The Woolfolk Murders

Introduction

It’s hard to say where it all begins. Every good story starts out that way. We wake up and never really take the time to think it could be the day that changes everything. This is very much what happened to me when I decided to take a look at the Woolfolk Murders. I was just another wannabe YouTuber looking for something to pollute the web. When I had the idea to do a local ghost story, I never imagined the fun, excitement, frustration, outright anger, and satisfaction that would come from investigating this strange, and horrific event.

To be fair, I’m not the first to look into the killing of 9 folks in rural Georgia. There’s a lot of material on this topic. Some of it is questionable, while other works are beyond amazing. Caroline DeLoach’s “Shadow Chasers” proved to be a work resulting from painstaking effort. Other scientists, lawyers, archaeologist, crackpots, ghost hunters, and history buffs have also studied this event. I’m not even going to try and hold a candle to their works.

In all reality, I started SkinFlint Outdoors as a means to chronograph my life and times in the field. Hunting, fishing, shooting, and such outdoor sports have always been a passion and I wanted to bring them together. Working with the budget I have insured some of the videos I’ve posted are slow, at best. Then, on an unseasonably hot January day in Georgia, I decided to find an activity that was like hunting, but could still be done without the troubling point of deer season being over. Having a broke down boat, no money for repairs, and no place to hunt hogs I had to get creative.

It was then I came up with the brilliant idea to do a ghost hunt. I had acquaintances in my native Pennsylvania who did it, even some who belonged to clubs. Lamentably, my work schedule never allowed me to go along, as bad as I wanted to. As I battle my post-hunting-season-depression I came to the resolution that I could do the same thing on my own?

It was then, a pint of Guiness in hand, fuzzy slippers on my feet, and a stubborn thought in my head that I set about my Google search to find a ghost story in the area I lived. I managed to find a few interesting stories initially, but few that seemed reasonable to attempt an investigation. Then, I stumbled on an article about a place in the woods outside Macon, Georgia, where people had reported hearing disembodied voices and screams. The legend was a man had killed 9 people at this mysterious location in the woods and their ghosts haunt the spot to this day.

While the story was somewhat interesting, the location was all but just over the hill from where I was living at the time. It was almost too good to be true. I eagerly began to look more into the ghastly tale of murder in the woods and by the time I had finished my second article I was obsessed. Not Carolyn DeLoach kind of obsessed, but obsessed none the less. I had realized this was not just a simple ghost story to explore. It was far, far more.

The Woolfolk case was living history. As I began to ask some of my associated about the events of August 6, 1887, I was astonished at how many knew little tid-bits about what happened. Despite so many people knowing about this I was struggled to get any solid information. I had questions I wanted to answer. There was a lot of material to be found on the event, but most of what I read reported the same thing over and over. I elected to launch an investigation on my own. All that follows is a chronicle of that investigation. Nothing being presented is set to challenge theories, change minds, or critique facts.

That being said, I want to point out anyone can sit and read about the deaths of the Woolfolk family. I was perfectly capable of reading the same material, closing the book, and going on with my life. However, I decided to go a step beyond and actually find and visit the sites of what happened all those years ago. The story of Tom Woolfolk is only the guiding factor for my writing, but it not my purpose or intent to say if he was guilty or innocent.  The search for the history surrounding him and his family is the adventure I hope to capture.

The Grocery Store

Macon, Georgia, in the present day is a bustling little city. Among the shops and businesses you see a mix of culture and class. There’s crime, drugs, money, beauty, and history all walking down the same streets at the same time. From the exquisite architecture in downtown, to the boarded up houses in the area of town known as the Peach Orchard, Macon has it all. This is a city forged by excessive wealth, excessive poverty, war, and cultural shift.

The corner of Third and Cherry Street is no exception to this basic description. There’s beautiful landscaping, tastefully designed buildings, sleeping drunks, quaint restaurants, and an air of pride all in that intersection. Standing on the corner, I could almost imagine the horse drawn carriages making their way to and from the shops that once lined this section of town. It was within a stone throw of this very interchange where the Woolfolk store was.

If you read about the details of this event in Macon’s history you’ll find a number of theories about why Richard Woolfolk was murdered. One such theory I found involved a local conspiracy plotted by Macon’s elite so they could gain more power in a then-forming city. Another theory hinged in the plain and simple greed of a distraught son who wanted his inheritance.

What seems to be the truth is that R.F. Woolfolk wasn’t that well off. Records I found showed his farm to be worth a tidy sum when he was murdered. But still other records seem to indicate he was in significant debt. What made things worse was some of his business ventures, such as his store, were slowing slipping into ruin.

I will admit my library and internet research left me with a lot of unanswered questions. Still, I was able to find a few pointers that corroborated R.F. Woolfolk’s financial status. While purely circumstantial, the writing was on the wall, even by 19^th century standards. The first indication of failing business ventures was in several articles that discussed Tom Woolfolk’s struggles with pretty much everything he tried to do.

It seems to be no secret, both in the 19^th and in the 21^st centuries, that Tom Woolfolk wasn’t fated to be successful at anything. There is no shortage of references to Tom failing at running a grocery store. These references by themselves don’t prove much. Grocery stores at that time sold more than groceries. You could get virtually anything you needed at these stores as commerce was light-years away from what we imagine today. This leads me to my second indicator. I learned what 19^th century grocery stores carried by looking at all the advertisements in the 1869 Macon City Directory. The Woolfolk family had the only grocery store in the city that didn’t have an elaborate advertisement. Much like modern times, it cost money to design and publish an advertisement. The fact that there was no such advertisement, in combination with the references to Tom’s failure to run the store start to make it seem there wasn’t much spare change in the budget for things like advertising.

The Homestead

Leave the grocery store and hop in your horse-drawn carriage to make the hour and a half trek, 10 miles west of Macon, on what was then Culloden Road, and you’ll come to the 860 acre tract of land owned by Captain R.F. Woolfolk. I managed to track down a map from 1897 that gave me a pretty good idea of where the old homestead really was. Even with the help of a map and modern internet images I was presented with several challenges in y quest to find the Woolfolk homestead.

I began by scaling and rescaling the maps to get close to the area. Even with doing that there was the arduous task of matching determining what landmark was y reference point. It all started with the distance from town. It was easy to set the odometer in my car, but deciding where to start from became the challenge. In the end I abandoned trying to start from a point in Macon and started looking for landmarks away from town.

One big issue was the presence of a man-made lake that wasn’t even though of 127 years ago. This little change in the landscape erased several landmarks on a whole hemisphere of the area I was targeting. I was fortunate to find some roads on my old and new maps that were a match. I had to spend an afternoon driving back and forth the stretch of road near the homestead. I stopped at a close-by home and utterly freaked out the homeowner when I showed her satellite pictures of her property. It wasn’t much longer and I was in the vicinity of the very grounds the Woolfolk children played on.

The home was a single story farm house. There was an entryway that went from the front door to the back door. There were 4 rooms situated on either side of this hallway. The house had 3 bedrooms and a living room. Outside the house there was a well, which was the only other major landmark on the property. The house was situated on a terrace which overlooked Woolfolk’s cotton fields. A short distance away was smaller homes that were occupied by share-croppers working for the Woolfolks.

When the murder was discovered the home was in reasonably normal order. The household furnishings were in good order, with the exception of the gore from the night’s slaughter. There didn’t seem to be anything missing from the home. There was no sign of a large incursion of assailants. There was even a basket sitting in the parlor which was laden with picnic items for a gathering the family was planning to attend the day the killings happened.

Whatever caused the family to be slaughtered, there was no apparent sign showing anyone knew what was coming. There were rifles hung on the wall in the room where Mrs. Tempe was killed. They were unfired, and totally untouched. The whole family was tucked snugly in their births, resting peacefully for the gathering that was to take place the next day. There was a picnic basket found in the home that had been untouched. No doubt this parcel was laden with jams, bread, butter, spirits, cakes, peanuts, or maybe some preserved meats.

Rose Hill Cemetery

For years I had worked in Macon, and had driven past a peculiar drive leading up to a cemetery along my way. I would’ve never guessed the rich treasures of a distant age that lay in that cemetery. Truth be told, I was never much into graveyards. I had always considered them to be singular in purpose, and not something I really wanted to spend time in before I absolutely needed to.

But Rose Hill Cemetery is something different, and nothing short of special. As soon as you pass through the iron gates you immediately get the feeling you have passed into another time. The granite and marble statues speak to you from a more simple time. The art work and masonry speak to generations of family who have loved and lost. War, disease, old age, infant mortality, and murder all account for the occupants of this romantic patch of land along the banks of the Ocmulgee River. It was here where nearly 4,000 people came to the see the Woolfolk family laid to rest.

When I started this project I simply wanted to find the graves and snap a few pictures for the video. By the time I had made it ten feet past the gates I realized I was in for so much more than a simple photo shoot. I was first faced with the daunting dilemma of not knowing where the graves were in the cemetery. The size of the place made it virtually impossible to find them with the light I had left, so I took to a slow drive around the place.

Rose Hill Cemetery itself is a small city unto itself. There are over 1,700 Confederate soldiers buried there, in addition to the local citizenry. Also, we can’t forget the graves of two of the members of the Allman Brothers Band. But those who have tombstones in this picturesque scene are not the only notable mentions. As you drive around the place you will random spots in the grass which are the long forgotten graves, which now lay silent and unmarked.

While I was in the cemetery I was able to observe scores of brick works that outlined family plots. It was here and then I decided to examine the brick I found in the woods at the site of the Woolfolk home. At a random family plot I stopped and retrieved my mundane prize from the toolbox in the back of my car. I held it against a series of bricks that outlined a family plot from about 1850 to 1870.

I compared shape, size, color tone, and general manufacture. I was able to walk away from this being reasonably certain I had at least found a brick from the time period. So, at this point I can not confirm nor deny I had in fact found a brick from the Woolfolk property. But, I can reasonably say I discovered a brick from the mid-1800’s randomly laying in the woods. Happy in this circumstantial discovery, I packed my brick away and continued my search.

Then, after some more driving, I came along a path half way up the hill from the banks of the river. There, more worried about running out of gas, I stumbled upon the final resting place of Capt. R. F. Woolfolk and family. The family lays at rest on a slope overlooking the river, under the shade of a tall tree. The tops of the graves are covered by bricks from a local manufacturer and the tombstones have been replaced in the years since the family’s interment.

I have to admit, with no small degree of sentimentality, that I could almost imagine the events of 127 years prior to y visit to the grave site. You can almost imaging the night the family had been killed. It’s not hard to envision Capt. Woolfolk dying first, as he was the battle trained veteran. His wife and little daughter being killed immediately after, as his wife would’ve been rising from her slumber after the first ax stroke fell. Next, the two junior sons would be sent to the next world as they rushed in to find their parents brutally slain.

The women, younger and smaller, would’ve been killed next. The killer would’ve went to their room and delivered the fatal blows. This person never touched the loaded guns hanging on the wall above the elderly woman’s bed. The basket of food, bound for a Sunday afternoon picnic, was given no attention. All the slain family members had been killed, primarily, by deliberate blows to the face and head. No guns, no knives, no clubs, just a lone hatchet was found in the home to tell the tale. Thomas, visibly shaken, was the lone survivor of the household.

There are no shortage of theories as to whom and why these people were killed. Tom Woolfolk was being held at the house while the 1887 equivalent of first responders did their initial investigation. The Sherriff, noting Tom’s shaken state, asked if he wanted a drink. Tom accepted and was presented with a cup of water from the well. The Sherriff’s suspicion was piqued when Tom refused to drink. He ordered the well searched and the Tom’s bloody clothes were retrieved from the depths.

The next 3 years became the frenzy anyone would have expected, even by modern standards. Tom Woolfolk was subjected to several trials and moved between several jails. There was a general fear he would be lynched or not receive a fair trial, necessitating a constant change of housing and venue. At the end of 3 years he found himself at the Courthouse in Perry, Georgia. It was here he spent his final days. While the Courthouse itself is long gone, many of the local landmarks are still there, though they don’t well tell the tale of Tom’s final trek.

The Gallows

If you travel Courtney Hodges Boulevard into the area on the west side of Perry, Georgia you will come to a bridge over Big Indian Creek. If you look to your right you will see a well-manicured park, complete with creek-side benches and walking trails. Turn right on one of the one-million Martin Luther King Jr. Drives scattered across the south, and you’ll see the parking area immediately on the left. Take one of the concrete walking trails and stroll around the property, which comprises about 10 acres.

As you stroll along the paths you’ll experience the serene trickle of Big Indian Creek. In the lower part of the property is a marshy area that is very picturesque in its own way. The pavilions allow for a spot to escape the sometimes oppressive Georgia sun. From these vantage points you can see the timeless memorials, silently keeping watch from the hilltop cemetery that overlooks the property. Even with the busy Courtney Hodges Boulevard close at hand, this park is a pleasant spot for an afternoon picnic, or any in a number of relaxing excursions. Interestingly, I have found a number of folk who live in the area don’t know about the ominous history that surrounds them.

As I continued to read and explore all the details surrounding the Woolfolk murders I found more and more reference to the hanging of Tom Woolfolk. The event turned out to be as shocking as anything I had ever read when studying a case. I wanted to see the spot for myself. Being a stranger to the area made it difficult to simply drive out and find the location. Such a grim blemish on the reputation of anyone or anything often makes folks not want to talk about it, even after a century.

First, it goes without saying hanging was a gruesome business. There are three generally accepted forms of hanging. The first is the short drop, which involves having the condemned on a cart, horse, ladder, or other raised object. Said object is removed and the unfortunate person at the end of the rope swings until they expire. The standard drop involves a trap door or other mechanism which causes the condemned to fall 4 to 10 feet. If they’re lucky the fall will break the neck, causing instant death. If they’re not so lucky they will strangle at the end of the rope. The third is the long drop, which involves calculating the person’s height and weight to determine the amount of slack needed to insure the fall would break the neck, and hopefully be a more humane execution.

It sounded pretty simple, but there was still more to the process. Essentially, the standard drop was just that. Everyone dropped the same distance regardless of height and weight. This was successful on occasion, but yielded an equal number of horrific spectacles. The standard drop would deliver (depending on the weight of the accused and length of the rope) about 1,200lbf to the 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, or 5^th cervical vertebra. This amount of force was the culprit in several extreme hangings, such as the now famous Black Jack Ketchum, in 1901. This New Mexico Territory case saw our departed prisoner completely decapitated when the executioner hadn’t factored in Ketchum’s weight gain while awaiting execution.

The capital punishment world kept working on this for a number of years. Sometime after 1910 still different methods of calculating height, weight, and rope lengths were experimented with. Unfortunately, there was no way to perfect the science. Executioners had even figured out that placing the knot of the noose in front of the unlucky contestant’s face would snap the head back quickly when the rope went taught, helping to insure the desired swift expiration via broken neck. A botched hanging in 1930 led the state of Arizona to start a movement when the switched to the gas chamber for their executions. 

Thomas Woolfolk was hung, via the standard drop method, on October29, 1890.  It was a well-documented event, covered in newspapers from around the country. The noose was placed directly on the back of his neck. This was a horrific scene in the history of this small park. The park itself was perfectly described in many of the written works covering the execution. This made it quite easy to find and walk around in.

I’ll spare the citations from the dozens of sources which mention the demise of Thomas Woolfolk. There was little discrepancy between all the descriptions I found. The park was described as a patch of ground, overlooked by a cemetery. The parcel of land was situated close to Big Indian Creek on the west side of the town of Perry, Georgia. From the creek, the ground sloped up in all directions. This feature created something of a bowl, or natural amphitheater. It was reported military personnel walked Tom Woolfolk from the courthouse where he was housed, about a half mile away.

By this basic description I was able to begin my physical hunt for the exact location. I began with maps of the area. I identified the Big Indian creek as my major landmark. My other point of focus was the Courthouse, which use to stand on Washington Street in Perry. I focused on the area of Big Indian Creek which was within a half mile. The location of a cemetery overlooking the park was my third marker and made the park the undisputable location. Using Google Maps I was able to get a look at the park from the comfort of my fuzzy, pink bunny slippers.

The street-side view I got from the internet was a screaming match for all the historical descriptions. Everything was a perfect match. The landscape sloped perfectly towards Big Indian Creek forming a large bowl in the Earth, perfect for such a spectacle. When considering it there seems to be no coincidence someone in history chose this exact location to carry out public executions. Tom Woolfolk’s, being one of the last public executions in the state of Georgia, was a perfect example of just such a spectacle. 

Reading history, you discover hanging is not the quiet, reserved execution we see with the modern lethal injection. There are numerous accounts through history and from around the world which document thousands of spectators at executions. It would seem the broomstick snapping sound made when the rope draws tight entices the masses, both young and old. The first known hangings took place about 4,500 years ago, and in that time we have even seen authorities charging admission to executions in the town square.

People of all walks of life come out of the woodwork for these events. In Tom Woolfolk’s case, 8,000 or more people came out of the Georgia woodworks. If you take a trip to this tranquil park, you can begin to see and imagine all those people packed on the lawn. The October afternoon in old Georgia would have been pleasant enough. The smell of grilling possums would permeate the air, the vendors working feverishly to get a fresh possum sandwich ready for the next paying customer. No doubt, people would’ve gathered around these stands to soak up some heat from the boiling caldrons used to scald the possum, right before it would be scraped and grilled.

These wonderful sounding sandwiches were a common factor which kept popping up as I did my research about this most incredible event. Essentially, the possum was dispatched and scalded. The recipe I have says if you can dunk the possum in the water 3 times, but you’re not sure your hand can handle a 4^th then you have the temperature just right. After scalding, the possum is scraped so the skin stays on and keep the meat perfectly moist. After a simple salt and pepper seasoning the little critter goes on the grill. Once the grilling is done the meat is broken down and thrown on some bread so it can be enjoyed on the go. Folks wouldn’t want to miss a good execution because they couldn’t keep ahold of their grilled possum.

Children would have broken away from the group and had games and play areas where they could pass the time. The pungent odor of horse manure would battle the aroma of the grill. Folk would’ve left early, to come from miles away. They would be hungry, eager to socialize, and wanting to be entertained. There was even a murmur of disappointment when Tom professed his innocence one last time from the gallows. After the execution, there would’ve been a lingering of spectators, fully making a day of their sojourn to see a man meet his fate.

The park in Perry, Georgia is still there for all to see and enjoy. If you do a Google search you won’t find much history about the property. Tom Woolfolk’s execution in 1890 was among the last in an era. The blood curdling fear of the black hood over the faces of the condemned, the sickening crack of the rope going tight, the agonizing wait for the hung person to strangle to death have all been covered over by green lawn and leisurely walking trails. Music festivals, birdwatching, lovers strolling, children playing, and people just relaxing all take place right where those sentenced to death made their drop.

You can look on the parks Facebook page and see happy newlyweds obliviously posing for the camera in almost the exact spot the gallows stood. The gallows, one of the first symbols of high justice, have long since been dismantled. The rope used to hang Tom Woolfolk was cut into 4 pieces and given to family members of Mattie Woolfolk, one piece which remained in the possession of the family for a long time. Even the possum sandwich recipe is little more than a memory of what happened all those years ago.

Tom Woolfolk’s Grave

All the research you’ll find about the final resting place of Thomas Woolfolk will show you a broken tombstone in what seems to be an old cemetery. Most of the images I was able to find online were black and white, so I really wasn’t prepared for the degree of disrepair the tombstone was in. Likewise, I was nowhere near prepared for the size of the cemetery.

So, eagerly anticipating getting a view of the grave site, I used my trusty GPS to locate the Orange Hill Cemetery. When I pulled through the rusted metal gate I was immediately struck by the size of the graveyard. I’ve seen bigger, but still knew it would be yet another chore to locate the one tombstone in middle Georgia I had set out to find. The scene from the end of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly was playing in my mind as I found a place to park near the center of the graveyard.

I surveyed the area and broke it down into manageable chunks so I could cover as much ground as possible with what little daylight I had left. As I walked through the graveyard I was struck by a sense of reverence for the people laid to rest in this place. The Spanish moss danced in the trees while birds buzzed overhead, children played in the yards of nearby homes, confederate flags waved in the gentle breeze, and decades of history called out from the silent headstones in every row. These names on these stones represented over 120 years of war, industrialization, social change, poverty, and economic reform. I so wished I could hear their stories.

Regardless, I continue my search. Camera phone at the ready, I walked my grid, looking like one of the most morbid and foolish tourists in Georgia history. I had pictures of the headstone, but not specific location. After about a half hour of walking and taking pictures of old headstones I spotted a familiar shape from the corner of my eye. I broke away from my pattern and worked my way towards the distinctly shaped headstone. By the time I was within 10 feet I could read the name “Woolfolk” carved in the weathered stone.

So, with no great expenditure of labor, I had located the final resting place of Thomas Woolfolk. This was the graved filled immediately after his execution in October 1890. It was a hanging gone wrong. Woolfolk swung at the end of the rope for 15 minutes before his heart stopped beating. There are no lengthy articles or observations about his funeral. Nevertheless, it was touching to see the flowers on his grave, apparently left by distant kin who haven’t forgotten.

Epilogue

The Woolfolk home remained uninhabited until it eventually burned, sometime in the 20^th century. Since that time, there have been a number of explorations of the area. Some have found bricks and hinges, which are the only markers of the homestead. The well is little more than a leaf filled hole in the ground and the grave of Tom Woolfolk’s mother lies undisturbed on the quiet terrace.

Just a short time after Tom Woolfolk was hung a man by the name of Simon Cooper was lynched in South Carolina. Reports from the scene state Cooper had a journal on him in which he claimed to have been the murderer of the Woolfolk family. One entry stated “Tom Woolfolk was mighty slick but I fixed him. I would have killed him with the rest of the damn family, but he was not at home.” To this day nobody knows if there is any credibility to this mysterious journal entry.

The rope used to hang Tom Woolfolk was cut into 4 sections. They were given to members of his step-mother’s family. In Carolyn DeLoach’s “Shadow Chasers” there is mention that at least one piece of the rope was still in the possession of a family member. The ax used in the murders and exhibited in the trials seems to have disappeared from history. Try as I did, I was not able to track it down. One can only imagine it was stored in a Courthouse somewhere until it was eventually snuck out and put to a better purpose years after the fact. The Courthouse where Tom spent his final days has been torn down and moved.

The thousands of spectators who came from all corners of the south went back to their farms and homes. The Earth settled over the graves and eventually the newspaper articles became the stuff of legend in the local archives. The graves, the park, the stories, and the cemeteries are all there for you to explore. Let those quests for knowledge stand as a tribute to the slain family and their lone, condemned kin.