Revisiting a North Carolina Massacre: Shelton Laurel, Part One

There is a decidedly darker mood in the United States than ever in our lifetimes, it seems. In just one example poll recently, one in five Americans agreed that violence is necessary to get the country back on track. With that in mind, it seems like a good time to remember what happened the last time the country acted on this, when we fought the Civil War. Between 1861 and 1865, at least 1,030,000 people were killed, including about 620,000 soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease—and 50,000 civilians. No major battles were fought in the North Carolina mountains, although there was one particularly dark Appalachian chapter of the bloody nationwide saga, the Shelton Laurel Massacre, which took place in Madison County NC.

Here, we revisit the first of a two-part series that originally published in 2021. The original article, with much more back story, is on our page here, and you can find these and 150 other episodes of Southern Songs and Stories on your podcast app of choice.

Historical marker in Madison County, NC

Songs heard in this episode:

“Bonaparte’s Retreat” by Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith & His Dixieliners

“Beautiful Dreamer” by Hesperus from A Civil War Scrapbook

“8th of January/Cumberland Gap/8th Day of January” by Sheila Kay Adams, from All The Other Fine Things

Southern Songs and Stories is a part of the podcast lineup of both public radio WNCW and Osiris Media, with all of the Osiris shows available here . You can also hear new episodes of this podcast on Bluegrass Planet Radio here. Thanks to Carol Rifkin for pointing me to much of the music here, to Sean Rubin for converting tapes of the show Over Home to digital format, and to Corrie Askew for producing the radio adaptations of this series on public radio WNCW, where we worked with Joshua Meng, who wrote and performed our theme songs.

The Shelton Laurel Massacre, Part Two: Could History Repeat Itself?

In the conclusion of this two podcast series, you get to hear some surprising facts about the Shelton Laurel Massacre and related events, which by themselves are still surprising to many people just considering the events of those tragedies. Even once you get past the shocking nature of the executions, there are lots of ironies and unexpected twists to the story. The whole region was a hotbed of conflict that at least on paper did not seem to make sense. Perhaps these pieces can only fit together once you begin by acknowledging that wars never make much sense, especially to the people fighting them. Maybe the only logical answer to the insanity that was the Civil War in Southern Appalachia was to go off the rails county by county, mountain valley by mountain top, town by countryside and kinfolk by kinfolk. The events in Shelton Laurel in 1863 were the Civil War in microcosm, with the two sides not hundreds or thousands of miles away in distance, experience and world view, but with those fighting each other living in the same place, with the same bloodlines, the same heritage.

Cover art to the historical novel And the Crows Took Their Eyes by Vicki Lane

Asheville Citizen-Times article on the Shelton Laurel Massacre from 1981

This episode features details on the Massacre itself as well as another big surprise that Vicki Lane, Sheila Kay Adams and Taylor Barnhill revealed in their interview, plus a theory on how the seeds of this terrible event were sown. Also featured is music about the Civil War and songs that were widely popular in that era.

Songs heard in this episode:

“Republican Spirit/Mississippi Sawyer” played by Jim Taylor, from The Civil War Collection (excerpt)

“The Secesh (Shiloh)” by John Hartford, from the compilation Songs of the Civil War (excerpt)

“Shy Ann” by Byard Ray from A Twentieth Century Bard (excerpt)

“Battle Cry Of Freedom” by Bryan Sutton from Divided & United: The Songs of the Civil War

Thanks for visiting! You can follow the series on podcast platforms everywhere. After that, it helps greatly when you give it a good rating and a review. Spreading awareness by giving this series a top rating, and even more so with a review, will make all of the topics and artists covered on this series more likely to be found by more people just like you. Southern Songs and Stories is a part of the podcast lineup of both public radio WNCW and Osiris Media, with all of the Osiris shows available here. You can also hear new episodes of this podcast on Bluegrass Planet Radio here. Thanks to Carol Rifkin for pointing me to much of the music here, to Sean Rubin for converting tapes of the show Over Home to digital format, and to Corrie Askew for producing the radio adaptations of this series on public radio WNCW, where we worked with Joshua Meng, who wrote and performed our theme songs. - Joe Kendrick

The Shelton Laurel Massacre, Part One: The Past That Would Not Die

There are stories where the characters and events are so extraordinary and gripping that one can miss their overall meaning. It can be easy to take stories like the one you are about to hear at face value, and leave their larger context unrealized. But even the most casual reading of the events and people of Madison County, North Carolina from 1863 should raise a lot of red flags about our own worst tendencies. Even a pulp fiction version of the Shelton Laurel Massacre would lend plenty of insight into the all too often dark heart of humanity. But pull the lens back and consider these events, their beginnings and repercussions in the arc of history and you might come to an even more chilling conclusion. What caused neighbors and kinfolk to terrorize and murder one another in the Appalachian mountains all those generations ago, what larger forces that worked to bring out the cruelty and violence this chapter of history reveals, and what hatred and divisions that earned the place the moniker “Bloody Madison” are not only in history books; they are with us today. It would be nice to think that because America went through its Civil War and Shelton Laurel had its Massacre that it cannot happen again. But once you get sight of the forest beyond all its trees in this bit of history, you might wonder.

Historical marker in Madison County, NC

Looking southeast from Vicki Lane’s home

This is the first of two episodes in which you will hear much about the Shelton Laurel Massacre as well as some other events during the Civil War in the region. Both sides of this conflict had heroes and villains in their ranks, with many larger than life characters involved.

Songs heard in this episode:

“Bonaparte’s Retreat” by Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith & His Dixieliners

“Beautiful Dreamer” by Hesperus from A Civil War Scrapbook

“8th of January/Cumberland Gap/8th Day of January” by Sheila Kay Adams, from All The Other Fine Things

Southern Songs and Stories is a part of the podcast lineup of both public radio WNCW and Osiris Media, with all of the Osiris shows available here . You can also hear new episodes of this podcast on Bluegrass Planet Radio here. Thanks to Carol Rifkin for pointing me to much of the music here, to Sean Rubin for converting tapes of the show Over Home to digital format, and to Corrie Askew for producing the radio adaptations of this series on public radio WNCW, where we worked with Joshua Meng, who wrote and performed our theme songs.

Taylor Barnhill and Vicki Lane at Vicki’s home near Marshall, NC 06-04-21

Going Over Home With Doc Watson

In May of 1989, Doc Watson was 66 years old. He was known around the world, and had already cemented his legacy, but was nowhere near the end of his achievements. With four Grammy awards under his belt, he had four more to go. He had yet to be inducted into the International Bluegrass Hall Of Honor, and was probably not anticipating that the National Medal Of Arts would be awarded to him in the coming decade. One of his great contributions to the music world had begun just the year before: the event which was born out of the tragedy of losing his son, MerleFest.

It was a time when more people were awaking to and actively participating in the culture that Doc Watson knew in his youth. Although he had been at the forefront of the folk music boom in the early 1960s, which was itself an exercise in national self-rediscovery, that music was largely ignored by the Baby Boomer generation. By the time the late 1980s rolled around, there was still a core of roots music adherents, but their numbers likely had been waning since The Beatles arrived.

Enter Taylor Barnhill and Sheila Kay Adams, then his wife. Taylor, an architect, and Sheila, an old-time performer and lover of mountain tales, took on a project to preserve and reinvigorate oral traditions of the Southern Appalachians: a live radio show they called Over Home. They had no experience being on the radio or with producing live events, outside of Sheila’s budding music career. But they had more than enough heart to make up for it, and a willing partner in a soon-to-be public radio station with a signal covering parts of six states, WNCW.

In this episode of Southern Songs and Stories, we bring you a one-of-a-kind performance from Doc Watson. Instead of playing music, Doc tells stories. You probably know that Arthel “Doc” Watson often told stories in between songs at his performances, but this is a whole show’s worth. He opens up even more than usual, with tales from his own family’s history; stories that will make you laugh, and one especially that is pretty chilling. These are stories that give you a glimpse into the world that Doc was born into almost a century ago, a world that was then not so different from the time a century before it when many of these tales took place. And maybe best of all, they are stories which give us a bit more understanding of Doc himself. 

You’ll hear from Over Home producer Taylor Barnhill about his remarkable live series as well as we journey back to Doc’s performance on May 27th, 1989, on the campus of Isothermal Community College in Spindale, NC. All this has been lying dormant for more than three decades, until now.

(L to R) WNCW host Marshall Ballew, Jack Lawrence, Doc Watson, and WNCW Program Director Dan Reed at WNCW in 1997. Photo: Linda Osbon Bost

Thanks for visiting Southern Songs and Stories, and I hope you might tell a friend about the podcast. You can subscribe to this series on your podcast platform of choice, and it helps even more when you give it a good rating and a review. Great ratings, and reviews especially, will make Southern Songs and Stories and the artists it profiles more visible to more people just like you. And it helps to spread awareness and make more people connected when you like and follow the show on our social media -- you can find those accounts linked on their icons in the masthead above. Southern Songs and Stories is a part of the podcast lineup of both public radio WNCW and Osiris Media, with all of the Osiris shows available at https://www.osirispod.com/. You can also hear new episodes of this podcast on Bluegrass Planet Radio at https://www.bluegrassplanetradio.com/. Thanks to Corrie Askew for producing the radio adaptations of this series on public radio WNCW. Our theme songs are by Joshua Meng. This is Southern Songs and Stories: the music of the South and the artists who make it. - Joe Kendrick