301. Frankie Silver

 

301

Frankie Silver

Around Christmas-time of 1831, Frances Stewart Silver, called
Frankie, was living with her husband, Charles Silver, at the mouth
of the South Toe River, in what was then Burke county. On the
evening of December 22, having chopped a big pile of hickory wood
for the holidays, Charlie lay down with his baby on a sheepskin
near the fire. While he dozed, Frankie struck him a glancing but
almost-decapitating blow with an axe, then, while he thrashed about
the room, snatched up the child and threw herself into bed and
pulled the covers over her. When he grew quiet, she arose and
finished the job. She dismembered the body, burned portions of it,
and hid the rest under the puncheon floor of the cabin and in a
hollow sourwood tree outside. Then she "redd up" the room, scour-
ing away some of the bloodstains, shaving away the deeper ones on
wall and mantel with the axe, and went with her children to her
mother-in-law's.

After a few days the neighbors began to inquire about Charlie.
Frankie explained that he had left home to buy his Christmas
whiskey and suggested that he had fallen into the river, drowned,
and been frozen over. The more suspicious began a search, assisted,
according to one tradition, by a Negro from Tennessee with a
magic glass ball. Warm weather and a little dog were more effi-
cacious than the glass ball. The puncheon floor and the other
hiding places yielded their gruesome secret.

Frankie was tried at the March 1832 term of the Morganton
Superior Court, Judge John R. Donnell presiding. Records of the
testimony revealing motives for the crime are scanty and incon-
clusive. Jealousy was apparently the one that impressed the jury.'
On the other hand, the clerk of the court that tried the case has
been reported to have said, when an old man, that Frankie "would
not have been convicted if the truth had been disclosed on the
trial. . . . Silver mistreated his wife and she killed him in pro-
tection of herself." Whatever the truth may have been, she was
convicted of murder and sentenced to be hanged. While her appeal
to the Supreme Court was pending, she escaped from jail and made
her getaway concealed in a load of hay, but was speedily recap-
tured. She was hanged on Damon's Hill in Morganton on July 12,
1833 — the "only white woman and with the exception of one

' Charles I. Penick, Raleigh, N. C, a student in the University of
North Carolina, stated that while on a fishing trip on Lake James (near
Morganton) with Donnell Van Noppen, of Morganton, in the summer of
1947, Mr. Van Noppen pointed out a spot on the way to the lake as
"the place where Frankie and Johnny lived and where the murder took
place." Mr. Van Noppen added, from local tradition, that "Johnny"
Silver was a trapper and customarily spent the winters in the mountains
of Tennessee. During the winter of the murder, Frankie discovered
that "Johnny" had been "shacked up" with another woman. Upon his
unexpected return "Frankie gave him the axe" while he was sleeping
before the fire, then hid the bodv in an old hollow stump. It was
discovered by dogs in the spring thaw.

 

700 NORTH CAROLINA FOLKLORE

negress, the only woman ever capitally punished in North Carolina
after it assumed the status of statehood."

According to persistent and, it would seem, undisputed tradition,
before the hangman adjusted the slipnoose Frankie read or recited
from the gallows a confession in verse of her own composition.

There are several accounts^ of the Frankie Silver murder, with
versions of her "song," most of them resting on uncritical accept-
ance of tradition. James A. Turpin, in The Serpent Slips into a
Modern Eden (Raleigh, 1925), quotes as his main source of in-
formation an article in "the Waynesville Courier some years ago,
and taken by it from an old clipping of some local paper handed the
Courier editor." This in turn quotes (pp. 50-59) Alfred Silver,
"half-brother of the murdered man . . . living today . . . eighty-
seven years old." According to Alfred Silver, "It was hoped that
she [Frankie] would make a public confession on the scafifold and
she seemed prepared to do so, but her father yelled out from the
crowd, 'Die with your secret, Frances.' " Yet (on what authority
he does not state) Turpin adds (p. 59) : "The following verses
were printed on a strip of paper and sold to people who assembled
at Morganton to see Frances Silver executed. It is claimed that
she composed them and gave them out as her confession." Muriel
Earley Sheppard's account of the facts, in Cabins in the Laurel
(Chapel Hill, 1935), is based on the story of "Aunt Cindy Norman,
sister of the murdered man," given in her ninetieth year, to W. W.
Bailey, of Spruce Pine. Robert Menzies and Edmond Smith, Jr., in
"The Scarlet Enigma of Toe River," True Detective Mysteries,
July 1935, repeat the father's alleged adjuration of silence (p. 73)
but add that Frankie replied, "I have ... a lot to say" and "In a
voice clear and unwavering . . . began to sing." Only S. J. Ervin,
Jr., an attorney of Lexington, in "Frankie Silver" (the Morganton
News-Herald, April 3, 1934), suggests "an untrustworthy tradi-
tion" with respect to the gallows recitation. The more improbable
ascription of authorship he accepts with the remark "Frankie Silver,
it seems, was possessed of a higher degree of education than was
common at that day."

Printed sources and the testimony of communicants of texts in-
dicate traditional preservation of the song, and one of the texts,
under the title 'Susie Silvers,' seems to refer to a musical recording,
but there is no transcription of the music in the Brown Collection.
Mellinger E. Henry (SSSA 48-50) prints a version with a foot-
note from his informant stating: "The above occurred about 1908.
It is a true story. Mrs. Silvers lived at Morganton. . . . She
composed the above while in prison and sang it just before she
was hanged at Morganton." Randolph OFS 11 124 prints four
stanzas; Davis FSV 276 lists one text of fourteen stanzas from
Virginia.

Phillips Barry, BFSSNE x 24, has suggested that the killing of
Charles Silver by his wife Frankie is the basis of 'Franky and
Albert.'

''To those cited below, add H. J. Miller's "The Sad 1832 Story of
Frankie Silvers," in Tri-County News, Spruce Pine, N. C, December
23, 1948, which appeared after this headnote was written. It does not
add new facts-

 

NORTH CAROLINA BALLADS 701

A

'Francis Silvers.' Contributed by M. I. Pickens, a student in Trinity
College, September 22, 1922, with this note: "The first woman to be
executed in North Carolina was Frances Silvers. She was executed in
Morganton, July 12, 1833, for the murder of her husband, whose body
she burned after killing him with an ax. The following verses were
handed down as having been delivered from the scaffold just before her
execution." Dr. Brown noted : "For a good account of this murder see
Mrs. Sheppard's Cabins in the Laurel."

Comparison of this text with the others referred to above suggests
that oral tradition had a share in the preservation of the piece. Though
close to Ervin's and Henry's in the number, order, and content of stanzas,
it differs from them in a dozen or more particulars of wording and
phrasal order ; with Henry's it shares the mistake in the name of the
judge (correctly "Donnell" in Ervin's). From these three texts the
others differ in important respects. Mrs. Sheppard's lacks the first two
stanzas common to the other three and shows striking differences in the
ordering of the stanzas. The Turpin text has eight stanzas. The first
six correspond with verbal differences to the first six of Pickens, Ervin,
and Henry. The last two, however, are additions :

In that last calm sleep I see him now,
The beautiful peace on his handsome brow ;
Our winsome babe on his heaving breast
The crimson blade and the dreamless rest.

Now, that I can no longer live
Oh, pitying Lord, my crime forgive.
When I hear the call of judgment roll
May I appear with a bloodwashed soul !

Scarcely more than the others, this version suggests that it was the
misfortune of the Frankie Silver "song" not to have enjoyed more of
the rough but chastening nurture of oral transmission.

1 This dreadful, dark and dismal day
Has swept all my glories away.

My sun goes down, my days are past.
And I must leave this world at last.

2 Oh, Lord, what will become of me?
I am condemned, you all now see.
To heaven or hell my soul must fly,
All in a moment when I die.

3 Judge Daniels has my sentence passed,
These prison walls I leave at last.
Nothing to cheer my drooping head
Until I am numbered with the dead.

4 But oh ! that Dreadful Judge I fear.
Shall I that awful sentence hear?
'Depart you cursed down to hell
And forever there to dwell.'

 

702 NORTH CAROLINA FOLKLORE

5 I know that frightful ghosts I'll see
Gnawing their flesh in misery,
And then and there attended be
For murder in the first degree.

6 There shall I meet the mournful face
Whose blood I spilled upon this place.
With flaming eyes to me he'll say,
*Why did you take my life away?'

7 His feeble hands fell gentle down,

His chattering tongue soon lost its sound.
To see his soul and body part
It strikes terror to my heart.

8 I took his blooming days away.
Left him no time to God to pray, •
And if sins fall upon his head
Must I bear them in his stead ?

9 The jealous thought that first gave strife
To make me take my husband's life.
For months and days I spent my time
Thinking how to commit this crime.

10 And on a dark and doleful night
I put this body out of sight ;
With flames I tried to consume
But time would not admit it done.

11 You all see me and on me gaze.

Be careful how you spend your days.
And never commit this awful crime.
But try to serve your God in time.

12 My mind on solemn subjects roll.
My little child, God bless its soul.
All you that are of Adam's race.
Let not my faults this child disgrace.

13 Farewell, good people. You all now see
What my bad conduct's brought on me.
To die of shame and of disgrace
Before this world of human race.

14 Awful indeed to think on death,

In perfect health to lose my breath.
Farewell, my friend, I bid adieu.
Vengeance on me must now pursue.

 

NORTH CAROLINA BALLADS 7O3

15 Great God, how shall I be forgiven?
Not fit for earth, not fit for heaven ;
But little time to pray to God,
For now 1 try that awful road.

 

'Francis Silver's Confession.' From the Lenoir Topic, March 24. 1886;
clipped from "Morganton Paper" and reprinted with the following head-
note : "We publish, by request, the following confession of Frances Sil-
vers, who was hanged in this place on the 12th of July, 1833. for the
murder of her husband. Some of our readers will remember the facts
in the case." Note by N. I. White: "As in Pickens' version, with re-
markably slight verbal variations, but lacks last two stanzas."

C

'Susie Silvers.' Contributor anonymous ; no indication of date or ad-
dress. Note by N. I. White : "Same as Pickens' version, with remarkably
slight variation, but lacks last three stanzas."

Tom Dula and Laura Foster
Nos. 302-304

Three native North Carolina ballads arose out of the murder of
Laura Foster by Thomas C. Dula, in Wilkes county, in 1866. One
of these, twenty-one stanzas in length, is marked by the monotonous
movement and the mannerisms characteristic of pedestrian murder
ballads. The other two achieve a certain poignancy sometimes
found in the best folk songs.

The case of State v. Dula was tried at the January 1867 term of
the North Carolina Supreme Court. It is reported in North Caro-
lina Reports, 61 : 176-9.

The prisoner [Thomas Dula] was indicted as principal, and one Ann
Melton as accessory before the fact, in the murder of one Laura Foster,
in Wilkes county in May, 1866. The bill was found at Fall Term,
1866, of Wilkes Superior Court, and upon affidavit, removed to Iredell.
The prisoner and Ann Melton were arraigned together, but, upon motion
of the counsel [Zebulon B. Vance] for the former, there was a severance,
and he put upon his trial alone. The case, as made out by his Honor,
contained a statement of all the evidence, and was quite voluminous.
There were several exceptions by the prisoner on account of the admis-
sion qf improper testimony. . . . His Honor overruled the exceptions,
and the testimony was admitted. Verdict of guilty; rule for a new trial ;
rule discharged; motion in arrest of judgment; motion overruled; judg-
ment of death and appeal.

It was the judgment of the Supreme Court that the trial judge
"fell into error," and a venire de novo was awarded.

From the verdict of this trial, held in Iredell county upon the
third Monday of January 1868, Dula appealed a second time to the
Supreme Court {ibid., pp. 338-41).

The State relied upon circumstantial testimony, and upon the acts and
declarations of Ann Melton in furtherance of an alleged agreement be-

 

704 NORTH CAROLINA FOLKLORE

tween her and the prisoner to commit the homicide. To establish the
agreement evidence was given to the court that the deceased was at home,
at her father's, on Thursday night, 24 January, but on the next morning
was gone, as was also a mare that had been tied in the yard. Early
on Friday she was seen upon the mare, about a mile from home, going
in the direction of "The Bates Place. "^ She was not seen alive after that,
but subsequently her body was found rudely buried in a laurel thicket
near the place, and there was a wound upon her left side piercing the
cavity of the body.^ There was evidence that the prisoner was in the
habit of criminal intercourse with both the deceased and Ann Melton;
that some short while before he had contracted a disease from the de-
ceased and had communicated it to Ann Melton , that he had threatened
to "put through" whoever had given it to him; that he had been with
the deceased at her home on the Sunday and Monday before she dis-
appeared, ancf there had private conversation with her ; that on Thursday
and Friday he had private interviews with Ann Melton at her home, and
on a ridge near her home; that he had sent for liquor in a canteen when
at her house on Thursday, which was brought there in his absence :
whereupon, Ann Melton had sent for him by a little girl, in a secret
and singular manner, to c6me and get it, but* her messenger did not find
him ; that afterwards he had come to her mother's house, saying, he had
met her upon a ridge near by, and that she had told him where to get
the canteen and some alum; that he had borrowed a mattock during the
day from her mother and was seen with it near "the Bates Place" ; that
on Friday morning he was seen traveling in the direction of "the Bates
Place," by a road which ran parallel with that by which Laura Foster
was seen going; that Ann Melton, after leaving her mother's, did not
return to her own house until Friday morning, when her shoes and
dress were wet, and she retired to her bed remaining there most of the
day; after she had gone to bed the prisoner came there, leaned over her,
and had a whispered conversation with her.

The hypothesis of the State was that the grave was dug on Thursday
or Thursday night, and the deceased killed on Friday or Friday night ;
and that the motive was the communication of the disease.

After disposing of some technical points with reference to the
testimony of Ann Melton, the report concludes: "Verdict, 'Guilty.'
Rule for new trial discharged. Judgment and appeal. . . . There is
no error."

^ "The Bates Place" : A New York Herald telegraphic dispatch, dated
Statesville, May i, 1868, described the place thus: "The community in
the vicinity of this tragedy is divided into two entirely separate and
distinct classes. The one occupying the fertile lands adjacent to the
Yadkin River and its tributaries, is educated and intelligent, and the
other, living on the spurs and ridges of the mountains, is ignorant, poor
and depraved. A state of immorality unexampled in the history of any
country exists among these people, and such a general system of free-
loveism prevails, that it is 'a wise child that knows its father.' This
is the Bates Place, where the body was discovered by blood marks, and
where some ten or twelve families are living in the manner described."

* The New York Herald correspondent mistakenly dates the murder
May 28, 1866, but correctly locates it on "the Bates Place." He then
goes on to say : "The body was then removed about half a mile from
the scene of the murder, and was placed in a grave already prepared
for it. Late in August of the same year the body was found in a state
of such decomposition that it was difficult to identify it.— There was a
deep gash in the left breast just above the heart. ... It was believed
that the murdered woman was enceinte."

 

NORTH CAROLINA BALLADS 705

The Salisbury IVatchman and Old North State, for May 8, 1868.
reprinted the following story of the execution of Tom Dula from
the Statesville American.

Thomas C. Dula suffered the extreme penalty of the law by hanging,
near this place, at 17 minutes past 2 o'clock P.M., on May ist, haying
been a second time convicted of the murder of Laura Foster, of Wilkes
county, more than a year ago. Under the gallows, he made a long
address to several thousand persons who were present to witness his
execution, in a general way, and avowed his preparation to appear in
another world. On the night previous to the execution, he made con-
fession of his guilt, which we copy from his own hand :

"Statement of Thomas C. Dula : I declare that I am the
only person that had a hand in the murder of Laura Foster.
April 30th, 1868."

The Statesville American, having expressed its satisfaction over
Dula's confession, continues:

Ann Melton, charged as an accomplice to this murder, is still in
prison at Wilkesboro, and will have her trial at the next term of Wilkes
Superior Court, to which her trial was again remanded. This tragedy
has been involved in great mystery, and there is a popular and strong
belief that, notwithstanding Dula's confession, he did have one or two
accomplices. The N. Y. Herald had a Reporter present who will,
doubtless, supply the public with a description of all that transpired on
the occasion in the columns of that journal.

As predicted, the May 2, 1868, issue of the Herald contained a
three-column account of the execution (reprinted in the Salisbury
IVatchman and Old North State for May 15).

Thomas Dula, the condemned man, is about twenty-five years old, five
feet eleven inches high, dark eyes, dark curly hair, and though not
handsome, might be called good-looking. He fought gallantly in the
Confederate service, where he established a reputation for bravery, but
since the war closed, has become reckless, demoralized and a desperado,
of whom the people in his community had a terror. There is everything
in his expression to indicate the hardened assassin — a fierce glare of the
eyes, a great deal of malignity, and a callousness that is revolting.

This story confirms the account of Dula's written confession,
describes his last hours, and indicates the tenor of his last speech
to the crowd. It does not, however, say anything about Dula as a
singer and banjo player, or make mention of a ballad or song
relating to his fate.

From the Statesville American, through a reprint by the Watch-
man and Old North State of November 6, 1868, we learn of Ann
Melton's fate.

The trial of Ann Melton, charged as an accomplice to the murder of
Laura Foster, took place at Wilkesboro, at the late term of the Superior
Court, and she was acquitted. The unfortunate woman has suffered
about two years imprisonment, and, if guilty, she has been severely pun-
ished, and the gallows would have added little to her punishment. Thus
ends this awful tragedy.

Still current local traditions about the murder of Laura Foster
are exemplified by the following letter written April 24, 1948, by

 

706 NORTH CAROLINA FOLKLORE

Mrs. Orene West Burrell, of Lenoir, N. C, to her brother, John
Foster West, a student at the University of North Carolina, and
here quoted by permission:

I'll tell you all Verlee and I can remember about Tom Dula. . . .
Laura Foster was a cousin of Grandpa Harve Foster. She and Dula
were engaged. Tom got to running around after this other woman, we
can't remember her name. She and Tom planned to lure Laura off and
kill her. Laura and Tom were horseback riding in the woods somewhere
near Happy Valley, and the other woman stepped out and stabbed her
in the side. They stuffed handkerchiefs in her side to stop the blood.
People hunted for her for some time, and one day a man found her
because the horse he was riding smelled her and was snorting, etc.
She was in a shallow grave, her head between her knees. The other
woman, on trial, packed it on Tom and he never did tell she did it.
She would say on trial, "A rope will never go around this pearly white
neck." Tom was hanged, and later, on her death-bed, she confessed.
The legend or story goes, and Lve heard Grandma tell it a hundred
times, that you could hear meat frying and see black cats running up
and down the walls of the room she was in when she was dying.

Of the three distinct ballads about Tom Dula and Laura Foster
in the Frank C. Brown Collection, two have several variant texts
for each, one has only a single text. Texts of all three were con-
tributed by Mrs. Sutton, w^ith two long notes written at different
times. Texts of two of the other distinct ballads came from other
informants.

Mrs. Sutton's notes on the songs, both designed for newspaper
publication, amount to essays and are too long to be included here
in full. The first must be summarized briefly; the second will be
given in substantially complete form.

Quoting the opening stanza of 'Hang down your head, Tom Dula,'
Mrs. Sutton identifies it as "a typical outlaw ballad" and continues
with a little essay on the subject of outlaw ballads. Her account
of the murder of Laura Foster and of the trial of Tom Dula,
though inaccurate in certain details as compared with the court
report previously quoted, has some additional features. Laura Fos-
ter "is said to have been very beautiful — with chestnut curls and
merry blue eyes ... as most ballad heroines have been, 'wild as a
buck. " Vance, who defended Dula, "thought he was shielding a
woman, who really committed the murder, but Dula never talked."
He was "assisted in the defense by Judge Armfield and R. P.
Allison. They are said to have packed the jury with Confederate
veterans and to have kept Dula's war record, a sensational one,
constantly before the jury." "Ann Melton ... a very old man
who still lives in Wilkesboro and who attended the trial, assured
me, a few weeks ago, was 'the purtiest womern I ever looked in
the face of. She'd a-been hung too, but her neck was jist too purty
to stretch hemp. She was guilty. I knowed hit. Ever'body
knowed hit, and Tom Dula could a-proved hit, but he loved her, I
reckin. Anyhow he shore died fur her.' On the separate trial of
Ann, the same old man is reported to have commented: 'Ef they'd
a-been ary womern on the jury, she'd a got first degree. Men
couldn't look at that womern and keep their heads.' " "The story,"

 

NORTH CAROLINA BALLADS 707

concludes Mrs. Sutton, "is just the kind to be written in a ballad and
sung for generations. It has all the ballad essentials : a mystery
death, an eternal triangle, and a lover with courage enough to die
for his lady . . . and in bad verse with a wild minor tune, it is
sung in cabins today."
--------------------

322

 

north carolina folklore
Frankie Silver

 

'Francis Silver.' Sung by Mrs. H. R. Buchanan. Recorded at Minneapolis,
Avery county, in 1931.

 

Scale: Hexatonic (4), plagal. Tonal Center: f. Structure: aa^bc (2,2,2,2) ^
ab (4,4).

 

A(I)

'Frankie Silvers.' Sung by Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Recorded at Turkey
Creek, Buncombe county, in 1921 (?). The text is identical with that of the
A version.

4

Scale : Mode III, plagal. Tonal center : e-flat. Structure : aba^bi (2,2,2,2) —

aai (4,4)-

 

'Francis Silver's Confession.' Sung by Mrs. J. J. Miller. Recorded as MS

score ; no date or place given.

 


Scale: Hexatonic (6). Tonal Center: d. Structure: abca (2,2,2,2).