Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 December 1879 — A Terrible Southern Tragedy. [ARTICLE]

A Terrible Southern Tragedy.

Mrs. James Adams 1* ving near Lancaster, N. C., with her husband and three boys and two girls, came to the residence of Crenshaw, a neighbor, at twelve o’clock at night, begging for an exe, but insisted that no light be brought. Going out, Mr. Crenshaw discovered that the clothing was entirely burned from the body of the woman and that she was suffering intensely from the fire which baa enveloped her. Bhe was wrapped in a sheet and taken home. An hour and a half after being placed in her befl death kindly came to her relief, and she passed away without a’ word to those around her concerning the terrible picture which was soon to be opened up to them. Some of the neighbors, of whom there had by this time gathered quite a number, having occasion to go into a little shed-room connected with the house, encountered there a spectacle which, once looked upon is never to be forgotten. Iu one bed lay all five of the children, each weltering in its own blood, and all dead. Ail resting in natural positions—three of the children’s heads at the eud of the bed and the heads of the others at the foot —so much of repose was there in the scene and so little suggestion of violence of any kind, that the chance spectator would have said they were enjoying natural sleep. The bodies were still warm, but the blood was there to tell where the kuife had been. Lights were brought, aud examination revealed that not one little life had been spared by the distracted mother. In every case the jugular vein had been cut by some sharp instrument, and so painless was the death that not one child had moved. The eldest of the children, aged about eleven years, had been stabbed in two places, and the infant in three, but only upon the face of the eldest was there a scratch, and except upon the necks, from which ’he life hk>od had run out, there was uo sign of blood until the cover was removed and the bodies turned over. The husband had gone from home the day before, at the urgent solicitation of his wife, to stay two days at a brother’s.