Volume 14 , Issue 20

1884 Lynching In Monterey, Virginia

It always amazes me when I hear back on an OkieLegacy features in our archives. This comment was made by Kevin Fansler who replied to our feature story in Vol. 13, Iss. 16, dated 2011-04-18, concerning "Learning Good With the Bad Ancestrial Stories."

Kevin says, "Henry Morgan Tomlinson is my great-grandfather. Giles Gum is my great-great-uncle and Sidney Ruckman is also a relative. I have been curious about this story ever since my grandmother Tomlinson told the story. The Tomlinson fled ultimately to McPherson, Kansas where Henry changed his name temporarily to Charles Morgan, according to the 1885 Kansas census. He, with his family, came into Oklahoma after 1895 and settled around the Fay, Oklahoma area."

This story as stated in the History of Highland County, Virginia, page 230, by Oren Frederic Morton states, "The good record of the county in this respect was marred by a lynching in the month of January 3, 1884." The lynching victim was a man from Michigan (may have been originally from Massachusetts), E. D. Porter (a.k.a E. D. Atchison), came to the west of the county after his release from the Pocahontas jail. It was believed that Porter was not a well-behave person, and during a game of cards with a citizen of Back Creek, a quarrel arose between two intoxicated men. Porter being one of them. He struck the other person a blow with his knife, only inflicting a slight wound in the breast.

As the story goes . . . a party of citizens broke into the jail, shot Atchison in his cell, and then hanged him to a tree on the Vanderpool road, where the same crosses the brow of the conical hill south of the town. It was reported that all but one of the lynching party was identifiable. One citizen was tried by a jury of Rockbridge men but was acquitted. The others who were assumed to be implicated in the unfortunate occurrence left the county never to return.

This is a list of the men that Sheriff Hiner could identify 9 out of the 10 men. He saw the face of the tenth man but did not recognize him. Arrest warrants were then sworn out for the following 9 men:

1. John Anderson Chestnut
2. James Beeson
3. Joe Beath
4. Luther Wade
5. L. N. Gibson
6. Giles Harrison Gum
7. Henry Morgan Tomlinson
8. John Adam Lightner
9. Robert Warwick (may have been the same as my great grandpa, John Robert Warwick)

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