Volume 18 , Issue 4

1884 Highland Lynching

It was in the Richmond, Virginia newspaper, The Richmond Dispatch, dated 11 January 1884, Friday, page 3, that we found this Highland county lynching of January, 1884.

Found on Newspapers.com

The Highland Lynching
Additional particulars of the affair as the coroner's jury verdict comes down. The lynched man suspected of many crimes, and action of his cellmate. The below was a special telegram to the Dispatch:

Staunton, Va., January 10 (1884) -- Some further particulars of the lynching which occurred at Monterey, Highland county, Va., have reached here today. Justice Wilson summoned a jury of inquest which after an all day session returned the following verdict:

"We, the jury of inquest, find that the deceased, E. D. Atchison, was taken from the jail of Highland county, Va., on the morning of the 5th of January, 1884, between the hours of 12 A.M. and 4 A.M., by a mob; that he came to his death either from a pistol-shot or gun-shot, or from being hanged by the neck, or from the effects of both. [Signed] A. H. Campbell, Foreman."

The road over the fourth mountain between here and Monterey was covered with snow so hard and slick that it could not be crossed since Tuesday evening. A gentlemen who left there Tuesday morning says another prisoner by the name of Ratcliffe was confined in the same cell with Atchison, charged also with stabbing. The two had heard of the threatened Lynching, and were greatly alarmed, and the gentleman referred to heard them praying aloud in their cell the night before the mob came. When the attack was made Ratcliffe was so overcome with fright that he fell upon the floor and remained there unconscious, and thus escaped the shots which wounded his companion.

After Aitchison had struck the pistol from the hand which had been put through the door to finish him, he fell back bleeding and fainted on the floor not knowing that the weapon had fallen inside. The lynchers fearing that Aitchison had armed himself with the weapon stopped their attack and held a consultation, but determined that as they had come there to kill Atchison they would go ahead. They then proposed to Ratcliffe that if he would secure them the pistol they would not hurt him, whereupon he looked for it and finding it upon the bed handed it out, and the party renewed the attack upon the door with at the result telegraphed you last.

The last information is that Atchison was from Massachusetts, had lived in Highland about two years, and was considered a very bad character and suspected of many crimes, and was much feared by the community. This fact may account for the apparent apathy of the citizens during the attack on the jail. It is very probable that the outrage would have been stopped had Commonwealth's Attorney Stephenson, who lived in the village, been at home. He was in Richmond, and started back as soon as he saw the newspaper accounts this morning.
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