Sellersburg Lynching...The shockingly swift end of young ANDREW WILLIAMS Part 2
The 1880 census shows a Williams family living in Silver Creek Township. Father, John is 40 years old and from Kentucky as were his parents. His wife, Eliza is 36 and she is from Indiana as was her father. Her mother was from Tennessee. John works on a farm as does his oldest son, Andrew "Andy" who is 13. There are two other children, Edward age 10 and Catherine age 8. All the children were born in Indiana. Neither John nor Eliza can read or write, but Andy can.
The Williams' neighbors are on one side a young couple. John and Julia Dierich. They are 'newlyweds' only 22 and 19 years old. Beyond their house is John's widower father , also "John" and his 6 brothers and sisters. All farmers.
On the other side of the Williams family is another young couple, the Creamers. David is 32 and his young wife is 23. They have a child, Catherine ...1 year old in 1880. The Dierichs and Creamers are white as are almost entirely the rest of the population of Silver Creek Township and Sellersburg Indiana in 1880. The Williams family is Black. So matters stand June, 1880.
Less than 3 years later, on February 19 Andrew "Andy Williams" would be lynched in the village of Sellersburg, not far from the train depot. According to news accounts, he was 19. But according to what I consider the more reliable federal census...he would have been 15 or 16 years old.
I found the story in an archive of the "Terre Haute Express" where it was printed as a dispatch from Jeffersonville. The title of the article is "JUDGE LYNCH" and the subtitle is "Holds Court in Clark County over a Negro Ravisher". According to the news report Joe Taylor and his young family a wife and a two year old child lived in Sellersburg. On the night of Monday, February 19 Joe had gone to Memphis by train on 'business'. The story given is that Andy Williams showed up at Mrs. Taylor's door about 8 pm and entered the home making the claim Joe had sent him to watch after her. He is said to have sat down by the warm stove for a few minutes and then attacked her by striking her in the head with the butt of a pistol. Next we are told that the two year old son of Joe and Mrs. Taylor (we are never given her proper name) stopped the attack by striking Andy Williams over the head with a fire poker.
I want to stop right here. I want to consider this idea that a two year old is wielding ...effectively wielding a fire poker against a '19 year old man'. Or a 15 year old teenager. Does that sound...right to you? There are a few more details given about the attack...but there is no claim Williams 'ravishing' her. I am going to have to put that down to the assumption made of any black man in an encounter with a white woman...as usually is done when a lynching is the conclusion. According to the story she made it to a window and was able to yell out and draw the attention of her brother Abe Hitch (and others) who came to her rescue. Abe tried to shoot Williams but his pistol misfired. No explanation given of whether Andy Williams made use of his pistol. That's an odd detail to leave out it seems to me.
He is arrested and taken before the local magistrate Esquire James Ware with two local women, one of them "Lizzie Hitch" (who I found lived on long enough to appear in the 1920 census) 'against him'. I suppose Lizzie was either Mrs. Taylor's sister in law or some near relation. Apparently Mrs. Taylor was, herself, too distraught to appear.
Williams was then taken into custody by constable Tom Beck and Abe Hitch and the idea was to take him to Jeffersonville to be held in the county jail. I will end this section with the plain words from the news article:
"...at the crossing they were met by a large armed mob, who demanded the surrender of the prisoner, at pistol point. The mob took him twenty steps from the track near the depot and without ceremony hung him at about 9:30 p.m. .....passengers in trains passing saw the negro dangling this morning. (here is a link to the news story
Thus, according to this account, in the space of about an hour and a half, Andy Williams was accused of attacking Mrs. Taylor to Ravish her and lost his life by lynching. That doesn't seem very long to determine the justice of a situation. It's a bit more sickening when you learn Andy Williams was probably only 16 or less when he was murdered.
I must say, as these events occurred in February, ,when dark comes early I better understand the origins of the Sellersburg saying 'don't let the sun set on you in town'. (if you are black) as my old employer Freda Kahl told me nearly a century later.
In my mind, I imagine the news coming to the parents, John and Eliza...how do they tell their younger children Edward and Catherine what happened to their brother. Where is he? Where was he buried? What do they do now? Those are mysteries still lost in time.
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