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VOL. X L I V NAN HERALD & ADVERTISER NEWNAN, GA., FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 7, 1909. NO. 51. BAGGING AND TIES Before you buy your Bagging and Ties we want to make you some prices, as we had the foresight to buy before the advance. We also have the best duck cotton Pick Sacks at 25c. each. We have just received a car-load of Shorts, Bran, :and Bran and Shorts mixed, on which we can make you some very close prices. We also carry the best feed Cotton Seed Meal for your cow. We have, too, •a quantity of the best Georgia Rye. “Merry Widow” Tobacco is the finest on earth for the price. Just received 1,000 lbs., and must sell it at once ; so, while it lasts, we will continue to sell at 10c. plug, or a 10-lb. box for $3.25. Don’t forget that we sell the famous “Stronger Than the Law” Shoes—the only water-proof shoe on the market. Every pair guaranteed, and we are still selling them at the old price. You can get the genuine Jeans Pants from us— .the kind your mother used to make—(“Gold Medal” label.) Come to see us and let us figure with you on anything you may need. T. G. Farmer & Sons Co. 19 Court Square : : 6 and 8 W. Washington Telephone 147 * «g» ♦ September* Finds us with our preparations for the Fall trade complete and ready for business. Our Falljand Winter goods are now here, and we are showing the largest stock of Dry Goods, Clothing, Dress *8* Goods, Shoes, Hats, Etc., That we have ever carried. Have just received a lot of Children’s Ready-made Dresses—sizes from 6 to 14. Make up your mind now to wear one of our suits’ this season. We handle the celebrated “KAN’T- BE-BEAT” line. They have always been noted for their perfect-fitting and wearing qualities, and the moderate price. We are showing some pretty pat terns in this clothing, and our line for 1909 is big ger, better and brighter than ever. Our stock of odd Trousers is also complete—prices $2 to $5—and at every price named we offer the very best values. We have several misses’and ladies’ Coat Suits ( that we will sell at lower prices than you will find elsewhere. We invite comparison, and ask for business only on the merits of our merchandise. I 1 H. C. ARNALL MDSE. CO. AUTUMN. Tis nil n myth that Autumn grieves, For watch the rain amid the leaves; With silver fingers dimly seen It makes each one a tambourine, And swings and leaps with elfin mirth To kiss the brow of mother earth; Or, laughing ’mid the trembling grass. It nods a greeting as you pass. Oh, hear the rain among the leaves— ’Tis all a myth that Autumn griuves! ’Tis all a myth that Autumn grieves. For list the wind among the sheaves; Far sweeter than the breath of May Or storied scents of old Cathay, It blends the perfumes rare and good Of spicy pine and hickory wood; And with a voice as gay as rhyme It prates of rifled mint and thyme. Oh, scent the wind among the sheaves— ’Tis all a myth that Autumn grieves! 'Tis all a myth that Autumn grieves; Behold the wondrous web she weaves! By viewless hands her thread is spun Of evening vapors shyly won. Across the grass from side to side A myriad unseen shuttles glide Throughout the night, till on the height Aurora leads the laggard light. Behold the wondrous web she weaves— ’Tis all a myth that Autumn grieves! —[Samuel Minturn Peck. A CHRISTMAS TRAGEDY FORTY-THREE YEARS AGO Newberry (S. C.) Observer. 31st ult. Mr. and Mrs. Elisha C. Cureton left Newberry yesterday. Their home is at Moreland, Ga. Mrs. Cureton is a daughter of Mr. James B. Reagin, of Newberry. Mr. Cureton himself once lived in this county. He has many relatives and friends here, who have known and respected him for many years. Strangers may have noticed a clean-shaven, handsome man of middle life, of a cheerful and intellectual face, propelling himself along the sidewalks in a wheel-chair. That was Mr. E. C. Cureton, of Moreland, Ga., out here on a visit with his wife to her father’s family. Mr. Cureton, though a man of affairs and the head of a large and prosperous business, has not walked a step in forty-three years. Mr. Cureton’s father was James Cureton, a native of this county. His mother was a Schumpert. In 1889 they moved, with the Youngs and Carmi- cals, to Coweta county, Georgia. In 1862 he moved back to his Newberry county home, retaining ownership of his Georgia farm. On the night of December 25, 1865, a party of thirty or forty negroes went out from the town of Newberry, armed with rifles and muskets, shotguns and pistols. At that time the negroes had been free less than a year. There was no civil law in South Carolina, and the administration of justice was in the hands of Yankee garrisons. The garri son stationed at Newberry was com posed of as thorough a gang of scoun drels as ever wore white skins. They had undoubtedly filled the negroes’ minds with the notion of killing off the white men and taking possession of the country, as some of the negroes after wards confessed, and had supplied them with guns and ammunition, with the admonition to “return them before daylight.’’ Between 9 and 9 :R0 this gang of ne groes, without any warning and fof no provocation on earth, broke into the home <,f Mr. James Cureton, 8 miles from Newberry, the crashing of the front door being the lirst intimation the family had of danger. It was a large two-story dwelling. Downstairs in one room were Mr. and Mrs. Cure- ton, and on a “trundle” bed their two little girls. The fire had not burned out and there was a flickering light on the hearth. Outside the moon was shining brightly from the clear, cold sky. In the upstairs rooms were their daughter, Mrs. Harris, the young wid ow of a Confederate soldier; their son- in-law and daughter, Mr. arid Mrs. George Broom, who had been married six months, and their 18-year-old son, E. C. The elder son, Fred, wno had been a member of the “Boy Volun teers,” Go. A of the 4th Batallion, had been sent by his father to their former home in Coweta county, Georgia. When the front door crashed in and the noisy, half-drunken fiends rushed in Mr. Cureton leaped out of bed, and was fired upon by several of the party. An ounce ball from an army rifle pierced his right lung and went clean through his body. He dropped down on a chair and fell over on the bed. Mrs. Cureton caught up the two girls from the “trundle” bed and rushed upstairs with them. The negroes continued to shoot and to yell like demons, demand ing, “Where is George Broom?” The wife and children had gathered at the head of the stairs, where Mr. Broom stood with a five-barrel pistol, deter mined to get as many of them as he could if they attempted to climb the stairway. Rushing from the yard into the house and then into the yard again the negroes behaved like fiends incar nate; but none attempted to go up stairs. Meantime the 13-year-old son, unob served by the others, slipped down the stairway and, going to his father’s room, picked up a double-barrel shot gun that stood in a corner and was turning with it when a negro raised his army rifle and fired at him. He felt a stinging sensation behind the shoulder, and fell over on the floor; the ounce ball had ploughed its way through the spinal column. He thought he had re ceived his dentil wound, hut felt no pain—and never afterwards felt any pain from the wound. At the earnest entreaties of the wo men Mr. Broom consented to go for help; for the negroes had shouted up the stairs that, if he didn’t come down they would set fire to the house. He went to a back window, got on the roof of a shed-room, and reaching the edge leaped from the roof, passing right over the heads of two or three nergoes who were standing under the eaves. He struck the ground running. As soon as they had recovered from their sur prise they lired several shots at him and started in pursuit, hut could not overtake him. Mrs. Broom missed hot little brother, and in desperation went down to her father’s room, where some of the negroes still were. She stood in the door leading into an adjoining room and while there saw three negroes, who were at another door, poke their guns through the crack of the door and fire at her father, who was sitting on a chair with his body fallen on the bed, and partly concealed by the open door. He uttered no sound, and she supposed —as they had all supposed since the shooting lirst began—that lie was dead. While she stood there searching the room with her eyes for her brother she heard him call her. She went to him. He told her he was wounded and could not walk, and asked her to take him out of the room. She gathered him un der the arms and, half toting and half dragging, was carrying him from the room, when a negro, with his army ri fle, lired at her, the ball passing so close to her head that the concussion knocked her to the floor. When she came to herself her mother was there, and, one taking the lad by his body, the other by his knees, they carried him upstairs to his bed. The negroes left soon after that, and when the wife and daughters came down stairs, expecting of course to find the husband and father dead, they saw a most pathetic sight. Ilia nightshirt was on fire and his breast severely burned, and he was bending over with his hand to the floor dipping up his own blood with which he was trying to extinguish the fire, which was burning his shirt, and also the blaze chat had spread to the bedclothes. All the time, lie told afterwards, he was perfectly donscious, but made no noise, hoping that when the nergoos thought he was dead they would go away. George Broom, when ho left the house, went first to Mr. Jacob Long's about a mile away, and thence to Mr. Ellis Schumpert’s, and thence to Mr. George Schumpert’s, where the young people of the neighborhood were gath ered at a party. When he returned with assistance it was near 2 o’clock. The white men gathered rapidly. Phy sicians at Newberry and Prosperity were sent for. They found that, be sides the wound In the lung, through which the air rushed at every breath, Mr. Cureton had received a heavy charge of buckshot in his side or hip. The doctors thought it was no use to dress his wounds; that he must die very soon; but Dr. McFall insisted, and his wounds were dressed. Strange to say, the wound through the lung began to heal at once, and he would have recovered but for the wound in the Hide, which proved fatal, death oc curring five weeks later, Jan. 29, 1866. When the white men of the neighbor hood had gathered at the Cureton home, in response to the alarm given by George Brooin, and the doctors had been sent for, search was begun at once for the guilty nergoes. By the early morning several had been caught, and, their liquor having died down and being separated from their leaders, their courage failed them, and, in the presence of the justly infuriated whites, they were seized with abject terror, and began to confess and to re veal the names of their accomplices in crime. The leader was a negro preach er who had belonged to Mr. Jacob Long. There were several others of the immediate neighorhood, though most of them had come from about the town of Newberry. One of them was a young negro named Dave Harris, who had been given to Mrs. Harris by her father-in-law. He was a sort of pet of the family, when a slave, and after wards; was very fond of the young Cureton children and they of him. That very Christmas morning Dave had come up to the "big house” and called out “ ‘Christmas gif,’ Mars James,” and received his gift. He then told Mr. Cureton that he was going to town that day, and asked if he eould do any thing for him before he should go. Mr. Cureton told him to catch and saddle his horse for him and hitch him at the gate, and he did so. That night, in the midst of the pandemonium, even the children recognized Dave’s voice as, inflamed with liquor, he joined in the maledictions and curses against the white people. Not one of them had a grievance of any kind against Mr. Cureton, who was a good, kind man. Either of their own design or instigated by the Yankee garrison they said the latter they had set out to murder all the men in that neighborhood and to take possession. Their plan was, after killing Mr. Cureton and Mr. Broom, to proceed to the homes of Mr. Jacob Long, Mr. Elisha Schumpert, Capt. Matthew Hall, Col. William Lester, and others, and to kill all the white men there; and they would have done so hut that they knew Mr. Broom had given them warning. Mr. Cureton recognized several of the party, and so had Mr. and Mrs. Broom. After twelve or thirteen of the mur derous band had been caught by the white men of the community the ques tion came up as to what should he done with them. The younger men were for putting them out of the way with out other formality of the law than their own verdict of their guilt; hut the older men begged them to wait. They consented to wait until they could send to town and consult with the offi cers of the garrison. The officers were induced to go out to the scene of the crime, where they might see the evi dences of the fiendish work the father fearfully wounded with guns and his head hacked witli an old sabre, one of the ears being cut almost from his head; the lad desperately wounded; the doors broken down, the window- panes shattered, and the many bullet- holes in the walls of the house. They went and saw, and expressed horror at the deed, and promised that if the ne groes—whom the men had hidden away to await the decision—were committed to jail they would see that justice should be strictly and speedily adminis tered and punishment meted out to the guilty. Acting upon this promise, the lives of the negroes were spared and they were brought to Newberry and committed to jail. So, on the promise of the officers of the Yankee garrison that the negroes would be brought speedily to trial and would have strict justice meted out to the guilty, the white men brought the negroes to the county jail. Mr. James Cureton, before his death, knowing the horrible associations that would linger around the old home, ad vised his family that, as soon as his af fairs could be settled up, they should return to Coweta county, Ga., and make their home there. In March they were ready to go; but the negroes had not yet been brought to trial. All the family except Mr. and Mrs. George Broorh left Newberry county that month for Georgia. Mr. and Mrs. Broom had recognized several of the negroes on Christmas night, and they remained in the county in order to tes tify again&t them, the garrison promis ing that the trial would soon come on. In April the Yankee officers an nounced that it was necessary to carry the accused to “headquarters” in Co lumbia for trial; t.hat the trial would come olf at an early date, and that Mr. and Mrs. Broom would lie notified when to appear in Columbia as witnesses. They waited until some time in tKe month of April, and then learned that the negroes, every one, had been turned loose without any form of trial whatever. Most of them left the coun try, fearing to return. The leader, Rev. William Long, who had belonged to Mr. Jacob Long, father of Mr. G. F. Long, disappeared entirely—going North, no doubt. Lewis, a negro that had ([belonged to Mr. G. F. Long, re mained in Columbia, or near there, and Mr. Long saw him some years after wards in that city, and subsequently received a letter from him asking him for financial help—- which, of course, he did not get. Lang Singley, who had belonged to Mr. Jacob Long, returned after a time to the neighborhood, and on the night of November 6, 1908, was shot and killed by Lou Singley, his daughter-in-law, who was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to two years in the penitentiary. There was at least one of the gang that met hiH reward, though it is a pity that he could not have been hanged three times to pay for the three lives that he had, by his own confesion, ta ken -one very close upon the other. His fate is best told by his own confes sion, which follows; CONFESSION OF LONDON JONES, FREED- MAN. Rev. Samuel Leard in Chester (S. C.) Standard, 1866. In giving the following confession of the above-named notorious robber and murderer, it is necessary that I should state that I have given the facts as nearly as I can. in his own words, and that I assume no responsibility as to the truthfulness of his statements. They were made to me voluntarily on his part, and with the knowledge that it was my intention to make them pub lic. He says: “I was born in Newberry district, S. G, and am now about twenty-two years of age. I have no children. I formerly belonged to Mr. Lambert Jones, of Newberry district. I knew Belton Cline from a boy, and regard him as wanting in good sense. I joined the Methodist church, South, some years ago, under the ministry of the Rev. .1. R. Piokett, hut being hired out to persons who treated me roughly, 1 soon lost all religious concern and be came reckless, in 1861 i went into the army with my young master and remained with him until the close of the war. About the 1st of April I moved to Columbia. But before that, on the Monday night before last. Christ mas, I helped to kill .James Cureton. Mv gun was near his body when I fired. He died a few days afterwards, and if it was buckshot that killed him, then l am the man that killed him, for my gun was loaded with buckshot. We went into the house after George Broom, who had married Cureton’s daughter, intending to shoot him, hut he got away. We did not intend to rob the house, or insult the females. “Belton Cline brought Morris to me in Columbia, and through their persua sion 1 agreed to go to Chester to rob Mr. A. 1). Walker. This was on Friday night before the murder of Mr. Walk er. 1 never saw Morris until that night. It was not our intention to kill Mr. Walker, hut only to rob him. We came on Sunday night on the train from Columbia. Morris gave us whis key, hut I was not drunk I knew all 1 was doing perfectly well, Morris laid the plan, and we did just as we were told to do. I jumped on Mr. Walker first, while Belt ran after Mr. Estes. He (Walker) turned suddenly around and asked, ‘What do you mean?’ 1 threw him down and by that time Mor ris and Belt both came. I then started after Estes, and when I got. about a hundred yards I heard a pistol lire. I believe that Belton Cline shot Mr v Walker, ns Morris was very angry about his being killed and left us im mediately. Bolt and 1 then went to the house, and 1 shot the pistol into the house for the purpose of scaring Estes. We did not intend to kill Mrs. Walker or Estes, as we easily could have done so if we wished. I cut the wardrobe with an axe. We got only $6.85 in money, besides the watch and clothing. As we came hack Belt ran his hand in Mr. Walker’s pocket and got out two dollars more. (This hap pened on the night of the 22d of July.) "On the following Wednesday we went into the neighborhood of Mr. Lane in Newberry, and watched for a chance to murder and rob him until Friday night, when we accomplished it. There were six of us altogether. (Mr. C. G. Clinton, in Chester, has their names in an affidavit made by Lon don on Friday morning just before his execution.) We intended to murder Mr. Lane, and then rob the house. Morris waked him up in the yard where he was sleeping, and by agreement made beforehand, while Morris was talking to him, 1 slipped around behind him and struck him on the head with an axe. The first blow killed him, but I hit him the second time to make sure work of it. Belt and I then went through the house, hunting the money, the most of which we gave to Morris, who put it in a carpet-bag. We put. some into our own pockets, and that was all wo ever got. I had some $800, and afterwards Belt gave me $100 more, in all $900. I have not seen Morris since that night. Belt and I went ■ to Petersburg. Va., where I spent the most of my money gambling. ” The above are the leading particulars of the crime, as detailed by London to me within a few days of his execution, and we leave your readers to form their own judgment as to their reliabil ity. The circumstances connected with his apprehension, trial and escape from prison, and recapture, are all too well known to need repetition Imre. Of one subject alone in connection with the prisoner we shall speak, and that is his repentance, and the apparent change in his moral character. Soon after sen tence of death was passed upon him I was sent for to visit him in the prison. 1 found him in distress of mind and apparently very desirous of religious instruction. He seemed to have an imperfect hut real sorrow for the sins of his past life. This I endeavored to excite still more, and labored first of all to show him the horrible nature of the crimes he had committed. He con fessed his ignorance of all religious ex perience—that he did not know how to pray—and that he was afraid to stand in the presence of God with all his sins resting upon him. 1 asked him if he had not had misgivings of conscience whilst pursuing his course of crime. He replied that he had been reckless, and did not (at that time) care what might happen to him. But now he had time to reflect and could not think of the certain approach of death without alarm. I knew the difficulty of the task before me, and sought on the one hand to encourage him to pray and hope for pardon ; and on the other, not to he in haste to conclude that God had forgiven him. A large part of Friday (the day of his execution) morning I spent with him in his cell, and left him an hour or so tiefore he was taken out, with an humble hope that God had been merciful even to so vile a sinner as himself. He expressed great grati tude for kindnesses shown him (luring his imprisonment; begged the forgive ness of all whom he had injured; sent messages to his young master, mother, wife and relatives; and with much ap parent calmness and firmness went to the place of execution. Samuel Leard. The Mr. Lane spoken of in the above confession of London Jones was Mr. Lemuel Lane, who was murdered at his home in this county in 1866. One of the murderers was hanged in this coun ty. Mr. Lane was the father of Mr. J. J. Lane and of the late John C. and Wm. H. Lane, and the grandfather of Messrs. Ernest and Olin Lane.