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