The Donaldsonville Chief

Mysteriously Murdered.

Finding the Bones of Old Man Tom, Who Disappeared Two Years Ago—A Tenth Ward Tragedy.

Tenth Ward, Ascension, Jan. 9, 1880.

Mr. Editor:

On the 22nd day of December last, as one of our most industrious planters was quietly riding through the woods looking after his stock, he came upon a bone. It was evidently a skull-bone, but of a different form from those usually seen in such localities—being neither the skull of a horse, cow, sheep or hog. He got down to examine it—being a keen old hunter—but on the grinning teeth revealing themselves he dropped it quickly, for at the instant there flashed across his memory the mysterious disappearance of poor "Old Tom" and the suspicious circumstances connected therewith.

This "Old Tom" was a colored man who bore a general character of partial moral obliquity regarding the distinctions pertaining to the law of "meum et tuum" in such slight matters as hog and chicken property; in fact his advent in this parish was anteceded by his being run off from the neighboring one of East Baton Rouge, some of the sterner element of said parish wholly failing to appreciate poor Tom's facetious manner of appropriating feathered stock.

Some time in the month of March, two years ago, the news spread that Old Tom was missing, and suspicions of foul play were freely interchanged in the community, for it was a generally received opinion that the unfortunate man had his little pile secreted somewhere, all his purchases being invariably paid for in cash—some of his payments for hogs amounting to quite a little figure. Search was duly instituted and a strict watch kept on his shanty for some time, but nothing was ever learned of the fate of poor Old Tom till on Monday, the 22nd of December last, the circumstance occurred with which I started this communication. As soon as Mr. B. had made his discovery known, the neighbors began to gather at the grave; and after serious deliberation and due consultation with Mr. Brown, our worthy Justice of the Peace, there occurred a little managing slightly characteristic of Ward 10 under such circumstances. Perhaps almost any other community would have dug up the poor man's remains, and sent for the Coroner, and held a post mortem and tumbled and disarranged the dilapidated old man badly, but our citizens wisely concluded that that was old Tom and that all he wanted was burying a little better; so they piously gathered the old man's perquisites, consisting of his skull, one of his shoes, a protruding or obtruding bone or two, and the cord with which he had evidently been strangled, and which was still hanging from a limb overhead, arranged them in the grave with the rest of him, covered all decently, and left Old Tom in peace.

And now, Mr. Editor, excuse a word of comment here: I well know that in a section like this, where the majority of the inhabitants are struggling under the disadvantages of poverty and the severe toil of clearing and fencing land, the idea of sending to a distant town for the regular Coroner would be very inconvenient, and in some cases, owing to the decomposed state of the body, utterly impossible: still this cheerful spirit of resignation, this quietly picking up of the remains from where the murderer had left them, giving them decent burial and going each one to his own affairs, what effect is this to have on the impressible minds of the rising generation growing up to see murders committed in their midst and not half the effort put forth to bring the perpetrators to justice that there is to catch a hog or horse thief? It is true Old Tom was only a nigger; it is also true that he was said to be a chicken stealer, and while in the flesh he might have in his own conscience even aspired to the dignity of a hog thief, still all this does not in the least excuse the "deep damnation of his taking off," for this was no lynching affair by justly outraged citizens, but a secretly planned and secretly executed murder.

Ever since the fiat went forth from the lips of Eternal Wisdom, "Whosoever sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed," all civilized nations have recognized the justice of the decree and formed their laws accordingly, and it augurs ill for the future well-being of a community that allows such enormities to be perpetrated in their midst and let them pass unpunished.

D.