The purpose of the Black Sheet Sunday prompt is to highlight a black sheep of the family tree. Every one of us has skeletons in our closet, so to speak, but these black sheep had the unfortunate luck of their skeletons making the newspaper. That's where I found the story. There is always three sides to a story: his, hers and the truth. I am not so naive as to believe that the news printed the truth, but most of the time, the printed news pieces are all I have to go by. There is no judgment here; just sharing the stories.
Warren Price
In 1882, Warren James (or James Warren) Price shot and killed his son-in-law. He was arrested, found guilty of the charge, and hanged in Johnson County, Georgia.
The first account I'm going to present is a mixture of facts and an account written by Warren Price's 3rd great-granddaughter, Kristi Rawls, and published in The Wrightsville Headlight, Wrightsville, Georgia, on March 29, 1990. Then I will present the version shared by the courts.
Warren Price was born in Johnson County, Georgia in 1841. On May 20, 1861, he married Susan Alitia 'Susie' Ross (1840-1896). Over the next 10-12 years, they had several children. I have seven listed; there could have been more or less.
Susie Ross & Warren Price
In January of 1882, one of their daughters, Virginia 'Jinnie' or 'Jennie,' married Romanus F Perry, also of Johnson County. Jinnie was 15 years old; Romanus was 22. After about three month, Jinnie was expecting their first child. Their marriage quickly went sour. Jinnie moved back home with her parents and told her father that she never wanted to see Romanus again.
Well, Romanus was not giving up that easy. He would "sneak" over to see Jinnie late at night. He would go to her window and beg her to come back home. It was not a secret that he was doing this, and Jinnie's father, Warren, told Romanus in no uncertain terms to not come back around or else he would kill him.
So on the night of August 31, 1882, Warren Price heard rustling in the cornfield beside his house. He assumed it was Romanus. He stepped out onto the porch and called out a warning to Romanus. He told him to leave or he was going to shoot him. The rustling continued, and Warren raised his gun and shot toward the cornfield. Perhaps it was just intended to be a warning shot, but unfortunately, Romanus was hit and he died shortly thereafter. The court version says it was a few days later he died, but his date of death is August 31, so he died soon after he was shot.
Warren was arrested and tried... the very next month. He was tried in Johnson County during the September 1882 court term. That was not much time for his attorneys to prepare for trial. He supposedly had good attorneys, but it not enough. Warren was found guilty of the murder of Romanus F. Perry, his daughter's husband. There was a motion made for a new trial, so sentence was not handed down at that time.
The following year, in September of 1883, a new trial was set, but in November, it was decided that Warren Price would be retried in neighboring Emanuel County. Flash forward another year to September 1884, he was again convicted of murder. He was sentenced to hang.
Warren was held in the Washington County jail until the time of his hanging. On the night before, law officials left the jail unlocked and a horse tied outside, but Warren refused to escape. He said that if he could not live with his family as a free man, he did not want to live at all.
Family lore is that Warren walked to the gallows the next day smoking his pipe.
Again, law officials gave him the opportunity to escape. They left him there at the gallows, unrestrained, while they went to lunch. Warren's family begged him to run. His reply was that he had killed Perry, and that he would hang for it.
Warren Price died on December 12, 1884, a mere three months after sentencing. He was hanged at the edge of the city limits of Wrightsville on the Adrian Highway. He was buried in the Price Cemetery in Pringle in Johnson County.
Warren has the distinction of being the first man hanged in Johnson County.
It is a tremendously sad story that brought heartache to everyone involved. The reverberations could be felt for lifetimes. Jinnie and Romanus's baby boy, named Rufus Franklin Perry, was born on January 5, 1883. The story is that while Jinnie and the Price family were at the hanging, Romanus Perry's family came and took the baby. Jinnie did not see him for 16 years.
On September 26, 1884, right about the time her father was on trial, Jinnie married Mandol Anathan Powell (1859-1930). They had 8 children together and were married for about 46 years. What bearing does this information have, you may ask. Well, it seems that Mandol was courting Jinnie when she was 14, around 1880, before she married Romanus. The only reason they broke up is Mandol got typhoid fever and didn't come around for awhile. Hearing rumors, Jinnie assumed he had jilted her. So she married Romanus. (Information provided by my cousin-in-law, Judy Harrison [luvmyporsh].)
Now for the version printed in the newspapers at the time. They are decidedly different in their accounts in that some suspected Jinnie of setting up the murder in order to be free to be with Mandol. There does seem to be quite a bit of Jinnie blaming.
From the Ledger-Enquirer, Columbus, Georgia,
Saturday, April 14, 1883, Page 3
From The Macon Telegraph, Macon, Georgia,
Saturday, December 13, 1884, Page 1
There is another version out there - the truth. I am sure it is located somewhere in between the two versions I have presented here today. We will never know the details of that truth.
Personally, I think the moral of this story is if you do make a mistake or a wrong, own up to it and take the punishment. That is what makes Warren Price more than just a black sheep; he was also a good man who made a mistake.
Warren Price was my 2nd cousin, 6x removed. Our common ancestors were John Moore and Sarah Norris.
