke County which was just 2 miles from the College.  At Connelly Springs also lived two brothers of Lee Stack. ⁸

ROBERT PARKER MARKER

On the morning of August 9, 1889, Robert Parker was shot and instantly killed by a man in ambush as he went out to his woodpile to gather firewood and kindling for his morning fire. ⁹ It had been exactly ten years since his pardon.  There were many witnesses who saw Frank Stack in the neighborhood that day with a gun.  There was evidence in the nearby woods of someone waiting there, prints in the mud and a tree branch broken for a better line of sight. ¹⁰

The authorities advised Union County to be on the lookout for Stack as he was coming home on the train, and he was arrested there about Sept. 1st and returned to Burke County where he was put in jail to await trial.¹¹  According to the Morganton Star Newspaper of Oct 3, 1889, he had a preliminary trial at Morganton before several magistrates.  At the preliminary trial, there were many reliable witnesses who had seen him around Morganton that morning, carrying a shotgun, walking down the railroad tracks.  These included a nearby neighbor, the wife of the section master of the W. N. C. Railroad, and seven or eight others who saw him well enough to describe him and point him out in court.¹²  The evidence against him was circumstantial but very strong.  So he was held for the Superior Court. 

BURKE CO. COURT CASE  NO. 2

BURKE CO. COURT RECORD NO. 1

There is an entry in the Burke County Court Minute Docket:  “State vs Frank Stack for Murder,  3^rd day of March 1890 Spring Term” - later marked Nol Pros.¹³  Of course we now know why this case was “not  prosecuted.

End of Part one

Watch for Part Two in my next blog which will tell of the outcome for Frank Stack who at the end of Part one in September 1889 is in a jail cell in Morganton, awaiting trial. 

Part three will be about the consequences of this deed done so long ago and how it has affected the Parker family up until this day!

FOOTNOTES  (which relate to Part One only)

1. 1860 CENSUS   ROBERT PARKER age 4

Source Citation: Year: 1860; Census Place: , Union, North Carolina; Roll: M653_915; Page: 348; Image: 94; Family History Library Film: 803915.

2. 1870 CENSUS     ROBERT PARKER  age 14

Source Citation: Year: 1870; Census Place: Gills Creek, Lancaster, South Carolina; Roll: M593_1500; Page: 382B; Image: 176; Family History Library Film: 552999.

3. 1880 CENSUS   ROBERT PARKER  age 24     and Margaret Jane

Source Citation: Year: 1880; Census Place: Buford, Union, North Carolina; Roll: 983; Family History Film: 1254983; Page: 358C; Enumeration District: 211; Image: 0635.

4.  Miles Gardner, Further Tales of Murder & Mayhem in Lancaster, Kershaw, and Chesterfield Counties     2006      Page 149

5.  12 September 1889        THE LANDMARK, STATESVILLE, NC

                                              Short Shrift for Murderers  The Lynching with backstory and                                                 much current information

6.  15 August, 1889             THE LANDMARK (STATESVILLE, NC.)  picked up from the                                                 CHARLOTTE CHRONICLE

                                              An Assignation at Connelly Springs    The murder with                                                             backstory

7.  Ibid

8.  Ibid

9.  Ibid

10.  3 October 1889           THE MORGANTON STAR

                                       1    EVIDENCE HEARD in PRELIMINARY TRIAL OF                                                                          FRANKLIN STACK

                                       2   The Burke County Lynchers          Picked up from                                                                     WILKESBORO  CRONICLE

11.  Ibid

12.  Ibid

13.  MINUTE DOCKET,    COUNTY COURT,  BURKE CO,  NC

      CR 005.301.1             (N. C. State Archives, Raleigh, NC                  p. 211

      STATE    Vs    FRANK STACK    -   MURDER     3^rd March. 1890   -  Spring Term -

                                                                NOL PROS