134. Purgatory Mountain: NC’s Civil War Ghost Story

SPEAKER_00 0:11

On the north end of the parking lot at the North Carolina Zoo, past the families and the strollers and the kids, begging for one more look at the elephants. There's a trailhead most people walk right by without giving it a thought. It goes up into the woods, about a mile, to the top of a low, flat-topped hill covered in big gray boulders. It's not much of a mountain, as mountains go. The government maps puts the summit at about 935 feet. But it sits in the Uaris, a range so old that geologists counted among the oldest in North America, worn down over the ages until it's more hill than mountain. These days it's a set of easy trails, about five miles of them all together, with names like Moonshine Run and Mountain Laurel, and you don't even need a zoo ticket to walk there. Some folks say this particular hill that we're talking about today marks the very center of North Carolina. Folks in Randolph County have called it Purgatory Mountain for as long as anybody can remember, and nobody can tell you for sure where the name came from. Some say it came from moonshiners whose fires flickered on the slopes at night. Others say it came from the Civil War, from the men who hid out in the thick bush to stay out of fighting, and lived so miserably up there that purgatory was about the only word for it. There's one more explanation, a stranger one. And you'll hear about that one in today's story. So come back with us about 160 years to Randolph County in the 1860s.

SPEAKER_04 2:06

I'm Darlene and I'm Melody.

SPEAKER_03 2:09

This is Hard Times and True Crimes.

SPEAKER_04 2:12

So we do want to thank all of our supporters who have bought us some coffees. Those have been coming in. Yes. And some new listeners that have been leaving us some comments. Thank you guys.

SPEAKER_03 2:24

Yes, thank you for the reviews. We always appreciate those.

SPEAKER_04 2:27

So just keep them coming. So it's October, almost Halloween, and everybody loves a good ghost story. Yes. And we have one that's local to right here in North Carolina.

SPEAKER_03 2:39

So actually, it's right here in Randolph County. It's Purgatory Mountain. We're mostly going to be talking about the years from 1861 to 1865. Our country was so divided over the war that there was a war going on in itself here in the county. So we're doing this story a little bit different. I'm going to give y'all a little history and then I'm going to talk about the legend. And then Melody is going to tell you the true story of what actually happened. Yep. Before there was an Ashboro or a zoo or a purgatory anything, this land belonged to Native Americans. So they were a small Siouan speaking people. And in the early 1700s, they lived in this little town with a log wall built all the way around it, down in a valley surrounded by cornfields. Did you know all this? No. No, I did not either. I was yeah, surprised. This was near the Uwari River.

SPEAKER_04 3:44

Oh, but that's not the Town Creek Indian Mound, is it?

SPEAKER_03 3:48

No, I don't think it is that, but it was the same people. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:51

Same type of settlement. Nice. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 3:54

Most of what we know about them comes from a man named John Lawson, who was this Englishman who came walking through here in about 1701, and he wrote down everything he saw and the details he wrote. This was one of my favorites. He wrote that the these Indians they wore mustaches and whiskers, which is, I don't know, that's unusual, right?

SPEAKER_04 4:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:18

John Lawson sounds like our very own Ricky Alred.

SPEAKER_04 4:21

He does. He was the Ricky Alred of the Sioux and Indians.

SPEAKER_03 4:24

Yes, he was. Yes. There was only about 500 of them. There were much bigger tribes around them, and they would raid them. And so not long after the Lawson's visit, they actually packed up and left. They joined up with some other small tribes for protection and moved around for a while and eventually became part of the Catawba nation. That's more familiar to me.

SPEAKER_04 4:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:47

White settlers moved in behind them, mostly small farmers, Quakers, Methodist, and German folks. And in 1796, the state laid out a little courthouse town and named it Ashboro after Governor Samuel Ash. And the hill southeast of town sat out there in the woods with no name that anybody had written down at that time, but it wouldn't stay that way. Now, what most people think about Ashboro in North Carolina, the Civil War, they think about boys in gray marching off to Virginia. And plenty of Randolph County boys did go that way, but Randolph County didn't really want this war. Did you know that?

SPEAKER_04 5:32

Only because Ricky has told us a little bit about that in his cemetery walks. Yeah, he touched on that. And that was the first time I had heard that.

SPEAKER_03 5:40

Only about one family in 10 here owned slaves. And most people were, you know, just scratching out a living, trying to farm. And the the way they saw it, it was a rich man's war, and they just weren't eager to die. So the planners could stay rich. To that, I'd that to the Quakers and Westland Methodists, Moravians, and a good many of them just didn't believe in slavery or in killing, even in times of war. Well, especially the Quakers.

SPEAKER_04 6:12

Right. Yeah. That's what I was gonna read. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:15

So when the war was started, Randolph County had one of the lowest volunteer rates in the whole state. About 14% of the men signed up when the rest of the state was closer to about 24. So in April of 1862, the Confederacy passed a draft, and it wasn't a lottery like we think of a draft. If you were a white man of the right age range, then you were going to the army. Oh, okay. Yeah. Unless a doctor or the law said otherwise. Okay. So Quakers didn't get a pass either. They, yeah, did you know that?

SPEAKER_04 6:50

No.

SPEAKER_03 6:51

Yeah, they could pay a fee or hire someone to go in their place.

SPEAKER_04 6:55

And if they could not do either one, well then they were going.

SPEAKER_03 6:59

Yeah. So men started hiding. And folks called them outliers because they laid out in the woods. Some never went at all, and some did go. And then they would come home. There was a lot of desertion. Is that right?

SPEAKER_04 7:16

Yes. I have recently just been reading about how people would desert. Not always permanently. Sometimes they would just slip home for a while to visit their family and come back.

SPEAKER_03 7:27

Yeah. And some of them, I was thinking they have farms to take care of and wives. And so maybe they went home during, you know, a busy time at the farm and then would go back and fight. I get it. Take care of their families. There was a secret union society around here, and they were called the heroes of America. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:47

I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_03 7:48

People called them the red strings. There was even an underground railroad running from the Quaker settlement up in Guildford County to the mountains and into Indiana. So outliers dug caves in the hillsides and covered them over, and they only crawled in there during the daytime when they had to. And then some of them they hit up on Purgatory Mountain. So this part isn't a legend. Their families and neighbors would keep them fed and they would keep their mouth shut to keep them safe. Right. And so I guess because they would have people come and looking for deserters. This one comes from family tradition, but this is a great story and something I can't prove. But a blacksmith named Frank Toomes worked down at the mills on Deep River. And every time the enrolling officer would come around, Frank would slip down to the mill, race, and lie underneath the water, breathing through a straw until the man left. So it worked up until December of 1863, when it was probably too cold for a swim.

SPEAKER_04 8:58

Yeah, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_03 9:00

They caught him about two weeks after he was mustered in, he walked off near Dalton, Georgia. He crossed over to the Union side and actually fought, he fought with them. His name was Maurice Petty. And after the war, Frank settled in Level Cross, right here in Randolph County. And that's where the Petties still are.

SPEAKER_04 9:26

Yes. And I our listeners probably know, but the Petties, yeah, that's Richard Petty.

SPEAKER_03 9:33

I thought that was I know, and I thought it was so funny because you think about the NASCAR and the Confederate flags and the out flying out there and it all goes together. It's all connected. Except for the ancestor fought for the Union. Yeah. So you probably ain't gonna see that on any t-shirts.

SPEAKER_04 9:51

No, probably not. We do know that brothers fought against brother, and yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:55

So I'm glad you shared that.

SPEAKER_04 9:57

I didn't know it.

SPEAKER_03 9:58

I thought that was pretty cool. It wasn't all mill races and straws though. By 1863 and 1864, three or four hundred deserters were hiding out in this county, and they weren't all sitting quiet in caves either. Some of them were raiding farms on election day in 1864. An armed bunch of them stood about 300 yards from a polling place, and the home guard had to sneak home a different way than they usually went for fear. And then another time they shot into a squad of home guard hauling supplies from Franklinville and ended up killing one of them. And so the leader everybody talked about was this man named Bill Owens. So Bill Owens had deserted from a Randolph County company, and by 1864, he was leading a band of outliers organized enough that people called him Colonel until the home guard wanted him badly. And deputy sheriff Alfred Pike decided that the way to find him was through his wife. And we don't even know her name. Nobody wrote that down either. But she was out in the yard one day washing clothes with her baby, who was about a year old, when Pike and his men rode up and asked where Bill was. She told him he was dead and buried because you know she's covering for her husband. Pike told her to take him to the grave then, and she cussed him, especially Pike, picked up her baby, and she was not telling him anything. So Pike slapped her across the face and made her hand the baby over. And then his men tied her thumbs together behind her back, tied her to a tree limb with a cord, and pulled her up until her toes could barely touch the ground. When they let her down, Pike said she started lying again. And so they threw her on the ground and pinned her thumbs under the corner of a fence. And that's when she told them where her husband was. So when the state solicitor, Thomas Settle, he heard about it and he wrote the governor Vance about what had been done to her because he thought it was wrong. Pike went to Settle himself and told him that he didn't need to go looking for witnesses, that he'd give him the facts, that he was not ashamed of it at all. He did what he felt he had to do, and he was just following the law. The sheriff did find Owens hideout and locked him up in the jail in Ashborough. Don't you have something to share? I do have something to share.

SPEAKER_04 12:45

This was this is actually from April 30th, 1864. It was in the Daily Confederate newspaper. Wow. It says the noted outlaw, Bill Owens, we are glad to learn from the Fayetteville Observer, has at length been captured and is now in jail at Ashborough. This notorious scoundrel has long been prowling around in Randolph and adjoining counties, robbing and killing people, and attempts to arrest him have been hitherto unsuccessful. But the sheriff recently, hearing of his whereabouts, summoned his posse and went in pursuit. He was discovered in a brush with his wife, no arms about him, and none of his associates to be seen. He has a dangerous wound received, as he says, in that affray at Simmons last February. He is now where it is to be hoped justice will reach him. Peter Garner, a detailed soldier from the army, was met with and summoned by the sheriff and was one of the sheriff's posse when Owens was taken. And Garner was the first man that bearded the lion. I don't know what that means. Bearded the lion. We'll have to find out what that means. That's pretty interesting. There was no remains of any property or goods about the deserted camps except part of a newspaper, the Raleigh Standard. Now keep in mind the name Peter Garner because we have more to tell you about him.

SPEAKER_03 14:12

Yeah. All right. So back in January of 1863, according to a story that was told and handed down, people have been telling this story over a hundred years. The home guard caught a 20-year-old man named Alson Alred laying out near Deep River. Do you know about this? Okay. So they took him to Buffalo Ford, tied him up, stood him on a horse under a big maple tree, and hanged him. His 17-year-old wife, that makes me sad though. His 17-year-old wife got there after it was all over, and the neighbors who saw her said that they would never forget the way that she just hollered and screamed. I mean, I'm sure losing your husband back then, what would you do? I know. And you're 17. And you're 17. And not only that, you love, you know, she probably loved him as well, but I'm sure just all of it. Traumatic. I'm sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:11

And by the way I don't know if you know this, but Buffalo Ford is just down the road here.

SPEAKER_03 15:15

No, we need to go on a little road trip because I don't know where a lot of this stuff is.

SPEAKER_04 15:19

Yeah, Buffalo Ford, actually, Buffalo Ford Road is just one road over from me. Well, that's cool. Yeah, very cool.

SPEAKER_03 15:26

Wow. So you knew that though about this part. Okay. So the story only survives like its oral history, I'm guessing. Okay. Written down in the Ashborough paper in 1976. So nobody's ever really found a record of a trial, but I don't know that they would have had a trial anyways. Probably happened quite frequently. In the spring of 1865, General Lee sent Colonel Alexander McAllister. Do you know who that is?

SPEAKER_04 15:57

No.

SPEAKER_03 15:58

Okay. I'm obsessed with this old city cemetery that Ricky Alred does his cemetery tours. If you guys have not done one of these, you really need to go and listen to him. He's amazing.

SPEAKER_04 16:11

He just did one recently, but he does those usually throughout the fall.

SPEAKER_03 16:14

He does them in the fall and the spring.

SPEAKER_04 16:16

Yes. So if you're local to Ashborough, definitely go and they're free.

SPEAKER_03 16:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:21

And he's got a lot of good stories.

SPEAKER_03 16:23

He really does. So in that cemetery, do you know the girl with the her hand?

SPEAKER_04 16:30

Yeah, the hand is broken.

SPEAKER_03 16:31

Yes, and she's a young girl. Okay, so this Alexander McAllister is her dad. Oh, okay. Okay. Which is really cool. Because this would have been before he married her mother. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. And they are the ones that, if you know anything about worthful, him and his father-in-law ended up starting that mill. Oh, really?

SPEAKER_04 16:57

Yep. And that mill is where the Naomi Wise story takes place. Yes, it's all connected. It just kids comes full circle, doesn't it? It really does. That's very interesting. Yeah. History, history is just fascinating.

SPEAKER_03 17:12

So yeah, so General Lee sent Colonel Alexander McAllister with 600 troops to clean out Randolph County. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_04 17:20

And I also don't know if you know this, but General Lee, Robert E. Lee. Yes, he's my celebrity crush. I'm reading a book about him now. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 17:29

I used to always say, if I had twins, I'm gonna name them Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. That's so funny. So my grandma Thomas, her dad's name was Robert Lee Shaw. And he was born right after the Civil War ended. So I'm sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:43

And yes, Robert Lee Robert E. Lee was a good man. I've studied his life. He was a good, godly man.

SPEAKER_03 17:49

So on March 22nd, they caught a deserter named Alpheus Gollyhorn, and they caught him down near Seagrove. The captain said that Gollahorn had shot at his men from this fortified spot. And so they gave him what they called a drumhead court martial, which is about as much of a trial as it sounds. Yeah. And they actually shot him by fire and squad that afternoon. Then on April 1st, in 1865, they shot a Union cavalry private named William Walters in Ashboro after a military court convicted him of robbery and the murder of a Confederate soldier named John Vanderford. And then Lee surrendered at Appomattox eight days after that, on April 9th. Now I'm saying all that so that you can kind of see the turmoil that was going on. I mean, in this county, that it was a lot. And I do believe if you take an oath and walk off and you're robbing neighbors and murdering, you kind of have to get what's coming to you. Yeah. But so many of the men, they didn't want to fight, especially the Quakers, I feel for them. They took the Sermon on the Mount very seriously. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:12

Yeah. And they, I mean, they truly were pacifist and had deep convictions about fighting.

SPEAKER_03 19:19

They really did. And I I just think in Randolph County in 1864, there wasn't much peace on either side. No. All right. So now we're getting to the part we came here to tell. It was the tail end of the Civil War, and the Confederacy was running short of men. There were some a lot who had died in battle, a lot who were so seriously wounded that they couldn't continue to fight. And then, of course, there's the dysentery and all the diseases. And then there's the deserters. Right. And so at that time, the they would hire people to go and get deserters and basically bring them back so that they could finish fighting. And there was a man nicknamed The Hunter. Now the story goes that the hunter heard about some Quaker boys who were being hidden out in their community. And Quakers were pacifists, like we said, and believed that it was a sin to kill even in times of war. And that's why they were hiding. They weren't cowards, they were following their conscience. He wasn't afraid of a fight if he had to, but he was getting paid by the head. And so he figured, hey, I can round up, you know, a lot of these, a lot of these boys and get paid quite a bit for it because they're not going to put up a fight. He gathered up some half-starved men and off they went. They rode up to a Quaker settlement on a hill near Ashboro on a Sunday morning while the friends were in their meeting house, sitting in that holy silence, like they do, waiting for the Lord. The hunter and his men burst through the door with shotguns in hand and pointed them at the congregation. And then violently knocking old men and mothers to the ground as they tried to plead, you know, for their children, for the sake of their boys, but there was no saving them.

SPEAKER_04 21:41

Wow. Imagine that. You can't someone taking your 14-year-old son. I can't imagine.

SPEAKER_03 21:48

I can't imagine. 13. Oh that's a seventh grader. I can't even get my boys to bathe when they were when they were 13.

SPEAKER_04 21:56

They certainly weren't ready to know.

SPEAKER_03 21:59

And these boys. We were being tied up and driven anyway. They were so they were being driven southeast through the fields and hills down toward the Cape Fear on down to Wilmington, where they were gonna be turned over to the the Confederacy, and then the hunter was gonna be paid. And they could have been shot, like if they refused.

SPEAKER_04 22:23

Oh yes.

SPEAKER_03 22:23

So they were definitely it was bad for them. The hunter tormented and scared the boys the whole way. He was a loud and mean, violent man. It was rough being in his presence, and they knew they believed him to be violent and knew that he would kill them if he wanted to or had to. They were on this trail, they weren't being fed very much. I just can't imagine the the fear and probably being weak and not sleeping, not eating, and I don't know. I just can't imagine it would have been horrible. But one night they stopped so that the hunter and his men could go to a tavern. And after being out on the road for days, the string of scared boys left them outside, went in for a drink, and while he and his men were in there enjoying themselves, the boys started whispering about possibly could they get loose from the ropes? But then they realized that a knife had been left. They really were debating it. You know, do we do this? Do we not? And then finally they decided that yeah, they were gonna do it. And so they were scared at first, but they decided they had to try to save their own lives. They cut loose, decided not to go home because they knew that that would be the first place that the hunter would look. And so they ran back up toward the hills that they knew and they hid in the thick brush on the side of what we now know as Purgatory Mountain. When the hunter came out of the tavern and saw that the boys were gone, he was absolutely furious. He actually blamed his men, he berated them and threatened them, and they were afraid for their lives themselves. They were thinking he'll he'll kill us. And knowing they weren't gonna get paid now, even if the boys were recaptured, they ended up leaving him. So adrenaline from rage gave him the energy that he needed, and he wound up tracking those boys all the way back to the foot of Purgatory Mountain. He didn't know exactly where they were, but he stood and yelled up in the woods, some kind of a vow loud enough that they knew that would have been pretty scary. It would have been. They talked and they prayed and disagreed some, but ultimately they did agree that they did not have a choice, that something had to be done. And it completely went against everything that they believed in through tears. Those teenage Quaker boys laid up in that brush, cold and hungry, watching the light from the hunter's fire down below, waiting for it to burn out and for him to quit moving around. And finally, they were sure he was asleep. And to protect themselves and their families, the boys had already drawn lots and three of them were selected. Earlier, whenever they had ran, they had noticed that the hunter and some of his men had left some guns, and so they grabbed them. Not thinking they would have to use them for something like this, but they were thinking for food.

SPEAKER_04 26:16

And probably I would think to keep them from able being able to use those guns on them.

SPEAKER_03 26:22

Yes, they had drawn lots, three boys were selected, they slipped down the hill where he laid, they snuck up on him and simultaneously fired and killed him instantly. Through tears afterwards, they swore this oath to each other that they would never tell a soul or speak a word to each other, even about what had happened on the mountain. They prayed again, this time for forgiveness. Some of them were so overcome with guilt that they felt like they could never go back home. The others hid out in the woods, half starved to death until after the war when they were finally able to walk back home to their moms. That makes me so sad, and their meeting houses. But after the hunter was supposed to be dead, people said they started seeing him on the mountain. Back then there were the no paved trails. There was just this laurel, this thick laurel on the mountain, these rocks, and you'd have to kind of turn sideways to get through it. And there was this thick fog and the rocks. But people went up there to hunt and just for different reasons. And in the blackest part of the mornings before the sun came out over the ridge, people started saying that they'd seen a big dark figure moving through the trees. Some said he had a black beard and black eyes, and in some tellings, those eyes had fire in them. They said that it looked like he was something or someone looking for something, or someone, like probably the boys who had killed him. Other people never saw anything, but they would hear twigs snapping behind them on the path. And when they'd stop, so did the noise. But when they'd gather the courage to start going again, the noise would start again as well. It was always just far enough back that they couldn't see anyone, but they knew that something was there. I I feel like I can just imagine some farmer coming down with like no rabbit. Oh, you know, he's got his gun and his wife's like, What is the matter with you? And he doesn't really want to say, like, I don't know. I don't know what happened. But anyway, the explanation that people gave was they believed that the hunter was not able to enter heaven or hell. And so he was left to walk that mountain. That's how the legend accounts for the name Purgatory, possibly. The stories never really stopped in the early 1970s. When the state started building the North Carolina Zoo on that land, there was a ranger named Mike Yates, and he was working the graveyard shift. Have you heard this?

SPEAKER_04 29:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:09

Okay. And according to a ghost story that they tell of the zoo to this day, one night the ground fog came up rolling in. It was so heavy that it nearly swallowed his truck by the pond. And when he got in and put it in reverse, he looked up and in the rear view mirror, there was this old woman. And the zoo ends the story by warning people that if you're around Purgatory Mountain on Halloween, don't speak to the little old woman in the formal gown and don't follow her old car around the curvy roads. So that's not the hunter, but I bring it up because even the zoo, which is a state-ran institution, tells you there's something about Purgatory Mountain. I believe evil is real and Melody does too. If somebody tells me they saw something in the woods, I'll listen. But I don't necessarily believe everything, strange thing is a ghost. And I wouldn't, anyway, I wouldn't necessarily assume something take it in the shape of a dead man as a ghost. I might be demonic or something. I don't know. So this is though what I was thinking. That I feel like it's easier to kill a monster. If you've killed a monster, yeah, it's not so bad. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know the true story. So there's there's an actual man behind, you know, behind this legend. And so yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:36

Okay. And now I'm gonna share less of the legend and more of some of the true facts and then some of the things that we just don't know for sure. Right. Peter Garner is actually a junior. Okay. He was he's a native, as we've talked about, of Southeast Randolph County. He was born in 1831, so he was a real man. Okay. Which you had established early on. Kind of young. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was actually the son of Peter Garner Sr. and Elizabeth Morgan. And Peter Garner, he married Susanna Latham on February 26th, 1857. She was the daughter of James Latham and Lucretia Garner. Now, this is just a little side note, but my husband is related to a lot of Garners in that area. I didn't have time to do the full study of the family tree to see if he's can Oh, he might be related to the hunter. Yeah, he could be. And I am gonna follow up on that later. So I'll see what I can find out. But Peter and Susanna had four children. They had Julia, who was born in 1858, Lucy Jane, what a cute name. I know, I love that. Born in August of 1860, Sarah, born about 1862, and then James Henry, born August 1864. So all of these were prior to and during the Civil War. So you talked about him being mean and kind of rough. Well, he was known to carry this rope on his belt and these guns and a big huge knife.

SPEAKER_03 32:08

So he was kind of it was kind of intimidating.

SPEAKER_04 32:10

He was an intimidating figure to behold. Okay. And so you did not want to really be on the run from Peter Garner. What we do know is at the end of the Civil War, there really was a group of deserters who were trying to that he had captured. Now we don't know for sure if they were Quakers. Right. Everything you all that history you told about the Quakers absolutely is true. Yeah. But we don't know if that group of deserters he found were was that group of 22 Quaker boys. Some of the things that make historians question that is the fact that being that they are pacifists, they are taught not to fight to defend their own lives. Right. It sounds good to us. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 32:52

So we like, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:53

So why would they have not just accepted their fate? Yeah. And and to have done something so violent to him would have really been hard for them to do. We're not saying it didn't happen. Right. We're just saying these are some of the things that we don't know. Another thing we don't know is because they supposedly took that vow to never speak of it again. And so we have to question then how did we get this story? Right.

SPEAKER_03 33:17

True.

SPEAKER_04 33:18

Yeah. Good point. So we do love a good ghost story, and we do. Most of those stories do have some kernel of truth. Yeah. So there could be reasons why there are stories like that. Maybe some of those things do have a kernel of truth. Maybe there was one or two Quakers. We don't know to separate the legend from the facts. We do know there were some deserters. They were called outliers. And we do know that were there were at least three. Okay. And oh, we do know that there were at least three involved in this story. Yes, we do know that. For several days, that group had been watching Peter Garner taking note of his routines. He was at home here in Randolph County with his wife, and they were watching him to see how they could take him out.

SPEAKER_03 34:05

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 34:05

So they were not under his the captured by him.

SPEAKER_03 34:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 34:09

They were plotting how they could get him. He was actually being hunted by them. He the hunter was being hunted. Okay. Yes, very good observation. And so what they noticed was every morning he would go out at sunrise with his daughter Julia. She was seven years old, and they would go out and check their fish traps. And they would cross this little branch over a little log. And Julia, she would hold her dad's hand until she was about halfway across, and then she'd let go and just run the rest of the way. Because I guess at that point she felt safe. And it's kind of interesting to think of this big scary man with this little girl. His seven-year-old girl every day checking traps. So that makes them human. It does make him human. And again, it makes you wonder how much of that legend of his scariness is actually true. Because again, too, a lot of things were not written down. We don't have a lot of written records. But anyway, little Julia, she'd run across and she'd let go and she would make her way on across. Well, on the third day of watching this go on, they realized this is our chance. They these guys acted on their plan. They prepared their weapons, they loaded their powder into each of their barrels, they tanned it down, and then they put four bullets into each one, and they tamped it down again. And then they let those hammers down and they waited for Peter, Garner, and Julia. Peter and Julia go that morning on their daily trek across that log. And once the little Julia let go and ran off, two of the men fired their weapons at Garner, hitting him and taking him out. Wow. Right in front of the right with his little girl right there. That's sad. They ran over and they cut the large brass buttons off of his coat and they took off into the woods. Now we don't know if Julia just, you know, screamed and other family members hurt her. We don't know if she ran and got help. We just don't have a record of what happened, but people did go in search of these men. And Garner, of course, they ran to his aid. His family members came up on him and realized, you know, that those shots had killed him. There there was some legend that those Quaker guys had hung him from a tree.

SPEAKER_03 36:25

Yeah, I've I heard three different ways that he supposedly was murdered. So I've heard the hang-in, the shooting, and a bear tribe, or like a some kind of a yeah, a big bear tribe. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04 36:37

Yeah. So, yeah. But we do know for a fact that he was shot. Okay. That's because the coroner's report tells us it says the following is the report of the coroner's inquest. We the undersigned after being lawfully summoned by the coroner of said county and duly sworn to hold an inquest over the body of Peter Gardner. And again, they misspelled his name here. They put a D in it, Gardner, but I believe it's actually correctly spelled Garner. Okay. And just again, historical records. Yeah. Sometimes that happens. But it says, Do report to said coroner on oath as follows after being assembled at the grave of Peter Gardner, we proceeded to take him up and open him and examine his person on which we found various wounds, one in the left side of his head and several in his left side, all of which was bound to produce death. Those wounds was produced by gunshot. Wow. So the medical record does show that that's what happened to him. So his family took him home and they buried him in the family cemetery on Garner Land. And Peter Garner was survived by his wife and four children. At the time of his death, his wife Susanna was actually expecting her fifth child. Oh, that's sad. And their descendants do still live all around here. Right. So I did look for that grave. Ricky is helping me. He sent me some information. I have not been able to go and further proceed on what he's giving me yet. I'm going to, but if we have any listeners local who happen to know where Peter Garner may be buried, please let us know. Please let us know because again, I'm trying to research it, but if you could make my job easy. Right. Or if you have family that owns that land, we could go visit that grave. We would love to do that as a field trip.

SPEAKER_03 38:28

Yeah, we do love a good field trip.

SPEAKER_04 38:30

Yeah. Like you said, that legendary, that legend of Purgatory Mountain talks about his ghost not being able to rest because he was neither in heaven or hell. And that's people do love to make a good story. Oh, yeah. And sometimes it's fun to be creeped out a little bit sometimes. Have you ever gone up to Purgatory Mountain?

SPEAKER_03 38:50

So I went up there actually a few weeks ago and couldn't get up. I guess that never happens, but when I went there, the gate was locked. Oh no. Yeah. Me and Lindsay were gonna walk on our lunch break up there and couldn't.

SPEAKER_04 39:04

Well, I've taken my dog up there several times. Okay. You know, it's only paved that first little bit. Is it creepy? Yeah, it can be creepy if if you're up there by yourself for sure. I would never once you get to the very top, because it's it's not a paved all the way up or anything. It's like a a like a trail. It's a dirt trail and it's very quiet. And there is there is a little more fogginess up there because you are up a little higher. Right. And you can look down and see, you know, below a little bit. It's it's actually a beautiful view, but it it can be creepy. You do you do hear twigs cracking and snapping, but again, when you're in the woods, you are gonna hear that. But because you hear those tales, you kind of go with this idea that it's gonna be creepy.

SPEAKER_03 39:46

Yeah, you know, see, but it's so interesting to think that there were, I mean, there were criminals hiding out up there. Yes, and they were oh, you ever seen the movie Cold Mountain? Yeah, that's exactly what it reminds me of because I all of those deserters and how they were coming down and just terrorizing.

SPEAKER_04 40:08

And I would imagine it was probably very much truth and like that, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:12

And when I read that, I was oh my gosh, like it was pretty much that movie happened here. Okay, so it's October. So if you want to see Purgatory Mountain for yourself, it starts at the North America parking lot of the zoo, right? Okay, and you don't have to have a zoo ticket, you just go and walk early. They say it's better in the early mornings because of the fog.

SPEAKER_04 40:36

Oh, yeah, because it can be really mi yeah, it's very misty up there. Yeah, um, oh, I don't know what the hours are during the day. Like I said, I've never been there with the gate closed, so that surprised me that you said that.

SPEAKER_03 40:48

Yeah, and kids don't be climbing it at midnight. Oh goodness no. A park ranger is probably scarier than the hunter. Yeah, or your mom. Right. Exactly. But yeah, those were some hard times. Those were some hard times.

SPEAKER_02 41:03

Purgatory loving baby worries for the show here, as to not take a full time.

SPEAKER_01 41:52

They called him the hunter. He drove the boys toward that line of the rain. He found the man who left the rain. Late in sixty-four they waited at the spring below the press. A shot rang out among the trees, and brass was cut.

SPEAKER_02 43:19

Still searching through the gray, oh heels there witness all the sound of those who could not go. A name was laid upon neither peace nor garden grows.

SPEAKER_01 43:38

At daybreak here the mountain breathe, the spring runs on the go.

SPEAKER_02 43:46

Purgatory keeps his foot fall.

SPEAKER_01 43:52

Where neither heaven nor hell can go.