In 1916, Erwin was a railroad boom town, home to the Cincinnati, Clinchfield, and Ohio Railroad's repair facilities, "sprouting like a boy growing too fast for his own britches," according to longtime resident Hank S. Johnson. The population of Erwin (which was supposed to be called Ervin, in honor of the man who donated 15 acres of land for the town, but was misspelled by a postal worker) nearly tripled in the first 16 years of the century. Makeshift boardwalks stretched above the ankle-deep yellow mud in the streets.
The Clinchfield line used to carry coal out of the Tennessee mountains; Clinchfield and Blue Ridge Pottery were the major employers in Erwin. For decades, the railroad yards were the busiest place in town.
Now, the yards are quiet: pigeons roost in the old passenger station, and most of the tracks are dull from disuse.
This is where Murderous Mary, a five-ton cow elephant with the Sparks Brothers Circus, was hung by the neck from Derrick Car 1400 on September 13, 1916. The story of why and how Mary died is, of course, obscured by time and countless retelling: an example of the best and worst of oral history. It is tragic, absurd, excessive: quintessential turn-of-the-century America.
Instinctively, the Harmons reached for their guns. It was the second year of the French and Indian War, and the Shawnees weren't to be trusted. Five months earlier, they'd swooped down onto the tiny nearby settlement of Draper's Meadows, murdering four, wounding two, and taking five hostages.
So Charlie did the best he could, traveling around the South, putting up advance posters and enticing folks with a noon circus parade prior to the day's two performances. Sparks posters claimed a certain degree of moral superiority:
"Twenty-five years of honest dealing with the public!"
"Moral, entertaining, and instructive!"
"The show that never broke a promise!"
What else did Sparks offer? Educated sea lions. Greasepainted and powdered dogs and humans, posing like Greek statues. Clowns. The Man Who Walks Upon His Head. And elephants.
Mary was billed as "the largest living land animal on earth"; her owner claimed she was three inches bigger than Jumbo, P.T. Barnum's famous pachyderm. At 30 years old, Mary was five tons of pure talent: she could "play 25 tunes on the musical horns without missing a note"; the pitcher on the circus baseball-game routine, her .400 batting average "astonished millions in New York."
Rumor and exaggeration swarmed about Mary like flies. She was worth a small fortune: $20,000, Charlie Sparks claimed. She was dangerous, having killed two men, or was it eight, or 18?
She was Charlie Sparks' favorite, his cash cow, his claim to circus fame. She was the leader of his small band of elephants, an exotic crowd-pleaser, an unpredictable giant.
On Monday, September 11, 1916, Sparks World Famous Shows played St. Paul, Va., a tiny mining town in the Clinch River Valley.
Which is where drifter Red Eldridge made a fatal decision. Slight and flame-haired, Red had nothing to lose by signing up with Sparks World Famous Shows: he'd dropped into St. Paul from a Norfolk and Western boxcar and decided to stay for a while. Taking a job as janitor at the Riverside Hotel, Eldridge found himself pushing a broom and, then, dreaming of moving on.
Eldridge was hired as an elephant handler and marched in the circus parade that afternoon. It's easy to imagine that what he lacked in skill and knowledge, he made up for with go-for-broke bravado. A small man carrying a big stick can be a dangerous thing.
Version I. After the Kingsport performance, Red Eldridge was assigned to ride Mary to a pond, where she could drink and splash with the other elephants. According to W.H. Coleman, who at the tender age of 19 witnessed the "murder":
There was a big ditch at that time, run up through Center Street, ...And they'd sent these boys to ride the elephants... There was, oh, I don't know now, seven or eight elephants... and they went down to water them and on the way back each boy had a little stick-like, that was a spear or a hook in the end of it... And this big old elephant reach over to get her a watermelon rind, about half a watermelon somebody eat and just laid it down there; 'n he did, the boy give him a jerk. He pulled him away from 'em, and he just blowed real big, and when he did, he took him right around the waist... and throwed him against the side of the drink stand and he just knocked the whole side out of it. I guess it killed him, but when he hit the ground the elephant just walked over and set his foot on his head... and blood and brains and stuff just squirted all over the street.
Version II. As reported in the September 13, 1916 issue of the Johnson City Staff, Mary "collided its trunk vice-like [sic] about [Eldridge's] body, lifted him 10 feet in the air, then dashed him with fury to the ground... and with the full force of her biestly [sic] fury is said to have sunk her giant tusks entirely through his body. The animal then trampled the dying form of Eldridge as if seeking a murderous triumph, then with a sudden... swing of her massive foot hurled his body into the crowd."
Version III. Maybe Mary was simply bored, as a staff writer for the Johnson City Press-Chronicle suggested in 1936. "The elephant's keeper, while in the act of feeding her, walked unsuspectingly between her and the tent wall. For no reason that could be ascertained, Mary became angry and, with a vicious swish of her trunk, landed a fatal blow on his head."
Version IV. Or did Mary kill Red Eldridge because she was in pain? Erwin legend has it that Mary had two abscessed teeth, which caused her such agony that she went berserk when Eldridge tapped her with his elephant stick. The infections were, of course, discovered only after Mary was killed.
Regardless of the details, the end was the same -- a man dead. Justice to be served. And besides, Charlie Sparks was no fool: no town in Tennessee would invite his circus to perform with a certifiably rogue elephant. Johnson City, where performances were scheduled for September 26, had already passed a privilege-tax ordinance restricting carnivals' operations within city limits, in order to protect its citizens from wholesale fleecing; it was common knowledge that Johnson City officials were looking for an excuse to ban all traveling shows. As valuable as Mary was, she had to go.
The problem was, how?
Guns, of course, were the first course of action. Just after Eldridge's death, blacksmith Hench Cox fired his 32-20 five times at Mary; the story goes that the bullets hardly phased her. "Kill the elephant. Let's kill him," the crowd began chanting. Later, Sheriff Gallahan "knocked chips out of her hide a little" with his .45, according to witness Bud Jones. But the circus manager stated, "There ain't gun enough in this country that he could be killed"; another approach would have to be attempted.
Someone suggested electrocution: "They tried to electrocute her in Kingsport -- they put 44,000 volts to her and she just danced a little bit," railroader Mont Lilly claimed. Others report that electrocution was never an option, because there wasn't enough power running in the railroad yards to affect Mary. (Since most American railroads continued to use steam locomotives until the 1930s, it's curious that railroad electrocution was even a possibility.)
Other reports suggest a third execution method: hooking Mary to two opposing engines and dismembering her, or crushing her between two facing engines. Both were dismissed as too cruel.
And so it was decided, instead, that Murderous Mary would be hung by the neck from a derrick car the next day.
More than 2,500 people gathered to watch Mary swing near the turn-table and powerhouse on that drizzly afternoon; perhaps the number of eyewitnesses, as well as the unforgettable, sad spectacle of the event, explains the consensus on this part of the story.
One of those witnesses, Myrtle Taylor, remembered that every child in Erwin was at the Clinchfield Yards. "And they took the other elephants and Mary down Love Street from the performance to the railyards, trunk to tail. We kids hung back because we were scared to death, but still we wanted to see it."
Wade Ambrose, who was 20 at the time Mary was hung, recalls that the roustabouts chained Mary's leg to the rail, then drove her companions back around the roundhouse.
"They had a time getting the chain around her neck. Then they hooked the boom to the neck chain, and when they began to lift her up, I heard the bones and ligaments cracking in her foot. They finally discovered that she'd not been released from the rail, so they did that."
It doesn't seem surprising that the chain from which Mary hung snapped shortly after she was raised off the ground. It was, after all, just a 7/8" chain, and Mary weighed 10,000 pounds. She hit the ground and sat upright, immobilized from the pain of a broken hip.
"It made a right smart little racket when the elephant hit the ground," says eyewitness George Ingram, with admirable understatement.
Seeing Mary loose, not knowing that she had broken her hip and couldn't move, the crowd panicked and ran for cover. Then one of the roustabouts "ran up her back like he was climbing a small hill and attached a heavier chain"; the winch was put in motion a second time, and Mary died.
They left her hanging for a half-hour, witnesses say, and then they dumped her in the grave they'd dug with a steam shovel 400 feet up the tracks. (The reports of the grave size vary from a too-small 10 by 12 feet to "big as a barn.")
When Mary's massive and valuable tusks were sawed off is a matter of debate. Some, such as eyewitness M.D. Clark, claim that "they dug down that night and cut her tushes off." Mont Lilly, who helped hang Mary, claims someone made a pair of dice from the tusks.
A careful observer of the one photograph allegedly taken at Mary's hanging will notice that the elephant suspended there has no tusks. So either Mary's tusks were removed before she was hung -- or they were removed after the hanging and Mary was "rehung" for a photo-op. A third possibility -- that the photograph was a hoax -- ought not to be discounted; when it was submitted to Argosy magazine for publication, the photo was rejected as a phony.
Tusks or no tusks, Mary or a superimposed substitute: The photograph revealing the hung elephant is a mirror of the times, in which Old Testament, frontier justice was served (Mary had, after all, killed two or three or 18 men), and people's insatiable hunger for grotesquery was, at least temporarily, satisfied.
There is also in Erwin a woman named Ruth Piper, who has made it her mission to memorialize Mary, to wash the town clean of elephant blood. Piper believes that Erwin has for too long taken the rap for Mary's death.
"Kingsport, the railroad, and Mr. Sparks are to blame for what happened to Mary -- not Erwin. People feel so guilty about it -- we've got to release it. It is a sad, sad thing that happened, but we have to let it go."
Somewhat paradoxically, Piper wants an elephant statue and fountain built in town, a movie at the visitor center, a memorial wreath laid in the railroad yards. In October 1995, she presented her proposal to the Erwin Bicentennial Committee. Nothing came of it.
There is a final irony clinging to the story of Murderous Mary, one that firmly places Mary's murder in a time and place. In an article published in the March 1971 issue of the Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin, author Thomas Burton reports that some local residents recall "two Negro keepers" being hung alongside Mary, and that others remember Mary's corpse being burned on a pile of crossties. "This belief," Burton writes, "may stem from a fusion of the hanging with another incident that occurred in Erwin, the burning on a pile of crossties of a Negro who allegedly abducted a white girl."
The murder of an elephant: a spectacle. The murder of "a Negro": another spectacle.
It was 1916 -- a good year for scapegoats in America.
Twenty-odd years ago, I went to eastern Tennessee to puzzle through the story of Murderous Mary, the five-ton Sparks circus elephant who killed her novice trainer in Kingsport one day and died by hanging in Erwin’s railyard the next. I spent time in the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University reading oral histories from those who witnessed the hanging or heard the stories told in the aftermath.
In the story I wrote for Blue Ridge Country, I shared the convictions of Ruth Piper, who believed then that her town had suffered long enough. Back then, she was a lone voice in Erwin: “Kingsport, the railroad, and Mr. Sparks are to blame for what happened to Mary—not Erwin. People feel so guilty about it—we’ve got to release it. It is a sad, sad thing that happened, but we have to let it go.”
It took a while, but today, Ruth Piper’s words are echoed by many. Erwin, Tennessee is tired of being known as the town that hung an elephant.
What I found when I returned to Erwin was a town determined to make amends for its elephant crime, and in the process, reinvent itself socially and economically.
First things first. Here’s what happened in mid-September, 1916.
The Sparks World Famous Shows was traveling the rails through eastern Tennessee when they picked up a new elephant handler. Walter “Red” Eldridge was a drifter, a dreamer and a daredevil—the day after he was hired, he rode massive Mary (“The Largest Living Animal On Earth”) through the streets of Kingsport.
When Mary stopped to enjoy some discarded watermelon rinds, Red hit the side of her head with his elephant stick. You can guess the rest: Mary lifted him in her trunk and tossed Red onto the street, then put her foot on his head and “squashed it like a ripe melon,” as Charles Price put it in his 1992 book, “The Day They Hung the Elephant.”
(Speculation later was that Eldridge had hit an infected tooth, causing Mary’s violent response. But since that report came from an alleged autopsy conducted by a veterinarian deep in Mary’s grave several days after her hanging, one can only wonder.)
Circus owner Charlie Sparks didn’t want to kill Mary…she was valued at $8,000 and was a major draw. But Johnson City and Rogersville, scheduled to host the circus later in the week, had banned Mary from their towns, and public opinion was turning fast. Word was that a vigilante group from Kingsport was coming armed with a relic Civil War cannon to kill Mary if Charlie Sparks wouldn’t do it himself.
So the next day, in Erwin, Mary the Elephant was hung from a 100-ton Clinchfield Railroad crane car before an audience of, they say, 2,500. And then she was buried in a massive, hand-dug grave somewhere in the railyard, unmarked to this day.
RISE Erwin was born a few years back, when CSX left town and the railyard fell silent. “Four hundred jobs, gone. The town was in mourning,” Rice says. “We had to ask ourselves, ‘who are we?’ We weren’t a railroad town any longer, and we were tired of having the stigma as the town that hung the elephant. We knew we had to create a new identity for ourselves.”
The 100th anniversary of Mary’s hanging was looming, and the members of RISE Erwin came up with a creative idea. Reaching out to the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee—one of only two certified sanctuaries in America—they offered to do a fundraiser for the sanctuary by auctioning off public-art elephant statues. The Erwin Elephant Revival was born.
“We bought unpainted elephant statues from a business in Denmark called The Elephant Parade. They protect elephant habitats all over the world. We had local artists paint them, and after they were displayed around town for a couple of months, we auctioned them off. The profits went to the Elephant Sanctuary,” Rice says. In the past two years, RISE Erwin has donated $20,000 to the Elephant Sanctuary.
“Tomorrow’s Great Outdoors Festival is the debut of our new herd,” Jamie says. “They’re on display out in front of the Courthouse.”
The elephants are beautiful, with their sunlit colors and whimsical designs. Children wander among them, touching their trunks and leaning against their legs. Cell-phone cameras are everywhere. A hiker who’s come off the Appalachian Trail removes his pack and sits on the Courthouse steps, taking them in. They are mesmerizing, these elephant statues.
Down the street, Glenna Lewis is sitting outside the Valley Beautiful Antique Mall, which she owns with her nephew, Joey.
“My father was there when they hung Mary,” she tells me. “I don’t remember what he said about it…but it happened here.”
More than 5,000 pieces of Southern Pottery are stacked high in the narrow shop, which used to be housed in the Hanging Elephant Antique Mall down the street. Opening in 1916—the year Mary was hung—Southern Pottery was a major employer in Erwin and the parent company of famed, hand-painted Blue Ridge Pottery. The town, with its extensive rail service, was also home to Cash Family, Erwin, Clinchfield, and Clouse pottery.
The Lewises seem to have cornered the market. This is the place to come to if you collect Blue Ridge. Spend an hour with Joey Lewis, and you’ll learn everything there is to know about the beautiful stuff.
I ask about the elephant figurines in the front window. “They’re from the 1920s, made here in Erwin to memorialize Mary,” Joey says. He watches my hand move toward one lustered white elephant: “Southern Potteries Rare Elephant Figural. 18k gold detail. $1,000.”
“She’s half-price—it’s our anniversary month,” he says. “I could go down to $400.”
I take a last, longing look and leave without it. As beautiful and historic as the pottery elephants are, my money would be better sent to The Elephant Sanctuary. (I know this to be true—but the $6.95 red elephant watering can I buy down the street is small consolation.)
In Clinchfield Pharmacy on the morning of the Great Outdoors Festival, there’s a giant inflatable elephant standing to the side of the pharmacy counter. “What’s that thing doing standing there?” a customer asks the clerk.
“Oh, you know, Joe,” she says, pointing to the pharmacist. “He was going to hang it, but he couldn’t find a noose.”
The clerk tells me a slightly skewed version of Mary’s demise, saying it was her owner that Mary killed, not her handler. “Always wondered, why didn’t they inject her with something and put her down that way? The killing happened over in Kingsport—why’d they have to come to our town to kill her?”
It’s an interesting question, unanswerable but inviting speculation.
As the morning passes, Main Street fills. Kids have their pictures taken with Smoky the Bear. A man strolls by with an iguana draped on his shoulder. Volunteers from Kingsport’s Bays Mountain Park have brought snakes and birds of prey. Appalachian Trail hikers stop by the AT booth to share stories. Skateboarding ramps and jumps line a side street. Plants are for sale on every corner. I eat Elephant Tracks ice cream and am happy for RISE Erwin: Despite a questionable weather forecast, the crowds have turned out for their Great Outdoors Festival.
Near the open stage and food trucks at the end of Main Street, Tyler Engle, executive director of the Unicoi County Joint Economic Development Board, stands smiling big. He’s young, and he’s cheerful, and he’s on the front lines of RISE Erwin. He’s an Erwin native who returned with his wife Logan to help bring his hometown into a new future.
“This is the most exciting time in the past 60 years here in Erwin,” he says. With the rise and subsequent fall of the railroad and Southern Potteries, the arrival of Nuclear Fuel Services in the 1950s was a major stabilizer. Now Unicoi County’s largest employer with a workforce of 1,000, Nuclear Fuel produces fuel used for Navy nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers.
There’s more. An industrial park. Fiberoptic throughout the county. A new hospital. Rocky Fork, Tennessee’s 55th state park, under construction. Grant-funded waterline extensions. A library housed in the former Clinchfield/CSX Rail Passenger station. The Appalachian Trail and the Nolichucky River. Main Street festivals—this one, and an Apple Festival in its 41st year that draws 110,000 visitors.
And an Elephant Revival. Eyewitness Wade Ambrose ended his account of Mary’s hanging like this:
So they buried the elephant there, and as far as I know, her bones are still there, near the back track, below where the old powerhouse used to be. Sometime, in a hundred, or five hundred years from now, somebody will probably find her and wonder how in the world those bones got there.
I’d like to think that Mary’s bones will stay buried where they are, at peace in this small mountain town, her memory ongoing in elephant revivals, public elephant art, and support for elephants who are a lot more fortunate than Mary was.
The word that comes to mind is atonement.
The Sanctuary lies 80 miles southwest of Nashville. But if you’re thinking of a visit, think again. Visitors are prohibited, in order to safeguard the elephants and their habitats.
However, through the use of solar-powered cameras, the world can catch glimpses of the elephants. Distance learning opportunities are available to schools and groups around the world. To access, go to www.elephants.com and click on the ELECAM link.
Todd Montgomery, Volunteer and Outreach Manager of the Sanctuary, is grateful to RISE Erwin for its support.
“It’s a cool partnership we have with them. We’re so touched—I guess that’s the best word for it—that an entire community has come forward to support us. For so long, Erwin was known as a town where an elephant was hung. Instead of pretending that it didn’t happen, they’ve found a way to honor the memory of Mary.”
I think Jamie Rice got it right when she said, “If Mary had lived in today’s world, she’d be at the Elephant Sanctuary.”
Today, if you google some variation of “Hanging Mary the Elephant,” you’ll be overwhelmed by hundreds of results. Among them:
• Mary’s been written about in the Daily Mail. The New York Daily News.
• NPR’s “Snap Judgment” did a Mary skit.
• Mary is on Pinterest.
• She’s been alluded to by bestselling novelists Sharyn McCrumb and Jodi Picoult.
• Matthew Carlton’s play, “Hanging Mary,” won first place in the 2012 Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights competition.
• There’s even been a ballad written about Mary, by Asheville songwriter Chuck Brodsky.
Mary is also one of two elephants written about in Mike Jaynes’s book “Elephants Among Us: Two Performing Elephants in 20th-Century America.”
The original Blue Ridge Country article is cited as a reference for much of what’s been published since it appeared in 1997. Let’s hope that this new story of Erwin and its Elephant Revival gets equal attention.