16 J. C. Burroughs Jr.

16

J. C. Burroughs Jr.

September 28, 1819–June 9, 1910

J. C. (Joshua Christian) Burroughs

Photograph Courtesy of the Stanly County Museum, Albemarle, North Carolina

   Sheriff Snuggs’s failure to enforce the law and protect his prisoner has been analyzed in the context of Alexander Whitley’s presumed guilt and the outrage of the community that spurred an unstoppable mob of angry men. While politics and religion certainly played a role in the lynching of the son of a prominent white family, they don’t fully explain how or why a sheriff allowed his friends and neighbors to commit this murder.

   I. W. Snuggs fought with the Confederate forces in the Civil War and returned to Stanly County a hero, a powerful man, a man held in high regard. Why did this man not stand up and protect his prisoner?

   Perhaps an answer is found in the interactions between J. C. Burroughs Jr., Alex’s father, and the community and his relationship with Snuggs. In researching Burroughs, I discovered the life of an interesting, complex man. Joshua Christian Burroughs Jr., one of 13 children of Joshua Christian Burroughs Sr. and Sarah Springer, was a colorful, nonconforming personality in Stanly County in the 1800s. He was exceptional in two areas: his accumulation of land, and his 23 confirmed children spawned from relationships with at least three different women.

   His first relationship, with Susannah Whitley, the mother of Alex Whitley, began in or around 1845. Burroughs began and maintained intimate relationships with two other women during the course of his relationship with Susannah. On September 1, 1867, just 19 days before the birth of their fourth child, Sarah Catherine, J. C. Burroughs and Rachel Catherine Lowder were married. Although married, Burroughs continued an intimate relationship with yet another woman, Frankie Honeycutt, which resulted in the subsequent births of their children. Although he was a philanderer, I found no evidence of any coercion or assault on any of the three women.

   When J. C. Burroughs began his relationship with Susannah Whitley, they were in their 20s and he had already begun to accumulate wealth. Court records reflect recurring boundary disputes with his neighbors and disagreements over the ownership of harvested crops. Burroughs often represented himself in these civil court actions in Stanly and Cabarrus Counties. He also made loans to people, including one to Alex and his wife Mary in 1885 that was never repaid, often securing their debts with a note on their land. Later in life, he leveraged his real estate as collateral for loans. Although he was poised to take advantage of the people indebted to him, he left no trail of foreclosures and the taking of property.

   While records verify J. C. Burroughs’s wealth and his sexual relationships that violated acceptable conduct of the time, there was another side to this man that demonstrated more philanthropy than philandering. Census records for Stanly County in 1870 and 1880 document the fact that nonrelated individuals lived with Burroughs, his wife Rachel, and their children. These people were boarders: some were older widows, one described as “insane,” one as blind, and most as unable to read or

   It is impossible to pinpoint when the life of J. C. Burroughs began to unravel, although reasonable speculation suggests that, as the result of loan defaults chipping away at his cash, Burroughs began to liquidate his real estate. In the days and weeks that followed the murder of Susannah’s son, attention in the community focused on the barrage of sensational stories vilifying Alex and justifying his murder by the mob. The Standard publicly shamed Burroughs by admonishing him for not claiming the body of his dead son and providing a proper burial. These stories made it appear that Burroughs had abandoned Alex, and acquiesced to the power of the mob by leaving his remains entombed beneath the lynching tree.

   While the Standard mocked J. C. Burroughs and local folks gawked at the grave site and the lynching tree, Burroughs prepared to travel to Arkansas to save his daughter, Judy Burris, and son-in-law, George L. Whitley, who were also charged in the death of D. B. Tucker. For their defense, he employed S. J. Pemberton, Esq., one of three attorneys in Stanly County in 1892, to go with him to Arkansas.

   Pemberton was a skilled criminal attorney and the perfect choice to defend Judy Burris, as described in a news article from 1886 endorsing Pemberton’s run for Congress.

A free constituency regard Mr. Pemberton, whose private life presents a stainless escutcheon, while the mirror of his public record reflects only the images of truth, virtue, and

   On August 18, 1892, the Standard documented his departure to Arkansas.

Hon. S. J. Pemberton, of Albemarle, has gone to Arkadelphia, to defend Judy Burris, who stands charged with murder. Our readers will remember that she was carried back to Arkansas while Whitley was lynched in

   Pemberton was successful in his defense of Judy and George Whitley, and the Standard documented his return to Stanly County on September 1, 1892.

Hon. S. J. Pemberton, of Albemarle, returned this morning from Arkadelphia, Ark., where he had gone to defend Judy Burroughs and George Whitley, charged with the murder of D. R. Tucker. The grand jury failed to find a true bill, and the defendants were discharged. Judy Burroughs returned to North Carolina while Whitley remained in

   The story of his success and the acquittal of two people accused of the murder of D. B. Tucker did not receive the same extensive coverage as the lynching of Alex Whitley. No one questioned whether Alex Whitley’s lynching was just. Burroughs saved his daughter and son-in-law’s life by employing Pemberton for their defense. But when Burroughs, Pemberton, and Judy returned to Stanly County, it was Burroughs who had to fight for survival.

   There is no record of any payment by Burroughs to Pemberton for his services. However, on September 18, 1892, 17 days after Pemberton returned to Stanly County, J. C. Burroughs borrowed $1,399 and secured the debt with a deed to 112 acres of his property. When Burroughs failed to satisfy the loan, the land was sold on the courthouse steps by Sheriff Snuggs, on September 18, 1893, for This was the first recorded land loss as a result of a loan default by Burroughs and a clear indication that the 74-year-old Burroughs was in financial trouble.

   Land that Burroughs had accumulated over the course of his life began to slip away as parcels were sold in foreclosure by Sheriff Snuggs for the collection of debts, such as the 1889 judgment entered in the Howell case. On December 4, 1893, Sheriff Snuggs sold three parcels of land totaling 299 acres for

   On August 11, 1894, two years after Stanly citizens murdered his son and as his fortune was eroding, his wife Rachel died. Six months later, on February 19, 1895, another 50 acres previously owned by Alex, which Burroughs held as collateral for a loan, was sold on the courthouse steps for Four years later, Burroughs again suffered a massive loss of property through a series of sheriff’s sales. On February 6 and February 7, 1899, he suffered the humiliation of another sheriff’s sale on three parcels of land totaling 290 ½ acres for only $183 to satisfy debts he had

   It is impossible to document why or how J. C. Burroughs lost his vast land holdings. Whether his creditors’ absence of mercy or leniency was related to the lynching of Alex is unknown. But perhaps the lynching and the expense incurred in defending Judy Burris left Burroughs vulnerable to land speculators searching for bargains at the courthouse steps. Their motivations are perhaps discovered through a series of news articles about gold.

   Gold was first discovered in the United States in Cabarrus County in 1799. The Reed Gold Mine became a National Historic Landmark in 1966 and a state historic site in 1971. Gold Hill, North Carolina, was the site of one of the largest gold mines in the state.

   In 1890, the Vidette, a newspaper in nearby Troy, proclaimed “we has rich veins of ore in our state as will be found on this Reports of new activities in mines or the discovery of new veins appeared frequently, describing the gold mining activity in Stanly County a few months before the lynching of Alex Whitley.

The Progressive Farmer: September 22, 1891

Lawyer Crowell exhibited to a Standard reporter a large collection of pieces of ore from the Jenn mine near New London, Stanly County. It is pure gold. It is worth $40 a ton. This property contains 51 acres, and the vein is 3 ½ feet deep, and a shaft has been sunk to the depth of 24

The Progressive Farmer: December 22, 1891

Salisbury Watchman: The Ohio company which bought old Barringer mine in Stanly County last summer, began work last Wednesday. Capt. C. F. Burns is superintending the work. The mine will be worked extensively as soon as the necessary preparatory work can be done. This is one or has been one of the richest mines in the State, and we may expect to hear big reports from there soon.

Mr. H. C. Crowell, of New London, tells of the good luck the Parker mine, Capt. Parker, superintendent, of New London, Stanly County, is in. With the system of washing inaugurated there the hill is being washed away. An extremely rich vein has been unearthed. Mr. Crowell says it just “looks like a wash pot full of melted gold was dashed on the rocks.” This company has spent $200,000 in developing the mine and returns now seem probable, says the Concord

   Burroughs appeared to be well positioned with the discovery of gold across Stanly County. But by 1892, when a mob murdered his son, Burroughs was 73 years old and fighting for his financial survival as his grip on his real estate empire was slipping.

   By 1900, the 81-year-old Burroughs was stripped of his fortune and living on his farm in Big Lick with his 16-year-old daughter, Mary. Burroughs outlived many of the men who murdered his son, including Sheriff Snuggs. On June 9, 1901, nine years to the day the mob murdered Alex, Burroughs died at age 82, taking many secrets with him to his grave.

   In 1892, members of the press taunted the prominent family of Alex Whitley for failing to provide a proper grave for his burial, characterizing Alex as a man so vile he was discarded even by his family. I could not imagine a father deserting his son in such a manner. It seemed out of character that the J. C. Burroughs I had come to know, through a life recorded in business and court documents, would bow in humiliation before the community and not retrieve the murdered body of Susannah’s youngest son. I recalled the small mocking note in the Standard that the grave under the red oak tree had a sunk a and I wondered whether Alex’s body had in fact already been removed from the grave in 1892. When Nelia opened the grave under the tree after only 39 years, just a few remnants remained, with no skull or skeleton discovered, just “five or six small bones of parts of the

   Buried in the Stanly County Courthouse register of deeds was, perhaps, the truth. The Standard missed this sliver of information about a quiet transaction on August 23, 1893, one year and two months after the lynching. The city of Albemarle purchased the “Cagle Cemetery” for $1—from J. C. Apparently it was not true that Alex’s family did not have a place to bury him, but whether his body was removed and interred in the private cemetery that J. C. Burroughs owned in 1892 has never been explored. I found no evidence that Nelia and J. C. Burroughs had a relationship or that she would have known of this possibility. Perhaps it is best to let those small fragments of bones rest in peace under the headstone of Alexander Whitley, where Grandma laid them to rest.