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 | March 6, 1884 | in the City of Spartanburg, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that ... the said child . . .came to its death from injuries received at the hands of Mary McKeys, Lizzie Mills, Paul Mills, and Alexander Mills, all of whom we deem cognizant of and accessory to the death |
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Lankin Suber | February 22, 1884 | at the Vance Place, Laurens County, SC | knife |
upon their oaths do say that the said Lankin Suber came to his death on the 21st day of February AD 1884 by cuts from a knife in the hands of Frank Jamison and so the Jurors aforesaid upon their oaths do say That the aforesaid Frank Jamison in manner and form aforesaid Lankin Suber then and there feloniously did Kill against the peace and dignity of the same State aforesaid. |
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W. H. H. Richards | February 1, 1884 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths, do say: That the said W.H.H. Richards came to his death by a pistol shot, received on 23rd July 184, at the hands fo W B Cash |
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Riley Parker | January 15, 1884 | at Clifton in Spartanburg, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that at Clifton S.U. on Jan. 14th 1884 that the said dec'd Riley Parker in manner and form aforesaid came to his death by means unknown to us |
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John Agner | December 26, 1883 | at Mr. John Agner's, Edgefield County, SC | knife |
upon their oaths do say we find John Agner Jr came to his death by wounds in his body inflicted by a knife. . .By a knife in the hands of one of the following named parties. Washington Hamilton James Hamilton or Perry Hamilton. |
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Julia Long | November 22, 1883 | at the residence of David Long, Anderson County, SC | shovel |
do say that the deceased Julia Long came to her death by natural causes. |
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Can Abrahams | child | July 28, 1883 | at the house of Austin Scott, Greenville County, SC | board |
upon their oaths do say that said Can Abraham came to his death by the visitation of God |
Francis Stuart | May 8, 1883 | in a house occupied by Henry Langford on the plantation of W.S. Pitts, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that on the night of 7th of May 1883 about half past 8 O'clock the said Francis Stuart came to her death from the effects of a gun shot wound supposed to have been inflicted by Lewis Stuart, her husband, and so the jurors aforesaid, do say that the aforesaid Lewis Stuart, in manner and form aforesaid, Francis Stewart, then and there feloniously did kill against the peace and dignity of the said State aforesaid. |
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John H. Kelley | December 21, 1882 | on the [?] Road near the city of Spartanburg, Spartanburg County, SC | knife |
upon their oaths do say that said ... came to his death from a cut or stab in the left breast with a knife in the hands of Patrick Henry |
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Harry Anderson | December 16, 1882 | at Clinton Ward, Edgefield County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do say that eceased came to his death from gun shot wound ... made with a pistol ... the shot being fired by one Andrew Harris |
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infant | September 12, 1882 | at Chester Scruggs well, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said infant was murdered by being thrown into an unused well by some person or persons to the jurors unknown |
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Thomas Phearby | September 1, 1882 | on the Mill's Gap Road, Spartanburg County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do say that said Thomas Phearby ... came to his death from Pistol show wound in the back of his head received from a pistol in the hand of John H. Foster |
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Moses Blalock | May 19, 1882 | on the Plantation of W G McDavid, Edgefield County, SC |
upon there oaths do say that Moses Blalock Death was Caused by a Gun Shot Wound the gun was in the hands of Mose Lackhart and in our opinion it is wilful Murder |
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Allen Holmes | March 4, 1882 | at Oscar Seigler Residence, Edgefield County, SC |
upon there oaths do say that the said Allen Holmes Came to His death by a Gun Shot wound in the hands of Gus Settler |
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Giles Guess | colored | February 2, 1882 | at the hosue of John Smith, Anderson County, SC | pistol |
do say that the deceased was willfully killed by the hand of one Isaac Putnam by shooting deceased with a pistol and that Silas Putnam was accessory to the killing about seven or eight oclock in the afternoon at the house of one John Smith |
James Anders | November 28, 1881 | at M. B. Ander's, Greenville County, SC | pistol |
he came to his death by the Shooting of some kind of fire arms two holes in his Head and one in the lore part of his Bowels . . .he was shot by a pistol from the hand of one Bengeman |
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Robert Williams | November 4, 1881 | at Wilson's Bridge, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the deceased Robert Williams came to his death . . . by hanging at the hands of parties unknown to the jury |
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Bill King | August 9, 1881 | at H C Kings Residence, Edgefield County, SC | hoe |
upon there oaths do say that the said Bill King Came to death from the affects of a wound on the head the wound being inflicted with a Hoe on the hand of Tom Doorn[?] |
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Julia Mundy | June 17, 1881 | at Jas H Banknight, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said Julia Mundy Came to her death from a pistol shot and fired by Josh Mundy her husband and made one mortal wound in the Right breast of her |
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Mary Hicks | May 10, 1881 | at the residence of Widow Lucy Clements, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that ... Mrs. Mary Hicks came to her death by a gun shot and a knife or some sharp tool in the hands of one B. Whitney Hicks, her husband |
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Elick Youngblood | child | March 21, 1881 | at S[?] R Warren, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oathes do say that the said Elick Youngblood come to his death near S R Warren water gin on Polys[?] Branch ... from Exposure Caused by the wilfull Neglect and cruel treatment of Eliza Hunt[?] |
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Edward Bridges | March 19, 1881 | Spartanburg County, SC | |||
female child, white child | female child, white child | January 21, 1881 | at Greenville, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that. . . the said unknown female child came to her death from violence at the hands of a party or parties to the Jury unknown |
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John Goodlett | December 28, 1880 | at Greenville CH, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the deceased John H. Goodlett came to his death from a wound on the head how caused the Jury are unable to say |
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William Gowan | December 12, 1880 | Spartanburg County, SC | |||
John Moore | November 19, 1880 | Greenville County, SC | |||
Perry Cox | October 30, 1880 | at Mrs. Ellen Goldsmiths Place, Greenville County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do say that Perry Cox here lying dead in our view came to his death . . .from gun or pistol shots from the hands of unknown parties |
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Poole Croft | colored man | September 9, 1880 | at Barksdale Church, Greenville County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do say that the said Poole Croft came to his death . . . by means of a pistol in the hands of Jefferson D. Gilreath by misfortune and contrary[?] [?] will in manner and found aforesaid did kill & slay |
Henry Blassingham | July 10, 1880 | at Greenville, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that . . .the said Henry Blassingham came to his death from the effects of a gun shot wound. The gun being in the hands of Frank Nelson. The ball entering the body to the left and a little above the left nipple and ranging[?] upwards |
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Isaac Boseley | July 5, 1880 | at Ridge Spring, Edgefield County, SC | pistol |
upon their oath aforesaid, do say, that the aforesaid Isaack Boseley came to his death by a gun Shot wound from a Pistol in the hands of one Peter Ramage |
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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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Jasper Deal | January 18, 1880 | at Greenville, Greenville County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do say that . . .the said Jasper Deal came to his death from the effect of a pistol shot wound in the hands of Henry Townsend. The ball entering the head just below the left eyebrow and passing directly through the brain to the back of the head. |
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Carey Ashley | October 11, 1879 | at J W Wises[?] plantation, Edgefield County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do say that the said Cary Ashley came to his death. . .from a pistol shot wound from the hands of Benjamin L. Jones |
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Margaret Simpkins | September 21, 1879 | on Jas C Brooks Plantation, Edgefield County, SC | shotgun |
do say that the said Margaret Simpkins came to her death by a gun Shot wound inflicted with a single Barrel Shot gun in the hands of John Simpkins |
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Woodward | June 9, 1879 | on the road leading from Dantzler's Bridge on South Tyger River via G. W. Duncan's and R. T. McElvath's to Reidville, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that ... the deceased came to her death by gunshot wound in the Breast, and incised wound on the neck, which severed the carotid arteries, windpipe, and other vital organs, and that we believe the said wounds were inflicted by weapons in the hands of John J. Moore |
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infant male child | infant male child | March 27, 1879 | at Greenville, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the aforesaid unknown male child came to his death from causes to this jury unknown |
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John R. McMillan | March 5, 1879 | at Winnsboro, Fairfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that aforsaid John McMillin came to his death in Winnsboro on the 4 day of March 1879. from a wound by pistol received on the 16 of Feb 1879. in the hand of some person to the jurors unknown[.] |
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James M. D'young | February 16, 1879 | at John J. Moore's, Spartanburg County, SC | |||
Henry Turner | September 24, 1878 | at Johnstons, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oath do say that the said Henry Turner came to his death by a pistol or gun shot from the hands of Cato[?] Butler |
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Thomas Booth | August 23, 1878 | at E. C. House, Edgefield County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do Say that the said Thos Booths. . .came to his death by pistol Shots from the hands of parties unknown |
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James Booth | August 23, 1878 | at E. C. House, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do Say that the said Jas Booth. . .came to his death by pistol Shots from the hands of parties unknown |
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W. Brooker Toney | August 12, 1878 | at E. C. House, Edgefield County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do say that W.B. Toney came to his death by Pistol Shots from the Hands of James Booth Benjamin Booth & Marion Booth |
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Edna Black | August 6, 1878 | at Joseph Davenport's, Greenville County, SC | claw hammer |
upon their oaths do say that the said Edna C Black was killed and homicideed . . . with a claw hammer in the hands of some person or persons to this jury not [?] known |
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infant child | infant child | August 5, 1878 | at the residence of H J Wright, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say the female Child . . . Came to its death by Misfortune or accident |
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Rufus Springs | April 20, 1878 | at Greenville, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said Rufus H Springs came to his death . . . from a gun shot wound in the hands of a party[?] to this jury unknown |
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Elijah Reynolds | April 11, 1878 | at Johnstons, Edgefield County, SC | pistol |
upon their Oaths do say that the said Elijah Reynolds Came to his death from a Pistol Shot wound from a Pistol in the hands of Dick Lundy |
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Clara Burress | February 25, 1878 | at the house of Caty Burress on the plantation of Dr. A. G. Cook, Anderson County, SC | pistol |
do say that she Clara Burriss came to her death by a pistol ball fired in the hands of William Pringle Cook fired at Caty Burress . . .do say William Pringle Cook did kill. |
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Allan G. Chapman | December 31, 1877 | at the Residence of Allan G. Chapman, Chesterfield County, SC | brick |
upon their oaths do Say that Allan G Chapman came to his death from the effects of a Blow from a Brick Bat Received on the back of his head thrown from the hands of Lucius R Hardin |
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Yancy Hardy | December 31, 1877 | at Dr. GJ[?] Butlers Plantation, Edgefield County, SC | pistol |
upon their Oaths do say that the said Yancy Hardy Came to his death from A Pistol Shot wound from a Pistol in the hands of Pierce Winfreed |
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infant child | infant child | December 14, 1877 | at Dr. K N Hudsons plantation, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their Oaths do say that. . .Ella Talbert did murder her own child with some instrument unknown then burned it |