Murder of Patsy Beasly, The

DESCRIPTION: Listeners are invited to hear the tale of a "harmless woman." "Patsy Beasly was her name, In Anson County where she was slain, Her little child alone was left, To live with others or starve to death."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1066 (NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal)
KEYWORDS: homicide children abandonment
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Aug 1844 - The body of Patsy Beasley found in Anson County, North Carolina. Some accounts say her young son had been left abandoned with her dead body with no means of taking care of himself
Oct 8, 1847 - Tom Nash, the probable father of Beasley's unborn child, is hung for her murder
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal, Douglas Helms, "The Murder of Patsy Beasly: The Story Behind the Folksong," Vol. XV, No. 2 (Nov 1967), p. 52, "The Murder of Patsy Beasly" (1 fragment, 1 tune)
Roud #11569
RECORDINGS:
Henry Griffin, "Patsy Beasley" (Hand-Me-Down Music: Old Songs, Old Friends - Vol. 1 Traditional Music of Union County, North Carolina, Folkways Records FES 34151, 1979)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Going Home to Die No More" (tune, according to NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal)
NOTES [679 words]: According to the notes in NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal, several people remembered the existence of this song, but the single stanza is all anyone recalled. But the history was remembered: Patsy Beasly (who already had one illegitimate child) was pregnant again, and was found murdered. The killer (and presumed father of her child), Tom Nash, was found out and eventually hung. Helms notes some similarities to the story of Tom Dula and Laura Foster, but the differences are also fairly significant. As a story, I find this one more affecting; Laura Foster doesn't seem to have been much more use to the world than was Tom Dula, but Patsy Beasley sounds like a decent person and her child didn't deserve to be orphaned.
Henry Griffin, whose (field) recording seems to be the only recording of this song, was also the main informant for the NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal article. The Folkways recording was made by Karen G. Helms and Otto Henry; presumably Karen Helms and Otto Helms, the author of the NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal article, are related. The recording has four stanzas; it adds the details "Down by the brook her body lay, The villain took her life away" and "Her skull was crushed, her hair was torn, Her arms were bruised to the bone," and concludes with a warning to "Get right with God, don't wait too late.
The Helms article tells a story which also occurs in Daniel W. Patterson, A Tree Accursed: Bobby McMillon and Stories of Frankie Silver, University of North Carolina Press, 2000, p. 96: "a local Primitive Baptist preacher 'opened a Sunday service by laying a large flint rock on the pulpit. He announced the murder of Patsy Beasley as his text and during the course of the sermon said, 'The man who killed Patsy Beasley is in this church house and I am going to smash his head with this rock.' Startled, a man named Tom Nash 'jumped through an open window and ran like a jack rabbit,' thus betraying his guilt."
There is one caution about all of this. The one source cited by NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal is an article by Heath Thomas. Thomas also had a finger in the ballad "Alec Whitley," which seems to be known only from his collection -- and some have considered Thomas to have made up details of the stories he told. I can't say one way or the other. Helms found others who had heard Patsy Beasley's story, at least, though he couldn't recover more of the song.
A note at genealogy,com says that Patsy Beasley's real name was Martha, and she was the daughter of John Beasley. However, the 1840 census records I tried to consult do not reveal a John Beasley, a Martha Beasley, or a Patsy Beasley in that part of North Carolina. Perhaps it's just that the relevant information has not been entered into the genealogy databses.
A review of the "Hand-Me-Down Songs (Union Co., NC)" recording at bluegrassmessengers.com says that a different man eventually was heard to say he had murdered Beasley, but it gives no details. Her first child was said to be about a year and a half old when Patsy was murdered.
Based on comparing Helms's sketch map with Google Maps, it appears that Beasley's home, and murder site, were just northwest of where where modern North Carolina highway 1459 crosses Richardson Creek. It's a rural area, farm fields broken up by woods, including along the creek. There are very few buildings in the area (which is in Anson County, just across the border from Union County); the closest address I can find is 8212 Fish Rd, Marshville, NC 28103, which is about 800-900 feet to the north or northwest of the spot. It is about thirty miles east of the center of Charlotte, North Carolina. Tom Nash's grave is probably somewhere near 6408 Carpenter Rd, Marshville, NC 28103. There doesn't seem to be much left of it, either. The church where the Primitive Baptist minister made is threat is probably close to the site of the New Home Baptist Church, 1617 New Home Church Rd, Peachland, NC 28133 (though there are so many Baptist churches in the area that if the congregation still exists, it might be one of the others). - RBW
Last updated in version 6.4
File: NCF15251

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