Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Letter for sale describes Roanoke Riot of 1893
A real estate agent says he found the letter and other seemingly vintage papers at an estate sale.
Courtesy of Todd Lavender
A letter believed to have been written in 1893 describes a notorious riot and lynching in Roanoke. It is up for sale on eBay.com
The Roanoke Riot of 1893 at a glance
Events and key figures on Sept. 20, 1893- The victim: Sallie Anna Bishop of Botetourt County was a vendor on the Roanoke City Market.
- The crime: Bishop said she was beaten and robbed by a black man who had bought some grapes from her and asked for delivery to a Salem Avenue address that turned out to be a vacant building.
- The accused: Thomas Smith, from Vinton was seized by a railroad detective on the flimsiest of evidence and held in the city jail at what is today Second Street and Church Avenue Southwest.
- The law’s upholder: Henry Trout, the mayor and former Confederate officer who survived Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. He called out the militia to protect the prisoner.
- The mob: Estimated by witnesses at 5,000 strong.
- Shots fired: An estimated 150 bullets killed eight and wounded 34, including Trout.
- The climax: The mob nevertheless later captured Smith, hanged him from a hickory tree at the corner of Franklin Road and Mountain Avenue Southwest, shot his body, then burned his corpse near the Roanoke River.
- Follow-up justice: There were 14 people charged in the lynching but only three were convicted. They were sentenced to a day in jail. The incident did result in a statewide crackdown on lynching that reduced the number of such extrajudicial killings in subsequent years.
Sources: The Roanoke Times archives; “Magic City of the New South, Roanoke, Va. 1882-1912,” by Rand Dotson
Not all artifacts are created equal. That's why a letter found in a dusty box in North Carolina that describes the notorious Roanoke Riot of 1893 is fetching only modest attention from eBay auction bidders and little interest from historians.
Todd Lavender, a real estate agent in Rutherford County, N.C., offered the letter for sale Friday after finding it along with other apparently vintage documents that he bought from an estate sale for $100.
"It caught my eye," said Lavender, because the five-page letter, evidently written by a Virginia resident to someone with the first name "Dovie" in Ellensboro, N.C., gives a hearsay description of the riot, in which eight people were killed and another two dozen wounded before the lynching of a black man accused of the robbery and assault of a white woman at the Roanoke City Market.
The incidents are detailed in such books as Rand Dotson's "Magic City of the New South, Roanoke, Va. 1882-1912." Dotson, a history professor at Louisiana State University, wrote that Roanoke's city militia fired on a mob that "took control of the city, lynched an African-American in police custody and threatened to hang the mayor."
While the riot remains a high-profile chapter in Roanoke's history, the letter being auctioned by Lavender isn't commanding a premium price partly because it isn't signed with the last name of the writer and lacks proof of authenticity.
"I'm always a little bit skeptical of how you can be sure something like this wasn't written last week," said George Kegley, editor of the Journal of the Historical Society of Western Virginia. Further, the letter's lack of firsthand descriptions of the riot and lynching "dilutes it," Kegley said.
The letter, signed with the name "Harlen," is largely focused on personal news from the writer, who pauses to say that, "Eastern Virginia is in excitement over the events in Roanoke yesterday." He added, "Wasn't it awful: they burned the negro and threw the ashes in the mayor's yard because he tried to keep the mob off with the militia."
It isn't clear that the writer was even in Roanoke, or had been during the violence. The letter is on stationery of the now defunct Seaboard Air Line railroad. It was based in Portsmouth, but had operations in Roanoke.
Laura Wickstead, who supervises the Roanoke City Public Library's Virginia Room, said the letter's significance is eroded without documentation. "There are certain questions -- just a lack of information about it."
Lavender acknowledges the letter's flaws. He said its value is mainly to collectors with a special interest in Roanoke history. He's also throwing in a copy of a 33-page scholarly article by Ann Field Alexander, "Like an Evil Wind," about the incident. It's in a 1992 issue of the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography.
As of 7 p.m. Monday he had 10 bids, the highest being $48.77. The auction closes tonight.
