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.