Gaston County, N. C., in the lower part of that State, adjoins York County, South Carolina, the State line dividing these two districts. In the north-easterly part of Gaston County, in the outskirts of Hoylestown, there came to live a family of mulatto people—or quadroons—in 1870, who were refugees from oppression, brutality and abuse of the Ku Klux Klan in Moore County, N. C., whence they had been banished after the husband had been shockingly scourged, and the lives of himself, wife, and three children threatened, unless he left Moore County within a fortnight from the night he was whipped.
At the earnest entreaties of his wife, who feared the next threatened visitation of the Klan, her husband consented to quit the place he had dwelt in some years, but where he had rendered himself obnoxious to the Democratic party around him, through his persistent advocacy of Republican sentiments, which he promulgated among his own race, causing them to cast their votes for the Radical ticket. And for this offence he was terribly whipped and ruthlessly driven from his home.
The name of this family was Noye, Aleck and Elfie, the father and mother had both been slaves, belonging originally to the Noye estate, in Moore County. Aleck was an ingenious fellow, and his brother Felix, had, twenty years previously, invented a peculiar reclining chair for the use of invalids; which to this day is manufactured largely in New England, upon the identical principle, originated by Felix, for which his old master took out a patent, and from the royalty of which he has realized a fortune first and last.
Aleck was a first rate mechanic and earned a good living. After the war, when he became free to exercise his natural talent for his own benefit, and had the right to vote, he became an ardent Radical, and proved a damaging subject among his brethren in the estimation of the Southern Democrats.
He was a brave fellow, and only at the urgent solicitation of Elfie, did he decide to quit his former residence, after the scourging above alluded to. But he went to Gaston County, found occupation readily and pursued his labor faithfully. The old love of “freedom of opinion” went with him, and his zeal for his colored fellow brethren soon cropped out, in his new location. He was “warned” to leave Hoylestown, just as he had been compelled by the mandate of the Klan to flee from Moore County, but refused to go.
On the night of February 7, 1871, Aleck was sitting with his family before the fire in his little cabin, after a hard day’s work; and the children were about the room, one of the little girls being at the moment beside his knee. The mother was busy getting the homely evening meal ready, and was just in the act of removing from before the glowing fire the pone and hoe cakes for supper, when the door of the hut flew open, suddenly, a musket shot rang out, and she fell head-foremost in upon the blazing logs, with a bullet through her brain!
Aleck sprang from his stool, caught his wife in his arms, and drew her out of the flames upon the floor. She never spoke from that instant, and, amid the screams of the terrified children, Aleck found himself in the gripe of two or three disguised ruffians, who entered in advance of half a dozen others of the Klan, who quickly pinioned him, and informed him that “his time had come.”
His wife, whom he tenderly loved, lay dead before his startled and dumfounded gaze, and he could not command himself to speak for a moment. Then he commenced to struggle with the brutes, the screams of his little ones bringing him back to himself. “What is this for,” he exclaimed. “Come along!” was the sharp reply of the leader of the gang, “You’re played out, and now you’re our meat!” And they swiftly bore the wretched father out of the hut, and away from his slaughtered wife and horrified crying babes.
Aleck was taken to the woods, half a mile distant, where the gang tore and cut his clothes off of him, and then proceeded to flay him, in accordance with the decision of the Camp in that county; the members of which had first been put upon his track by members of the Moore County Klan. Upon this second visitation, the edict was to “whip the nigger to death.” And they did the bidding of their leader, as the sequel proved, to the letter. He was cut and slashed, and beaten until the breath of life was almost gone out of his poor defenceless body, and then their victim was hurled into the chapparal, and left to the night wolves of the forest to devour.
It sometimes occurs that our strength increases in proportion to the strain that is imposed upon it. Wounds and rough hardship enure the sturdy, and provoke their courage, oftentimes, and there is a natural instinct in the heart of man, which, under the severest trials and abuses, steels his very nerves not to yield to the heaviest blows of calamity or adversity—mental or physical.