Confederate soldier

“Not having the fear of God before his eyes…”

     The Jurors for the State upon their oath presented that Thomas Dula, late of the County of Wilkes, not having the fear of God before his eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the Devil on the 18th day of June 1866[*] with force and arms in the County aforesaid in and upon one Laura foster in the peace of God and the State then and there being feloniously, willfully, and of malice aforethought did make an assault the said Thomas Dula with a certain knife of the value of five cents which he the said Thomas Dula in his right hand then and there had and hold the said Laura Foster in and upon the breast of her the said Laura Foster then and there feloniously, willfully, and of his malice aforethought did strike, thrust, and stab, giving to the said Laura Foster, then and there with the knife aforesaid in and upon her breast of her the aforesaid Laura Foster one mortal wound of the breadth of one inch and the depth of six inches of which the said mortal wound the said Laura Foster, then and there instantly died and so the Jurors aforesaid upon their oath aforesaid, do say the said Thomas Dula, the said Laura Foster in manner and form aforesaid feloniously, willfully, and of his malice aforethought did kill and murder against the peace and dignity of the state.
     The Jurors for the State upon their oath accuse that Ann Melton did ‘stir up, move, and abet, and cause, and procure the said Tom Dula to commit the said felony and murder, and him the said Tom Dula did then and there feloniously, willfully, and of malice aforethought receive, harbor, maintain, relieve, comfort, and assist against the dignity of the State.

Bill of Indictment against Confederate war veteran Thomas C. Dula and Ann Foster Melton of Wilkes County, North Carolina. 

Find this contorted 19th Century legalese confusing? Well, that’s not the half of it. The fact that the Bill of Indictment gets the date of Laura’s death wrong, marked by the asterisk above, just gets things started. Our song this week, familiar to many, takes this tangled legal mess and translates it into a significant force for the Folk Revival over 90 years after the crime.

Zebulon Baird Vance Confederate Officer, U.S. Senator, Governor of North Carolina, and Tom Dula’s defense attorney (pro bono)

Once More Unto the Breach, Dear Friends

Last year, when we took a look at “Frankie and Johnny,” I argued that it was the most popular, familiar murder ballad. The posts I did that week were a terrific odyssey of exploration for me. I hope they were entertaining and edifying for the reader. But, they also made me cautious about dipping into anything quite so popular and with quite so convoluted a history. “Tom Dooley” is one of the contenders to the claim of most popular and widely known, and has a real story beneath it far more contorted than Frankie Baker shooting her pimp in self-defense. I was wary of diving into it for these reasons. As we’ll see, both “Frankie and Johnny” and “Tom Dooley” get the story wrong in several respects.

Pat’s Memorial Day post recalling the aftermath of the Civil War prompted me to go back to “Tom Dooley” and see what I might do. The truth is, as we’ll see, that “Frankie and Johnny” still wins out according to a number of different indices. “Tom Dooley” became hugely popular, but has only been so for roughly half the time of “Frankie and Johnny,” despite telling an older story. Its real impact was kick-starting the enormous popularity of folk music in the late 50’s and early 60’s.

The real boom started with these guys, The Kingston Trio. We’ll come back to them again, but you should know before you start listening that their introduction to the song creates a false impression about the story right from the get-go. Lyrics are here, also on the YouTube page for the clip below.

The other challenge in taking up “Tom Dooley” is figuring out where we might add value. A significant number of web resources and blogs provide detail on the song and the story behind it. My goal in this first post on the song is to provide a basic summary of the story, with some links for further exploration, and then to move in this post and the ones that follow to a discussion of the history, story structure, and performance dynamics of the song itself. The facts, for our purposes, are mostly important for shedding light on how people used them, changed them, or ignored them to make a better story. It’s that aspect of poetic license or the folk process that I want to explore.

Adultery, Murder, and “The Pock”

Tom Dula (pronounced “Dooley” in the local dialect) was convicted twice and executed once for the 1866 killing of Laura Foster in Wilkes County, North Carolina. The trials and execution happened in Statesville, in Iredell County because Dula’s defense attorney requested a change of venue. The story of if, how, and why Tom was actually and/or legally guilty of the crime is an enormously complicated one. He was convicted on the basis of circumstantial evidence and the testimony of witnesses from his tightly-knit community, witnesses whose motivations and perceptions were not always clear, consistent, or impartial. But, I’m not saying this to try to exculpate him. He just may have done it, and if he didn’t, he probably helped the person who did.

I’m going to give the basics of Laura Foster’s disappearance and Tom Dula’s capture and trial below. As a relatively quick, web-based starting point for a more extensive account of the story, I highly recommend Paul Slade’s investigation into the story and the song. Slade acknowledges that his account relies heavily on Lift Up Your Head Tom Dooley, by John Foster West (Down Home Press, 1993). I haven’t read that account, but have read The True Story of Tom Dooley: From Western North Carolina Mystery to Folk Legend, by John Edward Fletcher. Fletcher happens to be a descendant of a couple of the principals in the story (James and Ann Melton). His account refers back to both Slade’s and West’s, including extensive quotations from Slade.

Photo of Ann Melton,after her acquittal.

However much the individual accounts disagree on the details is largely irrelevant for our purposes–which, eventually, will be to focus on the song. But, either book or Slade’s summary will do for acquainting you with as much of the facts as you’ll need to know. I’ll also add some other links below.

Laura Foster was missing for months before searchers found her body, decomposing in a shallow grave. Between her disappearance and this discovery, local speculation about her presumed fate apparently led Dula to skip town, fleeing to Tennessee. A few sheriff’s deputies from Wilkes County eventually went after him, and retrieved him with the help of a former Union Army officer living there, Colonel James Grayson. Dula briefly worked on Grayson’s farm, under assumed name, in order to earn enough money to replace his worn-out shoes and resume his flight. Dula was brought back to Wilkes County by the deputies and Grayson, and held in jail there while searchers continued to look for Laura’s body.

Colonel James Grayson (did not know Laura Foster)

Despite the press attention to the case at the time, the nature of the crime and a few other complicating factors mean that there is very little that can be known with absolute certainty about it–despite extensive attempts to solve it. It remains, therefore, fertile territory for folklore, literature, and song. Social, sexual, and family relationships among many of the principal players and witnesses complicated things. Believe me, getting the names straight and who is cousins to whom is mind bending. One potential reason that it drew the attention of broader, national press is that the story fed into typical Reconstruction-era story lines about backward ways of the mountain South.

Many trial witnesses had grudges against Dula and/or Melton. Melton, renowned for her beauty, apparently had few friends. One of the witnesses was paying the prosecution’s fees. None of the witnesses could testify to seeing Dula do it or even place them together definitively at the same place and the same time. No evidence of his direct involvement was conclusively found. There are no verbatim trial transcripts–the courts merely compiled summaries of testimony for appellate review.

Newspaper account of Tom Dula’s execution

These are just a few of the reasons for ambiguity, confusion, and the persistent thought that Dula was innocent and/or unjustly convicted.. Laura Foster told a neighbor that she and Dula were going to run away together, which makes little sense, as neither were underage. One reason she might have wanted to flee is out of fear of Ann Melton. A novelization of the story by Sharyn McCrumb proposes that Laura Foster was actually planning to run off with a mulatto ex-slave, a plausible reason why she might leave her home community and family behind.

Dula further complicated things by first signing a statement claiming that no one but he had a hand in killing Laura Foster, and then denying that he had killed her as he gave his last words standing on the gallows. The first statement is perhaps the one admirable thing he did in the entire sordid affair, because it probably saved Ann Melton’s life. This ambiguity is captured rather well in the song.

A speculative Harper’s Index version of the tale might look something like this:

Chance that Tom Dula and Ann Melton were engaged in an adulterous affair: 100% (no accounts contest this)
Chance that Tom Dula also had sex with Laura Foster: 90%
Chance that Tom Dula killed Laura Foster: 75%
Chance that, if Tom Dula killed Laura Foster, Ann Melton aided and abetted before, during, and/or after: 99%
Chance that, if Tom Dula didn’t kill Laura Foster, Ann Melton did: 90%
Chance that, if Ann Melton killed Laura Foster, Tom Dula aided and abetted before, during, and/or after: 99%
Chance that Laura Foster passed syphilis directly to Dula and indirectly to Melton: 50%*
Chance that Pauline Foster passed syphilis directly to Dula, and indirectly to Ann Melton and Laura Foster: 50%**
Chance that Colonel Grayson was in love with Laura Foster: 0% (yes, this non-event is significant–for the song, but not for the trial)
Chance that Dula’s conviction would hold up in court today: 10%***

*Although Laura Foster was reputed to have “round heels,” a popular term for being promiscuous or easy, some sources suggest that the timing of her affair with Dula was too close to the time that he discovered the infection. Even if Laura already had it, it’s just as likely that Dula got it from Pauline Foster.

**What? “Who’s this?” you say. Another Foster? Pauline Foster, a fourth cousin to Ann Melton and Laura Foster and a second cousin to Dula, came to Wilkes County to seek medical treatment for syphilis from the nearest doctor, and worked on the Melton farm to earn money to pay for her treatment. Ann Melton asked Pauline Foster to “romp” with Dula to defray speculation among the neighbors about Melton’s ongoing affair with Dula. Sources differ as to whether as to whether this was just a front or whether there was some reality to it. Regardless of Melton’s intentions, it’s rather clear that Dula was far from monogamous.

***It’s reasonable to argue, as John Foster West does, that Dula’s arrest, extradition, and imprisonment before the discovery of Laura Foster’s body were illegal. None of the three men who arrested him had a right to do so. He was imprisoned before there was clear evidence of crime. It’s also reasonable to argue that the circumstantial evidence presented at trial was insufficient to convict him, and that the jurors in both the trial and re-trial did not follow the judges’ instructions in rendering a verdict of guilty based on it. 

OK, had enough already? I said I wasn’t going to go too far into the story. This is one case where the underlying story is more convoluted and ambiguous than the “folk process” the song about went through. Suffice it to say that none of our main characters behaved very nobly in all of this. The gaps in the full story have led to various levels of speculation, from the psychological and literary (a sociopathic plot by Pauline Foster to wreak vengeance on Ann Melton and all she cared about–this is the McCrumb book) to the far-fetched and conspiratorial–including an unsubstantiated allegation that Dula was never executed at all.

As with the internet, so apparently with folklore about this case. Anybody can say anything. This is not just a truism, it’s a subject of scholarly study. But, there are enough gaps in the story for a great deal of speculation and alternative theories.

Tom Dula is dead, long live “Tom Dooley”

In the aftermath of the case, a few songs and poems took root, but mostly locally. We’ll get to more of that story in the next post, which I hope to put together this week. “Tom Dooley’s” real national prominence would come about 90 years later. We’ll tell the story of what happened in the meantime and what happened after The Kingston Trio’s “Tom Dooley” made it big later. But, I will leave you with one performance that alludes to some of it. I’ll also add some links below for further reading.

For further reading 

Here’s a short collection of links that will let you follow the Tom Dula story in greater detail.

Again, I recommend Paul Slade’s page for a thorough and well-written account of the story. It is longer than the rest of the pages here.

This North Carolina State Archives page includes some of the documentary evidence from the case.

The website for the University of North Carolina Library presents a succinct “This Month in North Carolina History” page on the story, accounting for the main players, but not digging into alternate theories or much of the back story.

The “Murder by Gaslight” blog does a good job with the story, opening with the line, “the stories behind murder ballads are never as pretty as the songs.” This is a point we’ll develop further shortly.

Chuck Shuford does a good job tracing the the story and the ensuing cultural legacy of the story in an article from last year at The Daily Yonder. He’s got his own take on the players, and be sure to read the comments.

That should be enough to get you started. We’ll pick up next with more of the story of making musical sense of it all.