Butts County GaArchives News.....Mrs. James Caraway - Murder April 1877
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Don Bankston http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00024.html#0005864 February 28, 2010, 8:43 pm

Butts County Argus April 1877
Caraway, Mrs. James – Brutal Murder

On Monday morning, 16th inst., Mrs. James Caraway, residing near Smithville, 
in the old sixteenth district of Sumter county, was brutally murdered by a 
Negro wretch, who sought this method of obtaining revenge for some imaginary 
wrong did him by Mr. James Caraway, for whom he worked some years ago.

It appears that Mr. Caraway was off his place attending to his duties, his 
children away at school, and no one at the home place but the unfortunate 
victim of this terrible tragedy.

About ten o’clock on the morning mentioned Rev. J. W. Woodall a Baptist 
minister, while on the way home from his charge, took occasion to stop at Mr. 
Caraway’s and on entering the house was horrified at the spectacle that mot 
his gaze.  In one room he found Mrs. Caraway lying in the middle of the floor, 
entirely unconscious, with her skull badly mashed and blood and brains 
scattered about the premises.  In the other rooms of the dwelling, bureaus , 
trunks and closets were found broken open and their contents scattered about 
the floor, bearing evidence that the arch fiend had coupled the crime of 
robbery with that of murder.

The alarm was soon given, and it was not long before the terrible news spread 
through the settlement and the neighbors were in council.  With no other clue 
than that a Negro by the name of Charley Thomas had been prosecuted some years 
ago by Mr. C. for sealing corn, they proceeded to scour the country.  Messrs. 
T. G. Williams, George Edwards and others, constituting the posse, overtook 
him in his flight in Terrell county, on the plantation where he was employed 
as a hand.

The missing money and other articles which he had taken were found in his 
possession.

We have had a short interview with him, and he makes the following statement”

“Two years ago I lived with Mr. Caraway; had been living with him about five 
years altogether; changed to another place to Mr. Allen’s on account of some 
misunderstanding about corn; had been living in Terrell county with Mr. Martin 
since Christmas.”

“On Monday morning, while passing Mr. Caraway’s the thought occurred to me 
that he had treated me wrong about a yearling that I had left on his place, 
and thinking he was not in the house, I entered a side door into his dining 
room, with a hickory stick, ordinary size, in my right hand.  There being no 
one else about the house at the time but Mrs. Caraway, I bowed and said Good 
morning, and she replied Good morning; where are you going?  Mr. Caraway is 
not here, he is out in the field where they are planting cotton, I stood in 
the door for a while, then entered as I did so she turned around to a window.  
After she turned I struck her a blow and she fell on her knees.  I walked into 
the sitting room and took some cloth that was lying on a trunk and looked at 
it.  Trying to open the trunk, I found it was locked; prizing it open with a 
stick I saw a little tin box, which I took.  It had about ten dollars in it, I 
suppose.  I took the cloth and box and went to a shed room, where I found a 
counterpane, and folding it up, took that also.  On leaving the shed room I 
went into the dining room, seeing Mrs. Caraway on the floor, crying,  Oh, 
Lord! Oh, Lord! In a feeble voice.  I struck her twice with the same stick, I 
did it from excitement, thinking I would not be able to get out of the house 
before the alarm would be given.  I knew she was not dead when I left.  I went 
out the same way that I came in.  I went through the orchard and took to the 
woods.  I then went home in Terrell county, on Mr. Willis Martin’s plantation, 
where I was found by the searching party.

The murderer emphatically denies having outraged the person of Mrs. Caraway, 
as was supposed.  He asserts that he never once thought of it.

He was brought out under a grand jury indictment on last Friday, was tried and 
convicted the same day, and sentenced to be hanged on the 18 day of May.

Butts Argus – Butts County Ga.
Week of April 26, 1877 


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