Homicide
In 1827, a slave named Ambrose escaped from his owner Berryman Burger. Like most runaways, Ambrose did not make the dangerous trek north but remained in the area, a practice called ‘lying out.’ In most cases, such slaves kept a low profile, living off the land or from scraps gleaned from friends and compatriots in the quarter. Ambrose, however, took a different path, waging guerrilla war against slavery and local slaveholders. Over the course of more than a year he broke into barns, slaughtered hogs and poultry, pillaged smokehouses, burned outbuildings, destroyed cotton, and generally behaved like a local Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and returning to his fellow slaves. Within months, Ambrose had induced other runaways to join him, and he was regarded by local planters as a “desperate character ... capable of any act of villainy” who should be killed on sight.
Early in the morning of September 24, 1828, a local white man, Kirkland Harmon, surprised Ambrose in his camp and gunned him down as he rose. Ambrose winced as the buckshot “enter[ed] his back loins & hips,” and he bled out on the ground. His one-man rebellion was effectively over. Without the coroner’s inquest convened over his body, however, we would know nothing of his rebellion; the record of his death is the only record we have of his life. How many Ambroses were there? It is hard to know. To its credit, Ambrose’s band picked up his mantle and continued to operate in the area as a plague to local planters.
I was not surprised to learn that such local resistance was quashed and that slaves like Ambrose were routinely murdered. I was surprised to learn how often the coroner responded. In her WPA interview, the former slave Mittie Freeman remembered the coroner as “that fellow that comes running fast when somebody gets killed,” and the coroner is mentioned in quite a few of the most famous slave narratives, including those by Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown. The coroner was often the only magistrate mentioned because he was the only ‘outside’ law the slaves ever saw. We will never know precisely how many enslavers murdered their slaves and effortlessly covered it up. But in cases where the murderer was someone other than the enslaver, or where the enslaver failed to cover it up, there usually was an investigation, at the very least because property had been destroyed, and someone expected compensation.
Reflecting on the South he was forced to flee because of his Unionism, John Aughey noted: “Of course the laws which exist in every state against the murder or torturing of slaves are about as well observed as might be laws enacted by wolves against sheep-murder.” But in the coroners’ inquest there was actually a subtle game of community standards going on. Standing over the body of a slave and surveying the grim damage, a coroner’s jury was often perfectly comfortable recommending that a white be indicted. And at coroner’s inquests slaves were allowed to testify. The actual jury nullification came later, in the courtroom, when the mangled body was not actually present and the murderer was let off. But by then he had been held up to public scrutiny; his judgment and decency had been questioned publicly and legally. It is less than justice, but it is not nothing, a fact which slaves themselves recognized. When the coroner came a-runnin’, many slaves thought he might bring justice with him from some far off, saner place. And in his own Narrative, Frederick Douglass tells the story of an unnamed slave girl whose mistress “pounded in her skull” with a piece of firewood because she allowed a baby to cry uncontrollably and wake the household. “I will not say that this murder most foul produced no sensation. It did produce a sensation. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Mrs. Hicks, but incredible to tell, for some reason or other, that warrant was never served, and she not only escaped condign punishment, but the pain and mortification as well of being arraigned before a court of justice.” It is hard to believe that for all he’d seen of the institution of slavery, Douglass still thought it capable of any justice at all.
What does not make it into many of the slave narratives, including Douglass’s, is the violence that existed within the slave community. Enslavement does not magically transform all who endure it into savvy, self-sustaining freedom-fighters. If we are going to grant the enslaved their full humanity we must grant that, like any other group of people, they occasionally fought, fornicated, and got into petty disputes that sometimes took a murderous turn. To be sure, as historian Steven Hahn has noted, the slave quarter produced one of the most radical and transformative politics ever seen in America, a politics that produced Nat Turner and Frederick Douglass and finally brought down a $3.5 billion dollar interest. But in coroners reports we get a glimpse of the violence that existed within the slave community that we knew had to be there. Thus did the enslaved of the Haile plantation turn their children over to Tamer, the enslaved nurse, on their way out to the fields, little knowing that she liked to punish the children by tying them too close to a fire, a practice that was only discovered when she finally cooked one of them to death. Or take the case of an enslaved man named Dick who became so jealous that he pulled a log from a fire and murdered the man who was staying in the cabin of a woman he wanted to sleep with.
Today, the typical homicide in the United States involves one man shooting another, and this is equally true in the CSI:Dixie database. Comparatively speaking, the CSI:D sample has a higher percentage of male victims and a lower percentage of gun use. Today firearms are used in 68% of American homicides; in the CSI:D sample guns are used 52% of the time. Today 77% of homicide victims are male; in the CSI:D sample 88% are male (and virtually all of the perpetrators are men). Put bluntly, in the nineteenth century south, violent death was a more exclusively male province, and Death had more faces.
Interestingly, though, in the CSI:D database virtually none of the gun-related homicides are related to robbery. Most are the product of the highly combustible combination of anger and alcohol. The last words of J. Edward Sims were typical: “Shoot you damed cowardly son of a Bitch.” Or take this poignant exchange:
Tom Rutland (firing): “I will kill you, you son of a bitch.”
William Padgett (bleeding): “You have already.”
In the strange alchemy of the male brain, friends became mortal enemies in an instant, often over trivialities. “How in the hell did you Gap up My ax?” Gus Settler demanded to know of Allen Holmes in March 1882. I hardly know what a gapped-up axe looks like, but I do know that returning a borrowed tool in less than satisfactory condition is no grounds for murder. Settler disagreed and shot Holmes dead.
Infanticide
Life in the Faulknerian world of CSI:D was especially cheap for children. Catherine Berry, a domestic in the R. C. Poole household, was told that she would be terminated if she was indeed pregnant. In an awful feat of endurance, she continued with her chores until, doubled over with pain, she snuck away to give birth in the potato shed. Reeling from the loss of blood, she still managed to strangle the baby and fling it into the Pacolet River, where it washed up at the feet of some fishermen. When Peggy Bedenbaugh felt her first contractions, she went out to a corner of the yard, gave birth in a hole, and covered the baby over with dirt. Luly Collins threw her baby down a well. Nancy Owens swept hers under a brush pile. All had denied for months that they were in the “family way”; all had killed the evidence; all were indicted for murder.
Or take the case of Jane Arnold. On September 7, 1857, Brazeal Cox and his wife found sixteen-year-old Jane Arnold stretched out on the ground with a baby beside her, bleeding from its umbilical cord. When Arnold became aware of the couple she called out to Mrs. Cox, who wrapped the dying infant in Arnold’s apron and took it into the Arnold home. Mrs. Cox then returned and asked the girl why she hadn’t given birth indoors. Because her daddy was “doging” her, she said, and had cast her from the house. “She seemed to be grieving,” Cox told the coroner in a model of understatement, “but [I] don’t know what for, whether on the part of her dead child or the abuse of her father.”
Three years later, at four in the morning, a shivering Jane Arnold knocked at the door of a neighboring farm. She was cold and unkempt, but she couldn’t make up her mind to stay. Instead she returned to the abandoned schoolhouse where she had taken her latest baby, born in the middle of the road, to die of exposure.
The coroners’ office reveals a world where men force women into sex and women pay the price for it, in embarrassing pregnancies, social stigma, and the occasionally desperate attempt to cover up the evidence. In 1829 a fire in Thomas Welsh’s smoke-house revealed a small cubby in which a full term child had been secreted in a jar of lime. It is impossible to know whether this was an infanticide or a child who had been stillborn. Regardless the mother was covering up something. Occasionally that something was an interracial liaison. More often it was simply a pregnancy out-of-wedlock. Many of the cases reveal that the women had been trying for some time to induce an abortion. ‘Home remedies’ for pregnancy mentioned in the CSI:D sample include savin powder mixed with turpentine, red bark bay tea, and the ashes of dried corn cobs. In this sense some of the infanticides might be considered extremely late-term abortions. One unnamed mother, for instance, gave birth to a stillborn child who bore unmistakable marks of abuse en utero. M. Lipscomb was found doubled over a fence having apparently bled out in a botched, self-induced abortion.
Almost sadder is the number of women who were held to account for the ‘murder’ of infants who had most likely died of crib death or SIDS. Often sent back to the cotton field within days of giving birth, enslaved mothers were understandably exhausted, and they often slept with their infants so they could breast feed in a haze and go back to sleep. When they occasionally awoke to dead babies, they were unfortunately as susceptible as their doctors and enslavers to believe that they had smothered their children in their sleep, a phenomenon which only enhanced their reputation as uncaring and unnatural mothers.
NEXT: Suicide
Murder Cases Tried in South Carolina, 1887-1900
Year | Number of Homicides Tried | Not Guilty Verdicts | Guilty Verdicts | Cases Dismissed or Continued | Percentage Found Guilty |
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1887 | 79 | 54 | 11 | 14 | 13.9% |
1888 | 117 | 61 | 36 | 20 | 30.1% |
1889 | 120 | 69 | 30 | 21 | 25.0% |
1890 | incomplete returns | - | - | - | - |
1891 | 151 | 76 | 46 | 29 | 30.0% |
1892 | incomplete returns | - | - | - | - |
1893 | incomplete returns | - | - | - | - |
1894 | incomplete returns | - | - | - | - |
1895 | 210 | 112 | 67 | 31 | 31.9% |
1896 | 201 | 110 | 67 | 24 | 33.3% |
1897 | 215 | 120 | 64 | 31 | 29.7% |
1898 | 248 | 105 | 96 | 47 | 44.0% |
1899 | 205 | 83 | 97 | 35 | 47.3% |
1900 | 224 | 127 | 71 | 26 | 31.7% |
Credit: John Hammond Moore, Carnival of Blood: Dueling, Lynching, and Murder in South Carolina, 1880-1920 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006), pp. 130-131, taken from Reports and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina
Homicide Inquests
Name | Deceased Description | Date | Inquest Location | Death Method | Inquest Finding |
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Infant of Nann Williams | Infant of Nann Williams | February 4, 1889 | at Nelly Sanders, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say. And so the Jurors aforesaid do say that the said infant came to its death by the hands its mother Nann Williams, by strangulation at Nelly Sanders in Laurens County and State aforesaid, on the the morning of the third day of February AD 1889. |
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Ambrose | slave | September 25, 1828 | at the house of [?] Duke, Kershaw County, SC |
do say upon their oaths that the said Negro man slave Ambrose came to his death early in the morning of the twenty-forth of September instant by buck shot discharged from a gun presented at him by Kirkland Harmon ... [the shot] entering his back loins & hips |
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Luke Smith | October 14, 1931 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths, do say: We the coroners Jury in the case of L. Smith find that L. Smith came to his death by Gunshot wounds of Gun in the hands of Paul Cuffin |
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Joe | June 26, 1837 | at the house of John Holley, Fairfield County, SC |
are of the opinion that he [Joe] came to his death by a wound in his abdomen near his navel about one inch in Length committed on the body of Joe by the Hand of one Robert Freeman on the 22nd of June 1837. |
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Tandy Holmes | September 21, 1894 | at or on Dr. W.C. Prescotts Plantation, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say, We find that Tandy Holmes, came to his death by a blow on the head, with a gun in the hands of T.K. McKenny and that the said McKenny struck said blow in self defense and was justifiable in so doing |
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James Pinson | deserter | December 5, 1864 | at Greenville CH, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that . . .was killed and homicideed by some person or persons (by a gun shot (in the breast on the morng of the 4th inst) to) the jurors unknown |
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Walter Brown | November 26, 1943 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Walter Brown received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by _______ in the hands of Mose McKay. . . He came to his death by a gun in hands of Mose McKay. |
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Haywood Barksdale | May 11, 1893 | near A.H. Martin's, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that he came to his death in Laurens Counrt on the 10th day of May 1893 from strangulation by being hung by the neck, by parties unknown to the jury. |
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Julius Metskie | June 27, 1887 | at Valley Falls, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Julius Metskie came to his death by a gun shot would inflicted in the head by George S. Turner at Valley Falls |
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Haman Miller | October 30, 1824 | at Blacks Store, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said Haman Miller came to his Death by Violence committed on his sides by a number of Blows with the fist of John Prince and a fall... as a consequence of of Said Blows, and that the said John Prince did then and there feloniously Kill and Murder, against the peace and Dignity of this State. |
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Nelson Smith | freedman, boy | October 4, 1866 | at Andrew Warts, Edgefield County, SC |
upon there oaths do say that Nelson Smith freedman came to his death from being shot with some kind of fire arms in the hands of two persons from the way he was shot by persons unknown |
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Robert Melton | April 19, 1871 | at the residence of Robert Melton, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths, do say: That Robert Melton, the deceased came to his death from two gun shot wounds, one taking affect in the left hip; the other in the region of the stomach, inflicted by some person or persons unknown to this Jury, this taking place at the Residence of the deceased |
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Charles Little | June 11, 1934 | at Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths, do say: as the result of pistol shot in the hands of W. Lester Russell |
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Mary Grace Aldrich | infant child | August 11, 1856 | at Graniteville, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say. . .that said child came to her death at the time and place aforesaid by having large portions of laudaunum administered by a servant girl the nurse of the name of Clarissa. . .with felonious intent |
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Anthony | October 30, 1860 | at Dr. McCoys, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Antony came to his death from Shot wounds of a gun in the hands of John P Templeton on the 29th day of Oct |
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Lewis Trabough | July 14, 1913 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths, do say: Lewis Trabough came to his death From pistol shot in the hand of Ben Gardner. |
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Julia Van | June 20, 1892 | at the plantation of Mr Joe Thurmond, Edgefield County, SC |
Upon their oaths do say that Rial Williams Killed the said Julia Van by misfortune and contrary to his will |
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Sam Williams | May 30, 1876 | in the streets of Pendleton, Anderson County, SC | |||
Thomas Waters | April 7, 1866 | on the plantation of Daniel McCaskill on Lynches Creek, Kershaw County, SC |
upon their oaths do say ... they do believe that the said Thomas Waters was killed ... by a gun shot in the head & that the said gun was in the hands of Elias McLandon |
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Frank Dillard | September 24, 1890 | on the plantation of William Patterson, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said Frank Dillard came to his death by "a gun shot wound in the hands of W.B. Patterson |
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James Reynolds | December 20, 1860 | at the residence of James Reynolds, Edgefield County, SC |
upon there oaths do say that the said James Reynolds came to his death feloniously at the hand of Joseph Samuel. . .from the affects of a wound inflicted on the head Just above the left ear by a large stick |
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Joseph W. Glover | September 2, 1844 | at Charles Comptys[?] Hotel, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say the he came to his death by the discharge of a pistol in the hands of Lovett Gomillion loaded with [?] Bullets which load of shot entered the said Joseph W Glovers body a little above the nipple on the right side of the breast . . .said pistol was discharged by said Gomillion in a street fight between himself and said Glover in self defence |
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Wallace E. Bland | July 4, 1880 | at Edgefield C. House, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said W E. Bland came to his death by a gun Shot wound in the hands of A. A. Elisby [Clisby?] |
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Infant male child of G.Y. Jennings | Infant male child of G.Y. Jennings | April 10, 1893 | behind Elihu Bullock's stables, Laurens County, SC |
We the Jury of inquest... find that this child came to his death. . .By the hands of G.Y. Jennings, By some means unknown to us, And aided And abetted by Elihu Bullock Clara Bullock and wife of G.Y. Jennings against the peace and dignity of the state of So Car. |
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infant | November 28, 1829 | in Camden on the lot on which Mr. Thomas Welsh[?] resided, Kershaw County, SC |
do say upon their oaths that the remains of an infant born at "full time" were found in a smoke house, suspiciuosly concealed in a jar with lime on the lot on which Mr. Thomas Welch[?] resided; but how, or when the infant came to its death we know not. |
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L. Roy Lavender | June 9, 1838 | at Lucey Lavenders, Fairfield County, SC |
do say upon their oaths that one James Sessions[?] feloniously voulantary and of his own malice aforethought made an assault uppon the said L.R. Lavender with a [?] dirk knife made of Iron and Steel of the value of $1.25 [?] Mortal Wound . . . which Mortal Wound by the Stab of Said Knife the said L.R. Lavender came to his death. |
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John McKinny | September 26, 1894 | at W P. Lipfords[?], Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say, that. . . John Mckenny. . .came to his death by gun shot wound in the hands of Jessie Bostie and Edmon Jones and others unknown |
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Henry | freemen formerly the slave | October 30, 1865 | at or near Dr. Bery F. Few's, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said Henry was killed and homicideed by some person or persons by the discharge of a gun to the jurors unknown |
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infant | January 8, 1815 | at the plantation of James Leatherwood, Spartanburg County, SC | |||
David Primus | July 5, 1943 | at Cheraw, S.C., Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that David Primus received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Shot gun in the hands of Ernest (Peter) Howard |
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George Sullivan | June 26, 1893 | at Prospect church, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say, That his death was caused by a pistol shot, fired from an American double action, .38 cal, five shot pistol, By Edgar Sullivan, on the 25 day of June, about one oc in the evening, at Prospect church in Laurens Co SC. |
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infant | August 23, 1888 | at Spartanburg, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said unknown child came to his death by being killed and murdered by some person or persons to the jurors unknown |
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George Watkins | October 10, 1866 | at George Watkins, Edgefield County, SC |
upon there oaths do say that George Watkins came to his death by a Gun shot wound in the hands of Newton Corley |
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Johnson | Johnsons infant | June 18, 1875 | at Roberts Tuckers, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths, do say: That it was the child of Henretta Johnson that rivers found dead in the woods near the Robert Tucker House and that from appearance that it was the propper time for it to be deliverd and if the child was not murderd She intendedto murder it and it was don on or about the 11 of June 1875[.] |
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William M. Tredaway | March 27, 1851 | at the house of William M Tredaway at Beach Island, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that he came to his death from a gun shot fired at him by William Wilson |
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Jane | slave | March 10, 1863 | at Anderson Court House, Anderson County, SC |
do say that she came to her death on sabath the eighth day of March?at the residence of her master A. A. Morse, of deceased hastened or made premature by the maltreatment of her Master A. A. Morse and his mistress Mrs. C. T. [?] Morse, and more particularly on the part of the latter, and....that the said slave Jain the said A. A. Morse & C. T. Morse, by misfortune, and contrary to their will |
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Joe Coleman | near Willing, Fairfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say: that the Said Joe Coleman came to his death by gun shot wounds, by the hands of person or persons unknown to the Jury, but suspicion and evidence points to William Woodward principal and we further think that he had accessories[.] |
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Arch | September 4, 1864 | at SR Todds plantation, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that he came to his death by a gun shot wound, by M.P. Traynham in self defence at SR Todds plantation about one oclock the 3rd Sept Inst AD 1864. |
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Patterson Blackwill | May 22, 1914 | in Chesterfield County, South Carolina, Chesterfield County, SC |
on the 22 day of May 1914 find that the deceased came to his death by a gun Shot wound in the heands of J. A. Blackwill and our virdic is a justified homiside this 22 day of May 1914 |
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Isham Glover | August 9, 1892 | at Edgefield C.H., Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do Say that Isham Glover came to his death by a gun Shot wound in the hands of Parties unknown |
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S. G. W. Dill | June 5, 1868 | at the house of S.G.W. Dill, Kershaw County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the above named S.G.W. Dill and Nestor Eillison ... about half an hour after dark on the evening of the 4th day of June 1868 came to their deaths from gun shot wounds in the hands of some parties to the jury unknown |
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Archie Woods | February 8, 1937 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Archie Woods received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Pistol Shot in the hands of Marion Johnson |
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infant | March 16, 1870 | at Isaac Young's on Pacolet River, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oath do say that the said child came to its death by some means to the jurors unknown against the peace and dignity of the same state aforesaid |
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Jno Fuller | October 6, 1890 | on the plantation of Melmoth Hooker, Laurens County, SC |
by their oaths do say that the said Jno Fuller came to his death "From Gun Shot wounds in the hands of Perry Gray without cause." |
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Henry Blakeny | June 6, 1893 | at Ana Deason, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Henry Blakeney came to his death by a Pistol ball in the heands of Thos ingram at the residence of Ana Deason on the 6th June A.D. 1893. |
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Infant Child | Infant Child | July 27, 1809 | at the house of John Brysons, Laurens County, SC |
upon there oaths aforesaid say that the aforesaid female Child came to its death by a Stroke on the head by the Reputed Mother Jean Bryson. . . |
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Micajah Hilliard | November 28, 1829 | in the house of Joseph Ward, Kershaw County, SC |
do say upon their oaths that he came to his death by an affray with Joseph Ward & John Ballard at the residence of Joseph Ward on the 27th Inst. |
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Infant Brown | September 26, 1932 | near Angelus, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths aforesaid, do say, that the aforesaid Infant Brown We, the Jury of Inquest find, according to evidence produced, that the infant came to its death by Neelie Brown, its Mother. |
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Ben | October 10, 1865 | at Abram Putnams, Laurens County, SC |
upon their Oaths do say that the freedman came to his death from a Gun shot wound in the head and the cutting of his throat with some sharp instrument, by persons unknown to the jurors |
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Joe | negro man, boy | March 5, 1865 | Greenville County, SC |
who came to his death from a gun shot wound in the breast at the hands of Midleton Patterson |