Murderous Mary:
The Hanging That Made Erwin Famous
by C. Turner, December 03, 2003
for English 3040 Literary Nonfiction,
East TN State U
[ C. Turner is a double major in English and
Finance at ETSU. She is also a lifelong
resident of Erwin, Tennessee. She has been raised with the
legends of the elephant hanging told by local residents--some of whom were actual
eyewitnesses. ]
It is
before dawn when everything is still and dark.
As I look out my window at the approaching sunrise, I see the sky has
lightened. The sun, which has not yet
completely climbed the nearby mountains, has turned the eastern sky a color
similar to raspberry sorbet, while the rest of the cotton-candy-colored sky
holds clouds that are soaked with pink, morning light against a clear light
blue. This is the image of a morning
sunrise in my hometown, Erwin, Tennessee.
The town
bustles to life almost immediately. Cars
move at a pace faster than the law recommends outside my Main
Street address.
About fifty feet from my house is the railroad. It was once the center of this small town’s
economy, but now the railroad is just dismissed as an inconvenience for a society
whose technology has progressed to faster modes of transportation. About a mile and a half down the track from
my address is a place where history was made for this small town. Of course, most of the local residents know
about the event which took place on September
13, 1916, but news of the incident has also traveled as far as the syndicated
morning radio talk show, The Big Show,
which broadcasts worldwide via the World Wide Web.
* * *
According
to William W. Helton, author of Around
Home in Unicoi County (1986), Erwin was part of the eighth district of
Washington County before D.J.N. Ervin donated thirty acres of land to the
creation of Unicoi County
on February 9, 1876. Helton also states that the southern part of Unicoi
County was once called Vanderbilt
because the county officials hoped to attract George Vanderbilt to Unicoi
County. Instead, Vanderbilt chose to locate his
mansion in Asheville, North Carolina;
so in 1879, the name of the town was changed to Ervin in honor of D.J.N.
Ervin. However, Erwin legend says that a
postal worker misspelled the town’s new name and, for a reason that has been
lost over the years, the town of Ervin
became known as Erwin and the error was never corrected.
Today, the
population of Unicoi County
is only 17,200, according to the September 2003
Unicoi County
phone book. An individual can understand
that Unicoi County
is small when in comparison with nearby Washington
County, which boasts 106,700
residents according to that county’s
website.
Any town
has stories beneath its soil and man-made constructions. These stories may be told and forgotten, but
some tales last years and sometimes even continue to be told for decades or
more. Erwin is no different than any
other town in that regard. One of
Erwin’s most famous legends rests in an unmarked grave which is just past the
roundhouse and close to the old powerhouse in the Clinchfield Railroad
yard. A pachyderm, possibly the largest
in the early 1900’s, was executed by hanging and was buried there.
Unfortunately,
there are mixed reports about the hanging of the elephant and the events which
led to her execution. All that is left
of this story and the events which led up to it are in the oral records located
in the fourth floor of the Sherrod Library at East Tennessee State University
and the few books and articles that have been written on the subject. Unluckily, the books and articles are written
based on second-hand information from individuals who did not extensively interview the eye-witnesses
until the 1960’s. By that time, a lot of
information had been clouded with the haze of many years. All the eye witnesses, however, remember the
sight of “Murderous Mary”, a five ton cow elephant, hanging from the make-shift
gallows of a 100-ton railroad derrick in the Erwin railroad yard in 1916.
But what was
the incident which led to the execution of Big Mary on September 13, 1916? On the day she was hung, rumors about the
event which led to the execution of “Murderous Mary” swarmed through the town
like flies. Everyone seemed to have a
slightly different variation of the same story.
Were all the stories false, or do the legends, books, and articles,
which were written on the subject, each have an element of truth?
* * *
The start
of the story begins, not in Erwin, but in St. Paul,
Virginia.
The Sparks Brother’s Circus had traveled in by rail to perform. The Sparks Brother’s Circus was owned by
Charlie Sparks who made posters which claimed that the circus was “moral,
entertaining, and instructive”. The main
attraction of the circus was a thirty-year old elephant called Mary. Mary, who weighed five tons, had performed
for fifteen years and was the leader of twelve other elephants in the
circus. According to Charles Price’s
book, The Day They Hung the Elephant,
Walter “Red” Eldridge saw the signs for the circus with Mary’s picture on them,
and decided he would try to get a job with the circus as an elephant
trainer. Even though Charles Sparks did
not know if Red Eldridge possessed any of
the skills that he needed in order to handle the elephants, Sparks
hired Eldridge on September 10, 1916.
Eldridge
learned how to handle the circus elephants from the other elephant
trainers. By September 12, 1916, when the circus arrived in Kingsport,
Tennessee, Eldridge had learned the basics
of elephant training, but was reported by some of his fellow co-workers as
“hot-tempered” with the elephants.
Although Eldridge acted friendly toward the other trainers, no one could
confirm “Red” Eldridge’s native
town. However, another circus employee
mentioned that Eldridge may have been originally from a town in Indiana.
Many rumors
about the events of September 12, 1916,
have been spread through the years. The
tale that has been most widely circulated through my hometown of Erwin, is that
Eldridge and some fellow elephant handlers were riding the elephants to a pool
of water that was located just past present-day Center
Street in Kingsport,
when Big Mary noticed something that she wanted. Mary spied a piece of watermelon that had
been dropped, so she stopped, and started to extend her long trunk for the
delicious morsel. Red Eldridge tried to
get Big Mary to abandon the watermelon by tapping her lightly on the head with
a stick he carried with him at the time.
It is speculated by Charles Price in his book, The Day They Hung the Elephant, that Eldridge became agitated and
embarrassed when he could not control Big Mary. Regardless of the reason, Red
Eldridge hit Big Mary hard over the head with the stick he was carrying. Mary reacted by locking her trunk around Red
Eldridge’s body, lifting him high into the air, and throwing his squirming body
into a wooden drink stand. It is not
known if Eldridge was alive after Mary threw him, because his fellow co-workers
could not dismount their elephants and run to his aid before Mary walked over
to Eldridge’s body and squashed his head with her massive foot.
There are
other variations to this story, like in an article which was printed in 1961 by
The Erwin Record, which stated that, “the elephant drove her tusks through
and through him [Eldridge]”. Or an
addition to the Erwin legend, later told by its residents, that Mary was
irritated because of an abscessed tooth. Most people who have been interviewed
by interested parties have speculated that either Eldridge was handling Mary
roughly or that the elephant had become agitated due to an abscessed tooth and
she behaved in a way which was uncharacteristic of her. No matter what led to the events that
unfolded, Mary killed “Red” Eldridge after a daylight performance on September 12, 1916.
The public
demanded Mary‘s execution for what they saw as a murderous rampage. After Eldridge’s death, the elephant was
referred to as “Murderous Mary”.
Possibly fearing the loss of attendance to his circus, the owner agreed
to dispose of Mary, who had only lived about one half of her life’s expectancy
of sixty years. However, because of the
size of the massive elephant, Charlie Sparks claimed she could not be executed
by a gun shot to the head or body. In
fact, Charles Price states in his book, The
Day They Hung the Elephant, that many men who were present at Eldridge’s
death drew pistols and began shooting the elephant. None of the bullets could pierce the
elephants thick hide, however, and she was soon led away by a circus employee after
the gun fire ceased. Since the owner of
the circus stated that there wasn’t a gun that could kill Mary, an execution by
hanging was suggested by an unknown source.
The
decision to execute “Murderous Mary” did not occur in Erwin. Erwin was a place
of convenience, because the county’s railroad yard had the only derrick large
enough to suspend the elephant until she died.
It seems as though the small town of Erwin,
Tennessee, has gotten
long-lasting fame for a resolution which was made beyond its county lines.
The
following day the Spark’s Brother’s circus traveled to Erwin to perform the
scheduled show and Mary’s execution.
According to Charles Price’s book, admission to Mary’s execution was
free to the individuals who paid to see the daylight performance of the circus
prior to her hanging.
Even after
Mary had killed Eldridge and had been sentenced to death, some Erwin residents
claimed that she was still allowed to participate in the last show. However, William W. Helton’s book claims that
an eye witness who worked for the local railroad, Wade Ambrose, saw Mary staked
down away from the performance. She had
reached out for him, possibly looking for peanuts or gum, and was within three
feet of him when a circus employee chastised Ambrose for his poor judgment and
sent him away from the area.
According
to William W. Helton, author of Around
Home in Unicoi County, around four o’clock
on September 13, 1916, Mary
and twelve other elephants were led to the Clinchfield Railroad yard. Mary was the leader of the herd and would not
go anywhere without the other elephants following her. After the elephants arrived at the spot where
the execution would soon take place, they were led away as one of Mary’s front
feet was chained to the railroad tracks.
The other elephants became suspicious when they realized Mary was not
with them and they began to trumpet warning signals. After a few moments, however, the warnings
ceased. It is not known if the elephants
were bribed with food or if they stopped trumpeting on their own.
The man who
usually operated the derrick was not working that day, so a fireman, Sam
Harvey, known to Erwin residents as “One-Eyed Harvey”, was assigned to the
hanging. Sam Bondurant, the wreck
master, began the execution as soon as the other elephants had disappeared from
view. Harvey
was instructed to lower the chain, and as soon as the chain was placed around
Mary’s neck, Bondurant gave the order to lift her off the ground.
As Harvey
began to lift Mary from the tracks, there was a loud ripping noise. They had forgotten to unhook her front foot
from the tracks! The ripping sound that
some witnesses heard was probably the ligaments which tore in her foot. Unknown to the operators and the onlookers, a
link, which made up the chain around the neck of the elephant, had pulled from
its welding. As Harvey
once again started to lift Mary from the tracks, she began to fight and the
swaying motion from the new, rigorous movement caused the link to “jump” from
the next link which connected it to the rest of the chain. Mary fell to the tracks and remained dazed
until the chain was secured around her neck once more by a brave circus
roustabout. People scattered at the
sight of the unrestricted murderous elephant.
As all the people on the ground ran away, Wade Ambrose noticed from his
secure perch on top of a railway car that Mary “jumped to her feet” just as Sam
Harvey pulled her up off the tracks for a final time. It took about ten minutes before
Murderous Mary was finally dead.
Witnesses reported that her body went limp and did not move after she
was brought down onto the railroad tracks.
Amazingly,
a steam shovel was not used to dig a final resting place for the giant
pachyderm. Erwin residents reported that
they watched as the circus employees dug a hole with shovels to accommodate
Mary’s large size. The circus workers
toiled the rest of the day digging Mary’s grave.
There are
rumors that Mary was buried under the place where the courthouse now sits in
Erwin. However, she would have had to
have been moved almost a mile for this to be true. Witnesses to the execution and burial state
that Mary was buried near the roundhouse in the Clinchfield Railroad yard and
there isn’t any evidence to prove otherwise.
Sometime
during the night, Mary’s large ivory tusks were cut off. Area residents believed that the elephant’s
owner had ordered them removed secretly in order to compensate for some of the
loss he had taken because of Mary’s early death. He had told reporters that he had paid
$10,000 for Mary (the equivalent of $100,000 in 1986, according to William W.
Helton).
Why was Big
Mary hung? Mary was probably hung to
keep Charlie Sparks’ circus from losing admission. Then why didn’t Sparks
sell her to another circus? William W.
Helton speculates in his book that, because the news of the murder Mary had
committed spread so rapidly, Sparks
had no other choice than to execute Mary or risk losing admission to his
circus.
No one realized on that September day that
they were witnessing an event that would make the small town of Erwin
famous. Another event of that scale has
not occurred since in my small hometown.
Even a talk show, “The John Boy and Billy Show”, also known as “The Big
Show”, aired out of Charlotte, North Carolina, has talked about Erwin,
Tennessee, because of the elephant hanging.
This show has a broadcast that reaches overseas listeners via the World
Wide Web. In addition to the morning
radio talk show, newspapers from states, such as Illinois,
have printed articles about the hanging of “Murderous Mary”, which occurred in Erwin,
Tennessee.
* * *
And now the
sun settles behind mountains that have already been made dark by the absence of
light. The small town of Erwin
rests, and so does Mary in her unmarked grave with a story that made Erwin
famous.
Bibliography
Chandler, Betty
B. “Hanging of the Elephant Keeping Erwin on the Map”. The Erwin Record. (June 1976).
Helton, William W. Around Home in Unicoi
County. Johnson
City, Tn: The Overmountain
Press, 1986.
Price, Charles Edwin. The Day They Hung the Elephant.
Johnson City, Tn:
The Overmountain Press, 1992.