Fourteen months after it was stolen and 103 years and 14 months after its subject was murdered, a marker remembering the lynching will be replaced Friday.
Helen Timmons Henderson (1877–1925) - Encyclopedia Virginia encyclopediavirginia.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from encyclopediavirginia.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
E. Lee Trinkle (1876–1939) – Encyclopedia Virginia encyclopediavirginia.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from encyclopediavirginia.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Highway Bond Referendum, 1923 – Encyclopedia Virginia encyclopediavirginia.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from encyclopediavirginia.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Historical Highway Marker Program – Encyclopedia Virginia encyclopediavirginia.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from encyclopediavirginia.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
SUMMARY Floyd Allen was the central figure in one of the most sensational and bizarre incidents in Virginia criminal and legal history, the so-called Hillsville Massacre. In the great Carroll County shootout in Hillsville on March 14, 1912, a judge, a sheriff, a commonwealth’s attorney, a juror, and a spectator were all killed by shots fired by Allen and others after Allen was convicted of assault. Allen and several members of his family immediately fled the courtroom but were later captured and convicted of murder. Allen and his youngest son, Claude Swanson Allen, were both executed for their crimes. One of seven sons of American Civil War veteran, landowner, and local official Jeremiah Allen, Floyd Allen was a farmer, storekeeper, and occasional officeholder in Carroll County in southwestern Virginia. As head of a clannish mountain family that had a reputation for feuding, law breaking, moonshining, violence, and even murder, Allen had been charged with assaulting sheriff’s deputies and freeing his nephews, who had been arrested for fighting. According to Roanoke lawyer Robert C. Jackson, Allen was “overbearing, high-tempered, [and] brutal, with no respect for the law and little regard for human life.” But the Allens blamed their troubles on recently elected Republican county officials with whom they had had several run-ins and who, they claimed, were out to get them because they supported the Democratic Party.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of one of the most shameful political events in Virginia history, one that has repercussions to this day. In 1921, Virginia Republicans purged Black voters from their ranks. Virginia Republicans werenât alone. Republicans across the South were doing the same thing, in a failed bid to make themselves more acceptable to white voters. Much context is in order: Before the Civil War, Democrats were the dominant party in the South. The Republican candidates for president werenât even on Southern ballots in 1856 and 1860. After the Civil War, newly enfranchised Black voters were naturally loyal to âthe party of Lincoln.â The Handbook of Texas says that in that state Black voters accounted for 90% of the Republican vote in the 1880s.