Tom Woolfolk

Started by Mary Sanford Drexler on Thursday, October 8, 2015
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10/8/2015 at 8:12 AM

This is an interesting story. I have searched but can not find any of the family on Geni. I am kind of surprised. There is lots of information in findAGrave. It is not clear if Tom actually murdered his family. But he was convicted and hung.

Toms grave http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6722863

His mother died before the murders. It was his father and step siblings that were killed.
His mother's grave offers some evidence that he may not have been the killer
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=10690375

Woolfolk Murders
August 6, 1887 - Macon
Five years before Lizzie Borden and her axe became famous, nine members of the Woolfolk family were killed with an axe at their home near Macon in Georgia's first mass murder.

Richard Woolfolk, his wife Mattie, their six children, and a visiting relative, were all slaughtered as they slept. Suspicion immediately fell on Tom Woolfolk, Richard's 27-year-old son from a previous marriage. Tom was the only family member not killed. He claimed a gang broke in and murdered his family. He had heard the killings, and managed to escape.

Police found no evidence of forced entry. Tom's body bore blood stains. He seemed agitated and nervous. His bloodstained shirt was found down a well. As an angry crowd gathered, the sheriff jailed Tom to save him from a lynching.

The murders shocked Georgia, and made front–page headlines across the nation. After two trials, and two appeals, Tom Woolfolk was convicted and hanged in 1890.

Many questions remain about Georgia's first mass murder, and exactly what happened on that bloody morning, August 6, 1887

10/8/2015 at 9:01 AM

Consider starting the tree and building it out.

10/8/2015 at 11:01 AM

I am not sure how to start a tree that is not my own family???

10/8/2015 at 11:08 AM

You're a PRO user, you can do it!

to create a new, unrelated tree, you can make a sibling to yourself, disconnect from parents, and voila ! New tree started.

Of course I actually do it from a random public historic profile I manage so I don't get amused messages from my family: "something you weren't telling us?"

Then you add parents, spouse, children. Chances are decent, with the size of the Geni database, that a connection "will" be findable to an existing tree.

I had success with this recently with an important "folk figure" :

Mary "Typhoid Mary" Mallon

10/9/2015 at 7:10 AM

I did it!!! Was a little scary having a murderer for my brother for a few minutes LOL

10/10/2015 at 3:23 PM

It "is" a very strange feeling. As you get more practiced, you'll want to "tree start" "up the tree.". But I've "lost" profiles I did that way; now I enter in a project immediately for retrieval when real life interrupts and I need to go back to it later.

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