Cruel and Horrible deaths

Wilson Family Cemetery

Matthew Harvey Wilson son of M & E Wilson born Liberty VA March 2, 1816
While nursing his sick uncle J.S Wilson. They were cruelly torched and murdered. 

John S Wilson 

In Memory of John S Wilson born near Fincastle VA, December 3, 1789

Sabbath night April 30, 1865, while sick and nursed by his nephew M.H. Wilson

They were cruelly tortured and murdered by robbers.

From W. C. Handy’s 1941 autobiography, Father of the Blues, chapter one, pp. 3-4.

Contrast these characters with that of my maternal grandfather, Christopher Brewer. When his master, John Wilson, had given my Grandfather Brewer his freedom, he preferred to stay near Mr. Wilson as his trusted servant. At one time, near the close of the Civil War, guerilla warfare was common in this locality. Three robbers were eventually hanged five miles out of Florence. These thieves had undertaken to rob John Wilson. They stripped him and tortured him to death by burning paper and searing his body to make him tell where his money was hidden. He refused. My Grandpa Brewer likewise knew. They shot him to make him tell. He also refused. But when his wounds had sufficiently healed he went to Nashville and brought his young master, Coonie Foster, back home and disclosed to him the hiding place of the money.

Note: This incident occurred in Nov. of 1865. According to Wade Pruitt’s Bugger Saga, Tom and Dennis Clark, Elias Thrasher, John Campbell, Charles Oliver, and Albertie Gallion. were the alleged perpetrators of this crime.

From W. C. Handy’s 1941 autobiography, Father of the Blues, chapter twenty-two, p. 291: