Our last bit of the story of the Lowry Gang begins on Feb. 16, 1872, when the gang staged a raid in Lumberton. The gang stole an iron safe from the store of some prominent merchants, Pope and McLeod. That safe happened to have a lot of the town’s money inside, for there was no local bank in Lumberton at that time.
To add insult to injury, the gang also stole the iron safe from the sheriff’s office. The combined weight of the two safes proved too much for the cart the gang had planned to use to haul the loot away. Why, this was the least of the gang’s problems. They just dumped the sheriff’s safe right in the middle of a Lumberton street and continued on their way.
This raid by the outlaws proved to be the largest haul they had ever made, for the safe contained $22,000. However, the significance of this robbery wasn’t its success or the amount of money, but rather in the fact that Henry Berry Lowry mysteriously disappeared shortly afterward.
The last two years of the Lowry War were largely a tale of bounty hunters and their pursuit of the rest of the Lowry Gang.
One of the first successful bounty hunters was James “Donahoe” McQueen, who lived in the upper part of Robeson County. McQueen was of half-Indian blood and knew the ways of the men he pursued — who happened to be the Strong brothers.
As McQueen lay in wait from a ground blind not far from Andrew Strong’s home in Black Swamp, he would not be disappointed. Just as the sun went down on a Friday night in March of 1872, Andrew Strong came out of the woods. Before Strong went into his house, he looked in every direction. Wasn’t long he came back out on the porch and gave a low owl call. That’s when his brother, Boss, came creeping out of the shadows and went into the house.
McQueen waited patiently for the men to eat their supper and hopefully bed down for the night. When he thought the time was right, McQueen very quietly slipped up to the house and peeped through the cat-hole in the door. There lying on the floor in front of the fireplace was Boss Strong, playing his mouth harp.
Boss’s feet and head were facing toward the fire and not the front door. With the sound of the harp, Boss Strong was unable to hear McQueen’s rifle as he slid it though the cat-hole just feet from Boss’s head. With deadly accuracy, McQueen fired his rifle and before the sound of the rifle had disappeared, the women of the house screamed and said, “He’s shot.” At almost the same time, the firelight inside the house went out.
McQueen hid in the shadows for a short time, hoping to get a shot at Andrew Strong. But sensing real danger to himself, he slipped away.
The next morning, McQueen and a posse returned to Strong’s house only to find a woman mopping up blood stains from the floor where Boss had been shot. Boss’s body was never found and it took more than a year for McQueen to collect the $6,000 bounty for the outlaw from the state legislature.
Throughout the spring of 1872, a Col. Frances M. Wishart, now heading up the local militia, continued his effort to round up the rest of the Lowry Gang. In May of 1872, only Tom Lowry, Steve Lowry and Andrew Strong remained in the area. All the others gang members were either dead or had disappeared.
Just so happened, on May 2, Wishart met Steve Lowry and Andrew Strong at Moss Neck Station. They talked about a possible compromise and agreed to meet again.
A few days later, Steve Lowry sent word to Wishart to meet him near a church at Red Back Railroad station. Wishart agreed to meet him and try to convince the outlaw to leave the area. Fearing a trap, Andrew Strong hid himself in a blind where the meeting was going to take place.
Lowry and Wishart met as planned and talked for a spell and finally decided to separate. Some say as Steve Lowry turned to go, Wishart drew a revolver, which he had concealed, and fired at Lowry. At that point, Andrew Strong shot Wishart. Whether this story is true or not, Col. Wishart lay dead.
Soon after the killing, Wishart’s brother and half- brother ambushed Tom Lowry and killed him.
With the death of Tom Lowry, the outlaw band was reduced to two members, Andrew Strong and Steve Lowry. Although these two men could no longer threaten the white community, they continued to roam freely through the swamplands and served as reminders of Indian resistance.
On Christmas Day 1872, Strong and Lowry went to John Humprey’s store at Pates. They went to warn William Wilson, a white man clerking there at the store, to stop talking about them and the Indian people around the area. As the conversation ended, Strong told Wilson if’in he didn’t leave the county, he would kill him.
That very evening, Wilson loaded his double-barrel shotgun with buckshot, slipped-up behind Strong as he rolled a cigarette and killed him. Wilson collected the bounty money on the outlaw and left the county.
With Steve Lowry left on his own, he tried to get a pardon from the governor; but to no avail. He must have sensed that he was doomed.
His fate came in late February 1874 when he was lured to a party. Being all alone can be a terrible thing. Steve got careless and drank too much that night. Someone asked him to play the banjo and he laid his guns aside.
He began to play, totally unaware that three bounty hunters were watching him. They were waiting for just the right moment to strike — and this was it!
Suddenly, two bounty hunters opened fire at the same time on Lowry. To make sure he was dead, the third bounty hunter finished him off with an ax. Lowry’s body was carried to Lumberton and a claim was made for the reward.
The Lowry War was over and an uneasy peace returned to Robeson County for the first time in a decade.
One hundred and forty years after the Lowry War, the Indians of Robeson County still ponder and talk about the sudden disappearance of Henry Berry Lowry in 1872. They wonder whether the guerrilla leader was killed and his body secretly buried, or whether he left the state for a safer and friendlier environment.
The only certainly is that no one ever collected the reward placed on his head and his memory will forever be in the hearts and minds of the Lumbee people.
J.A. Bolton is a member of the N.C. Storytelling Guild, the Anson County Writers’ Club, the Richmond County Historical Society and the Story Spinners in Laurinburg.