William Andrews was an African American laborer who was lynched by a white mob in Princess Anne, Maryland on June 9, 1897. Andrews, then 17, was tried, convicted, and hanged all in one day after being accused of assaulting Mrs. Benjamin T. Kelley. [1]
On the afternoon of May 5, 1897, Mrs. Benjamin T. Kelley claimed that local African American laborer William Andrews, aka "Cuba" assaulted her in Marion, Somerset County. [2] Following these claims, Andrews was immediately arrested for the alleged attack on Kelley. He was moved to Baltimore City jail for protection from “lynch mobs” while awaiting trial. Around 11:00 a.m. on June 9, Andrews was brought to Main Street in Princess Anne, Somerset County where he was found guilty of the charges against him. Judge Henry Page sentenced Andrews to execution by hanging at the state's request. [3]
Once the court adjourned, a large mob began to grow outside the courthouse making it impossible for the officers to transfer Andrews to the nearby Somerset County jail. While handcuffed, William Andrews was ripped away from the arms of the officers by an infuriated mob that cheered after hearing a guilty verdict. Andrews was brutally kicked, punched, and beaten with all sorts of weapons until the crowd of people were satisfied. After the crowd realized Andrew Williams was still alive they dragged his body to the property of Z. James Doughtery, where he was hanged on a walnut tree until he was finally pronounced dead. His body remained on the walnut tree until around 2:30 p.m. on June 9, 1897. [4]
Princess Anne is a town in Somerset County, Maryland, United States, that also serves as its county seat. Its population was 3,290 at the 2010 census. It is included in the Salisbury, Maryland–Delaware Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is home to the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and the Teackle Mansion.
Salisbury is a city in and the county seat of Wicomico County, Maryland, United States. Salisbury is the largest city in the state's Eastern Shore region, with a population of 33,050 at the 2020 census. Salisbury is the principal city of the Salisbury, Maryland-Delaware Metropolitan Statistical Area. The city is the commercial hub of the Delmarva Peninsula, which was long devoted to agriculture and had a southern culture. It calls itself "The Comfortable Side of Coastal".
William Preston Lane Jr. was an American attorney and politician who served as the 52nd Governor of Maryland from 1947 to 1951.
The Eastern Shore of Maryland is a part of the U.S. state of Maryland that lies mostly on the east side of the Chesapeake Bay. Nine counties are normally included in the region. The Eastern Shore is part of the larger Delmarva Peninsula that Maryland shares with Delaware and Virginia.
WBOC-TV is a television station in Salisbury, Maryland, United States, affiliated with CBS and Fox. It is the flagship television property of the Milton, Delaware–based Draper Holdings Business Trust, and is co-owned with low-power NBC affiliate WRDE-LD and Telemundo affiliate WBOC-LD, as well as eight radio stations. All of the outlets share studios on North Salisbury Boulevard in Salisbury; WBOC-TV maintains secondary studios/office facilities in Dover, Delaware, and transmitter facilities in Laurel, Delaware.
WRDE-LD is a low-power television station in Salisbury, Maryland, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by the Draper Holdings Business Trust alongside dual CBS/Fox affiliate WBOC-TV and low-power Cambridge-licensed Telemundo affiliate WBOC-LD. WRDE-LD's news department is located on The Square in Milton, Delaware, though technical functions and most internal operations are based at WBOC-TV's studio on North Salisbury Boulevard in Salisbury. WRDE-LD's transmitter is located in Laurel, Delaware. WRDE-LD's programming is repeated on Salisbury-licensed WRUE-LD, with transmitter near Pocomoke City, Maryland.
Maryland Route 388 is a state highway in the U.S. state of Maryland. Known for most of its length as West Post Office Road, the state highway runs 2.38 miles (3.83 km) from MD 675 in Princess Anne east to the end of state maintenance east of Princess Anne. MD 388 was constructed in the early 1930s.
Maryland Route 675 is a collection of state highways in the U.S. state of Maryland. These two highways are sections of old alignment of U.S. Route 13 in Princess Anne in Somerset County and Delmar in northern Wicomico County. MD 675 was designated after US 13 bypassed Princess Anne in the late 1950s. MD 675B was assigned several years after US 13 bypassed Delmar in the mid-1950s. MD 675A existed in Pocomoke City before it was replaced by US 13 Business in the mid-1990s.
Joe Coe, also known as George Smith, was an African-American laborer who was lynched on October 10, 1891, in Omaha, Nebraska. Overwhelmed by a mob of one thousand at the Douglas County Courthouse, the twelve city police officers stood by without intervening. Afterward, the mayor called the lynching "the most deplorable thing that has ever happened in the history of the country."
In Forsyth County, Georgia, in September 1912, two separate alleged attacks on white women in the Cumming area resulted in black men being accused as suspects. First, a white woman reportedly awoke to find a black man in her bedroom; then days later, a teenage white woman was beaten and raped, later dying of her injuries.
George Armwood was an African American who was lynched in Princess Anne, Maryland, on October 18, 1933. His murder was the last recorded lynching in Maryland.
Matthew Williams was a black man lynched by a white mob in Salisbury, Maryland on December 4, 1931.
William Burns was a 22-year-old African-American man who was lynched on October 6, 1907, in Cumberland, Maryland for the alleged murder of white Cumberland police officer August Baker.
On February 9, 1893, Alfred Blount, an African American and a Chattanooga native, was taken from his jail cell in the county jail and brutally beaten, stabbed, and hanged from the Walnut Street Bridge in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Blount was charged with assault of a woman by the name of Mrs. M. A. Moore. Moore, 51 and widowed, claimed she was cleaning her house when a man entered through her back door requesting food. Moore, assuming it was a neighbor of hers, invited the man in and called out to her African-American house boy Sam to bring the man some food. Upon realizing Sam's absence, Moore herself went into the kitchen to prepare food before reporting being grabbed by the arm and attacked by the man. After hitting the man with her hand, Moore fainted and laid unconscious in her house before recalling the incident to her neighbor, Mrs. DeRochement.
Charles J. Otto is an American politician and farmer serving as a Republican member of the Maryland House of Delegates representing district 38A since 2011.
The Worcester Democrat was a weekly newspaper published from 1898 to February 22, 1973, in Pocomoke City, Worcester County, Maryland. It was founded by Samuel M. Crockett, a Democratic politician who served in the Maryland House of Delegates for two terms, 1920–1922. Crockett had learned the newspaper business as a young man working at the Somerset Herald in Princess Anne, Maryland, and was also owner of another local paper, the Peninsula-Ledger. In January 1921, the publication changed its name to the Worcester Democrat and the Ledger-Enterprise after it absorbed the successor of the Peninsula-Ledger, the Ledger-Enterprise. This remained the title until September 24, 1953, when it was changed back to its original Worcester Democrat. On March 1, 1973, the Democrat merged with nearby Snow Hill's Democratic Messenger to form the Worcester County Messenger. This newspaper remained in publication until at least 1980.
The lynching of Paul Reed and Will Cato occurred in Statesboro, Georgia on August 16, 1904. Five members of a white farm family, the Hodges, had been murdered and their house burned to hide the crime. Paul Reed and Will Cato, who were African-American, were tried and convicted for the murders. Despite militia having been brought in from Savannah to protect them, the two men were taken by a mob from the courthouse immediately after their trials, chained to a tree stump, and burned. In the immediate aftermath, four more African-Americans were shot, three of them dying, and others were flogged.
A mob of white Vigo County, Indiana residents lynched George Ward, a black man, on February 26, 1901 in Terre Haute, Indiana, for the suspected murder of a white woman. An example of a spectacle lynching, the event was public in nature and drew a crowd of over 1,000 white participants. Ward was dragged from a jail cell in broad daylight, struck in the back of the head with a sledgehammer, hanged from a bridge, and burned. His toes and the hobnails from his boots were collected as souvenirs. A grand jury was convened but no one was ever charged with the murder of Ward. It is the only known lynching in Vigo County. The lynching was memorialized 120 years later with a historical marker and ceremony.