While searching for online information on the Martin family, I discovered by accident the hanging of my great-great-great-great-grandfather, which was posted in a Fayetteville newspaper back in 1849. Another newspaper in Wisconsin carried the report.
It’s a dreadful story of the suffering my ancestor endured before he died. In the piece, headlined “Dreadful Scene at an Execution” (Waukesha Democrat, Dec. 4, 1849), a Rockingham correspondent of The Fayetteville Observer gives the following scene at the execution of a man named Robert Hildreth at that place on Dec. 2, 1849:
The axe glittered, the trap door falls, and Hildreth swings by the neck. For half a minute he remains motionless.
Is he dead? Can his own weight, without having fallen one inch, broken his neck? No. Poor fellow, he expected one pang, and that his lust. But the fatality which often leads Sheriffs to gross negligence in executing the law must cost him now a world of woe.
With a convulsive effort he reaches the platform and stands again on earth alive. The cap has fallen from his face. The blood was already fast rushing upwards. But his large and muscular neck prevented the rope from tightening. Even then his meekness did not leave him. He spoke, without complaint, in a clear voice that was heard with awe by every ear — “Come here and fix the rope, it won’t choke me to death!”
The sheriff did go to him. First with an axe, then with a piece of scantling, he endeavored to knock away the boards. At last he pushed Hildreth’s feet from the scaffold, and hung him inefficiently a second time.
The poor fellow made no more effort to recover himself. Finding that he was hung in a way which produced the most excruciating, because gradual suffocation — with the blood slowly collecting in his brain — through a circulation only partially impeded — the unfortunate man, compelled by the pangs which momentarily grew greater, drew up his legs as high as possible, then with all his force threw them down to tighten the cord.
Three several times, at intervals of a minute, he did the same thing. Then his struggles ceased — his own executioner, he became unconscious of pain.
The scene at Rockingham, or something frequently shocking, abominable, is of frequent occurrence. It is witnessed, almost without exception, wherever capital punishment is inflicted in North Carolina.
Why was Robert Hildreth Sr. hanged?
In the summer of 1848, Robert and his younger brother, David Hildreth, were living in the Brown Creek community of Anson County. Robert Hildreth’s children were down the road at William Taylor’s home, playing with the Taylor children. The Hildreth children were getting unruly and Mr. Taylor demanded that they go home.
At the Hildreth home, Robert Hildreth and his brother David were drunk. The children told their father that they were ordered to go home. In the drunken state of mind that the Hildreth brothers were in, they planned to seek revenge on Mr. Taylor. They went to the Taylor home and got into an argument with William Taylor.
David Hildreth stood back while Robert Hildreth stabbed Mr. Taylor in the chest with a knife, and Taylor was dead. Robert Hildreth was arrested that day and David Hildreth was arrested three days later.
Robert was taken to the jail in Rockingham to keep him safe from any revenge. The murder case was taken to court in November of 1849 and there was a jury trial. David Hildreth was set free and Robert Hildreth was sentenced to be hanged.
One year later, Robert was hanged at what was known as “the hanging tree” in Rockingham.
So, after Robert Hildreth was hanged in November of 1849, the family went to live at the Anson County Poor House in the 1850s. The oldest daughter Emmeline was born about 1841, and she married Benjamin Lurry/Lerry in 1873 in Lanesboro Township.
Susan Hildreth, born about 1843, was never married but was mother to several children. Susan’s descendants are the Meeks family of Polkton. Their only known brother was Robert Hildreth Jr. born about 1846 (my ancestor). Robert Hildreth Jr. married Elizabeth Lineberry in the 1860s.
One of the mysteries of this Hildreth family was what happened to their mother, Frances Hildreth? She was not living in the county poor house with her children in 1850.
She was living in David and Nancy Hildreth’s household in the 1850 census. In the 1860 census of Lanesboro Township in household No. 430 was Franky (Frances) Hildreth, age 65, along with daughter Emmeline Hildreth, age 15, and Nancy Hildreth, age 17, whose relationship to the family is unknown to me at this time.
I do not believe that Frances Hildreth was 65 years old at this time. Most likely she was 45 to 50 years old. Where was Susan Hildreth during this time?
In the 1860 census, Robert Hildreth was 15 years old and living in the household of Joshua and Ann Preslar in Lanesboro Township. Robert was working on their farm. Robert Hildreth Jr. enlisted into the Civil War on May 10, 1862 into Company K of the 26th N.C. Regiment when he was 16 years old.
Steve Bailey is employed with the Anson County Historical Society and has specialized in local African-American family history for 20 years.