A MURDER IN CLARKESVILLE HISTORY 39

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In a tiny northeast Georgia cemetery,an eerie image of a young girl's faceon an ancient tombstone has resur-

rected ghosts from William Faulkner'spast. Whether the face is an apparitionfrom the “other side” or just randomshadings of lichen and moss, its discoveryled to the reexamination of a 174-year-old murder mystery that affectedFaulkner and influenced his Nobel prize-winning novels.

The Old Clarkesville Cemetery sitsalmost unnoticed just a few blocks fromthe quaint town square. On this one-acrepostage stamp of land, giant white pinesand poplar trees tower over staggeredrows of tablet headstones that leandrunkenly in the lasting gloom. Scatteredamong the graves are box crypts, wornfrom almost two centuries of exposure tothe elements. Many of them gape open,their lids gradually lifted by the ever-growing, implacable tree roots.

The oldest tombstone in the cemeterybelongs to Calvin J. Hanks, a young attor-ney stabbed to death on a Clarkesvillestreet on August 15, 1834. Although itwas a public murder, Hank's death wentunpunished after a jury set his accused

killers free. Adding to the enduring mys-tery, all four suspects were distinguishedresidents of the town: a doctor, a formercity commissioner, a son of aRevolutionary War hero, and a teacherwho later became a Mississippi judge.

Prompted by the DevilJust a block from the cemetery, Joy

Lovell works for the Habersham CountyChamber of Commerce in the MauldinHouse Museum and Visitor's Center.Along with other members of theHabersham County Historical Society,Lovell has taken on the job of caring forthe old cemetery. Each year she leads vis-itors on night walks through the grave-yard. During these events, volunteersdressed in antebellum costumes andCivil War uniforms tell the stories of thecemetery's permanent inhabitants.

From the beginning, Lovell notes,Hanks' grave has been a favorite with vis-itors, perhaps because of the mystery sur-rounding his death and the haunting epi-taph carved into his tombstone:

Ye living men as you pass byAs you be now so once was IAs I am now so you must bePrepare for death and follow me.

“It's almost as if Hanks was tauntinghis killers,” Lovell says.

The story of Hanks' murder captivat-ed Lovell when she first heard it, butdetails were few. During the seventeendecades since his death, manyHabersham County court records were

destroyed, first by fire in 1856, thenwhen the courthouse was dynamited in1898 during a civic feud with the neigh-boring town of Toccoa, and again whenthe replacement courthouse was dam-aged by fire in 1923.

The only surviving courthouse recordof the crime is a grand jury indictmentthat describes how Dr. Elbridge G.Harris, Cuthbert Word, and WilliamHamilton were men who “not having thefear of God before their eyes but beingmoved and seduced by the instigation ofthe Devil...” aided John W. Thompsonwhen he "feloniously, willfully, and ofmalice aforethought" stabbed CalvinHanks, giving him “a mortal wound ofthe breadth of two inches and debth [sic]of six inches.” The document provides noinformation about a motive for the crime.

In Habersham County, Hanks' mur-der and the trial of John Thompson werenearly forgotten until 2003, when some-thing odd happened. Dion Beck, a visi-tor to the cemetery, photographedHanks' grave. He was in for a shockwhen he got the pictures back. "He tookthe film to be developed," Lovell relates,"and he called the next day and said hehad found the image of a young womanon the stone."

Lovell said she does not believe inghosts, but admits that the picture revealsan ethereal likeness of a girl with flowersin her hair. "It does seem strange that outof all the graves here, the image wouldappear on this one stone," she comments.

The photograph attracted the atten-

A Murder inClarkesville

“The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.” Requiem for a Nun, William Faulkner

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tion of local newspapers and televisionstations, which featured stories about themysterious image and the unsolvedkilling. “I was glad for the stories,because I just knew that somewhere,someone knew something about thismurder,” Lovell says.

Ten miles away, someone did. When Isaw the picture and story published in TheNortheast Georgian, Habersham County'snewspaper, it triggered a memory dor-mant more than 30 years. A quick trip tomy basement to find a dusty old bookconfirmed it. According to JosephBlotner's monumental 1974 biography ofthe author William Faulkner, the manaccused of brutally stabbing Calvin Hankswas John Wesley Thompson, Faulkner'sgreat-grandfather by adoption. The killingwas just the first in a series of similar vio-lent events that would haunt the Faulknerfamily over the next 100 years, providingthe great novelist with salacious materialabout doomed Southern families strug-gling against the fates.

Dark ForebodingFaulkner knew of the murder from

prison letters exchanged betweenThompson and his bride of only threeweeks that still survive among the writer'spapers at the University of Virginia. In aletter written just days after the murder,Thompson encouraged his 19-year-oldwife, Justiania, in truly Faulknerian prose:"In the midst of darkness light springs up,the virulent edge of tyranny and oppres-sion is fast becoming blunted and soonthe muddy stream of publick opinion willregain its purity and the facts will placethe present disastrous circumstances in aproper light.” Thompson, the son of a

Methodist minister,also vowed that hisspirit would "burst itschains and fetters andpass the walls thatwould confine it andclimb the battlementsof Heaven where jus-tice, truth and mercyhold their omnipo-tent sway."

As the trial date approached,Thompson's despair became obvious. Hewrote Justiania that they would havetime for only one more exchange of let-ters. Apparently expecting to be convict-ed, Thompson urged her to burn all ofhis letters except those "that will serveyou as a frail memento of him whofound but one on earth that he lovedwithout alloy and you are she."

Despite his dark forebodings, a juryacquitted Thompson of Hanks' murder.Yet Faulkner's biographers and perhapsFaulkner himself believed thatThompson had in factcommitted the crime.Blotner, who was also aclose friend of Faulkner's,suggests that Thompson'sacquittal was an exampleof “frontier justice,” andlater biographers haveagreed. Perhaps, theyspeculate, the "notguilty" verdict indicatedthat the jury believedHanks deserved to dieand John Thompson togo free.

Even after his acquit-tal, Thompson would nothave felt safe inClarkesville. Censusrecords show that the deadman's father and twobrothers lived inHabersham County at thetime. Shortly after thetrial, Thompson reunitedwith his bride and left thearea for good. The nextyear he was living in

Ripley, Mississippi, where he found workas a teacher and then as an attorney.

"Maybe nothing ever happens onceand is finished.”Absalom, Absolom!, WilliamFaulkner

But the legacy of family violence didnot end with the move. According toBlotner and other Faulkner biographers,the Thompsons took in and raised theboy who became William Faulkner’sgreat-grandfather, and then did the samefor his grandfather. Like Thompson,Faulkner’s great-grandfather, known as"The Colonel," was tried and acquittedof two murders. But at the age of 64, TheColonel was gunned down by a politicalrival on the streets of Ripley. Faulkner'sown father was also shot and nearly killedafter a fight with a local ruffian.

Faulkner was both appalled and fasci-nated by the history of violence embod-ied in his ancestors. “If John WesleyThompson was not 'fated' or 'doomed'

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40 GEORGIA BACKROADS/SPRING 2008

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like the Sartorises,”Blotner wrote, “he wasa strong and sometimesviolent man, a fittingfather-surrogate for themodel of [the fictional]Colonel John Sartoris.”

That is where thestory stood for morethan 30 years. Despitethe Faulkner connec-tion, very little wasknown about the mur-der of Calvin Hanks orthe reasons for hisdeath. But thanks tothe wealth of genealogi-cal information nowavailable on theInternet, the microfilmcollection of old news-papers at the Universityof Georgia Library, andpreviously unpublishedrecords at theHabersham CountyCourthouse, the story of Hanks' murdercan finally be told.

Like any good whodunit, this one hasunexpected twists and turns. Best of all,John Wesley Thompson, the man every-one has assumed committed the murder,was apparently innocent after all.

A Forbidding CountenanceBefore it was officially incorporated

in 1823, Clarkesville was a trading postknown to the Cherokee as Sak-yi, a namesimilar to the Soque River, which cours-es along the north side of town. By themid 1820s, Clarkesville had settled intoits role as a cool summer getaway in thefoothills of the Appalachian Mountains.Wealthy planters from Savannah,Augusta, and Charleston went there toescape the sweltering heat, malaria andcholera that dogged the low country.

All that changed almost overnightaround 1828 with the discovery of goldin nearby Dukes Creek. Within a fewyears, the population of the countyincreased threefold as some 10,000 min-ers flooded into the area. With them

came the attendant arguments overclaims and deeds, which if not settledwith fists, guns and knives, were arguedin Habersham County's new brick court-house, where young lawyers includingHanks plied their trade.

Surviving Habersham Countyrecords show that a crime wave of sortssettled over Clarkesville. In place ofcharges of "trespass' and "pig stealing"the docket records an increase in assaults,battery, murder and even "riot" and"mayhem." It was during the peak of thiscrime wave that the town's residentsestablished the Old ClarkesvilleCemetery. Records show that the mur-dered Calvin Hanks had the unfortunatedistinction of being the first personinterred when the cemetery opened in1834.

The charge of murder fell upon 25-year-old John Wesley Thompson, whomay have been a teacher at theClarkesville Academy. The suspectedaccomplices included his brother-in-law,Cuthbert Word, son of RevolutionaryWar hero Thomas A. Word. Also indict-ed were former Habersham County

Sheriff William Hamilton and his son-in-law, 34-year-old Dr. Elbridge G. Harris.

While Thompson, Word andHamilton were arrested immediatelyafter Hanks' death, Dr. Harris vanished.In advertisements placed in several news-papers across the state, Georgia GovernorWilson Lumpkin offered a $300 bountyfor his capture. To this amount, the deadman's brother and father-in-law offeredan additional $500, a total of about$166,000 in today's money. (Monetaryconversions for this article are based onformulas developed by Dr. Samuel H.Williamson and Dr. Lawrence H. Officerin their publication: “Five Ways toCompute the Relative Value of a U.S.Dollar Amount, 1790-2005.” The valu-ations are based on the comparativewages of unskilled laborers.)

Dr. Harris is described in the bountynotices as “five feet eight or nine inchestall, rather spare made, dark skin, sallowcomplexion, high forehead, a large thinface, the skin of which is very rough, anda downcast and very forbidding counte-nance.” This was not his first brush withthe law, as he had been charged in 1826

John Thompson was tried for the murder of Calvin Hanks in the Habersham County courthouse in Clarkesville (photographed here in the late 19th century).

A MURDER IN CLARKESVILLE HISTORY 41

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42 GEORGIA BACKROADS/SPRING 2008

with assault and battery and in 1830with robbery. No disposition of the firstcase is recorded, and Harris was foundnot guilty of the robbery charge.

Although Thompson was tried andfound not guilty, the detailed language ofthe indictment persuaded many historiansto believe that he actually committed themurder. But a brief article in a coastalGeorgia newspaper suggests that the jury'sverdict should be accepted at face value. Ifthe details reported just nine days after thecrime in Savannah’s The Georgian newspa-per are accurate, Thompson was apparent-ly innocent after all:

“A few days we learn upon goodauthority, a Mr. Thompson and a Mr.Hanks, of Clarksville, met in thestreets of that village after a misunder-standing between them, which hadexcited warm blood. A quarrelensued, in the course of whichThompson threw a stone or weight atHanks; whereupon Hanks fired a pis-tol at Thompson, but without effect.They now closed without weaponsand after a short struggle were seperat-ed [sic], when Hanks made off, as wasbelieved, for his gun. As he retired, hewas pursued and overtaken by a Dr.Harris (who to this time seemed anindifferent spectator,) and wasstabbed by Harris three or four times;of which wounds he died immediate-ly. Harris has made his escape; butThompson has been arrested, why, orwherefore, we cannot tell, if the for-agoing be a true account of the affair.It certainly leaves him the most inno-cent of the three.”

Habersham County legends also sug-gest that it was Harris, not Thompson,who committed the murder. In a historyof the county written around 1914, JuliaWilson, one of the town's oldest resi-dents at the time, stated that “CalvinHanks was killed by Dr. L.B. [sic]Harris.” The fact that it was Harris whofled, and not the other three men, wouldalso indicate that the jury made the rightdecision.

Although court records show Hankshad earlier won a small judgment against

Thompson for an unspecified fraud, aclear motive for the fight and the murderhas been elusive. Faulkner's biographerssuggest that the killing may have resultedfrom a family feud of some kind.

And while Harris could have beensimply protecting his friend, records atthe Habersham County courthouse dis-close that the doctor had a million-dollarmotive for murder. In fact many peoplein the town had reason to be angry withHanks and his partner/father-in-law fortheir role in a gold and banking swindlethat rocked the entire state.

It is worth mentioning thatThompson did have a second reason todislike the Hanks family. According todescendants now living in Florida,Thompson was trying to hide a familysecret – his mother was Cherokee – that ifexposed could lead to his expulsion fromthe state in the Cherokee removal. TheThompsons were desperately trying toavoid relocation, but Hanks’ sister-in-law, who was also Cherokee, apparentlysupported removal as did the Hanksfamily. Their support might account forthe bad blood between them and theThompsons, and the removal itselfwould explain Thompson’s cryptic refer-ences to “tyranny and oppression” in hisjailhouse letters to his wife.

While the ongoing Cherokee removalmay explain Thompson's reasons forstarting the fight with Hanks, it does notsuggest Dr. Harris's motive for strikingthe fatal blows. The key to the mysterycan be found in the actions of CalvinHanks' father-in-law, John Humphries,who may be the gravitational centeraround which all of these family misfor-tunes revolve. Humphries was one of theoriginal landowners in Clarkesville and aformer sheriff of Habersham County.Before he fled the state for Arkansas in

1835, however, he had several brusheswith the law and developed a reputationas an “unscrupulous con-man.”

According to Matt Gedney's “Life onthe Unicoi Road,” which details some ofthe families living in Habersham Countyat this time, Humphries had worked hisway up the Chattahoochee River search-ing for gold. In 1831, he believed he hadfound what he was looking for: a quartzvein near present day Helen, Georgia.Humphries agreed to pay the landowner$10,000 for half-interest in the mine.

By late 1834, though, Humphries'business forays were rapidly going sour,and Gedney writes that Humphries had“mortgaged and borrowed his waythrough the gold region, putting himselfin a position where he had to either findplenty of gold or go broke.”

Humphries had been authorized bythe State of Georgia to sell up to$700,000 in stock in his mining compa-nies, but in December 1834,Humphries' partner, Daniel Blake, died,and his executor discovered that titles tothe mines that Blake and Humphriessupposedly owned together either couldnot be located or were “defective.” Aboutthe same time, Humphries moved 40miles west to Dahlonega, where he won acontract to build the courthouse in thenewly formed Lumpkin County.Humphries was the low bidder at $7,000and received a $2,500 advance, but neverdid any work. By then his investmentshad failed and his gold properties wereseized. Habersham County court recordsalso show that he and his now deceasedson-in-law were being sued by numerouscreditors.

At this same time, another partner ofHumphries', Archibald McLaughlin, wasaccused of buying thousands of dollars ingold with worthless money from therecently failed Bank of Macon. TheHabersham Court records show thatElbridge Harris was apparently caughtup in this gold swindle as he hadincurred a debt of $5,000 ($1 milliontoday) owed to another speculator withties to Humphries and McLaughlin.Hamilton, too, was deeply in debt, the

And while Harris couldhave been simply protect-ing his friend, records atthe Habersham Countycourthouse disclose thatthe doctor had a million-dollar motive for murder.

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A MURDER IN CLARKESVILLE HISTORY 43

records show.Thus, two of the men implicated in

Hanks’ murder were financially pressed,due in no small measure to the shenani-gans of the victim’s father-in-law and hispartners. It is also known that a closefriend of the Thompson and Word fami-lies lost more than $16,000 in gold spec-ulation due to McLaughlin.

With everyone losing huge sums ofmoney and with the added pressure ofthe Cherokee removal looming over theThompson family, it is no surprise thatJohn Wesley Thompson and CalvinHanks came to blows in Clarkesville thathot August day in 1834. It is certainly nostretch to conclude that Dr. Harrisblamed Hanks, his father-in-lawHumphries, and Humphries’ partnersfor his losses, and in the heat of themoment stabbed Hanks to death.

So what became of the four menindicted for the murder of CalvinHanks? John Wesley Thompson becamea successful attorney in Ripley,Mississippi, and was elected districtattorney and later judge. He and his

beloved Justiania were married for 36years. Thompson died in 1873 at the ageof 64. Justiania died in 1898, age 83, andthey are buried beside each other nearRipley.

Cuthbert Word enrolled in the U.S.Army and fought in the Mexican-American War of 1846. He died on hisway home from the war in 1847 at theage of 35. He is buried on the west bankof the Mississippi River, about threemiles above Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Dr. Elbridge Harris fled to Texas,then still part of Mexico. He died ofunknown cause on April 4, 1838, at theage of 38. He was apparently never triedfor the murder of Calvin Hanks. He isburied in the historic Oak GroveCemetery in Nacogdoches, Texas.

William Hamilton went to Texaswith Harris. He died May 3, 1837, ageapproximately 63, soon after reachingNacogdoches. His son, Elias Hamilton,was a hero of the Texas Revolution. Eliaswas killed when his horse fell on him in1840.

So, whose face is it that appeared on

the grave of Calvin Hanks and broughtthis story back to life after 174 years?The mystery remains, but my money ison Hanks' wife, Charlotte HumphriesHanks, who gave birth to a son fourmonths after the murder. She may neverhave seen justice served, but at last theidentity of her husband's true killer isknown.

"…and then all of a sudden it's allover and all you have left is a blockof stone with scratches on it providedthere was someone to remember tohave the marble scratched and set upor had time to, and it rains on it andthe sun shines on it and after a whilethey dont even remember the nameand what the scratches were trying totell, and it doesn't matter."Absalom, Absalom!, WilliamFaulkner

David Price is director of public relationsat Piedmont College in Demorest andauthor of soon-to-be-published, A Murderin Clarkesville. He can be contacted atdprice2@piedmont.edu.

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As he retired, he was pursued and overtaken by a Dr. Harris (who to this time seemed an indifferent spectator,)and was stabbed by Harris three or four times; of whichwounds he died immediately. Copyright

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2008