Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 August 1878 — ELIZA PINKSTON’S FIRST STORY. [ARTICLE]

ELIZA PINKSTON’S FIRST STORY.

W hat She Told the Physician Who Dressed Her Wounds—Negroes the Criminals. [From the Louisville Courier-Journal.] Island Desaibed, Ouachita Parish, La.,l July 2*. / As Eliza Pinkston has been again brought before the public, and as there is this time some truth in her statement, I deem it a fit time for me to state a few facts never before made public. Early the morning after her husband was killed and she wounded, I was sent for to see her in haste. Arriving at the place, I found her in a negro quarter, lying on a pallet, much excited and alarmed. Before examining and dressing her wounds, she told me Henry Pinkston had been killed, and that she was badly wounded, and believed that she was going to die. I said to her that I wanted her, before I did anything for her, to tell all about it, and tell me the truth, and who they were that did it. She told me she would tell me the honest truth; as she did not expect to live, she would tell me the “ solid truth.” She said: “Fifteen or twenty negroes came to our house sometime before day this morning and killed Henry and wounded mo, as you now see.” She said she was positive that it was none but negroes that did it all. When she said this a negro' woman in the quarter said to her that she wished they would come back that night and finish her, and that she herself had a good mind to take up something and kill her as she lay there. Eliza said to me, “See there ; they want to kill me because I will tell the truth and say it was negroes that killed Henry.” I examined and dressed her wounds, finding but one wound on her person that was, or might become, serious. She remained in the neighborhood several days, walking about from place to place until she was carried to New Orleans. I state in all candor, as a physician and surgeon, that there was nothing in her case that would necessarily prevent her from going where she wished, or that would confine her to a room. I make this statement in as brief and pimple a manner as possible, saying nothing about how she was wounded, as this is not the proper place to do it. I am a physician of nearly thirty years active practioe, and am well known is a large portion of this State. Can give the best of references In this State as to my integrity. I refer to the Hon. R. L. Gibson, the Hon. Lewis Bush, the Hon. S. F. Goode, Bishop Cener, the Rev. Linas Parker, D. D., Judge Robert Ray, the Hon. C. B. Wheeler, and to the entire community in which

I live.

A. S. HELMICK, M. D.