Public Executions in Lynchburg, Part 4
By Christian Crouch, Assistant Curator and Museum Technologist
A short while ago, this author brought you some stories about executions in Lynchburg (which can be found here) which sought to identify the six known men executed in Lynchburg’s history. The story I present today, of one Joe Higgenbotham, was originally going to be added as an addendum to the other stories, but after finding an absolute wealth of information and a day-by-day account of this case, it was decided to write a full individual blog post about him. Similar to the stories before his, this story contains graphic content that may not be suitable for all readers and has graphic descriptions of a hanging, rape, and attempted murder.
Joseph “Joe” Higgenbotham seemed to be a somewhat quiet and reserved, yet well respected man before the events of 1902. He was “raised in one of Lynchburg’s most respectable and prominent families” and before 1902 had worked as a janitor for First Presbyterian Church. He had worked two years as a porter (similar to a janitor with some added responsibilities) at the Floyd Street School, a white-only school located on Monroe Street near Sixteenth[1], which is today the area housing the Diamond Hill Recreation Center. Joseph lived with two other Higgenbothams of unknown relation at 1402 Jackson Street: Peter and Edmonia Bibie Higgenbotham.
Ralph and Bertha Webber at the beach with their twin boys. Photo submitted by Webber family descendants. c.1915
The victim of his alleged crime was Bertha May Winslow Webber, a woman from Wytheville, North Carolina, who had moved to Lynchburg some time between 1900 and 1901 to marry Ralph Webber. Ralph Webber was from Saco, Maine, where he worked for the Saco & Pettee Machine Shop in his early life alongside his brother and other members of the Webber family. Sometime between 1899 and 1900, Ralph came to Lynchburg, Virginia, to work as an overseer or superintendent in the Lynchburg Cotton Mill. The two lived their early married life in a home at 1615 Monroe Street.
Higgenbotham and the Webbers could have crossed paths as early as their first day moving into their home. The Floyd Street School, where Higgenbotham worked, was situated directly across the street from the Webber household, where he could have noticed a young, newly married couple furnishing their new home. According to later newspaper reports, Ralph had a very regular schedule as a superintendent, one that Higgenbotham was easily able to determine. Higgenbotham allegedly “had his eyes on Mrs. Webber for several weeks, but had never planned the crime.”[2] Then, roughly a year later, on the fateful day of January 11, 1902, someone broke into the Webber house.
In an attempt to not assume guilt upon Higgenbotham, as we can have no real way of knowing his actual whereabouts or actions and instead having to rely entirely upon a third party to describe the events, the author has decided to anonymize the following paragraphs detailing the crime.
According to various reports, the morning of the 11th was no different than any other day for the Webbers. Ralph and Bertha woke up and proceeded through their normal routine and, as usual, Ralph left the home before daybreak. Shortly after his departure, Bertha heard “someone walking on the front porch” and fled out the front door to stay with her neighbor, Mrs. W.T. Burton. She stayed until the sun had risen and presumably the stranger had gone. After Mrs. Webber had gone to stay with her neighbor, the assailant pried open a window on the back side of the house with a chisel and worked his way through the various empty rooms. Determining, after a short investigation, that Mrs. Webber was not there, he entered the Webber bedroom to lie in wait. As day broke, around 7 a.m., Mrs. Webber left the household of her neighbor entered the home from the back door, advanced through the kitchen, and eventually went to her bedroom, situated to the right of the front door. [Graphic Content Warning] Immediately after Mrs. Webber entered the room, the assailant leapt from behind the door and attacked. The man grabbed her throat, threatened to kill her if she shouted or made noise in any way, and he proceeded to rape her. Mrs. Webber recounted in her courtroom testimony that the assailant must have known her and her husband’s schedule because when she threatened that her husband would come home, the attacker replied, “You can’t fool me; I know your husband does not come back this time of day.” At further insistence that her sister would be by at noon, the attacker was similarly unphased.
The house pictured, located at 1615 Monroe St., was built in 1902 and most likely replaced the home lived in by the Webber's.
Around 30 minutes after the assault began, the man got up from the bed and reportedly said, “Well, I reckon I’d better be going,” and made his way to the door. As he did so, Webber struggled to stand and right herself using the bed, gaining the attention of the attacker who then stated, “If I leave you alive you will tell on me and get me into trouble.” He then pulled out a short knife and attempted to cut Webber’s throat. The first blow was blocked at the expense of Mrs. Webber's fingers, which shielded her neck from the attack but were deeply wounded. However, the attacker was undeterred. He then struck Mrs. Webber with his hand, throwing her into a daze on the floor, placed his knee upon her head and thrust the knife down into her neck; pulling upwards toward her jaw to complete his purpose. Mrs. Webber, by luck or by strategy, positioned herself slightly under her bed, hiding her neck and head from further attack, and remained still. The attacker, convinced of her immediate, or at least eventual, death hastily departed the room and exited through the back door. According to the Richmond Times, “Mrs. Webber got to her feet and dragged herself to the front porch, and thence through the front gate, along the front fence, to the front gate of the yard of her neighbor, Mrs. R.B. Wood...every step that she took was marked by blood, even the fence rails and the sides of the doors and gates being stained with great red blotches.”[3] Having no voice left within her, she collapsed quietly into unconsciousness on those steps mere feet from safety.
As luck would have it, a local barber named Coleman Christian was walking nearby and noticed Mrs. Webber. As far as can be ascertained, Christian and the man who eventually got the credit for finding Mrs. Webber, Charles Hamlet, were not necessarily known to each other.
Although Christian, a Black man, was the first to find Webber, he is only mentioned in the local newspaper account. In every other account, Hamlet, a white man, was given full credit as Webber’s savior. Hamlet gathered the help of a Dr. Samuel Lile of the St. Andrews Home hospital. Dr. Lile came as quickly as possible with a small number of nurses but, even in his haste, Mrs. Webber was “absolutely pulseless and her extremities were cold.”[4] Mrs. Webber was then moved to a bed inside and healed to the best of Dr. Lile’s ability. According to his testimony, “the cut was wide and deep, extending from the muscles on one side of the throat to the muscles on the other side...The external jugular vein was cut, but fortunately the internal jugular was only nicked.”
According to a later confession by Higgenbotham,[5] he made his way from the back of the home, through a garden, to Seventeenth Street, down Taylor Street and towards the railroad, and from there to Fishing Creek near a cotton mill. Upon arriving at Fishing Creek, he washed his hands but “did not wash the coat sleeve at all, nor his shirt or knife.” He rolled his sleeves up to hide the blood staining the ends and then went “by way of Camp Davis” through the three or so blocks it took to reach the Floyd Street School. He entered the school, removed his bloody clothing and weapon, stashed them in the corner of the boiler room, donned clean clothing, and then went back outside. Seeing a crowd gathered at the Webber house across the street, Higgenbotham, presumably overwhelmed with curiosity, joined in looking on at Mrs. Webber being tended to. He apparently “mingled in the crowd”[6] with those around, talking about how the “offender should be strung up,”[7] all while watching his own handiwork unfold.
The prime, and seemingly only, suspect (Joe Higgenbotham) was apprehended within about 48 hours of the crime. Webber had a moment of lucidity during her surgery during which she stated, “Doctor, it has just come to me that the negro who attacked me was the janitor at Floyd School.” The description of the man she gave was that he was “of light build and had a complexion almost white...He was clean shaven and was well dressed.” If not for the identification by Webber, it is very likely that Higgenbotham would not have been caught due to the police assumption that the offender had caught a train to a nearby city. An overwhelming amount of resources were spent combing the tracks and trains all around Lynchburg and sending telegrams to stations all around. It seems that they were so certain of this, they didn’t really bother looking too closely around Lynchburg. In addition, a large reward of around $500 was taken up by local citizens, and news was distributed in neighboring areas. Beyond that, John J.S. “Hurricane” Branch, a renowned detective, was brought in to help with the investigation. His bloodhounds were famous throughout Virginia and apparently gained some amount of recognition country-wide - though they unfortunately uncovered little in this particular case. The bloodhounds tracked to Fishing Creek but from there they made a deliberate move towards what is today the Presbyterian Cemetery off of Grace Street. In the eventual confession of Higgenbotham, he states that he “was positive that he did not go near the Presbyterian Cemetery,” diminishing the celebrity reputation of the hounds.
On Sunday, January 12, Higgenbotham was arrested and taken to the local jail in Lynchburg. That same morning, the Floyd School was searched, and major pieces of evidence were found in the boiler room: a four-bladed pocket knife, which was bloodied and “put to rough use,” a pair of bloody pants, and a new cap. Higgenbotham retorted that the knife he had been given was a gift from a teacher, had an iron handle, and was “too dull to sharpen a pencil.” Attempts were also made to find the sleeves from Higgenbotham’s shirt that were missing upon his arrest but were unsuccessful. Higgenbotham stated that his sleeves had simply worn off from use during his work in the summertime. Dr. Lile discovered a small area of the remaining sleeve on Higgenbotham had been stained and took the piece for further study. Sometime later in the day, Miss Mildred Cabell, who may have been visiting a friend in the area at the time, identified Higgenbotham as the man she saw running away from the Webber household on the morning of the 11th. The final piece of evidence on the 12th seems to have come in the form of scrapings from Higgenbotham’s fingernails. Dr. Lile, the physician who saved Mrs. Webber, identified the scrapings as “blood stains and clots.” His identification was reviewed by an “expert at microscopic investigation,” Dr. Morrison, and confirmed.
As news of the event spread, sentiment grew for vigilante justice. Local citizens even formed a mob in front of S. O. Fisher’s gun store and threatened to break windows and take weapons for use against Higgenbotham. In response to these threats of violence, Mayor G. Woodville Smith and the local sheriff contacted Governor Andrew Jackson Montague, who granted his full support of transferring the prisoner to Roanoke and calling in the local militia. The governor then stated “a lynching in Lynchburg would be a blow to the city and State.” Other than the prisoner stagecoach becoming briefly lost for a few hours that night and the next morning in transit to Roanoke, the transfer went smoothly. Monday night, the 13th, a crowd formed at the Lynchburg jail consisting of “many men from the adjacent country” who were of the opinion that the sheriff was lying to them and secretly keeping Higgenbotham in the Lynchburg jail instead of transferring him. A few “ringleaders” were identified by the officers and were given access to the jail by Sergeant Samuel H. Johnson to give testimony towards the absence of Higgenbotham. The crowd dispersed by ten o’clock that evening.
On Tuesday the 14th, a bloody shirt collar was found in a cigar box in the Floyd Street School boiler room and the chisel, allegedly used to pry open the back window into the Webber home, was found in the schoolyard. Items from previous crimes allegedly committed by Higgenbotham were also found in the boiler room.
Nearly a week went by without incident until a correspondent for The News in Lynchburg went to visit Higgenbotham on Sunday the 19th. The correspondent laid out the evidence stacked against Higgenbotham, who "stuck to his claim of innocence, but it was noticeable that he weakened considerably.” He stated that there was definitely “no blood” on his iron-handled pocket knife, that he had not worn the bloodied coat since before the 10th, and that Mildred Cabell had most likely seen him at the jail before identifying him. He also maintained that Mrs. Webber couldn’t identify him because “he is not the man.”
Mrs. Webber had been recovering well from her wounds during this time. Although her doctors recommended three weeks of rest, Mrs. Webber and her husband travelled to Roanoke to attempt to identify her attacker. Upon entering the room to identify Higgenbotham, she stated “you have the right man, the very man,” quickly following with, “you have not got me as near dead as you thought you had!” Higgenbotham confessed that night to an officer at the jail saying “Tell Dr. Lile I am guilty. I confess, and ask him to do what he can for me.” Dr. Lile then travelled there and gathered his full confession.
January 22 saw the arrival of Higgenbotham into Lynchburg along with seven companies of state militia members - described as “several hundred” men total. Higgenbotham was taken by train from Roanoke to Lynchburg and escorted to the Lynchburg jail where he was handed over to Sergeant Johnson once again. A perimeter was set up that night and no one was allowed within a full city block of the jail and courthouse (now the Lynchburg Museum). At 10 o’ clock on Thursday the 23rd, the trial commenced with Judge Frank P. Christian presiding. Lynchburg officials struggled to gather a panel of impartial jurors, and it was debated whether to gather jurors from other cities or to just fill the vacancies with Lynchburgers. Eventually, a group of 20 men from Danville were chosen, only one of which was African American. Higgenbotham reportedly sat calmly and tapped his foot on the floor while awaiting the proceedings. Spectators noted that Higgenbotham’s demeanor “was quiet, and his every word and action showed very conclusively that he recognized the utter hopelessness of the awful doom which he had brought upon himself.” Higgenbotham plead guilty, and when asked if he understood the full penalty of a guilty verdict would be death he replied gravely with, “Why, certainly.” Four witnesses were heard: Officer Vaughan, who retold the method of investigation; Mildred Cabell, who identified Higgenbotham; Dr. Lile, who retold the injuries to Mrs. Webber; and finally, Mrs. Webber herself. In just nine minutes, the jury reached a verdict. Higgenbotham was to be executed for his crimes. The judges final remarks are as follows:
You are a young boy. You have been educated, and you should have known better. You have committed a crime that is one of the most heinous in the history of the State, one that has required the exercise of nearly all the power of the Commonwealth to prevent violence[8] . The jurors are men who have never known you or seen you and in their judgement they have been unbiased. The sentence of the court is that you be committed to the sergeant for safe keeping and conveyed to Roanoke and there kept until the 24th day of February, and on that day between the hours of sunrise and sunset, you be hanged by the neck until you are dead; and may God have mercy on your soul.
Things were quiet in Lynchburg in the days leading up to the 24th of February. Higgenbotham was transferred back to Lynchburg and brought to the jail at around 2 o’clock in the morning where he slept for a very short time. Around 4 o’clock he was visited by Rev. Downing who counseled and prayed with him. Rev. Bernard Tyrrell, pastor of Diamond Hill Baptist Church, also accompanied Higgenbotham until the final moments.
Rev. Bernard Tyrrell, Past of Diamond Hill Baptist Church. From the Manual of the Theadelphic Literary Society of Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan, 1900
[Graphic content warning] At 6 o’ clock Higgenbotham was served breakfast, and an hour later he was visited by his stepmother and Tyrrell’s wife. His stepmother reportedly said, “though this would be their last meeting on earth, through the mercy of God they hoped to meet in heaven.” The nearby ministers then sang out a few hymns, “My Faith Looks Up to Thee,” “Fade, Fade Each Earthly Joy: Jesus is mine,” and “Shalt We Meet with Christ, the Saviour.” This meeting was kept short, and upon parting his stepmother held him and wept. At 8:13 a.m. Higgenbotham was led to the gallows, which were situated inside of the Lynchburg jail, presumably in the exterior yard, on a platform about 10 feet square. He was read the punishment for his crimes as indicated by the order of the court, and had a black hood slipped over his head. He offered this to say as his final words, “Dear friends, the time has come for me to hang for a crime of which I am guilty. It was a terrible crime and I’m sorry for that and all my sins. Men may not forgive me, but I feel that God will. I know that I’ll be saved because Jesus died for sinners.” In the last moments, he said “Good-bye, friends, meet me in Heaven.” The platform dropped, and Higgenbotham was pronounced dead at 8:40 a.m.
Mr. and Mrs. Webber moved away from Lynchburg shortly after their harrowing experience. Mr. Webber moved on to become a foreman of a local mill in Laurinburg, North Carolina, and he and Mrs. Webber eventually bore twins. Mr. Webber unfortunately committed suicide 31 years to the exact day of his wife’s assault in 1933 via a household poison nicknamed “Paris Green,” commonly used as a rodenticide and insecticide. Mrs. Webber survived him and lived another 20 years, passing away in 1953 at the age of 77.
Photo Courtesy of Chris Goulet at English Wikipedia
This recounting ends the stories of the six men who were executed in Lynchburg and their various alleged crimes. It is very important to keep in mind that all of these men could easily have been innocent of any crimes levied against them. The author can only tell of what was found and rely on investigative work that was done 100 years or more in the past and assume its validity. Throughout American history Black individuals were unfairly punished far more than than their white counterparts. In particular, between 1900 and 1999 there were no white individuals executed in the entire state of Virginia for the crime of rape, while 48 Black men were. Take all of these stories with a grain of salt and consider that errors may have been made in their investigations and that the justice was not always blind. Were some or all of these men guilty? Possibly. Were some innocent? Equally possible. The author hopes to encourage those who enjoy history and to look into strange and largely undocumented history with a modern eye. Follow the rabbit trails of research and see where you end up.
Thank you to the descendants of Ralph and Bertha Webber that assisted me with research and generously offered the usage of family photos for this blog post and specifically Ms. Connie (Webber) Guérin for being available for questions and being so amenable!
Do you have any more information about these events or key people? Are you are a descendant of Higgenbotham, Webber, or Winslow? Do you have any photographs of them or their families? If so, we want to know! Please contact the Lynchburg Museum at museum@lynchburgva.gov or (434) 455-6226.
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[1] 1907 Lynchburg City Directory p.33
[2] Lynchburg Newspaper P.19
[3] The Times, Richmond, Jan 12
[4] Ibid.
[5] LB Papers, p. 18
[6] LB paper p. 19
[7] January 17 newspaper
[8] https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/state-and-federal-info/state-by-state/virginia