Sweetwater – All grave stones tell a story – even the ones too old to make out.
But one gravestone in Robbinsville goes above and beyond.
Thad Sherrill is buried in the Old Mother Cemetery near the Old Mother Church, under a mature shade tree that caused the gravestone to slant as the tree grew.
The gravestone was added sometime in the late 1950s after funds were contributed by community leaders and members. The gravestone has a memorable and – for a gravestone – lengthy inscription:
“Thad Sherrill son of Jason and Clarissa, 1846-1898, Bushwacked (sic) on Mt. Creek by George Maney, Maney lynched by mob in Murphy 1899, hanging him to Upper Valley River Bridge.”
I like old cemeteries and was exploring Old Mother Church Cemetery in Robbinsville on Jan. 24, when I encountered this gravestone. I took a picture and posted it on my Facebook timeline. Deb Happel and Catherine Pritchard – who I worked with about 20 years ago at the Fayetteville Observer – were equally intrigued and got to work.
Deb posted one, then two, then three articles dating to the late 19th century that reported Thad Sherrill’s death and the aftermath. Catherine added depth with a clipping of her own that she came across.
Marshall McClung, The Graham Star’s history columnist, showed up in the research with his own telling of the story back in 2012.
The clippings spanned a period of time from the first reports of Sherrill’s death, to the arrest and lynching of the murderer, and finally – because clearly this homicide was a crime of passion – the motive.
It has been nearly 124 years since Thad Sherrill was slain by his neighbor, but it is a story worth repeating – in this case, with a few more details.
“Bushwhacked”
Thad Sherrill was a successful cattle rancher who shared a house with his two unmarried sisters, Margaret and Angeline Sherrill, on the banks of Mountain Creek, which is located about three miles northeast of Robbinsville, in an area where livestock is raised even now.
On Saturday, June 18, 1898, Sherrill set out to the mountains to salt his cattle, expecting to return that night.
He never came home.
His sisters reported their missing brother and a search party of some 200 men was formed. In the twilight hours the next day, Isaac Crisp and Bill Rice found the body in thick woods off the trail around dusk Sunday, shot through the chest and decapitated.
The bushwhacker had been hiding in some laurel bushes when he shot Sherrill. News accounts at the time said the slaying occurred a few hundred yards above George Maney’s house.
Motive?
Little is recorded about Maney, other than that he was married to Hester Prewitt Maney – a pastor’s daughter. They had three children – a son, and twin daughters. Maney’s brother William lived with them.
Maney suffered from a severe cough, often spitting up blood. It was thought that he had “galloping consumption” – a form of tuberculosis – but he refused to get treatment.
Thad Sherrill and his sisters befriended the Maney family. Fearing that the children would contract the illness, Sherrill advised Hester to take the children and move in with her parents, the Rev. and Mrs. William Prewitt.
Some accounts say Maney was enraged that his family left him. Maney’s own account – as reported by contemporary news accounts – was that he grew enraged in the belief that Sherrill and his wife had an affair.
Hundreds of people flocked to the coroner’s inquest – among them Maney, who appeared nervous, a news account said.
“Dark threats were heard if the perpetrator were ever found,” the reporter wrote. “Maney made conflicting statements about the last time he saw Sherrill alive and was arrested on suspicion. In jail he broke down, fearing lynching, and confessed.
“He told how he had waylaid Sherrill, whom he accused of being intimate with his wife, shot him through the body as he came up the road and shot him again through the head to make sure of his death.
“Maney persistently refused to say what was done with the dead man’s head.”
Failed detainment
Maney was jailed in Robbinsville, but an angry mob formed and threatened to hang him. Longtime Graham County Sheriff John Ammons and his deputies had to hold the crowd at bay with rifles and shotguns to prevent a lynching. Under the cover of darkness and accompanied by heavy guard, Maney was quietly moved by horseback to the Cherokee County jail in Murphy on the night of June 23, 1898.
Soon after his transfer to the Murphy jail, Maney and other prisoners sawed their way out and escaped into the mountains.
Ben Sherrill – one of Thad’s numerous siblings – came to Graham County from Georgetown, Texas, to organize volunteers to hunt Maney down. Their attempt failed after weeks of searching that extended into winter.
Months later, on January 15, 1899, suffering from exposure and malnutrition, Maney came out of the wilderness and turned himself.
Back in jail in Murphy, news of Maney’s surrender reached Graham County, where a group of armed men – Thad’s brother Ben Sherrill among them – assembled and set out on horseback.
As they traveled, others joined them from communities along the way including Andrews, Coalville, Marble, Regal, Peachtree and Murphy. By the time they reached the Cherokee County jail, the mob had about 50 members.
Capture
One news account of the lynching was written as if the reporter had been at it.
“For three weeks he remained in hiding in the woods, suffering hunger and cold. Thoroughly wretched and desperate he returned to Murphy and surrendered himself to Attorney Ben Posey. About nine o’clock last night a big party of men rode into Murphy on horse. They drove up in front of the jail and the leader knocked loudly on the door.
“Deputy Sheriff Axeley responded, asking: ‘What’s up?’
“‘We’ve just caught a horse thief,’ replied the man. ‘Open the door.’
“All unsuspecting, Axely did as he was bid. The next instant he was swept back against the wall by a rush of men into the corridor. Resistance would have been folly. The crowd secured the keys, located Maney’s cell, opened the door and dragged him out. A noose was passed around his arms, and the crowd led him forth.
“Maney had nerve. Though his face was very white, be did not betray a tremor. Five minutes later the murderer’s dead body was dangling from one of the girders of the Valley River bridge. The lynchers had been quiet, but terrifyingly business-like. Hardly a word had been spoken through it all and when the murderer knelt a moment on the bridge to say a last prayer, he did it silently, no sound escaping his pale lips.”
When the mayor and marshal of the town came to cut Maney down about two hours later, Maney was hanging just above the level of the water and showed signs of having died by strangulation from the hanging.
“He was overheard last night to confess again that he killed Sherrill with a pistol, refused again to disclose the whereabouts of the head of his victim and declared with his last breath before the fatal push from Valley River bridge, that his brother William, had nothing to do with the killing,” the reporter wrote.
Footnotes
The bridge over Valley River in Murphy where the lynching took place no longer exists. It was located just upriver of a present-day railroad trestle, in the area of Persimmon Lake.
George Washington Maney was born Oct. 26, 1866. He died by lynching on Jan. 9, 1899, at the age of 32. His death was the only recorded lynching in Cherokee County. He is buried at Harshaw Chapel Cemetery in Murphy.
Maney’s wife, Hester, was born in 1874 and died in 1900, the year following George’s lynching. Their son, Frank Jefferson Maney, born 1894, died in 1955. He was 5 years old when his father was lynched. There were no records about his twin sisters.
Thaddeus “Thad” Sherrill, the son of Jason Sherrill and Mary Clarissa Murphy, was born in Burke County, N.C. in 1846, and died in Graham County in 1898 at the age of 52, the victim of murder. He never married, had no children, and lived with two unmarried sisters, Margaret and Angelina. He was brother to Mary, Samuel, Benjamin, Margaret, Willoby, Joseph and Angelina.
Around 1959, a fund was started to mark Sherrill’s grave at Old Mother Church Cemetery. Contributors were then-Magistrate J.J. Dula, Leonard Phillips, Willie Bridges, Laverne Maxwell, then-Sheriff Boyd Crisp, then-County Attorney T.M. Jenkins, former sheriff G.E. Brewer, then-N.C. Rep. Leonard Lloyd, then-Clerk of Court W.M. Sherrill, W.G. McKeldrey, G.A. Harwood, Mrs. Walter West, Walt Wiggins, Mrs. Clyde C. Lloyd, Druggist Ed Ingram, Editor Todd Reece, Ross Smith, J. Smith Howell, and Bob Barker.