Griffin Shooting
Raleigh, North Carolina, July 18
It has never fallen to our lot to record a more tragical occurrence than the following, which took place in Halifax county on the 5th inst. A young man in that county of the name of William Parker, had for two or three years past paid his address to a Miss Polly Griffin, and the marriage of the parties was expected; recently however Miss G., had discarded him. On the 5th they, with some other company, dined at Mrs. Harris’s where Parker behaved towards Miss G. with some rudeness. His conduct and some expressions which fell from him excited her suspicions that he meditated some serious mischief, and she invited two of her female friends to accompany her home. When they had nearly reached her mother’s Parker come out suddenly from an angle of the fence and presenting a gun at Miss G., shot her through the arm and lodged the contents in her side. She fell instantly and the horses, rode by the other young ladies being frightened, they were also thrown. Parker then began very deliberately to reload his gun, the young ladies, bereft by their fears of power either of flight or resistance, entreated him not to kill them. He told them that he had no intention that he was then loading for himself and asked one of them for a corner of her shawl for wadding which he tore off. When he had finished loading, he placed the muzzle to his breast and sprung the trigger with his foot, it missed fire; he then pecked the flint, and on the second attempt the load entered his breast - he tottered to the fence, against which he leaned in much agony, and desired the young Ladies to pray for him; he then walked towards the dying Miss Griffin, and fell beside her. Both expired in a few moments.
Miss Griffin was a young woman of merit, and the only child of a widowed mother who heard the cried and firing, and came to the place just in time to see her daughter expire. Parker was notorious for possessing a violent and ungovernable temper.
The hour of death is a dispassionate and honest hour. When too late, he seems to have been impressed with a just sense of the awful nature of his crime and to have felt all the horrors of presenting himself before the Avenger of blood in a dread eternity.
-- The Star.
Source: The Centinel, Gettysburg, PA August 2, 1809. Contributed by Nancy Piper
THOUGHT TO BE BODY OF IRVIN CRAWLEY
A body was taken from the river at Roanoke Rapids, N.C., recently that is thought to be the remains of Irvin Crawley, colored, one of an auto party in a wreck on a bridge near Clover, over the Staunton river.
It will be recalled that Crawley and Howard Arnold were thrown from an auto into the river when a car they were in had a head-on collision with another car on the bridge. This occurred last October 15th and the body of Arnold was found thirteen days later in an upright position close to the bank at a point near where he had been seen to go down. The body of Crawley had never been found and this body, that of a colored man, found at Roanoke Rapids, is supposed to be that of Crawley, although, it was in such a decomposed condition that it was impossible to positively identify it.
(Source: The Charlotte Gazette, Drakes Branch, VA, Thursday, March 22, 1928 Submitted by: Bea. Adams King)