Jim Schlosser: Where was that hanging tree?
Monday, October 31st, 2005
By Chris Fitzsimon
GREENSBORO — Guilford County residents frequently ask, "Where was the hanging tree?"
Halloween may be a good time to answer.
Until the 1890s, public hangings here and in other counties drew large crowds.
But where?
A news account of one public hanging in Guilford is vague, saying only that it was somewhere east of downtown.
Be thankful, then, for an account by Lawrence W. Routh -in the Guilford County Genealogical Society publication in 1985. It reveals the location and much about Guilford’s last public execution, which was in 1892 or 1893.
A snippet from the article appeared in the 1990 News & Record Centennial Book, but the full picture Routh painted wasn’t reported.
His account provides a glimpse into early justice in the county and how the public reacted to hangings.
Routh, who died in 1999 at age 97, told of the double executions of an 18-year-old white man, Charles Reynolds, and a black man, Merrimon Headen, age not given.
A jury had found them guilty of the murder of a well-to-do farmer, Salathiel Swaim, in southern Guilford County in August 1892. The motive was money and perhaps revenge. Swaim had been telling Reynolds that if he didn’t straighten up, he’d be hanged.
Routh based his story on a cold evening in 1920 around a pot-bellied stove in John Barker’s Store in Summerfield. (more…)
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