fiWfiED for ^t/RDER, W Vtfu She guilty?
by Maxine McCall*
Mineteen-year-old Charlie Silver
had gone missing that winter
from his family's small cabin
near the Toe River in western
North Carolina. “He lit out in the
snow last night and never came home/' his
young wife said.
When Charlie disappeared on December 22,
1831, heavy snow was falling. Did he slip
through the ice on the frozen river? Was he
wounded or killed by a bear or a mountain lion?
Friends and neighbors
searched the area for miles
around.
After several days, a wily
trapper named Jake Collis
looked for clues to Charlie's
whereabouts at the Silver
home. Collis dropped ashes
from the fireplace into a bowl
of water and found them “too
greasy." When he and other
men tore up the floor in front
of the hearth, they saw a blotch
of blood "as big as a hog's
liver." Outside, they found bits
of bone and a heel iron from
one of Charlie's shoes buried in
a hollow stump away from the
house. Officials charged
Charlie's pretty wife, Francis
“Frankie" Silver, with murder
and carried her off to the
Morganton jail.
Her trial in March of 1832 drew large crowds
and stirred much talk. Streets were abuzz with
courtroom tales of how petite Frankie (a teenage
wife and mother) had killed her husband with
an axe and then, to hide the crime, chopped up
his body and burned the parts in the fireplace of
their home in Mitchell County (Burke County,
back then). Frankie's mother and brother had
been arrested along with her but let go for lack
of evidence that they were involved in Charlie's
death. Still, folks wondered if Frankie had help
from her family in disposing of the body.
But just as chilling as the crime is the fact that
Frankie Silver may have been wronged by the
courts! The case brought against her seemed
impossible to prove, there being little evidence
(especially in the days before DNA testing or
other modern methods of investigation) and no
eyewitness to the crime except possibly the
Silverses' year-old daughter. Only Frankie could
say what actually happened that night. But in
1832 the law (unchanged until 1881) did not
allow defendants to testify in court. Frankie pled
"not guilty," and her lawyer did not press for a
confession. "They won't hang a woman," he said.
In a lonely mountain cabin in 1831, Frankie
Silver killed her husband, Charlie, with an axe
and tried to hide the crime by burning his body
in the fireplace. Was il murder or self-defense?
Stories of people who flocked to Morganton to
witness Frankie Silver's hanging have been
handed down from generation to generation to
this day Images courtesy of illustrator ]ackie
Deaton, of Valdese, from They Won't Hang a
Woman (Heritage Edition) by Maxine McCall.
After her trial and conviction, more than two
hundred citizens begged two governors to par¬
don Frankie. Among them were the clerk of
court, members of the jury that convicted her,
and even her jailor. Some believed that Judge
John R. Donnell should not have allowed the
jury — who at first stood 9 to 3 in favor of acquit¬
tal — to reexamine witnesses who had discussed
the case together after testifying. Some changed
their testimonies, but the judge did not allow the
lawyers to cross-examine them. Ruling on an
appeal, the N.C. Supreme Court upheld the
guilty verdict. And neither Governor Montfort
Stokes nor his successor, Governor David Lowry
Swain, granted Frankie Silver a pardon.
'Maxine McCall — educator, conference speaker, and award-winning author — has done extensive research on the facts TH/H, Fall 2008
and folklore surrounding the case of Frankie Silver. Her resource book, They Won't Hang a Woman (Heritage
Edition), is used in the Burke County Public Schools. Dramatizations of her original story about Frankie Silver have
aired on public television and the History Channel. To learn more, access www.niccallsbooks.com.
