Tennessee murder tale

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

I heared my brother-in-law tell a tale about his, about a man a-drivin’ mules and horses to South Carolina. He come to a place and called to stay all night, and this, he got to stay all night there. And in the, in the night when he went to bed, why, they was a man under the bed with his throat cut, and they come upstairs to kill this man, and he, they knocked him in the head, and they said he wasn’t a-bleedin’.

He had took the man out from under the bed and crawled under the bed hisself, and so next morning he come downstairs, and they had tied silk cords around a jack’s legs till he couldn’t walk, and it surprised them kindly when he come walking down the stairs. So he went on to another place and told them.

They axed him how he could, how he ever got away from there, axed him where he stayed all night, axed him how he ever got away from there. Never had been a man [that] went there and stayed all night, but what he never was heared tell of no more, and he told them how it was. And they went back then to, they went there then and arrested all of them and took them out of there, but I don’t know what they done with them. That’s all of that.

Jack Johnson
Tuckaleechee Cove, TN
b. 1877

source: www.cas.sc.edu/engl/dictionary/transcripts/johnson_jack.html

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