Frankie Silvers [Laws E13]

DESCRIPTION: The singer, Frankie Silvers, has been condemned to die for murdering her husband. She describes the deed and its consequences with horror: "This dreadful, dark, and dismal day Has swept all my glories away." "But oh! that dreadful judge I fear...."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1885 (Lenoir Topic, quoting the "Morganton paper"); Patterson, p. 101, claims a manuscript copy from 1865
KEYWORDS: homicide husband wife punishment execution | Charles Frankie Silver
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Dec 22, 1831 (probable date) - Frances "Frankie" Silver(s) kills her husband Charles Silver in North Carolina
Jan 9, 1832 - Frankie Silver arrested
March 30, 1832 - Frankie Silver convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Appeals and complications mean that the execution will be postponed for more than a year
May 18, 1832 - Frankie Silver escapes prison, but is recaptured on May 26
July 12, 1833 - Frankie Silver is hanged without making a gallows confession although apparently there was some sort of testament (source: Young)
FOUND IN: US(Ap,SE,So)
REFERENCES (12 citations):
Laws E13, "Frankie Silvers"
Randolph 158, "Frankie Silver" (1 short text, 1 tune)
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore2 301, "Frankie Silver" (1 text)
Brown/Schinhan-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore4 301, "Frankie Silver" (3 excerpts, 3 tunes)
Henry-SongsSungInTheSouthernAppalachians, pp. 48-50, "Frances Silvers" (1 text)
Burt-AmericanMurderBallads, pp. 17-18, (no title) (1 text)
Cohen-AmericanFolkSongsARegionalEncyclopedia1, p. 234, "Frankie Silvers" (1 text)
NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal, Elaine Penninger, "Frankie Silver" Vol. X, No. 2 (Dec. 1962), p. 28, (notes only)
NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal, various authors/Special issue devoted to the film, "The Ballad of Frankie Silver: Reflections on a Murder," Vol. XLVII, No. 1 (Winter/Spring 2000), pp. 5-7, "Frankie Silver -- A Full Text of the Ballad" (1 text, from Bobby McMillon)
DT 776, FRANSILV
ADDITIONAL: Perry Deane Young, _The Untold Story of Frankie Silver: Was She Unjustly Hanged_, Down Home Press, 1998, pp. 108-110, "Francis [sic.] Silvers's Confession" (1 text, from the Morganton Star); there are excerpts of other versions on the following pages
Daniel W. Patterson, _A Tree Accursed: Bobby McMillon and Stories of Frankie Silver_, University of North Carolina Press, 2000, pp. 30-32, "Frankie Silver" (1 text, 1 tune, from Bobby McMillon; I do not trust the tune transcription); pp. 101-103, "(no title)" (1 text, the Lenoir Topic/Morganton Star version); pp. 109-110, "(no title)" (variant lyrics plus a tune); pp. 119-120 (scattered verses with comments)
Roud #783
RECORDINGS:
[Clarence] Ashley & [Gwen] Foster, "Frankie Silvers" ((Vocalion 02647, 1934; rec. 1933)
Clarence Ashley & Tex Isley, "Frankie Silvers" (on Ashley01)
Byrd Moore & his Hot Shots, "Frankie Silvers" (Columbia 15536-D, 1930; rec. Oct 23, 1929; on Ashley04); "Frankie Silver's Confession" (Gennett, unissued, 1930)
New Lost City Ramblers, "Frankie Silver" (on NLCR04)
NOTES [3678 words]: This incident has frequently been reported as the inspiration for "Frankie and Albert" also; see the notes to that song.
On the other hand, the song has very few actual details about the case (most versions don't even mention Frankie Silver's name or that of her husband); one might suspect that it is an earlier song about another crime with a few (very few!) localizing details dropped in. Indeed, a resident of the area where the murder took place, said that it was a rewrite by one Thomas W Scott of a piece about the Kentucky case of a murder committed by one "Beacham" (Patterson, p. 103). Patterson, p. 104, is able to link this to an acctual 1824 murder of Solomon P. Sharp by Jerome Beauchamp. In addition to "Beauchamp's Confession," which does not seem to have gone into tradition, it inspired the traditional "Colonel Sharp" (which see for more details).
The versions we tend to hear of this song today derive from early country recordings, which had to fit on a 78 rpm record and so could be only a few verses long. But Patterson believes (p, 110) that most of these performers had known longer versions which they had to cut down. I suspect he is right; the earliest versions are often a dozen or so verses long. (Though much of what is dropped is no real loss, since it's similar to many, many other gallows-confession songs).
Patterson, pp. 108-109, reports that there are four tunes for this song, one related to "Barbara Allen," one to "Lord Bateman" (he doesn't report which versions of those songs he means), one independent, and one related to the shape note tune "Devotion." This disparity of tunes exists despite the fact that most known texts are closely related. Patterson thinks that this means that several singers initially learned the song from print and used a tune that worked for them; I suspect he is right, even though the original printed copy has not been located.
Brown has extensive background notes on this murder, without clear conclusions as to why Frankie Silvers (the name the book uses) murdered her husband, noting that the jury apparently believed the motive was jealousy. Note that the young woman's surname seems to have been "Silver," not "Silvers." We might note, though, that most members of the Silver and Stewart families were illiterate, and records about them are few; it is quite possible that some of them used the name "Silver" and others called themselves "Silvers."
In Brown's and Randolph's texts, the judge who convicted Frankie Silver is called "Judge Daniels," but Randolph reports that he was actually named John R. Donnell.
Young's more recent book puts the whole thing in a rather different light. Lyle Lofgren brought the book to my attention and gave me my original summary.
Frances Stewart married Charles Silver in 1829, when (by one account at least) both were 17; they lived near Toe River, North Carolina (in an area now known as Kona -- a name derived from the chemical constituents of feldspar, K/potassium, O/oxygen, and Na/Sodium). They had a daughter Nancy in 1830.
Charlie apparently was fond of drink and other women. On December 22, 1831, they quarreled. Possibly Charlie went for a gun and Frankie killed him with an ax. Had Frankie simply notified the authorities at that point, all might have been well. But she burned his body and hid the remains, claiming that he had gone hunting and never come back. When the physical evidence was found, she was charged with murder. Having denied the crime, she couldn't plead self-defense, and her request for clemency were denied. She was executed on the date listed.
Powell, p. 1036, quotes a contemporary account that says she was a "bright-eyed very pretty little woman," and says she is believed to have been the first white woman executed in North Carolina. (Young, p. 19, however says that at least one white woman had been hung before her just in Morganton. But that one woman was hung with her husband. So I suppose you could argue that Frankie was the first white woman hung in Morganton for her own solo crime. Which isn't much of a distinction, to be sure.)
Popular accounts of the events, according to Patterson, p. 66, derive almost entirely from two sources, Alfred Silver (1816-1905) and Lucinda Silver Norman (1826-1927). But Silver was 86 or 87 at the time he was interviewed, and his memory surely imperfect. Norman was even older (90, according to 84) when she told her story, plus would have been too young to really have understood what was happening at the hanging; furthermore, the story went from her through two other bearers before it was published. (For what it's worth, Patterson, in his Appendix A, pp. 165-177, reprints their evidence and that of a couple of others.) So we suffer from a severe lack of reliable witnesses. The result is that there is much we cannot know. But I will offer what facts I can, mostly from Young supplemented by Patterson.
Charles Silver, the murdered man, was one of thirteen children of Jacob Silver (born 1793), but the only child Jacob had by his first wife, whose name is uncertain and who likely died in childbirth. The family moved from Maryland into the Toe River area of North Carolina some time after 1802 -- family tradition said 1806 (Young, p. 28). Jacob Silver is said to have been a Baptist preacher, but he is also described as illiterate (Young, p. 29).
One of Charles's half-brothers described him as "strong and healthy, good looking and agreeable. He had lots of friends. Everybody liked him. He was a favorite at all the parties for he could make merry by talking, laughing, and playing musical instruments. I think he was the best fifer I ever heard" (Young, p. 30).
Frances Stewart/Stuart's parents were Isaiah and Barbara Stewart. Both were apparently illiterate. It appears she was one of seven children (born c. 1810), and the only girl. The family came from Anson County, North Carolina to the Toe River area in the mid 1820s (Young, p. 31). The same brother who gave the description of Charles said that Frankie Stewart was "a mighty likely little woman. She had fair hair, bright eyes, and was counted very pretty. She had charms. I never saw a smarter little woman. She could card and spin her three yards of cotton a day on a big wheel" (Young, p. 30).
There is no formal record of the marriage of Charles Silver and Frankie Stewart, but it appears to have taken place in 1829 or 1830, when they were both 17 or 18 years old. They settled on land given to them by his father; apparently Charles built a one-room cabin on the site (Young, p. 33). It was not good farm land; it is likely that much of their living was made from hunting and harvesting wild products. Based on the sketch map on pp. 74-75 of Patterson, it looks as if the closest spot you can find on Google Maps (as of August 2022) is "High Cove," 1215 Rebels Creek Rd, Bakersville, NC 28705. What the map calls the Silver Cemetery is an unlabeled park about 300 yards/meters south of there. The cabin Frankie lived in is gone. However, what I believe (from the map and the photo on p. 76 of Patterson) is the home where Charles Silver grew up still stands; I believe it is at 52 Gordon Silvers Rd, Bakersville, NC 28705, though Google does not have Street View photos of that area to verify it.
Their only child, Nancy Silver, was born on November 3, 1830, so she was just a toddler when she lost her parents (Young, p. 33). Given her date of birth, and the date of her parents' (undocumented) wedding, one wonders a bit about a shotgun marriage.
We don't know the reason for what follows, although there were news reports that Charles was "a man of rather vagrant and intemperate habits" and was said to have been a bad provider (Patterson, p. 133). One source claimed that Charles was actually preparing to shoot Frankie when she hit him with an ax -- and hurt him so badly that she finished him off to put him out of his misery (Young, p. 38). Patterson's transcription of Bobby McMillon's version of the story has it that Frankie's father was actually there at the time of the murder and encouraged her; Patterson, p. 33. (One wonders if that detail -- possible but unverifiable -- derived from Isaiah's statements at her execution; see below.) But McMillon has another story: That the Stewart family wanted to head west, and they wanted to take Charles and Frankie with them, and when Charles refused, the family pressured her to kill him (Patterson, p. 41).
For the first few days after the murder, she apparently went to the household of her in-laws each day, asking about Charles. Soon, the Silver family started looking for the missing man (Young, p. 42). Eventually they found burnt bone in Frankie's fireplace, and blood spots under the floor; Young suggests they also found a skull, since there was a report on the wound to his head (Young, p. 43; Patterson, pp. 36-37, has a tale that the head was hid in a tree and eventually found). It all added up to an attempt to dispose of a body, and pretty clear evidence of homicide. Frankie, her father, her mother, and her brother were all taken into custody -- although the charge against the father was quickly dropped. Isaiah Stewart was apparently able
Apparently portions of the body of Charles Silver was found burned in the fireplace, so we don't really know how he died. Young, pp. 34-35, supplies some of the stories people told, but they are beyond verification. There doesn't seem to be any genuine documentation of the murder, e.g. a coroner's report. Young, pp. 131-136 reprints court documents; those from the county court (which are the ones which contain evidence) are scanty, uninformative, and illiterate. Nor was there a newspaper that served the Morganton area where the Silvers lived, and the records of papers from outside the immediate region are few (Young, p. 127).
It's important to keep in mind that, at that time and in that place, women were basically the property of their husbands. Spousal abuse was expected (there was even a court ruling authorizing it, and the guy who wrote it would be on the North Caroline Supreme Court to hear Frankie's appeal; Patterson, p. 57). If a wife killed her husband in self-defense, she could be expected to be convicted of murder (Young, pp. 36-37, gives examples). Even today, reports Hall, p. 223, "There is no 'battered women's defense,'" but at least abuse is taken into account. Not in the 1830s! There were several witnesses who testified that Frankie killed Charles in self-defense, but that arguably was not a defense. Similarly, there were several people who reported a confession by Frankie which supposedly related facts which (if accepted) would have resulted in a different outcome to the case. However, if this confession existed, and if someone transcribed it, it has not survived (Patterson, pp. 54-57).
The best evidence for the confession comes from various appeals for clemency. According to Patterson, p. 121, two different governors of North Carolina received six different requests for clemency. The early petitions argued that the case had not been proved. (True, I think, but the governor ignored that). The later ones said that Frankie committed the murder but there were extenuating circumstances. Is that sufficient to say there was a confession? I rather doubt it, else the confession would have been included. But it is noteworthy that among those signing petitions were two members of the grand jury that indicted her and fully four members of the jury that convicted her! (Patterson, p. 123).
Whatever Frankie's reasons, once Charles was dead, she could expect extreme punishment if she were accused of his murder. So she apparently thought her only option was to conceal the crime. She apparently tried to do this by cutting up the body and burning the pieces, possibly with her family's help (Young, p. 41). She had some time; Charles was reportedly murdered on December 22, 1831, and the warrant for Frankie's arrest was not issued until January 9, 1832 (Young, p. 131, has the record of this warrant, which was apparently copied into a small corner of a judicial document and is so poorly written that I doubt a court would accept it today).
Frankie, her father, her mother, and her brother were all taken into custody on January 10 -- although the charge against the father was quickly dropped. Isaiah Stewart was apparently able to get his wife and son out of jail by posting bond, but Frankie was not allowed to go free. (Young, p. 44; Patterson, p. 44, makes it sound as if Barbara and Blackstone Stewart were released without bond. ).
When the grand jury met in 1832, Frankie was formally charged with killing Charles; charges of aiding and abetting were considered against her mother and brother Blackstone, but no true bill was returned on the latter charges (Young, pp. 47-48; Patterson, p. 44). When the charge was read to Frankie, she immediately pled not guilty, and the trial quickly followed (Young, p. 48).
Young, pp. 49-51, says that the judge in the case was John Robert Donnell (1789-1864; often distorted to "Daniel" in folklore); the prosecutor was William Julius Alexander (1797-1857); Frankie was defended by Thomas Worth Wilson (1792-1863, who was a close relative by marriage of Alexander). Patterson, p. 45, has a portrait of Donnell (which is, however, physiologically impossible; no one has a neck that long. I suspect the artist painted the face from life and then faked the rest); p. 46 has a portrait of Alexander.
Patterson, p. 59, observes that Wilson apparently did not ask for a change of venue, despite the case being infamous in the area (making it hard to find an unbiased jury) -- and on the same page offers other hints that Wilson was not a very good lawyer. He suggests on p. 64 that Wilson wasn't very smart. On pp. 60-61, he offers evidence (very indirect) that he never ever heard her side of the story until long after she was sentenced -- and concluded that she was guilty of manslaughter, and his whole defense had been wrong.
We have only fragmentary records of the trial (which started on March 29, 1862; Patterson, p. 44), plus a report from one Henry Spainhour who was there but did not write about it until half a century later (Patterson, pp. 48-49) -- but there are good reasons to think it would be considered problematic today. Under the laws of the time, which said that the accused could not testify in their own defense, Frankie never got to state her side (Young, pp. 52-55).
Based on Spainhour's report, the physical evidence consisted of some blood in the Silver cabin, a few body parts alleged to be Charles's, and some metal from what were alleged to be Charles's burned shoes (Patterson, p. 49). It sounds like enough evidence to prove that someone was murdered, but not enough to prove that it was Charles, let alone who murdered him.
The trial lasted only two days. The case itself took only one to go to the jury. It seems that Frankie's lawyer, rather than argue self-defense, argued for her absolute innocence (her father may have been behind this. Powell, p. 1036, mentions the claim about her being unable to plead self-defense, although he sounds dubious about it). The jury was apparently nine to three in favor of innocence, but wanted additional evidence from the witnesses. Based on Patterson, p. 50, they were actually allowed to question the witnesses themselves -- an absolute violation of the rules of American trials, although permissible in British law in some circumstances. With no good way for the defense to respond, the jury went back and rendered a unanimous guilty verdict (Young, pp. 52-55).
That was on Friday, March 30, 1832. The following Monday, the judge ordered Frankie be hanged on July 27.
It is perhaps of note that it was not until 1932 that the Supreme Court "ruled that defendants in state capital cases were entitled to legal assistance." (Hall, p. 171.) Frankie had counsel, but it was what she could afford. Perhaps it's no surprise that she didn't have a great lawyer.
The defense of course wanted an appeal. But under the laws of the time, it was the judge, not Frankie's lawyer, who decided the issues for the appeal (Young, p. 55). And appeals at that time were limited in scope -- having a lousy lawyer wasn't a defense, because the defendants hired the lawyers! (It wasn't until 1984 that the Supreme Court finally established that a defendant could appeal for relief due to bad counsel; Hall, p. 172). So, basically, Frankie was stuck unless the judge decided to accept her side's grounds for appeal. He didn't. The appeal went to the North Carolina Supreme Court, which basically said that there was no failure in procedure, so the verdict would stand (Young, pp. 56-57). It went back to the lower courts so Frankie could be re-sentenced to death. Because the judges were rotating in and out at the time, this took a while (Young, p. 57), but the result was inevitable. In March 1833, she was sentenced to die on June 28, 1833 (Young, p. 69).
Interestingly, after the first result came down, people seemed to realize that Frankie had suffered spousal abuse, and a lot of people started to sympathize with her. There was a campaign to get her a pardon from two different governors (Young, pp. 58-59, 66-67, and elsewhere). Many prominent women directly referred to abuse in their appeal for clemency (Patterson, p. 125). The pardon campaign worked up quite a head of steam, helped no doubt by the delays in her execution, but nothing came of it.
With little else to hope for, on May 18, 1832, Frankie cut her hair, dressed as a man -- and escaped from jail (Young, p. 69). One wonders if the jailer helped her out -- he was one of those who had signed petitions for her pardon (Young, p. 70. Bobby McMillon's folktale version has Frankie's father bribing the jailer; Patterson, p.3 8). Alternately, might it have been her relatives who got her out, which would explain why they were afraid that she might confess? (Young, p. 71). In 1833, her father, his brother-in-law Jesse Barnett, and a third man would be charged as accessories in her escape, but that might just mean that they helped her once she got out. Stewart turned state's evidence against Barnett, who was convicted in September 1834 (Patterson, p. 47, 150-151), but the whole thing sounds too pat to me. In any case, the governor pardoned Barnett in early 1835 (Patterson, p. 48).
The escape did Frankie no good; she was recaptured before the end of the month. It was at this time that she supposedly made her confession (Young, p. 72), but, to repeat, it has not survived and it is not known who heard it, although it apparently figured in discussions about her fate.
As with everything else in the case, records about Frankie's execution are few (Young, p. 78), but there seems no doubt that it happened.
Supposedly ten thousand people came to see her hung. There were hopes that she would confess, but it is claimed that her father, Isaiah Stewart, called to her, "Die with it in you, Frankle" -- and she did (Powell, p. 1036; Patterson, p. 39; Bobby McMillon's preferred version was that her mother shouted this; Patterson, pp. 88-89). One really wonders what secret they wanted her to keep. Ironic that this song claims to be a gallows confession from someone who didn't confess on the gallows!
McMillon claimed that they dug multiple graves for her to keep the real one from being robbed (Patterson, p. 39).
Frankie's daughter Nancy Silver was apparently taken in by Frankie's relatives under an indenture (Young, p. 86), and the 1860 census shows her married to one David Parker, with four children; they eventually had two more (Young, p. 87). Her husband was a soldier in the Civil War, suffering three wounds and dying of the third in 1865 (Young, p. 87). Nancy remarried and had one more child in the 1870s (Young, p. 88). Thus Frankie probably has many descendants today (Young, pp. 171-190, traces some of them all the way to the end of the twentieth century), though apparently there was a legend that the family was "cursed" (Young, pp. 92-95; Patterson, p. 40, also mentions this though he points out that some of the Stewarts lived a long time). Indeed, Bobby McMillon, who inspired Patterson's book and is source of most of the details described in the early pages of Patterson, was himself descended from an uncle of Charles Silver and also was tied to the family by marriage (Patterson, p. 5).
Looking it all over, I can't help but think that we will never really know the story of Frankie Silver, but it certainly sounds as if she was more sinned against than sinning. Do I think she killed her husband? It is the easiest and hence the most likely hypothesis, but it's hard for me to believe that the evidence was compelling enough to constitute proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Certainly not enough to prove premeditated homicide!
There was apparently a documentary video called "The Ballad of Frankie Silver." The special North Carolina Folklore issue (XLVII.1) is devoted to this documentary. It has some material about the song and the history, but most of it has to do with the documentary instead. The Young book is probably a better source. And Sharyn McCrumb, who seems to make a habit of writing worthless historical novels about folk songs, contributed The Ballad of Frankie Silver in 1998. (To be fair, this does seem to have been a serious attempt to find an explanation for what happened -- but why not make it non-fiction.) Nonetheless, this achieved enough notoriety to be referred to in another mystery, Molly MacRae, Last Wool and Testament, Obsidian, 2012, p. 158 (chapter 158). There is no sign that I can see that MacRae realized that this was a true story inspired by a folk song.
There was also a ballet (not a song ballet, the dance kind of ballet!), "The Ballad of Frankie Silver"! (Patterson, p. 4; on pp. 181-182, Patterson lists other writings and performances based on the Silver story). And Patterson, pp. 26-27, says there is a Silver Family museum, though I couldn't locate it when I searched. - RBW
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