Micajah Watt (or Watts) was identified by the court as a ringleader in the effort to protect Tuttle. Can we find evidence of his leadership outside of the newspapers? (The article excerpt is from the Western Sentinel, 22 August 1895).

Connections (3) – Micajah (Cager) Watt and the Depot Street School Neighborhood
 
Micajah Watt or Watts (1847/1849 – 5 May 1905. PID GS65-YPD). Watt was usually called Cager, but he was also shown in newspapers and elsewhere as Kajah, Cajer, Mc Cager, and possibly Kaziah. At almost 50, Watt was one of the oldest men arrested in the aftermath of the riot; born in 1850 or earlier, he was old enough to remember slavery times. An article in 1886 listed him as one of 68 African Americans in Winston-Salem who owned improved real estate (Western Sentinel, 11 March 1886).

The judge at the trial of the rioters considered him a ringleader in the effort to protect Arthur Tuttle. As a ringleader, Watt received a sentence of six months of hard labor on the county road. This was the second most severe sentence handed down. It is possible that his sentence was no longer because of his age; in other cases, as I have noted, the court showed leniency on account of health or age. One of the three men who received longer sentences, Pleas Webster, was a much younger man, somewhere between 27 and 31 years of age, but I have not found evidence for the age of the two other men (Charles Hauser and Frank Robinson) who received a one-year sentence.

As a reputed leader, Watt was also singled out for unofficial punishment—abuse while in prison. Although a cook and restaurant owner, he was made to work at hard labor rather than serve as the prison camp’s cook. He was whipped in the camp with the knowledge of, if not at the order of, the camp superintendent. We know this because of a short article on the front page of the Western Sentinel. It begins with a headline—“County Convict Camp. Micajah Watts Was Not Whipped”—that is not supported by the story: the story does not say that Watt was not whipped, but only that he was not whipped by Superintendent Shutt; in recent political jargon, it is a nondenial denial. Beating Watt was obviously meant to intimidate and bully him; placing the story on the first page and printing a denial that, in effect, acknowledged the beating were both consistent with a strategy of intimidating the community that looked up to Watt. But this is admittedly speculation.

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My original goal in studying the protectors as a group was to ascertain whether Watt was, as claimed by the court and newspapers, a leader in the effort to protect Tuttle. Are there clues that justify the claims that he was a leader in the community? I thought I might find clues in identifying the men who lived near him.

Cager Watt lived at 809 Depot St and ran a restaurant at 807 ½ Depot; the “Graded School” for African American children was not far away, at 615 Depot. The Depot Street school was a major institution in the African American community. Established in 1887, its principal from 1890 - 1895 was Simon G. Atkins; in 1895 he moved to take charge of the Slater Institute, forerunner of Winston-Salem State University, where he served for many years. In addition to the men arrested for riot (see below), many prominent citizens lived nearby, including Rufus Clement (801 Depot), an alderman and a member of the Republican Executive Committee; lawyer John S. Fitts (corner of Chestnut and E. 7th), who defended a number of the men arrested for riot; Dr. H. H. Hall, who lived at 127 E. 7th ; and Dr. J. W. Jones, at 710 Chestnut.

Nearby institutions included the African American Hook and Ladder company commanded by Aaron Moore (E. 7th near Depot), who served at least one term as alderman. Just across the street from the graded school, on the corner of 7th, was the AME Zion church. If you walked from the corner heading west on 7th, on the right was the Hotel Bethel, the only hotel for African Americans in Winston-Salem. (Later, an important community center, the hall of the Knights of Pythias, was located here.)

Just before the hotel, you could turn north on Chestnut and soon walk to the home of the Rev. J. C. Alston at 714, then to his church, Lloyd Presbyterian. Dr. J. W. Jones lived at 710, and few years later, the lawyer James S. Lanier would live at 713, near the Presbyterian church where he worshiped; like Fitts, he defended in court a number of those arrested for riot, including Pleas Webster. Webster lived nearby, at 715 E. 9th.

Continuing on 7th, just past the hotel you could turn left on Chestnut and walk south a block to the First Baptist Church, near the corner of 6th Street; the pastor, the Rev. G. W Holland, lived at 309 E. 8th, within easy walking distance and a few doors down from shoemaker Wesley Mitchell, one of Tuttle’s protectors. Holland officiated at the weddings of Samuel Toliver, Walter Price, and Aaron Stone.

From the hotel you could also continue west on 7th Street and soon reach, on the left, St Paul’s Methodist Episcopal Church and the home of its minister, the Rev. W. W. Pope. Pope officiated at the marriage of Frank Meadows and Sam Penn. His church is likely where Robert Tuttle rose after the  service on the evening of August 11, 1895, to ask the congregation to gather near the jail to protect his brother, Arthur, from lynching.

***********

Given the vibrancy of the neighborhood, it is not surprising that many of its citizens would have acted to protect Tuttle. The information available cannot prove that Watt was a leader. But it is still interesting and possibly significant that between Watt’s business and the Depot St. school lived several men arrested for participation in the riot:

William Cooper (724 ½ Depot St)—sentenced to pay proportion of costs. He may also have been known as Will Copper, and there may have been a white man in town with the same name. I have not found other connections for him.

Calvin Martin (738 Depot)—indicted, but no information available on the disposition of case. Two men named Calvin Martin seemed to have lived in town at the time, close in age, but married to different women. The Martin on Depot St (born 1864 – 1869) married Mary Davis in 1891; the other (born 1872) married Paulina Mitchel in 1895. Both marriages persisted into the next century. Both men were working class. I don’t know which man was involved in the riot, but I suspect it was the older man.

Matt Malone (728 ½ Depot)—discharged without payment of costs. Another Matt Malone—or perhaps the same man who moved while the 1894 directory was being prepared—lived nearby, at 330A 7½ St., the same address as Walter Price, found not guilty. I have not established other connections for Malone. Price was married in September 1894 by the Rev. G. W. Holland to Alice Holmes of Reidsville; I have found no other connections for him.

Henry (W. H.) Neal’s home and grocery store were near Price, at 313 7½ St; he was found not guilty. He was politically active a few years later, in the hotly contested election of 1898. On one occasion, he and John Mack Johnson appeared to take the opposite sides in an acrimonious debate; in a later discussion, his words were construed (or misconstrued) by the local white supremacist newspaper to heighten racial tension. I will discuss politics in more detail later.

James Williams (734 ½ Depot)—sentenced to 4 months of hard labor on the county roads. I have not established other connections for Williams.

Other rioters who lived nearby on other streets include:

Frank Carter (possibly the C. F. Carter who lived at 523 Sycamore St)—pleaded guilty, but because of his high character, was not sentenced to hard labor but fined $50 and his proportion of costs. Carter likely lived near the school, since he was employed there as a janitor—a salaried position that was highly coveted. He was licensed to preach by a local church (I don’t know which) and, like Samuel Toliver and James Dandridge, he belonged to the Knights of Pythias. He also employed tobacco stemmers. I think it quite likely that contemporary sources sometimes identified him by his initials. Most white men and certain African American men, primarily those accorded a degree of respect by the white community, were known in the newspapers by their initials—R. J. Reynolds, for example. African American ministers were regularly identified this way, for example, the Rev. G. W. Holland, minister at the 1st Baptist Church. Usage was not consistent. It is possible but not certain, then, that C. F. Carter was Frank Carter.

Also living on Sycamore, at 608 was John Grogan, found guilty but released without fine, costs, or hard labor.

Wesley Mitchell (315 E. 8th St)—not guilty. I have not been able to establish other connections for him.

Aaron Stone (618 Chestnut St, just south of the Presbyterian minister and his church)—For unknown reasons, his sentence—three months at hard labor on the public roads—was changed by the judge to $50 and cost. I have not been able to establish other connections for him, except the fact the Rev. G. W. Holland officiated at his wedding.
 
James Dandridge also lived on Chestnut St, at 253. He was sentenced to four months at hard labor on the county roads. As I noted in a previous post, there were later at least three men of this name in town. I do not know which of the men lived on Chestnut, nor which participated in protecting Tuttle. The oldest of the three seems to have been about the same age as Cager Watt; at his death in 1922, he was a member of the Masons, the Knights of Pythias (like Samuel Toliver and Frank Carter), and the Odd Fellows, in whose cemetery he was buried.

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As with my previous posts, this is an interim report. There are a few known sources of inform I have yet to explore and perhaps better ways of assembling and understanding the information I have already gathered. 

Prosopography in 1895 Winston-Salem: Difficulties

Before going on, it may be useful to note the limitations imposed by the available information:

(1) So far as I know, none of the men in included in my collective portrait left their own words behind. With the exception of one or two newspaper articles, we cannot hear them in their own voices, even at second hand.

(2) Because of a major fire in the fall of 1892—it destroyed two city blocks, including a bank and several businesses, a factory, and a warehouse—the twin cities and their business leaders became serious about fighting fire. An invaluable resource from our period is the Sanborn-Perris insurance maps published in April 1895. But they focus on the areas of the city where there was heavy capital investment in factories and institutions; outlying areas are not included, and minor streets are not named. Many of Arthur Tuttle’s protectors lived in areas not covered by the map.

(3) We know where many of the protectors were living in 1894 because of the directory for the cities of Winston and Salem published that year by E. F. Turner of Yonkers, NY. The directory lists name and occupation, home address, and often business address. It also segregates the citizens by race, a practice we avoid in directories (but not the US census), but it is useful for analyzing the racial composition of neighborhoods and occupations.

This resource, as useful as it is, also has its limitations. It generally does not list women in households that include a male relative. It may have also excluded some areas dominated by African Americans; this omission, if it occurred, would explain why men known to have lived in the area during this period are not listed in any of the directories (I have reviewed those published in 1884 and 1890, as well as in 1894). Further, the testimony in the 1890 trial of the contested election of 1888 (see previous posts) suggests that African Americans often moved in and out of town, in part I suspect because tobacco factories were not open year-round. Many may have been away when citizens were being identified for the directories.

(4) The detailed information from the 1890 US census was destroyed many years ago, leaving a large gap in the available information for our period.

(5) Until 1898, no newspapers in Winston-Salem were published by and for African Americans, and no copies of the short-lived Twin-City Herald published in that year are known to exist. Out-of-town papers—notably the Richmond (VA) Planet and the Star of Zion, published in Charlotte—did occasionally cover news from Winston-Salem, including but not limited to the 1895 riot.

(6) Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.com have collected marriage records that, where they exist, are useful in showing age, family relationships, and other connections; for example, as I have already discussed, Yance Simpson and Walter Tuttle attended each other’s weddings in the summer of 1888.

These information gaps mean that we can gain at best only a limited understanding of the men who were arrested as they attempted to protect Arthur Tuttle.  

Headline in the Western Sentinel on 29 August 1895. The newspaper was a proponent of secession before the Civil War, and of white supremacy afterwards. It was disappointed in the court's leniency—that is, some were acquitted, and some found guilty but discharged without punishment, or subjected to fines and court costs in lieu of harsher punishment. But many were sentenced to 3-12 months of hard labor.  

Overview of Tuttle's Protectors
Before going on, it may be helpful to provide an overview of the men who banded together on the night of Sunday, August 11, 1895, to prevent the feared lynching of Arthur Tuttle. I will list the protectors, along with a few others, noting birth and death information, where I have it; known occupation around the time of the riot; and the sentence issued for participating in the riot. The newspapers are not always clear or consistent about the charges, but at least some were charged with carrying concealed weapons or unlawful assembly.  

In many cases, birth and death dates and locations are tentative. Based on available information, in some cases I’ve noted dates for which there is evidence the men were still alive or no longer alive.

NOTE: PID means personal identification number in FamilySearch.org. 

Tuttle, Arthur (born 1875 in Forsyth Co, NC; died 1946 in Philadelphia, PA. PID G7X2-5M2). I’ve no evidence that he worked tobacco in Winston-Salem, but it’s likely. On moving to Philadelphia after his release from prison, he worked in a cigar factory. Trial: guilty of 2nd degree murder, sentenced to 25 years, with possibility of release in 17-18 years based on good behavior. But he appears to have served no more than 15 years, possibly no more than 8.  

Tuttle, Walter (1867 – 1894; born and died in Forsyth Co NC. PID G7X2-MD8). Worked as a roller in a tobacco factory. Killed by policeman Hasten in July 1894.

Protectors—those discussed in earlier posts
 
1. Foster, Henry (possibly born 1875 in Davie Co, died 1949). Started as tobacco worker, but by the time of the riot (and later) was working as hostler, driver, and coachman. Trial: acquitted.
 
2. Johnson, John Mack (John McJohnson) (born unknown, died after 1898). Tobacco roller, once owned a bar and organized an excursion. Trial: pleaded guilty; sentenced to 4 months at hard labor on the county road.
 
3. Matthews, Ellis (born 1870, died unknown). Occupation not known. Trial: found guilty; discharged upon payment of his proportion of the costs.
 
4. Neal, W. H. (born 1856 in NC, died probably after 1922). Grocer. Trial: not guilty.
 
5. Owens, Peter (born 1828?, died 1897 or later). Co-owned restaurant serving snacks. Trial: pleaded guilty; judgment was suspended on payment of cost.
 
6. Scales, Green (There were three: 1: Born 1838, died 1924, probably in Winston-Salem, since he is buried in Odd Fellows’ cemetery; 2: Born in NC 1845-1850; 3: Born 1867 in NC). A young Green Scales worked tobacco; later, a man or men of that name ran a grocery store and a restaurant. Trial: acquitted.
 
7. Searcy, Walter (born 1870/1877, possibly died after 1918). Tobacco worker. Trial: acquitted.
 
8. Simpson, Yancey (born 1861/1862 in NC, died 1930 in Goldsboro, NC). Worked as a tobacco roller. Trial: pleaded guilty; judgment suspended on payment of cost.
 
9. Toliver, Samuel (last name also spelled Taliaferro and Tolliver) (born 1846/1852, probably in Richmond, VA; died 1903 in Greensboro, NC. PID LDPW-D3V). Owned a restaurant, was agent for the Richmond Planet, represented an insurance company, and at least once organized an excursion. Trial: pleaded guilty. Fined $100 and cost; originally sentenced to four months at hard labor, but the judge softened the sentence. 

Protectors—to be discussed in detail in later posts
 
10. Bailey, George (possibly born 1840 in Virginia; death unknown, probably after 1902). Tobacco worker. Trial: because of weak evidence and his age, judgment was suspended.

11. Barnett (or Bennett, Bonnet, or Bornett), Robert (There were 2: older was born 1862, died unknown; younger was born 1882/1883, died 1960, in Winston-Salem, NC). The younger man later worked in tobacco. Trial: payment of proportion of costs.
 
12. Brim, Joe (born 1864, in VA, possibly Patrick Co; died in Winston-Salem in 1909). Began as laborer, later owned a restaurant and a butcher/oyster shop at City Market. Trial: Not guilty.
 
13. Carter, Frank (born 1864/1865, possibly in Forsyth Co; died after 1900). Janitor of Depot St School, licensed preacher, town commissioner, employed tobacco stemmers. Trial: pleaded guilty; because of his high character, fined fifty dollars and his proportion of the costs rather than hard labor.
 
14. Copper, Will or Will Cooper (unknown). Laborer. Trial: Guilty; pay his proportion of the costs. Will Copper and Will Cooper may or not be the same person.  
 
15. Dandridge, James (Jim) (At least 3 men of this name--1: born 1840/1850 in Henry Co, VA, died 1922 in Winston-Salem, buried in Odd Fellows' cemetery; 2: born 1876 in Ohio, died in 1931 in Winston-Salem, buried in Happy Hill Cemetery; 3: Samuel James, born 1880 in Virginia, son of James Dandridge 1; died 1956). The men with this name worked as laborer, tobacco roller, and driver. Trial: four months at hard labor on county roads.
 
16. Day, Earnest (born 1875/1878, in Florida; died after 1938). Laborer. Trial: Pleaded guilty; sentenced to 4 months at hard labor on county roads.
 
17. Foster, Della (born 1876 in NC, died after 1923). Occupation in 1894/95 not known; later worked as barber, laborer, factory worker. Trial: Not guilty.
 
18. Foy, Lee (born 1870 in NC; died possibly after 1924). Shoemaker. Trial: pleaded guilty; sentenced to 3 months of hard labor on the county roads.
 
19. Goins, Gus (born 1875/1879 in Winston-Salem; died 1951 in Pittsburgh, PA). Laborer. Trial: pleaded guilty; sentenced to 4 months at hard labor on county roads.
 
20. Grogan, John (born 1836 in Maryland; died after 1906. PID GWJ6-27M). Tobacco worker. Trial: discharged without payment of costs, possibly because of age.
 
21. Hart, Morgan (born 1864/1865, possibly in Edgecombe, NC; died 1935 in Columbus, OH; PID GQM7-HSC). Tobacco worker. Trial: pleaded guilty; sentenced to 4 months at hard labor on county roads.
 
22. Hauser, Charles (unknown). Occupation unknown. Trial: 12 months at hard labor on the county roads.
 
23. Hopkins, Gus (unknown) . Occupation unknown. Trial: arrested and jailed, but possibly released without trial.
 
24. Jones, Nathan (Nat) (born 1866 in Virginia; died after 1902/1903; PID GWJN-V92). A man of that name was later a laborer. Trial: four months at hard labor on county roads.
 
25. King, Frank (born 1881, died 1937 in Winston-Salem and buried in Happy Hill). Plasterer. Trial: acquitted.
 
26. Knowles or Noals, Ed. (Also possibly spelled Noel or Noell) (unknown). Occupation unknown. Trial: acquitted.
 
27. Lee, Felix (born 1873 in Caswell Co, NC; died 1962 in Lexington, NC. PID GCMY-RR7). So far, no one of that name have been found in Winston-Salem, but this farmer in nearby Davidson County may have been in town to buy and/or sell. Trial: not guilty.
 
28. Malone, Mat (born 1868/1871 in Warrenton, NC; died before 1940, probably in Winston-Salem). Tobacco worker. Trial: discharged without payment of costs.
 
29. Martin, Calvin (born 1869/1872 in NC; died unknown). Tobacco worker. Trial: Indicted, but no further info available.
 
30. Matthews, Soon (unknown) . Occupation unknown. Trial: acquitted.
 
31. Meadows, Frank (born 1867/1869 in NC, died after 1903). Tobacco worker. Trial: Not guilty, possibly because he identified a number of the defendants.
 
32. Mitchell, Wesley (unknown). Shoemaker. Trial: Not guilty.
 
33. Myers, Tom (born 1874, died 1899 in Winston-Salem). Occupation unknown. Trial: 4 months at hard labor on the county roads.
 
34. Penn, Sam (There were three. 1: born 1862, died unknown; 2: born 1875/1880, died unknown; 3: unknown). Occupation in 1894/1895 unknown. Sam Penn 2 and 3 later worked in tobacco factories. Trial: 3 months at hard labor on the county roads.
 
35. Price, Walter (born 1871/1873 in NC, died after 1902). Tobacco worker. Trial: Not guilty.
 
36. Robinson, Frank (born unknown, died after 1916). Laborer. Trial: 12 months at hard labor on the county roads.
 
37. Ross, Coy (born in Union Co, SC, 1861/1865; died in Winston-Salem in 1936 and buried in Odd Fellows’ cemetery. PID GWJ7-CJ3). Later a tobacco worker, his occupation in 1895 is not known. Trial: Four months at hard labor on the county roads.
 
38. Scales, Mat (born unknown, died after 1906). Occupation unknown. Trial: guilty; discharged without payment of costs.
 
39. Skeen or Skeens or Skeenes, Sam (born 1862, probably in Randolph Co, NC; probably died before 1910). Tobacco worker. Trial: guilty; discharged without payment of costs.
 
40. Smith, Charles (unknown; possibly a schoolboy born 1878, died 1896 in Winston-Salem, and/or a tobacco worker with unknown dates). Trial: not guilty.
 
41. Snow, Sam (born 1876 in Germanton, NC; died 1953 in Winston-Salem and buried in Odd Fellows’ cemetery). Tobacco worker. Trial: Not guilty.
 
42. Steele, Anderson (unknown). Plasterer. Trial: guilty, but sentence suspended due to infirmity.
 
43. Stone, Aaron (born 1864/1865 in NC, died unknown). Tobacco worker. Trial: His sentence—three months at hard labor on the public roads—was changed by the judge to $50 and cost.
 
44. Taylor, Oscar (born unknown, possibly died after 1931). Tobacco worker. Trial: pleaded guilty; sentenced to four months at hard labor on the county roads.
 
45. Tuttle, Will (born 1868 in Forsyth Co, NC; died after 1903. PID G7X2-5FM). Occupation unknown. Trial: arrested; disposition of case unknown.
 
46. Watt, Micajah (born 1847/1849, possibly in Rockingham Co; died 1905, in Manhattan, NY. PID GS65-YPD). Cook, restaurant owner. Trial: pleaded guilty; sentenced to 6 months at hard labor on the county roads.
 
47. Webster, Pleas (1: born 1864 – unknown; 2: born 1868 - unknown). Probably tobacco worker. Trial: Pleaded guilty; sentenced to 12 months at hard labor on the county roads.
 
48. Williams, James (Jim) (unknown). Tobacco worker. Trial: four months at the county road.

​Edited 14 Sept 2022

Peter Owens testifies about his role in the contested election for sheriff in 1888 ("Boyer vs Teague," Union Republican, Thu, 23 Jan 1890, 1).

​As noted previously, in the year of the 1895 riot, Toliver and Peter Owens had businesses near the corner of Church and 5th Streets. Owens partnered with Dick Walker in the business of serving snacks (1894/1895 directory). Owens lived nearby on 5th Street. Neal lived farther away, on E 7 ½ Street, in the African American neighborhood near the Depot Street school for African American children.

Toliver and especially Owens were acquainted with John Mack Johnson. As noted earlier, Toliver’s sentence to hard time was changed to a stiff fine. Owens pleaded guilty, but judgment was suspended on payment of cost (Union Republican, 22 August 1895). Neal was found not guilty. Like Toliver and Owens, John Mack Johnson pleaded guilty, but he was sentenced to four months hard labor on the county roads (Western Sentinel, 29 Aug 1895). Two years later, he sued unsuccessfully to “recover [$16] stolen [by a guard] while he was on the county roads after the riot” (Western Sentinel, 16 Dec 1897).

The profile I am creating suggests that those who acted to protect Arthur Tuttle had attained some success in business, participated in community and political activities, and had an appetite for taking risks. See below for profiles of Peter Owens and John Mack Johnson. The small amount of information I have on W. H. Neal suggests a similar profile; he was a business owner willing to engage in political activity.

Peter Owens
Owens came to Winston-Salem about 1880, or so he testified in an 1890 electoral fraud case in which Sam Toliver and John Mack Johnson also testified (Union Republican, 23 Jan 1890). The newspaper reports of the trial recount the testimony of both “Peter Owen” and “Peter Owens”—probably a typographical error, but possibly two men in town had similar names. We will encounter this problem with other protectors of Arthur Tuttle. 

In his testimony at the trial, Owens mentions by the way that he had employed a couple of the contested voters under discussion. Entrepreneurialism is a trait he had in common with Sam Toliver as well as John Mack Johnson. Entrepreneurs are often risk takers; this trait Owens appeared to have in abundance, at least judging from his court appearances. Between 1891 and 1897, Owens (or another man of that name) came before the local courts several times for “retailing”—that is, selling whiskey without a license—and for gambling, twice along with John Mack Johnson (for example, Western Sentinel, 16 May 1895). From what we can tell through the filter of time, Owens seemed to enjoy taking risks.

Owens owned some property, a tenement house and lot on Best Street (Union Republican, 14 Nov 1895).

Beyond the newspapers, the only records I have been able find concern his marriage to Catherine Miller in 1892. According to the marriage records, he was 64 (born around 1828) and his bride was 36, almost thirty years his junior. If this was the same man arrested after the riot, he was the oldest of Tuttle’s protectors, so far as I have been able to determine from current information. His age may explain why, after he pleaded guilty, his judgment was suspended on payment of cost. In one case, a man found guilty after the riot was released without penalty because of his age; this was George Bailey, possibly born in 1840 (Western Sentinel, 29 Aug 1895; 1900 US Census). But many of those found guilty received minimal or even no penalty, so this is not a strong argument. Some of them were considered old—for example, John Grogan, born in 1836—but some were not.  

Another trait that Owens shared with Toliver and other Tuttle protectors, including Frank Carter and W.H. (Henry) Neal, was involvement in local politics. In 1892, Owens was on the credentials committee of the county Republican convention, and in 1894 he was named to the state Republican convention (along with lawyer J.S. Fitts and others) by the Wheeler faction of the local Republican party (Western Sentinel, 2 Aug 1894).

In his behavior during the much-contested sheriff’s election of 1888, Owens exhibited his risk-taking nature: the details are murky, but it appears he was arrested, apparently for pushing ahead in the voting line, though he said African Americans were outnumbered by whites two to one. After two hours in jail, he was able to vote. Joining the insurgent Wheeler faction took some degree of nerve—splitting the party risked ensuring a Democratic victory, with all the recriminations that such an outcome would entail—as of course did his participation in the assembly to protect Tuttle.  
 
John Mack Johnson
As already noted, there were several John Johnsons in Winston-Salem in the early 20th century. Ours seems to have appeared in the newspapers as John Mack Johnson, John McJohnson, John Johnson, and perhaps even John Mack. In the 1894-95 directory there were two John Johnson’s in Winston—a tobacco worker who lived at 1012 Oak, and a laborer, at 222 Conrad; and in Salem there was a third, also a laborer, who lived on Salem Hill. I don’t know which, if any of them, was our John Mack Johnson. The man on Oak St lived near one of Arthur Tuttle’s protectors, Oscar Taylor, at 1005 Oak.

From the sparse available evidence, John Mack Johnson appears to have been an intimate of Peter Owens and acquaintance of Sam Toliver. All were entrepreneurial. Johnson ran a bar room at times and occasionally organized excursions by train, at least one, to Danville, in partnership with Toliver (Western Sentinel, 2 Jun 1898). Owen and Toliver, as we have seen, both ran eating houses. Owen and Johnson gambled. In May 1894, Peter Owens and eight others, including John Mack Johnson, were charged with gambling; Owens was acquitted, Johnson found guilty (Union Republican, 31 May 1894). Both were arrested on the same charge a year later; Johnson was found guilty, but the newspapers did not report the disposition of Owens’ case (Western Sentinel, 16 May 1895).

All three were witnesses in Jan 1890 trial in re fraudulent voting the race for sheriff. A newspaper report of Johnson’s testimony in the trial gives us a rare chance to hear one of Tuttle’s protectors in an approximation of his own voice:
 
"I live on Fifth st., two or three squares from ‘Louse Level;’ I have been keeping barroom; ain’t doing anything now; I have been up before Mayor for gambling twice; submitted both times; been before Mayor four times for fighting…." ( Western Sentinel, 23 Jan 1890).

Fighting also indicates a taste for risk, of course, one shared with Johnson by Walter Tuttle and Yancey Simpson (twice found guilty of assault) and others to be discussed later.

As I’ve already noted, some of the protectors held minor political offices or party roles, which I take as evidence of bravery or risk tolerance, given the hostility of many whites to African Americans in any political office or role, however lowly. In 1891, John Mack Johnson served on a school committee, along with Charles Tuttle (probably the father of Arthur and Walter (Union Republican, 17 Sep 1891). By 1898, he was taking a more prominent role in politics. He spoke at a Republican county convention in favor of “the contesting delegation” seeking more political representation in the party for African Americans. Perhaps he shared the sentiments of J. M. Hawkins, who gave “a hot speech in favor of the contesting delegates. He said the negro had been treated as a fool and tool long enough” (Union Republican, 2 Jun 1898; Western Sentinel, 2 Jun 1898).

Finally, for a time at least, Johnson owned a horse, a fact we know because, in 1893 he threatened to sue the county “for injuries sustained by his horse falling through a bridge on the East Salem Road” (Western Sentinel, 9 Feb 1893). Owning a horse was not common among working class citizens of either race and suggests a degree of prosperity.

W. H. Neal
Neal is included here because he spoke against the “contesting delegation” in the May 1898 convention mentioned above, where John Mack Johnson spoke. Neal accused one of the speakers of "receiving money for his opposition work to the ‘bosses,’” i.e., chairman Reynolds and other leaders (Union Republican, 2 Jun 1898; Western Sentinel, 2 Jun 1898). This payment may have come from Democrats, as I will discuss in a later post).

In an October 1898 political meeting, Neal was quoted by the Winston Salem Journal as making inflammatory comments—"the issue now was the ‘negro man the white woman’” (Winston-Salem Journal, 7 Oct 1898). This comment was quoted by the white supremacist newspaper to inflame whites against the Republican Party. The context of Neal’s comments are not provided, indications of the bad faith characteristic of the Democratic Party.

In Sept 1898, W. H. Neal was a businessman who “conduct[ed] a [grocery] store [on E 7 ½ St], east of the … Graded School” for African Americans on Depot Street (Western Sentinel, 8 Sept 1898; Western Sentinel, 28 Apr 1897). I believe him to be the Henry Neal who was found not guilty for charges arising from the “riot.” He was married and had four children (1900 US Census). Like Owens, he was a property owner; in the 1900 census, he owned his home outright. 

In 1895, Samuel Toliver's shop and home were near Masten's Corner, where the men gathered to protect Arthur Tuttle from lynching, and directly across Church Street from the jail, technically located on Main Street. A neighboring shop was owned by Peter Owen, also arrested for unlawful assembly. 

Samuel Toliver (FamilySearch personal ID LDPW-D3V) was born in Virginia, probably in or near Richmond, sometime between 1846 and 1852 (the sources differ). In the 1870 census, he may well be the young housekeeper of that name who worked in a hotel in Lexington, Virginia. In 1874, as Samuel Taliaferro, he married his first wife in Richmond. He was probably living there: his mother lived in Richmond at the time of his second marriage in 1885, and as we will see he had important personal and business connections in Richmond.

Toliver came to Winston-Salem in 1882, as he testified in 1890 (Western Sentinel, 23 Jan 1890). Three years later, he married Lizzie Morehead in a ceremony conducted by the locally prominent Baptist minister, G. W. Holland.

Toliver had deep connections in the local African American community and was well respected in the white community. The latter fact probably accounts for his presence in the local newspapers. He was an acquaintance and agent for John Mitchell, Jr., the owner and editor of the influential African American newspaper, the Richmond (VA) Planet, and for that reason, if no other, he was occasionally mentioned by that paper, too.  

By 1889/1890, Toliver owned a grocery store and lived at 447 Church Street in Winston. He was still here at the time of the action to protect Arthur Tuttle. Toliver’s store was near the corner of Church and 5th Street, a location known as Masten’s Corner (see the map above). On the night of August 11, 1895, men gathered at this corner before walking to the nearby jail to protect Arthur Tuttle from the rumored lynching. Toliver was not mentioned in the newspapers as a leader, but his original sentence—four months of hard labor on the county roads—suggests that he was seen as one. His sentence was among the harshest handed down: three men received twelve-month sentences, one man identified as a ringleader received a six-month sentence, and four others, in addition to Toliver, received four-month sentences.

The judge reduced Toliver’s sentence to $100 and cost, then a substantial amount of money. The newspapers do not provide a reason for the change, but perhaps we will find it in the judge’s reason for reducing Frank Carter’s sentence: he “had been given an unusually good character and through deference to this [the judge] imposed a fine … instead of consigning him to the county road” (Western Sentinel, 29 Aug 1895).

A number of Tuttle’s protectors lived or ran businesses near Toliver, including Peter Owen, a business colleague and probably friend whose snack-bar had been next door, at 445 Church Street, since at least 1889/1890. Owen and another protector, tobacco worker Walter Searcy, lived around the corner on East 5th. In 1890, John Johnson, a tobacco worker and sometime barkeeper, also lived nearby on 5th.

Separate articles will consider these relationships in more detail. For now, I will continue with my profile of Toliver.

In 1895 and 1897, Toliver was an officer in the Twin City Pythias Lodge, a fact we know from the Richmond Planet (for example, 20 July 1895), not the local papers. (For a brief excursus on social organizations in Winston-Salem, see below.)

By 1897, Toliver was the Winston-Salem agent for the Richmond Planet (Richmond Planet, 21 Aug 1897) and occasionally made trips to Richmond to confer with the paper’s owner / editor, John Mitchell, Jr. He was also the Winston-Salem manager of the Working Men's Aid and Beneficial Association in Richmond, VA (Richmond Planet, 29 May 1897).

In April 1898, Toliver chaired a ward meeting of the local Republican party (Western Sentinel, 14 Apr 1898). At least one later post will address local politics in detail.

In January 1903, a false accusation against Toliver gave a newspaper the occasion to praise him as a “reputable and well known colored business man”: his business was now on Fourth Street (where it had been since at least 1897), and according to the paper “he has a good many friends among the white people of that vicinity” (Winston-Salem Journal, 10 Jan 1903). His health was declining, and he died later that year while seeking medical care in Greensboro (Union Republican, 20 Aug 1903).
 
Excursus—Social Organizations
Membership information in the many social and fraternal organization would be very helpful in defining social connections and networks, but unfortunately the local papers showed little interest in such features of the African American community. Even the city directory for the period often ignored these organizations.

It would also be helpful to know more about the membership services and benefits provided by the Masons and Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias, the Knights of Honor, and other groups, to know more about the cornet and string bands, and to know if there were temperance and literary societies in the community. In the African American cemetery established by the Odd Fellows are buried four men who may have been among Tuttle’s protectors—James Dandridge, Coy Ross, Green Scales, and Sam Snow. Probably many of Tuttle’s protectors had such connections, but they are at present beyond reach.
 
Here's the beginning of an inventory and chronology of such groups and related organizations:
 
1860s - 1880s

• 1867: African American lodge of Odd Fellows established in Winston.
• 1870s – 1880s: The Odd Fellows Lodge was one location used for schooling of African American children (Davis, et al., African Americans in Winston-Salem, 43-44).

 
1882

• Green Scales’ “string band serenaded at several places in town on Monday night” (People's Press, 9 Feb 1882).
• A new lodge of the Odd Fellows celebrates with a parade in regalia (Winston Sentinel, 1 Jun 1882).

 
1889

• The Odd Fellows parade in regalia with a band (People’s Press, 30 May 1889). By this time, the Odd Fellows were the largest fraternity organization in the nation.

 
1891/1892

• Gilt Edge Cornet Band (City Directory, 1891/1892). It “met on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights at the Brown Brothers Building on Church Street” and was led by A.D. King (Davis, et al., 141).
• Gold Leaf Cornet Band (City Directory, 1891/1892). The band performed during the celebration of Emancipation Day on January 2, 1893 (Twin City Daily Sentinel, 6 Jan 1893). The band “met at the corner of Fourth and Church Streets every Tuesday and Thursday” and was led by Captain J. W. Mayo (Davis, et el., 141).
• Winston Star Lodge, No. 2308 (City Directory, 1891/1892)
• Resurgam Lodge, No. 27 (City Directory, 1891/1892). A Masonic Lodge belonging to the Free and Accepted Ancient York Rite Masons (see "The Colored Methodists," Lexington, NC, Dispatch (7 Jul 1892).
• Good Samaritan Shining Star Lodge, No. 305; Good Samaritan Winston Star Lodge, No. 95 (City Directory, 1891/1892). They appear to have been Masonic lodges.
• Bloom of Youth Lodge, No. 127 (City Directory, 1891/1892). An Odd Fellows lodge.
• The Winston lodge of the International Order of Odd Fellows celebrated its 24th anniversary (People’s Press, 28 May 1891).

 
1892-1893

• Following a devastating fire in November 1892, the African American community organized a hook-and-ladder company to fight fires. The city provided uniforms and used equipment.

 
1895

• In late May, the Odd Fellows held a parade in full regalia (“Local News,” Union Republican, 30 May 1895)

 
1897

• YMCA (Richmond Planet, 10 Jul 1897)
• Orphan Aid Society of the First Baptist Church (Richmond Planet, 10 Jul 1897)
• Knights of Pythias Grand Lodge (Richmond Planet, 10 Jul 1897). The Pythian and Odd Fellow lodges probably offered burial insurance and other financial services to members.

 
1902/1903

• Knights of Pythias, with five lodges: Damon Lodge, No. 41; McKinley Lodged, No. 14; Maceo Lodge, No. 13; Salome Lodge, No. 9; Twin City Lodge, No. 5 (City Directory, 1902/03)
• Masonic, Ionic Lodge, F. & A. M. (City Directory, 1902/03)

 
Benevolent associations

• National Industrial Beneficial Endowment company (Richmond Planet, 10 Jul 1897)
• The Peoples Benevolent Relief Association of North Carolina (Richmond Planet, 10 Jul 1897)
• The Working Men's Aid and Beneficial Association (Richmond Planet, 10 Jul 1897)

Marriage certificate of Yancey Simpson and Mary Petrie, married 21 July 1888 by the Rev. E. P. Mayo. Witnesses were Walter Tuttle, Susan Bynum (soon to be Walter’s wife), and Gid Petrie, father of Mary and of Ellis Matthews.

Up to 300 participated in the effort to protect Arthur Tuttle; we know the names only of those men who were arrested, plus Arthur Tuttle’s sister (no women were arrested). Though those men are hardly a random sample of the participants, I am hoping that studying them will provide insight into their personal connections and social networks, in some cases their political and religious affiliations and their visibility to the white community. The primary motivation to participate must have been protecting a member of the community from torture and murder, but the situation threatened the entire community. In these networks and connections we may perhaps see evidence of the community at work.

In her dissertation, Miller suggests several reasons for the timing of the riot. First, the Black community had unrealized expectations of political participation and of patronage proportional to the size of their contribution to Republican electoral success. Second, the lynching of five men in Alabama in April had set the African American community in NC on edge; Miller’s evidence is an article in the AMEZ Star of Zion published in Charlotte and a resolution passed in June at an indignation meeting in Winfall, NC. In this tense context, Arthur Tuttle killed Michael Vickers, and the rumors of a lynching immediately spread through Winston-Salem (35-41).

Aside from the accounts of the killing of Officer Vickers and the murder trial, the newspapers have little information about Arthur Tuttle’s connections and social networks. To place him in a social context, his older brother, Walter, provides a good starting point. It is likely that Arthur knew many if not all of Walter’s connections, though that is only a surmise.

Walter Tuttle and Yance Simpson
One of the men arrested in the aftermath of the 1895 riot was Yance or Yancey Simpson (1861/1862 – 1930). He seems to have been a close associate of Walter. When he married Mary Petrie in July 1888, the witnesses included Walter Tuttle and Susan Bynum. When Walter and Susan were married the following month, witnesses included Simpson and his new bride. 

The Rev. Elijah P. Mayo of the American Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) Church officiated at both weddings. He appears to have left Winston-Salem before the riot. He was appointed to a congregation in Hickory at the end of that year (Press and Carolinian, 12 Dec 1895), but had disappeared from the Winston-Salem newspapers two years earlier. He may have been a significant influence, however. Before his departure, he was politically active. In 1892 he was particularly outspoken in meetings of the Republican Party. Later posts will take up the political situation.

The year after their marriages, Tuttle and Simpson were neighbors on Mack Town Street. In 1891, Tuttle and Simpson were still neighbors, now on Blum Row. In December they were both arrested and fined $7; the newspaper did not report the charge (Western Sentinel, 10 Dec 1891).

Simpson and Tuttle had fewer documented interactions from 1892 to Tuttle’s death in 1894. As I described in an earlier post, Tuttle became increasingly violent and developed a bad reputation. Simpson may have joined Arthur Tuttle’s protectors because he knew Arthur, or perhaps because of his close association with Arthur’s slain brother, Walter.

Yance Simpson and Ellis Matthews
Yance Simpson’s wife, Mary Petrie, was the daughter of Gid Petrie (a witness at Yance’s wedding) and half-sister of Ellis Matthews, a son of Gid Petrie and one of the men arrested after the riot.

Yance Simpson and Henry Foster
In 1894/95, a man named Henry Foster (1355 N Main) lived near Yance Simpson (1366 N Main) and worked as a driver. This may well be the man of that name arrested after the riot.

Yance Simpson and Green Scales
Another man arrested after the riot was Green Scales. There appear to have been three men with that name in Winston-Salem, the first born in 1838 (died 1924, buried in the Odd Fellows’ cemetery), the next born 1845-1850, and the youngest born 1867/1868. Yance Simpson knew at least one of them. In the 1880 census, the youngest Green Scales was working in a tobacco factory and boarding nearby at 198 Chestnut. Other boarders included Yancey Simpson, then 19 years old. Yancey’s and Green’s boarding together suggests, if only weakly, that this was the man of that name who participated in the riot. Like Simpson and Walter Tuttle, this Green Scales was married in July 1888, but by a justice of the peace and with no overlap in witnesses with the marriages of Simpson and Walter Tuttle. (Surprisingly, perhaps, one of the witnesses was J. W. Bradford, then serving as deputy sheriff and jailer; he became Winston’s Chief of Police a few years later.)

In the 1891 city directory, one Green Scales owned a grocery at 1105 Old Town. By 1895, a Green Scales still lived at that address, while presumably another Green Scales lived and ran a restaurant at 205 E. Fifth Street. I do not know the connection between these men. They may have been the same man; people who moved in the course of the year could be listed in the directory at both addresses. In the winter of 1882, Green Scale’s “string band serenaded at several places in town on Monday night” (People's Press, 9 Feb 1882).

The restaurant owner lived and worked quite near three other men arrested after the 1895 riot—Peter Owens, who lived a few doors down at 122 E. Fifth, and Walter Searcy, a tobacco worker who lived at 120 E. Fifth. Owens was also a restaurant owner; his restaurant was located just around the corner, at 445 Church St, next door to the restaurant of another arrested man, Sam Toliver, at 447.
 
Summary
Familial connections and neighborhood proximity suggest that overlapping social networks of men participating the effort to protect Arthur Tuttle from the lynch mob. As we proceed, we will find more connections, and we will find men who, given the available evidence, cannot be placed in networks—indeed, who cannot be placed in the community beyond the fact of their arrest.

The men in the group described here worked as laborers. Like Walter Tuttle, in 1880 Yancey Simpson worked in a tobacco factory, as did the young Green Scales who lived in the same boarding house. Ellis Matthews’ work is not listed in the 1894/95 city directory, but most of his neighbors in Blumtown were laborers. Henry Foster worked as a driver. By 1895, a man or men named Green Scales owned a restaurant and had been a grocer. 

Next post: Sam Toliver, Peter Owens, John Mack Johnson (or John McJohnson), and Henry Neal.

Send comments and questions to jsabsherphd@gmail.com. 

The Union Republican (23 May 1895)

In 1880, Charles Tuttle (born around 1827) and his wife, Margaret (born around 1841), lived in Middle Fork Township in Forsyth County, a key part of the Black-majority Winston third ward from 1892 to 1895. Charles farmed (the 1900 census shows he owned the mortgaged farm), his wife kept house, and by 1880 some of the children were already working in factories, including Walter at the age of 12. Evidence gathered by Bertha Hampton Miller for her 1981 dissertation suggests that Charles Tuttle “had money and large land holdings which incited envy among many whites”; newspapers from the white and African American communities agreed that the Tuttle sons had “’unsavory reputations’” (“Blacks in Winston-Salem 1895-1920,” 46).

Five of their ten known children figure in the story—Ida, born in 1863; William, born in 1867; Walter, 1868; Robert, 1871; and Arthur, 1875. Until May 1895, Walter was the family member most often in the news. He was frequently in trouble with law, primarily for brawling (the actual charge was “affray”) and assault.

So far as can be determined from the surviving newspapers, Walter reached a turning point in his life in March 1892. A drunk white man paid Walter, also drunk, and Sim Brannon to attack a young tobacco farmer from Rockingham County. The attack took place in the Piedmont Tobacco Warehouse. Farmer Nelson gave better than he got: he seriously wounded Walter with a knife and escaped without serious injury, as did Brannon. Chief of Police J. W. Bradford and Brannon sat up all night nursing Walter’s wounds. Tuttle was sent home to recover; before his trial he left town and went into hiding. He was not caught until December 1892. In March 1893 he was convicted on several counts of assault and sentenced to 12 months of hard labor on the county roads. He then disappeared from the Winston-Salem newspapers for about 14 months.

In May 1894, Tuttle was arrested for assaulting Bradford, now the former chief, “probably on account of some old grudge because of Bradford’s course in some way against Tuttle during Bradford’s term of office as chief-of-police” (Western Sentinel, 26 July 1894). Possibly Bradford’s treatment of Tuttle for his knife wounds was not as benign as the newspapers reported. Even among his fellow officers, Bradford seems to have had a reputation for harsh treatment; a few years later, when the ex-chief was himself arrested, he accused the arresting officers of mistreatment. One replied, “D---  you, you have treated many a man worse than this for less offences” (Western Sentinel, 9 Dec 1897).

Whatever the reason for his assault, Tuttle was convicted. Desperate to avoid another stint at hard labor—aside from the rigors of the prison life, he had a wife and two-year-old daughter—he asked Policeman J. R. Hasten to accompany him to find someone to pay the fine on his behalf. According to Hasten, when they were on the grounds of a tobacco factory, Tuttle tried “to snatch the pistol from [the officer’s] hip pocket, … and … failing in this grabbed” the officer’s billy club (Western Sentinel, 9 Dec 1897). The officer said he pulled his .38 and mortally wounded Tuttle. Eventually, witnesses came forward claiming that the officer had lied, that Tuttle had not gone for the his gun. Hasten was indicted for murder—the first indictment against a Winston-Salem police officer for killing an African American—and in May 1895 he was put on trial. But on Saturday, May 19, the white jury found him innocent.     

In the afternoon after the verdict, the sidewalks around the courthouse were as usual crowded with pedestrians. Among them was Arthur Tuttle, no doubt angry and upset by Hasten’s acquittal. He refused the orders of two policemen, Michael Vickers and Alex Dean, to move from the sidewalk to let others (probably white women) pass and became verbally defiant; he would move when he “damn got ready” (Union Republican, 15 Aug 1895). One of the policemen moved him from the sidewalk—it is not clear how much force was used—and Walter fought back. During the struggle, Tuttle grabbed a pistol (from his pocket or shirt or perhaps from the ground after it fell from his clothing) and twice shot officer Vickers. He was arrested on the spot; Vickers died the next evening.

Fearing that a lynching would be attempted, African Americans gathered near the county jail. The authorities quickly moved Arthur Tuttle to Greensboro, then farther away, to Charlotte. He was returned for the trial in August, despite the request of the defense lawyers for change in venue.

When the trial was in recess on Sunday, August 11, the white and black communities were swept by rumors of a gathering lynch mob. That evening, after church service, one of the Tuttle sons, Robert, asked a Methodist Episcopal congregation to take up weapons and gather near the church to protect his brother. In her memoir published just three years later, Ida Beard (daughter of a Confederate veteran) reported it as a night of rumor and fear, rumors that came to her from her husband, who worked in the office of a justice of the peace. To her disgust, he had helped in Tuttle’s legal defense and supported the effort to protect him from lynching.

I have seen no evidence that Robert joined the men guarding Tuttle. The oldest Tuttle son, William, evidently participated and then fled to avoid arrest. He was arrested in Statesville at the end of November, but I have not found stories indicating that he was tried. Years later, eyewitnesses reported in interviews that “Tuttle’s sister, Ida, weighing about three hundred pounds, sat on the courtroom steps brandishing two six gun shooters, and warned whites who had gathered a few yards aways: ‘The first white man comes across her to  undo this jail door, I’m gonna kill him’” (Miller, 45).

Next posts: I will begin exploring the lives and connections of the men who gathered to protect Tuttle.

Sources: In addition to Miller’s Duke University dissertation, I have used contemporary newspapers and Fam Brownlee’s very useful account, ”Murder, Rumors of Murder and Even More Rumors…”  For a more detailed account, see Appendix C of my annotated edition of Ida Beard’s memoir, My Own Life.

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White-ground lekythos, ca. 500-475 BC. Attributed to the Diaphos Painter. Public domain (Wikipedia).

José de la Heredia (1842 – 1905) was a French poet who was born in Cuba of a Cuban father and French mother. He was educated in France and settled there with his widowed mother. He is best known for the 118 sonnets in Les Trophées, published in 1893. He belonged to the Parnassian group of poets.

I probably came across Heredia when I was using English prose versions to “translate” poems in the Greek Anthology. I often found his sonnets difficult to follow, but beautiful and intriguing. I also liked the scope of Les Trophées--world history (though from a Western perspective; he wrote in the classic age of western imperialism), and nature poems. There are poems on Greek and Latin antiquity and the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and a short section on the Middle East, the Far East, and the tropics. My attention then as now was devoted to the treatments of Greek and Latin myth and history.

The second poem in the collection is “Némée,” referring to a location (Nemea) and the Nemean lion, a beast whose golden hide was impervious to weapons and whose claws could penetrate human armor.

Némée

Depuis que le Dompteur entra dans la forêt
En suivant sur le sol la formidable empreinte,
Seul, un rugissement a trahi leur étreinte.
Tout s'est tu. Le soleil s'abîme et disparaît.

À travers le hallier, la ronce et le guéret,
Le pâtre épouvanté qui s'enfuit vers Tirynthe
Se tourne, et voit d'un œil élargi par la crainte
Surgir au bord des bois le grand fauve en arrêt.

Il s'écrie. Il a vu la terreur de Némée
Qui sur le ciel sanglant ouvre sa gueule armée,
Et la crinière éparse et les sinistres crocs ;

Car l'ombre grandissante avec le crépuscule
Fait, sous l'horrible peau qui flotte autour d'Hercule,
Mêlant l'homme à la bête, un monstrueux héros.


Hercules and the Nemean Lion (1st draft)

Since the Breaker of Beasts entered the forest
tracking the frightening pugmarks in the clay,
only a roar has betrayed their fierce embrace.
Everything is quiet. The sun dips and sets.

Through thicket and bramble, across a clearing,
the frightened herdsman, fleeing towards the city,
turns. Eyes widened by fear, he sees
the beast, stopped beside the woods, rising.

He cries out; he sees the terror of the lion
whose jaw is gaping open to the sky,
with his maw of fearsome teeth, his straggly mane.

For shadows that creep from the twilit trees
are making, under the hide draping Hercules,
a monstrous hero, blending beast with man.

Understanding the poem may be difficult for modern readers, because Heredia assumes intimate familiarity with the story. In the third line of the first stanza, for example, he refers to “their embrace” (“leur étreinte”) without providing an antecedent for their—an “oversight” that would probably evoke comments in a contemporary poetry critique group. My title, “Hercules and the Nemean Lion,” gives the modern reader a starting place and an explanation for their.

Heredia also feels no need to explain étreinte/embrace, a rather understated way to describe the action to come—the hand-to-paw death battle described in the myth and further discussed below. 

The beginning of this line had another puzzle for me: “Seul, un rugissement a trahi…. Only a roar [or, one roar] has betrayed….” Some background reading clarified: since Hercules’ weapons were powerless, he used his hands to kill the beast by strangulation. Heredia’s version implies that the lion can manage only a single roar before his breath is cut off.

I was also puzzled, briefly, by the switch in tense from past to present perfect (from “entered the forest” to “has betrayed”). I wondered about the point of view implied by the change in tense.

The next line is in present tense, as is the following stanza (see the third line), but in the second line of that stanzas we find at last the point of view—“le pâtre/the herdsman.” What the herdsman sees, and what we see, is from a distance—the lion stopped at the age of the woods, mysteriously rising, presumably on his hind legs to grapple with Hercules; the lion’s fear; his fanged jaw opening on the bloody sky; and then the hide draped around Hercules (“floating around” him, in the original), for in the myth Hercules removes the pelt and head with the lion’s claws to use as his armor and helmet. The reader must bring these details to the poem.

In the gathering darkness, the herdsman sees a monstrous mingling of man and beast. Heredia’s use of monstreux/monstrous introduces another difference from today’s poetic practice. Monstrous meant, originally, a malformed animal or human, often a creature afflicted with a birth defect. Older museum exhibits used to display canisters filled with alcohol and deformed births labeled “monsters.” Later, the term meant an enormous or prodigious animal portending doom. These meanings are greatly attenuated now, and the attitude towards the abnormal has also changed, so it would be harder to use the term in a poem. The same is true for other terms used by Heredia--formidable, sinistre, and horrible. In general, we would likely use fewer adjectives of any kind.

These exhausted terms, as well as Heredia’s assumptions about his readers’ background knowledge of classical myth, are barriers to a contemporary appreciation of his artistry and subtlety.

Final notes: (1) I wish my rhymes were fuller and richer (especially mane/man) and followed more closely Heredia’s Petrarchan scheme. (2) I recently learned the term pugmark and used it here, where pawprint would probably be more suitable. (3) The final tercet departs furthest from the original.

Speculation: Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde appeared a few years before Les Trophées, making me wonder if the devolution of the doctor into the animal-like Hyde influenced Heredia’s understanding of the monstrous man-beast. Since Heredia’s poems were apparently written long before publication, it may be unlikely on chronological grounds, if no other.

Please direct any comments to jsabsherphd@gmail.com.

The Method and Value of Prosopography
 
In August 1895, rumors of an imminent lynching swept the white and black communities of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Probably in response to a call for action at the end of a Sunday evening church service, a large group of armed African Americans went to guard the jail and protect he prisoner in question, young Arthur Tuttle. As I will explain in detail in the next post or two, Tuttle had killed a policeman on the street a few months before.

When the crowd did not disperse, the local militia and sheriff deputies gathered, someone fired a shot, then the firing became general. The crowd scattered, with an unknown number wounded and possibly killed. Approximately fifty African American men were arrested, many of whom were tried and convicted, with sentences ranging from a year at hard labor on the county roads to payment of court costs. Their names were published in the local newspapers.

In reading accounts of the riot, as it was called, I became interested in the fifty men: who were they? What were their family backgrounds, their trades and professions, their connections with each other? Which churches did they belong to? What were their political aspirations? One of the rioters, an older man called Cager Watt, was said by the newspapers to be a ringleader, and I wondered if there were a way to support or debunk that claim. Were there other likely leaders in the group?

So far as I have discovered, there are no surviving first person accounts from participants in the riot—no diaries, letters, memoirs, or photographs. [Update, 18 Aug 2022: In the 1970s, some eyewitnesses were interviewed; their accounts are reflected in the 1981 dissertation by Bertha Hampton Miller, "Blacks in Winston-Salem, North Carolina 1895-1920."] To draw the group’s portrait, I must rely on the information that can be gleaned from newspapers, city directories, genealogical records, vital records, etc. In 1971, Lawrence Stone defined prosopography (collective biography) as “the investigation of the common background characteristics of a group of actors in history by means of a collective study of their lives. The method employed is to establish a universe to be studied, and then to ask a set of uniform questions—about birth and death, marriage and family, social origins and inherited economic position, place of residence, education, amount and source of personal wealth, occupation, religion, experience of office, and so on.” It works best when “applied to easily defined and fairly small groups over a limited period” for which there are many sources. (“Prospography,” Daedalus 100:1, 46-79). A major question will be whether the sources are adequate for my purposes.

Before Stone’s essay, the discipline had been applied by Lewis Namier in his groundbreaking studies of British parliamentarians. Since then, digital tools—databases, visualization tools, etc.—have been devised to help construct and analyze social networks across a wide array of times and places. One example among many is the Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire (http://www.pbe.kcl.ac.uk/).

My techniques are old-fashioned and slow and my ambitions are on a far smaller scale. I am an amateur getting started rather late in life. But I hope to make a contribution that will be useful to more sophisticated and energetic researchers. The larger question under examination is the nature of African American political life between Reconstruction and Jim Crow, a period that I believe has been somewhat neglected by historians.

Next posts: “The Tuttle Family and the Riot of 1895.”

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In my annotated edition of a 19th-century memoir, My Own Life, or A Deserted Wife, I found it necessary to research the identity of the many people mentioned by the memoirist, Ida Crumpler Beard, as well as others involved in the events she recounts. My main sources were contemporary newspapers (digitized on newspapers.com), city directories, various other published sources, and the vital records and genealogical information on FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com. Appendix E, “Index to People, with Biographical Sketches,” summarizes this research through approximately 200 biographical sketches. Since Ida spent most of her life in Winston-Salem, most of the sketches concern people who lived there between 1862, when Ida was born, and 1898, when she published her memoir.

These sketches provide information on the lives of men and women, both white and black, at various levels of society. But the treatment is uneven. In that period, there were no known newspapers in town owned or edited by African Americans; so far as I know, the first was the short-lived Twin-City Herald, founded and edited by the Rev. Jethro T. Gibbons in 1898. The extant newspapers from the period were all owned and edited by white men.

The Union Republican was founded and edited by Junius W. Goslen as a voice for the Union Republican party, “an interracial political party devoted to the principles of freedom, civil equality, and workers’ rights for all people, including the newly freed slaves. … Republicans endorsed political privileges for all men regardless of race or economic conditions” (Deborah Becket, Radical Reform: Interracial Politics in Post-Emancipation North Carolina, The American South Series, ebook, xvi, 158).

Goslen was a political ally of local African Americans, but they often felt his support was insufficient, particularly when it came to their aspirations to higher level elected positions and patronage positions. Goslen’s competition was The Western Sentinel and various related papers; they supported what they called “the Democracy,” that is, rule by white men in the Democratic party. They had supported secession and now openly supported white supremacy. However, The Western Sentinel could not simply ignore African Americans: the men could vote and were often elected to the town council from 1880-1896, an era that ended in 1898 with the statewide white supremacy campaign, followed by Jim Crow constitutional changes in 1900. The treatment by both papers may have been biased, sometimes vicious, but we can discern many of the leaders and politically active citizens in the African American community and at least some of their political goals.

However, all the African American leaders I have identified through the newspapers were men. My biographical sketches include only a single African American woman, Miranda Ratcliff, who had nursed Ida from birth. African American women are conspicuously absent from the pages of the local newspapers. They will continue to be largely absent from the collective biography on which I am currently engaged, a study of the fifty African American men who were arrested in 1895 as they attempted to protect a young man, Arthur Tuttle, from being lynched. The lynching never occurred, but many of these men were sentenced to hard labor or fines.

In this project, I hope to discover who these men were, their connections with each other, their family connections (including wives and mothers), their trades and professions, their religious and social affiliations—the stuff of the collective biographical discipline called prosopography.

Forthcoming posts include “The Method and Value of Prosopography” and “The Tuttle Family and the Riot of 1895.” Would you like to support my work? Buy my books!

Send comments to jsabsherphd@gmail.com.