Tomlinson Hill

by Chris Tomlinson

  Within a remarkably short space of time the public square was thronged with men. The prisoners had been taken from the jail to the third story of the courthouse. About 10:30 they were taken to the depot by Sheriff Emerson and Marshal Coleman and taken to Bremond and upon arriving in Bremond they were put into a box car by officers and brought back through Marlin to Waco.

  The Democrat has it from good authority that no body of men were nearer Marlin than Beulah Church six miles from Marlin, where it is reported about two hundred armed men assembled to hang the negroes previously referred to. However they returned to their respective homes as soon as a courier carried the news that the prisoners were gone.25

  All three men returned to Marlin weeks later to face trial individually. Abe Sanders was released for lack of evidence. O’Neal was sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison for supplying the ammunition. After twenty-four hours of deliberation, the jury sentenced Fendrick to life in prison. Onlookers began shouting for a lynching.26 Attorneys for both men appealed the convictions, without success, and the men went to prison.

  If a black man had propositioned a white woman, there is no doubt a lynch mob would have delivered swift punishment. In the twisted world of Texas justice, society was ready to forgive any husband for defending the honor of his wife, unless that man was black. This double standard would be put to the test in Falls County only a few weeks later.

  Early on the morning of May 12, 1897, seventeen-year-old Lillie Coates awoke to a hand on her shoulder and a man standing over her bed. The Coates family lived about thirteen miles southeast of Tomlinson Hill. Lillie screamed, and her parents tried to enter the room, but the door was locked. The mother ran onto the porch to get to her daughter’s window and saw an African-American man running away. Lillie said she saw a black man climb out her bedroom window, while a second man held it open for him. The two men ran in opposite directions, but both mother and daughter said they looked familiar. Rosebud constable Roe Owens went to the black neighborhood and arrested several men the next day.27

  That afternoon, Owens decided to leave town, and after nightfall a mob formed outside the Rosebud city jail. The deputies and constables on duty tried to move the suspects to Marlin, but they didn’t make it. Kennedy wrote in the Democrat:

  The dead bodies of the three negroes lay stretched in a row on the floor. It was a gruesome, almost sickening spectacle, one that could not be contemplated with indifference. The first corpse one came to was that of Sabe Stuart, alleged to have been the negro who entered the room and laid hands on the young lady. He was below the average size, about 22 years of age, and he had an intelligent expression. On the side of his neck was a small indention made by the rope. His neck was broken and the muscles were very rigid. He was dressed in a grey undershirt, jeans pants and brogan shoes.

  The next of the bodies in the row was that of Berry Williams, a lad of 16 or 17 years old. His neck was also broken and bore the marks of the rope. He is said to have been the negro who held the window while Sabe Stuart entered the room.

  The other negro, Dave Cotton, presented a horrifying appearance. The limb on which he was hanged gave way and his neck was not broken. He slowly strangled to death and his features were distorted as though his agony had been worse than the most awful torture imaginable.

  The bodies lay on the floor all day long and were viewed by hundreds of people. About six o’clock they were taken to Wilderville, their late home, for burial.

  The men were probably innocent, the lynchings based on a coerced confession:

  This alleged confession was secured on Wednesday night, the night before the lynching, from Berry, by coercion. On that night, Berry and his brother Nelson, were taken from the calaboose at Rosebud and conveyed to a pasture two miles southeast of town and each were swung up to a limb for the purpose of forcing a confession.

  Nelson, who is older than Berry, stoutly denied any knowledge of the crime, although he was hanged twice by the neck and severely beaten with an inch rope doubled. As Nelson was separated from Berry, no one, except his persecutors, knows what Berry did say in the way of a confession. He stated after being taken back to town, that the men only swung him up once, but also beat him up with a rope. Just what he really did say after being swung up will always remain a mystery unless somebody “peaches.”

  After it was reported that the confession was made Sabe Stuart and Dave Cotton were re-arrested and again placed in the calaboose.

  It is stated that some of the mob were not much in favor of lynching Cotton, as they were not altogether clear as to his connection with the crime, but they were very few.28

  Kennedy added an editorial in the Democrat that week:

  From the facts that have so far developed there appears to be no excuse for the lynching of the three negroes, Stuart, Cotton and Williams, near Rosebud Friday morning. There is no excuse for mob law under any circumstances. Every criminal, of whatever nature, should be accorded a fair and impartial hearing in the courts of the land, and whenever he is denied this the Constitution is trampled upon and the majesty of the law set at naught.29

  The Democrat’s editorial criticizing the lynching sparked outrage from the editors of the Rosebud News, the paper in the town where the lynching took place, and the Lott Clarion. Kennedy was happy to engage these editors in a debate over the merits of lynch law. On May 25, he addressed the question posed by the Rosebud News:

  The News would like to ask the DEMOCRAT what excuse, if any, would satisfy it for the lynching of the three negroes?—The Rosebud News.

  Brother Warrock, there is no excuse for mob law under any circumstances. Does the laws of Texas sanction it? Does the constitution endorse it? Does the Book of books excuse it? Does not the law say that he is guilty of murder who willfully takes the life of a human being? Does not the constitution guarantee to all citizens the same protection accorded to every other citizen and does not the Bible, that Law upon which all other laws, say “Thou shalt not commit murder?” Now, if taking from the hands of an officer in the dark hours of night a helpless prisoner and swinging him to limb is not murder in the coldest, bloodiest, and most brutal form then the law is a travesty and Holy Writ a mockery.

  Three weeks later, Kennedy replied again when the Lott paper condemned the lynching of a white man in Tyler, Texas:

  The Lott Clarion evidently believes that “consistency is the virtue of fools only.” It thinks the Rosebud lynching was a Christian act but denounces the Tyler affair as “murder, premeditated and with malice aforethought.” The Clarion would make a distinction where there is really no difference. If the shooting to death of the white man Bill Jones at Tyler was “murder, premeditated and with malice aforethought” the hanging of the three negroes, Cotton, Stuart and Williams near Rosebud was triple “murder, premeditated and with malice aforethought” and is the greater crime because three men were murdered instead of one as at Tyler.

  WHITECAPPING

  The Marlin Democrat soon began a campaign to record every incident of vigilante justice, not only lynchings but also whitecapping, where mobs used corporal punishment to keep blacks in line.

  White terrorism against blacks came to a quick yet brief halt when in 1896 Judge Samuel R. Scott, the district judge for McLennan and Falls counties, ordered a grand jury to investigate the whitecapping of four men in Hillside, a farm community near Waco. A masked group of white men attacked five African-American farmworkers in the middle of the night, killing one and severely beating the other four before ordering them to leave the county. Scott called it “the worst stain on the fair name of the county,” adding that “the men who did the whitecapping were ten times worse than the victims of their wrath.” The all-white grand jury became the first in Texas history to indict whites for mob violence against blacks. The jury named ten men, but a yearlong search did not turn up the four black victims to testify, so Scott was forced to drop the charges. But the case sent a clear message that white vigilantes were no longer immune to prosecution.30


  The white community struggled to maintain a balance between violence and benevolence, much as they had during slavery. Whitecappers tried to strike this balance, targeting black leaders and intimidating the rest of the community. In many ways, whitecapping was a more insidious activity, less spontaneous, and more calculated than lynchings, which normally took place during a bloodthirsty frenzy.

  Many would like to believe that those in the mob were uneducated dolts addicted to violence. But in many of the lynchings in Falls County, the mobs were so large that nearly every white adult male must have ridden with the vigilantes or joined the crowd at the kill site. These people were far from ignorant, since more than 80 percent of white Texans could read and write. Marlin had two well-edited newspapers, in which residents read long stories about the massacre of British diplomats in Guinea, an explanation of Islamic jihad, and the role that religion played in the battle for Armenia.

  The white people of Falls County were also very religious. There is little doubt Protestant teachings at the time belittled African-Americans, but they also taught benevolence.

  There is no way to know for sure that my ancestors rode with the lynch mobs of Falls County or joined the whitecappers in their enforcement of white dominance. But R.E.L.’s obituary described him as part “of a great family of Southerners, with typical devotion to the cause.” He and his brothers were respected leaders in their community, and R.E.L. defended lynchings in the oral history he gave to the American Folklore Project in 1936. The degree to which he was guilty of participating in the relentless racial violence in the 1890s will never be clear, but I find it difficult to believe that he and his brothers were not involved. Even if he did nothing, he allowed others to maintain the power and privilege he enjoyed in the community by employing terrorism. And my opinion is not solely that of a twenty-first-century citizen. In August 1897, the editors of the Belton Reporter wrote:

  The newspapers fairly reek with the revolting incidents of lynching after lynching. And still, many of our newspapers and prominent citizens attempt to excuse and mitigate this terrible wave of lawlessness which is sweeping over the land by abusing the courts in our country and inveighing against what they term the delay of the law. It is hoped that all who have the good of the country at heart and are sincerely in favor of the enforcement of laws will realize there can be no compromise with mob law, which is nothing more nor less than red handed murder and anarchy.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  The Brazos has again proved its claim to a treacherous stream. The channels and its currents are constantly shifting. Its caprices are weird, peculiar and tragic.

  —Marlin Democrat

  On June 29, 1899, a massive thunderstorm formed just northwest of Waco and a torrent of rain began falling over the upper Brazos River. The valley was the state’s largest agricultural producer, with cotton and corn accounting for most of the crops. Farmers along the river knew it was prone to spring flooding, depositing the soil that makes the valley so fertile. The soft red silt banks easily erode in a heavy rain and the river constantly changes course, creating oxbow lakes along Texas’s longest river. R. E. L. was born in a house overlooking the river, and he and his brothers understood its fickle ways better than most. But no one in Falls County was ready for this freakish torrent.

  The storm built up over Waco and inched its way down the river toward the Gulf of Mexico, dropping hail on Marlin for five straight days. The National Weather Service reported that an entire summer’s worth of rain fell from June 29 to July 15. Meteorologists called the storm one of the most remarkable weather phenomena in the state’s history.1 The river, normally twenty-five yards wide, broke its banks and stretched twelve miles wide along some reaches. At Tomlinson Hill, the water lapped at the family homestead almost a mile away, fifty feet above the normal waterline. On the low-lying east side of the river, the water spread out over five miles, reaching within a few hundred yards of the courthouse in Marlin.2

  The few crops that survived the hail perished under the floodwaters, leaving many farmers broke, including the white Tomlinsons. African-American tenant farmers lost everything, and farm laborers found themselves without jobs. The floodwaters also drowned thousands of cattle, horses, hogs, and other livestock. Groups from across the state donated money to buy seed for grain and vegetables that could grow in the remaining months of the season, but there was nothing the farmers could do for their cotton and corn.3

  R. E. L., who still owned a share of Tomlinson Hill, joined dozens of Brazos River farmers in asking the governor to give them a break from paying taxes, at least until they recovered their losses.4 The governor provided relief, but the weather did not. On April 27, 1900, another thunderstorm dumped a huge amount of rain directly over western Falls County, sending Deer Creek and Pond Creek beyond their banks, with floodwaters rising even higher than the previous year. Deer Creek, the northern boundary of Tomlinson Hill, Perry Creek, to the south, and the Brazos, to the east, all overflowed their banks in a flashflood that turned Tomlinson Hill into an island. Pond Creek, at its closest point to Tomlinson Hill, was six feet higher than during the record-breaking flood of 1899. The rushing water destroyed the steel highway bridge over Deer Creek that connected the Hill to Marlin and washed away the railroad trestle. The floodwaters poured into Peter Tomlinson’s shack on Deer Creek, sending the black Tomlinsons scrambling for higher ground.5

  The devastation of R. E. L.’s cotton crop for a second straight year was more than he could take. He hadn’t lived on the Hill since he’d gotten married, and his two older brothers did most of the farming. So he decided to get out of farming all together, sold his brothers his land, and concentrated on brokering real estate.6

  Despite the challenging weather, the new century held much promise for Marlin businessmen. Hundreds of visitors came by train every week to partake of the mineral water, pumping money into the economy. Marlin was also a rail center, with connections to Austin, Dallas, Houston, and Waco. The population swelled to ten thousand people, with four hotels and four hospitals offering the healing waters. If R. E. L. and his wife, Bettie, wanted to take in a show or a concert, they could choose the Marlin Opera House, the New Opera House, or the Kings Opera House. R. E. L.’s cousin Zenas Bartlett operated Rush, Gardner and Bartlett Co., a new, three-story hardware store on Live Oak Street, a business that remains a landmark more than a century later. Marlin voters elected Zenas’s son, Churchill Jones Bartlett, to serve in the state legislature from 1906 to 1910. Also in the 1906 election, R. E. L.’s cousin and brother-in-law Frank Stallworth won the city marshal’s race a second time. A young lawyer named Tom Connally also won election as county attorney, beginning a political career that would include eleven years in the U.S. House of Representatives and twenty-four years in the U.S. Senate.7

  J. M. Kennedy, the Marlin Democrat’s progressive publisher, was mayor, and residents began to put an emphasis on public education for white and black children.8 Communities in Falls County operated one hundred schools in 1900, serving 33,342 residents.9 Across the state, black illiteracy fell from 75.4 percent in 1880 to 38.2 percent in 1900.10

  That didn’t mean, though, that all children liked to go to school. On the eve of the first day at the white high school, September 2, 1900, “one or more headstrong boys” set fire to the Victorian structure, burning it to the ground. The city council rented a warehouse downtown as a temporary school building and sold the destroyed property to investors. They built the Marlin Cotton Compress, which brought every cotton trader in the region to the city. Students remained in the warehouse for three years, until the city raised enough money for a new school.11 The Tomlinson Negro School continued to operate into the first half of the twentieth century, and in 1903, Miss Fannie Steen taught reading and writing to sixteen students there.12

  MARLIN ENJOYS PROSPERITY

  I. J. Nathan bought two electricity plants in 1902 and created the city’s first electric utility. He ran transmission lines to any hom
e owner willing to pay for the service. His generators also powered a cooling plant to make ice, which a team of black men delivered door-to-door in wagons and wheelbarrows. One man, Son Jones, worked for the plant for fifty years, becoming a fixture in the community. That same year, Nathan also brought the first automobile to Marlin and published his driving schedule in the Marlin Democrat, warning that his loud, smoke-belching, two-cylinder Oldsmobile was going to pass through town. The notices often read “Be prepared to hold your horses. I’ll be out in my auto from four to five, Sunday afternoon.”13

  Nathan’s favorite drive was to the Falls Club House, three miles from town and on the Brazos across from Tomlinson Hill. Locals called the romantic single-lane lined with huge willow trees “Lover’s Lane” because young people drove their horse-drawn carriages along it on dates. Marlin also had a racetrack for harness racing.14

  Within ten years, though, young lovers could go to the Old Lyric on Live Oak Street to watch silent movies or listen to soloists sing along with hand-colored slide shows projected on the screen. The Peacock Bottling Company began selling Café Kola, Koca Nola, Peach Blow, and Tart Tasty Pomay, drinks the opera houses served ice-cold. Albert Levy operated the Arlington Opera House and Electro-Theater, promising “high class and refreshing pastime and pleasure for the theater-goers of Marlin.”15

  Whites could not have been more secure in their power. A Confederate veteran of the Fifth Cavalry was governor and the state was unabashed in its hatred of the North. When Confederate Generals John B. Gordon and James Longstreet died in January 1904, Confederate flags flew along Marlin’s main thoroughfare in a sign of mourning.16 Planters made their money on cotton, just as they always had, and the crop was still profitable thanks to cheap African-American labor. In Texas, landowners employed 35,000 farm laborers at seventy-five cents a day in 1900 and rented land to 45,000 sharecroppers. About 20,000 African-Americans owned their own land, while 57,000 blacks worked on farms. Among those were 38,000 unskilled laborers.17