21 Apr 1895 A Man Goes Missing & Six People are Lynched for his "Murder"

Butler County Bruises 

Just over two years after the December 1892 double lynching of Charles Kelley and John Hipp, the citizens of Butler County, Alabama may have thought life was settling down in the area and lynchings were a thing of the past. Imagine their surprise when they awoke to the headline, “Horribly Murdered! Five Negroes – Two Men and Three Women – Lynched for the Crime”. 

Watts Murphy, a farmer, was the nephew of the deceased Alabama Governor Thomas Hill Watts, whose grave is tucked away near Highway 10 behind what is, to this day, a field that is planted and farmed regularly. 

Watts Murphy Disappears  

Mr. Augustus Murphy, father of Watts Murphy, went to visit his son on April 17th, 1895. Watts Murphy’s fieldhands told him he’d ridden off on his mule. Murphy never came home, and when his mule returned a day or two after his disappearance (according to some accounts), his family began to search for him. His father was suspicious that he’d met with foul play, remembering that there was no love lost between his son and his crew of field hands, and he had Zeb Colley, a long-time family servant, arrested by private citizens and questioned. 

A Confession is Made 

Zeb Colley, who had lived as a laborer in the Butler Springs household of Augustus Murphy and his family since before 1880, when he was 15 and Watts Murphy was 14, confessed to witnessing the murder of Watts Murphy and participating in the cover-up, though under what conditions we cannot know.

Zeb Colley's account claimed that Mr. Murphy was working in his field, accompanied by six fieldhands. He had been taking a break, sitting on an exposed tree root, when he was assaulted by John Rattler, bashed in the head from behind with an axe Rattler had been working with. This blow alone did not kill Mr. Murphy, and while he still breathed, John Rattler and the other fieldhands placed logs and brush atop the man and set it on fire to destroy his body. Finally, Zeb Colley said he tied Mr. Murphy’s overcoat to the saddle of a mule, road several miles away, and turned the mule loose, with all of this taking place about an hour before Murphy’s father came to visit. 

After his confession, Zeb Colley took Gus Murphy to the purported location of his son’s body, a smoldering pile of brush where it was reported they found his liver, heart, and a few teeth, which were gathered up and buried. 

In all, he implicated himself and five others. It is difficult to find information on the farmhands, other than Zeb Colley, who grew up on the Murphy plantation on what is now Murphy Road. He was born around 1866 and was 29 years old. John Rattler was 26, and the three women were Mary Dean, aged 27, Martha Green/Dean, 23, and Alice Green/Dean, 22. Another man was also implicated, with at least one report saying he was Jerry Dixon, a man previously shot in the arm by Watts Murphy.

The Sheriff is Summoned 

Sheriff Barganier, who you may recall from the Bad Boys of Butler County, was still in office, and was notified of the murder on Saturday, April 20, 1895, and made his way to the Murphy home in Butler Springs. He returned Sunday evening, stating that five hands had been lynched near “the Buckalew place” (just northeast of present day Buckaloo Church, just south of Highway 10) while in route to Greenville.  

The Last Journey Begins 

On April 21st, a group of men set out to take the suspects to the jail in Greenville. The group included Dunk Sirmon, Henry A. Clarke, John Ransom Sirmon, Jr., Francis C. “Frank” Mize, and other unnamed parties.

Henry Clark was born November 3, 1854, in Alabama or Louisiana. He was a married farmer who had no children. In 1887 he had married Susan Wilson, whose parents lived most of their lives at "the Buckaloo Place."

John Ransom Sirmon Jr was born Mar 19, 1861. He was a farmer who moved to Butler Springs sometime after 1880 and was the brother of Henry Clark's first wife, Polly, who died in 1883. John Ransom Sirmon died Jan 8, 1921.

Frank Mize was a 35 year-old local farmer born June 12, 1859. He died March 27, 1902, and was heralded by the Forest Home Mason’s Lodge No. 270 as a helpful and charitable person. 

Dunk Sirmon was most likely John Daniel Sirmon, another local farmer, born July 22, 1876. He would have been about 18 years old on this night. He had recently married Ida Elizabeth Dean (future grandaunt of country music legend Hank Williams Sr.). They later had a family, and he passed away on February 8, 1958, at the age of 81.

The Suspects are Lynched

The group could have traveled from Murphy Road directly to Highway 10 (using current road names), but instead chose to travel in the opposite, longer direction to Shackleville Road (the former Old Federal Road) first, where they would have then turned left and traveled along Shackleville Road to a different point on Highway 10 east of where they would have reached the highway had they proceded in the more direct route. At Buckalew Place (where Shackleville Road turns to meet Highway 10 at a 45 or so degree angle), the men claimed to have been met by a lynch mob of fifty to one hundred angry farmers armed with rifles, who they encountered at a turn of the road, who emerged from the woods on both sides and surrounded them. They then took the prisoners one at a time, tied their hands behind their backs, and hung them from trees beside the road, apart from one man who escaped.  The next morning, as families made their way to church, they were met with the grisly sight of the bodies, left hanging for all to see.

Failure to Investigate 

Just as in the Kelley-Hipp case, Sheriff Barganier failed to find a single suspect for the lynching, which went uninvestigated and unpunished. In fact, the article in the Greenville Advocate snidely stated “The sheriff failed to find any clue as to who composed the lynchers” after having provided a list of men known to be escorting the victims. Perhaps the sheriff could have taken some advice on interrogation tactics from the person who interrogated Zeb Colley, but in Butler County, the sheriff was and is an elected official, and this no doubt had a large impact on the types of crimes that were investigated and to what degree. 

The Lynching after the Lynching 

On April 29th, a sixth man was lynched in the same area as the others. He was found by Sheriff Barganier about a day after he was hanged. This was the man who had originally escaped. His name was not given. One possible candidate is Shadrick Brown, who died in Apr 1895. His exact date of death is not given in the record. He was 35 years old and had a wife and at least two children. Shadrick, however, did not live on the Murphy plantation, but in nearby Manningham. Another man, Henry Monroe, died in April, but he was 75 years old, so he was not likely the man who was able to escape from an armed group of young men in their twenties and thirties. If the unknown man's death was recorded at the courthouse, he most likely was Shadrick Brown, but it is possible that his death was never legally reported, in which case Jerry Dixon, a name mentioned in some newspaper accounts, could have been the murdered man.

Skeletal Remains Found almost a Year Later 

In February of 1896, people traveling on the road from Pineapple to Greenville (currently a section of Highway 10), or perhaps a woman fishing, came upon skeletal remains at a ford (shallow spot) in Twelve Mile Creek, near Butler Springs. This is possibly the waterway now known as Black Branch, which is connected to Pine Barren Creek, and crosses Highway 10 and cuts through the forest between Murphy Road and Shackleville Road. The fleshless skeleton wore expensive, although time-tattered and badly torn clothing, which, according to articles, was an indication that the remains belonged to a prominent white man. The body was found with a wallet still in the pocket, so we can infer the man was not robbed. There were papers in the wallet, but they were impossible to read after being drenched in the creek. It was believed that the body had been trapped on the creek bank under a pile of fence rails, and the recent rains had lifted the rails and released the body. An article in the Birmingham Post-Herald stated the body was believed to have been secreted beneath the fence rails, and that it was believed to be the body of King Murphy (Watts's brother), but giving details of the Watts Murphy “murder” and the subsequent lynching. 

The article shared from the Selma Journal by The Greenville Advocate stated that one of the hands had claimed they burned him, but no proof of that could be found. The Birmingham Post-Herald article also stated that the burning of the body was never corroborated and adds that the confession had been discredited. 

The Greenville Advocate did not share the article from the Post-Herald, choosing the less detailed article from the Selma Journal instead, but followed it with their own report that the original article was inaccurate and that a part of Murphy’s body had been found in a log heap where it had been thrown after he was killed. In what appears to be an attempt to kill the story, The Greenville Advocate even casts doubt on whether a skeleton had been found at all. 

Lingering Questions 

Timing 

When Gus Murphy went to visit his son, according to one account just an hour after his murder, he found the seemingly unsuspecting hands, who told him Watts Murphy had rode off on his mule. From the account, it seems they were at work in the field, which begs the question, why would anyone, let alone Black people in Alabama in 1895, casually return to work after committing an atrocious murder? How did Augustus Murphy not see the fire or smell human flesh burning? If Zeb Colley had set the mule free six to eight miles away, how did he then make it back before Augustus Murphy’s arrival an hour after the crime was committed? 

The Confession 

Under what circumstances would confessing make any sense, especially if they truly had murdered the man? They would know what the outcome would be. One can imagine torture was involved. The National Registry of Exonerations shared an article from The Marshall Project that includes reasons why people make false confessions and falsely implicate others. In most cases, the confessor believes he will be punished for the crime he did not commit and confesses to a lesser role than the other party to lessen his own punishment. 

The Lynching 

How does one man escape a lynch mob of fifty to one hundred people? And why did the group taking the victims to jail travel late at night on an indirect path? How did so many people learn of the event, know when and by what route the group would travel, and lay in wait in a sparsely populated area in 1895? How did one hundred farmers armed with rifles hide in the woods on both sides of the road so quietly that they were not noticed until they could emerge surrounding the group traveling to the jail? Is it a coincidence that the lynching took place near Henry Clark's future in-laws' home?

The “Body” 

According to FindaGrave.com, Watts Murphy’s remains were buried in Pine Flat Cemetery. The listing does not include a grave or headstone photo, unlike the rest of Murphy’s affluent family members’ graves. Articles from the time seem to indicate that the so-called remains were buried swiftly. Who gathered the supposed remains and buried them? Was there an autopsy to verify the presence of human remains? Were they buried before the sheriff arrived? Was there a memorial service? Why did his heart and liver survive the fire while most of his skeleton did not? Would a skull burn faster than the organs? 

The Murder Investigation 

Was the supposed crime scene examined for blood or signs of a struggle or of a body being dragged? Was any attempt at all made to corroborate the confession when a body wasn’t found? 

The Lynching Investigation 

In some reports, the mob was said to be a large band of farmers. How can you know a man is a farmer and not be able to identify him?  Another article claimed the lynch mob was comprised of the "most prominent farmers and merchants living near the scene of the murder." The Greenville Advocate listed most of the men, if not all, who accompanied the victims to Buckalew Place (later called Buckaloo Heights, and eventually, just Buckaloo), where they killed. At least one of these men had close family relationships with residents of Buckalew Place. He himself lived in nearby Rocky Creek, but would have certainly been familiar with the property at Buckalew Place.

It would appear, however, that none of these facts were investigated.

The Skeleton 

What became of the skeleton found months after the disappearance of Watts Murphy? If located, genetic testing could solve this century-old mystery. Was the Murphy family not asked to identify the clothes and wallet found with the skeletal remains that were found on or near their property? Had any other wealthy citizen of the area been reported missing? 

Conclusion and Commentary 

As members of modern society, we now understand how false confessions happen and why they often include other innocent bystanders. In retrospect, this looks like a classic example of a false confession. It is obvious that Zeb Colley had no idea what had become of Watts Murphy. When pressed to show family members where the remains were located, he took them to a burned brush pile where details of what was found vary by account. The most common account, that only the heart, liver, and a few teeth remained, seems implausible since organs would burn far more quickly than a skull or other bones that were missing. Add to that the discovery of a skeleton in the area months later, and no one else missing, and it becomes painfully obvious that whatever was in that burn pile, it was not Watts Murphy. 

So, if the lynching victims did not kill Murphy, what happened to him? There are several plausible theories that I will share with you, the first of which I believe is the most plausible. 

1. Murphy rode off on his donkey to work on his fence or move the fence rails and had an accident, becoming trapped beneath the rails. Perhaps the donkey was pulling them and the line broke. If the accident itself did not kill Murphy, laying there for hours or days would have. Additionally, if the water had been up at the time, he could have drowned. 
2. Someone else murdered Murphy and placed his body beneath the fence rails. If this happened, it would not have been related to robbery, since his wallet was intact.  
3. The donkey threw Murphy and he hit his head and died but was never found. In this scenario, the 1896 theory that he had been beneath the fence rails and then released by rising waters would be incorrect. 
4. Hot from working on the fence, Murphy took off his overcoat and placed it on his donkey before going for a swim. Something went wrong, and he drowned. Again, this is assuming the 1896 entrapment theory is incorrect. 

 

Another item of note is that one account says the donkey was found tied out. If this is correct, the tragedy is amplified because whoever located the donkey was probably very close to where the body or injured man lay. 

Finally, it makes no sense that a group of citizens would set out late at night to take their prisoners to jail, travel an indirect route, and still run into a lynch mob of fifty to one hundred men who somehow knew when they would leave and that they would travel the least direct route, to Shackleville Road, instead of traveling directly to Highway 10. It also doesn’t add up that with that many aggressors, one man still managed to escape. It makes more sense to believe that the group set out to find a good spot for a hanging and carried it out themselves, especially when one factors in the fact that the lynching took place on property very familiar to Henry Clark, one of the men escorting the victims. This had to have been obvious to the Sheriff as well, yet no mention was made of investigating the men who were known to have custody of the victims. 

You must decide for yourself what you believe happened in this case. I believe that when the skeleton was found in 1896, the Murphy family knew they had made a terrible mistake but had no other choice than to double down on their claims that Murphy had been murdered by his field hands and his body burned. The locals would also have wanted to hide this mistake because they believed in lynchings and publicity of an exoneration afterwards would have ratcheted up the ever-growing public outcry against lynchings and the calls for anti-lynching legislation that had begun in the early 1800’s.  

Local papers aided in killing the 1896 story, and if there was ever a true investigation either in 1895 or in 1896, I can find no evidence of it online, despite a $250 reward offered by Governor Oates for the arrest and conviction of those involved in the lynching. In every case I have researched from this period, once a lynching occurred, no investigation took place, and everyone assumed the lynched parties had been guilty of their crimes.  

Well, not everyone. 

1884 Map of Butler County

The Living Truth
Friday, Feb 11, 1910

Resources 

"A Human Skeleton Found" Newspapers.com, Birmingham Post-Herald, February 29, 1896, https://www.newspapers.com/article/birmingham-post-herald-a-human-skeleton/146727619/ 

"A Skeleton Found" Newspapers.com, Greenville Advocate, March 11, 1896, https://www.newspapers.com/article/greenville-advocate-a-skeleton-found/146720832/ 

"Another Hung" Newspapers.com, The Journal, May 3, 1895, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-journal-another-hung/146574299/ 

"Died by the Rope" Newspapers.com, Portage Daily Register, April 22, 1895, https://www.newspapers.com/article/portage-daily-register-died-by-the-rope/146750159/ 

"Five Lynched" Newspapers.com, The Coosa River News, May 3, 1895, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-coosa-river-news-five-lynched/146573447/ 

"Five Lynched" Newspapers.com, The Montgomery Advertiser, April 22, 1895, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-montgomery-advertiser-five-lynched/146731933/ 

"Five Lynched Pg 8" Newspapers.com, The Montgomery Advertiser, April 22, 1895, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-montgomery-advertiser-five-lynched-p/146732928/ 

"Five Negroes Lynched" Newspapers.com, The Covington Cresent, April 27, 1895, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-covington-cresent-five-negroes-lynch/146734850/ 

"Five Were Lynched" Newspapers.com, Connecticut Western News, April 25, 1895, https://www.newspapers.com/article/connecticut-western-news-five-were-lynch/146751001/ 

"Four Lives Pay the Penalty for One" Newspapers.com, The Prattville Progress, April 26, 1895, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-prattville-progress-four-lives-pay-t/146573633/ 

"Governor Oates Offers Reward" Newspapers.com, The Florence Gazette, May 2, 1895, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-florence-gazette-governor-oates-offe/146736618/ 

"Horribly Murdered!" Newspapers.com, Greenville Advocate, April 24, 1895, https://www.newspapers.com/article/greenville-advocate-horribly-murdered/146571355/ 

"Negroes Lynched" Newspapers.com, Kenosha News, April 22, 1895, https://www.newspapers.com/article/kenosha-news-negroes-lynched/146749136/ 

"The Sheriff of Butler County" Newspapers.com, The Montgomery Advertiser, April 24, 1895, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-montgomery-advertiser-the-sheriff-of/146735050/ 

"The Skeleton of a Man Found in a Creek Near Butler Springs" Newspapers.com, The Montgomery Advertiser, February 29, 1896, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-montgomery-advertiser-the-skeleton-o/146741464/ 

"The Sixth Negro Lynched" Newspapers.com, The Moulton Advertiser, May 9, 1895, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-moulton-advertiser-the-sixth-negro-l/146734180/ 

"Women and Men Lynched" Newspapers.com, The Kansas City Star, April 22, 1895, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-kansas-city-star-women-and-men-lynch/146748246/