His name was Jim.

He was a slave in DeKalb County.

He was convicted of murder……and hung in 1845.

What is not known is that Jim was actually DeKalb County’s first hanging victim in 1845. In 1872 – 27 years apart, was the second hanging of John Presswood, Jr.   Both victims were young men.

Therefore, DeKalb County, Tennessee has had two (2) such legal hangings – not one (1) as was personally written earlier.

Imperiously, the first hanging took place in 1845 in the case of a slave named Jim, who was convicted of killing another slave.  Jim’s owner was a Mr. Payne who lived on Dry Creek, but moved to Alabama when he got in debt, wrote the late county historian Thomas G. Webb.    His property, including Jim, was attached for the debt, so Jim ran away and returned to Dry Creek.”

This is where Jim supposedly killed Isaac.

Educationally, it is known throughout African American history that slaves with only one proper name would take and identify with their owners, thus Jim, the slave, would officially and legally be known as Jim Payne.  The same scenario applies to the slave owners with the last names of League, Smith, Dowell, Tubbs, etc.

One of William Williams slave women was married to Isaac, who was owned by a neighboring farmer, William Avant.  Jim thought, rightly or wrongly, that Isaac was trying to turn him into the authorities, Webb continued.

On the night of January 11, 1843, “Issac was sleeping on a pallet in his wife’s cabin before the fire. His little girl slept on the pallet by his side.  Isaac then was shot through a crack in the cabin wall and died soon thereafter.  Jim was suspected and was eventually caught in a cave and was soon charged with the crime.  After two trials and an appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court, he was convicted and the conviction was upheld,” Webb continued.

The hanging gallows were located one-half north of

Smithville.  A large crowd from many locations was

present for the hanging.  Thirteen-year-old John A.

Fite of Alexandria, Tennessee came to the county

hanging “with a lot of other boys.”   He reported that

Jim was sitting on his coffin in the bed of a wagon. 

When he was asked by the sheriff if he had anything

to say, he said that three white men from Dry Creek

(One of whom was present at the hanging) gave him

the pistol and encouraged him to kill Isaac, that

otherwise, he never would have done the deed that

cost him his life, remembered Webb.

The only other legal hanging to take place in DeKalb County was that of John Presswood, Jr. in 1872.  (Presswood article on file in this newspaper’s office).

In conclusion, Webb lamented, “For some reason, the cases with the most lasting interest seem to be the ones involving murder.  Tennessee can sentence murderers to death by execution in the electric chair, but no one has been executed from DeKalb County since the 1960’s.  In earlier times, convicted murderers who received the death sentence were executed by a public hanging.  DeKalb County has had only two such hangings – Jim and Prescott.