Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 August 1886 — HORRIRLE STORY. [ARTICLE]

HORRIRLE STORY.

A Georgia degress Feeds a Pic--7 nio Party or Stewed Baby and Is Boasted in Turn. In Tattnall County, Georgia, last week, a negro named Samuel Frick left his daugto ter, aged 4 years, with a negress named Mary Hollenbeck to board during his absence at his employment at * turpentine still in a neighboring county. Yesterday Frick returned, and upon demanding his child was met with so many evasive and contradictory replies as to arouse a suspicion that something was wrong.’ A search of the premises resulted in the finding of half the child’s body hidden in a barrel which had originally contained salt pork. The pickle had not sufficed to prevent decomposition, and the negro was attracted to the barrel by the unnatural stench arising from it. By this time other negroes in the neighborhood had joined in the search, and when the discovery was made there were fifteen or twenty blacks about the premises. The irate father was on the point of braining the woman with an ax, when she fell on her knees and said she would confess everything if he would spare her life. It was decided to hear her story, but, as the sequence proved, she would have fared better had she maintained her silence. Two days after the child was placed in her care a negro picnic was given in the vicinity, and she was called on to prepare the dinner. Having no meat, and knowing that she would get no money unless she served some, she determined to kill the child and cook its flesh. Being somewhat under the influence of liquor, the fiendishness of the idea had no horrors for her, and she deliberately brained the child with an ax, dismembered it, and boiled the meat down into a stew with a heterogeneous collection of vegetables. When it was served the negroes remarked upon the peculiarity of its flavor, but nevertheless ate heartily. Several now allege that they were nauseated by the mess, but none of them were made seriously ill. At the conclusion of the narrative the fury of the hearers was ungovernable, and it was quickly decided to burn her alive at the stake. She was taken into a field and chained to a post fixed in the ground in the middle of a pile of inflammable pine, saturated with kerosene. When the match was applied the flames leaped high in the air, and the woman was soon ablaze. In fifteen minutes she fell among the blazing knots and was burned to a crisp. Nothing remained after the fire died out but a few charred bones and a ring which she had on one of her fingers. No attempt has been made to arrest any of those implicated in the affair, but an investigation by the Coroner and Sheriff of Tattnall County will probably be made.