North Carolina Myths and Legends by Pitzer Sara;

Author:Pitzer, Sara;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781493015863
Publisher: Globe Pequot
Published: 2015-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

The Ballad of Frankie Silver

Three days before Christmas in 1831, Frances Stewart Silver killed her husband, Charles, with an axe at their log cabin in mountainous Mitchell County. She cut up his body, tried to burn some of it, and buried some more at several different places in the area. On July 12, 1833, she was hanged for the crime. Frankie was about seventeen years old, Charlie about eighteen. Their daughter, Nancy, was just a year old. The story has been passed down, one generation to the next, ever since. The fact and dates of the murder and Frankie’s hanging are verifiable. Almost everything else that happened is open to question.

Why would a young mother kill the husband she needed to help maintain the home, bring in food and firewood, and provide for their little girl? Why would she try to dispose of his body in such a gory way? Could she, in fact, have managed such a monumental task by herself?

The story that has grown up around the events and has been part of local lore told to generations of children at home and school pictures this as a crime of jealousy and revenge. Here’s how the tale goes.

Charlie Silver was a lively, good-looking, strapping guy who could charm the girls and, like most mountain men, liked his whiskey. He and Frankie had a nice romance until sometime after their daughter, Nancy, was born; then, gradually, Frankie became more and more interested in Nancy and paid increasingly less attention to Charlie. So maybe a healthy young guy might stray a little bit—understandable, really. But whenever he was away from home any length of time, especially overnight, legend says, Frankie was wildly jealous and, over time, began plotting revenge for his supposed infidelities. Her chance came shortly before Christmas, when he came in from chopping wood, maybe after a nip or two, and lay down in front of the fireplace to play with his little girl. Shortly, he fell asleep with his head on a small stool padded by his coonskin cap, and Nancy went to sleep on his chest. Frankie moved the sleeping child to a bed, grabbed the axe by the fireplace, and gave her husband a fatal whack. Then she had to figure out what to do with his body.

At this point, some versions of the story say she got help from her mother, Barbara, and her younger brother, Blackstone, to chop up Charlie’s body, burn some of it with his clothes in the fireplace, and haul the rest to several different sites to bury them.

However it transpired, that is what happened to Charlie’s remains. It introduces another question: Where was little Nancy all the while?

Next morning, Frankie walked up to her in-laws’ place and told them Charlie hadn’t been home for two days and claimed that she wondered where he was. Later, she went back to tell them that she still hadn’t seen him and didn’t care if she never saw him again because she and Nancy were going to her parents’ house.

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