Appalachia’s Deadliest: The Adair Brothers
Appalachia’s Deadliest: The Adair Brothers
Well, if I’m going to have to tell the story, then I’m going to have to start at the very beginning. By all accounts, Groven and Columbus Adair were known as ruthless and tough men in the mountains of North Carolina and East Tennessee. The brutal crime spree that these two brothers committed during the 1870s would have made outlaws like Frank and Jesse James or even Billy the Kid take shelter in their homes and peep out of their windows in awe. Yet, you won’t see these boys splashed across Hollywood movie screens or sensationalized in the press because some crimes are so disturbing and unsettling that they’ve never been told until now. Buckle up for the true story of two of Appalachia’s deadliest outlaws, the Adair brothers.
In the days before the turn of the century, hanging was the penalty for the most egregious crimes committed in Appalachia. It had to be, because from the time that the earliest settlers began to make their way into these mountains, so did the outlaws and desperados who wanted to just disappear. Indeed, there was no shortage of bad men, and many of their stories have been passed down, telling of the harsh deeds and terrible crimes they committed. Of these types of men, none were meaner than the Adair brothers of Rutherford County, North Carolina. On the heels of the Civil War, the brothers stole everything that wasn’t nailed down, burned the homes of their rivals, and routinely sought the counsel of gunpowder and hot lead for any man who tried to stop them.
The chaos of the war had turned the entire county on its head, with Confederate money now worthless, and land and business owners no longer maintaining their stronghold on politics or law enforcement. The Adair brothers routinely plundered and ransacked these men, and the law, more times than not, simply looked away, fearing the wrath of these two brothers. Simply put, everybody feared them. Many wild and gruesome tales about them were told around cold stoves on cold winter nights whenever men gathered to talk about current events. Yet, for all their crimes, it was the horrible events of April 26th, 1871, one of the most horrible outrages that has ever shocked human ears, that in the years that followed, folks never uttered their names in public again. Old-timers would simply say, we don’t talk about that anymore.
It all started with a barrel of whiskey. On April 25th, the Adair brothers, along with their brother-in-law Martin Bernard, had broken into a general store and stole a barrel of apple brandy. They quickly made their way to McDowell County, where they intended to conceal the stolen loot on Rutherford Mountain. As the brothers were hiding the blockade liquor, they heard a noise in the distance, and within a few moments, a stranger emerged from the thick laurel bushes. Quickly surveying the scene, the stranger knew that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, so he took off running through the forest.
Now, this man was Silas Weston, a simple farmer, a God-fearing man who had been out squirrel hunting when he stumbled upon the Adair outlaws. Weston lived about a mile away in a primitive log cabin with his wife Polly and their four children. Silas was known throughout the area as an honest, hardworking man who would help anyone out and was a regular down at the Otter Creek Baptist Church. Truth be told, Silas hadn’t even seen anything when he stumbled upon the Adair boys, and he had no idea about the stolen loot either. What he didn’t know was that the two brothers had spent the rest of the afternoon tracking Silas all the way back to his cabin, and there they hid at the edge of the woods, watching and waiting for nightfall.
On the evening of April 26th, 1871, Groven and Columbus Adair, along with their brother-in-law Martin Bernard, had surrounded Silas Weston’s cabin. Inside, Silas was saying the blessing for the evening supper when, strangely, the dog began barking violently outside. That’s when Polly arose and went to look between the log walls where the chinking was missing, so she could get a look at what was going on outside. No sooner did she put her eye against the hole when an explosion of gunfire erupted, shooting her right through the eye at point-blank range from the other side of the wall. With a wild scream, Polly fell backwards to the floor, and in that same moment, the front door was kicked open as the two brothers immediately opened fire on Silas, who was still seated at the dinner table. Within moments, two balls of hot lead had been shot through him as he crashed face-first into the dinner table.
The cabin was full of blood and chilling screams from the children who were running and trying to hide behind furniture, as Polly, who was bleeding to death, crawled out of the kitchen towards the bedroom where her infant baby was sleeping. One by one, the killers tracked down each child in the cabin, shooting them point-blank in the head. After the echoes of gunshots went quiet, there were only the sounds of Polly crying in the bedroom and the sound of boots walking towards her. Complete hell on earth had just erupted in the cabin, but the nightmare wasn’t over for Polly. Hearing their footsteps, Polly tried to slide under the bed desperately, but one of the brothers grabbed her foot and pulled her out. Then, he pulled his pistol, pointed it at her head, and squeezed the trigger, but the gun didn’t fire.
If Polly thought that this was the miracle that she had been hoping for, she couldn’t have been any more wrong, as both brothers pulled out their knives and began stabbing her over and over, all in her throat and torso, until her body stopped moving. This wasn’t an ordinary crime by any means; this was an absolute thirst for blood. The two brothers turned their attention to the last living soul in the house, the one that Polly had tried so desperately to reach: her infant son, who, despite all that had just taken place, was smiling and reaching his arms out to be picked up when the two murderers stood over his crib. But the look on their face wasn’t human; it was pure evil as one of them took his knife and slit the baby’s throat.
Six lifeless bodies lay on the bloody floor: the husband face down on the table, the mother hacked into pieces on the floor, and the children still in their night clothes laying where they fell. The men quickly set out to cover their tracks. They began piling bedding and clothing on top of Polly’s body, and they threw a burning pine knot on it, setting it ablaze as they mounted their horses and made their getaway. They had stolen nothing; they had simply murdered for wicked pleasure. Yet, somehow, Polly was still alive. Perhaps it was her dress on fire that woke her up, but she managed to roll on the floor and put herself out as the flames were quickly spreading throughout the cabin. Polly went to each family member and touched them, looking for any signs of life, but she found none until she heard her baby gurgling. He was still alive. She grabbed him and crawled out of the cabin, as far away as she could in the yard, before she passed out from a severe loss of blood.
The closest neighbors lived nearly three miles away and had seen the light of the fire in the night sky. Yet, when they arrived in the morning, the entire house was ashes, with the remains of four human bodies lying twenty yards away at the bottom of a ditch. They found Polly still holding on to her baby, in critical condition but alive. Polly was immediately able to identify all three of the killers. When the sheriff first went to arrest the three men, he told them that Polly had lived, and one of the brothers was completely astonished and involuntarily replied, there is no way that is still alive. Waging tongues quickly spread the news of the murders all over the area, and soon national and even international newspapers ran the story across the entire world. The talk of lynch mobs taking justice into their own hands was rampant as the law pleaded for patience to let the wheels of justice handle the situation, but the pressure was so immense from the mountain men that the authorities had to move the three men to Henderson County, North Carolina, where they awaited trial for the murders.
Both Columbus and Groven Adair maintained their innocence during the trial, and they even smirked as Polly took the stand and told the events of that fateful night. But there was no way Polly would let them get away with what they had done to her family, and because of her sheer will to live that night and her courage on the stand, all three men were found guilty of murder and arson, and each one of those charges on its own in North Carolina was automatic death by hanging. By June of 1882, all three men awaited judgment day in Henderson County jail. For weeks, they could hear the hammering and the sawing and the crude jokes of the workers outside their window building the gallows. It was all too much for the brother-in-law Bernard, who summoned the sheriff and gave a full guilty confession of the crime in exchange for them postponing his execution by just a few more weeks.
Finally, the day of June 12th came, and people poured into Hendersonville early that day. They came from all over: men, women, and children by stagecoach and ox cart, horseback and buggies, and some on foot, whole families with picnic lunch baskets, all in the festive holiday spirit to see the big event. As the day went on, there was drinking, disorder, and fighting among the spectators, yet at the same time, fathers held their children aloft on their shoulders to get a better view. Finally, at high noon, the sheriff, who was also the local Baptist preacher, marched the two men at gunpoint to the top of the scaffolding, at which point he hosed his pistol and pulled out his Bible and quoted a bit of scripture.
Neither of the brothers seemed moved, and they refused to bow their heads. Instead, they gazed defiantly towards the crowd, and when asked if they had any last words, they only requested to have a look inside of their coffins. After a few minutes of staring at them, they thanked the crowd for coming and told the sheriff, well, let’s give them what they came for. With that, the notorious brothers fell through the trap doors and landed on the other side of eternity. Now, some may wonder what causes people to become monsters like the Adair brothers. It’s important to note that as this event was taking place, the two men’s mother was sitting at the foot of the gallows on a wagon, ready to claim the two bodies of her sons, yet the entire time they were given their speeches, she was complaining the whole time that the event was taking too long because she needed to get back home to wash some clothes.
Perhaps the greatest mystery and irony of this entire story happens next. Now, to better understand what follows, it’s necessary to remember that all this happened over 150 years ago, long before electric lights, but there was still unfinished business at hand with that third man involved in these crimes, the brother-in-law Martin Bernard. He was being held in the county jail as his rescheduled hanging was quickly approaching. The jail was dimly lit by cold-burning lamps placed in brackets in the jail corridors, and the jailer always carried with him a bowl-burning lantern whose smoked smudge globe often gave out little light.
Well, the night before Martin Bernard was to be hanged, he was sitting in his cell. Dark had fallen, and just then there was a knock on the jailhouse door. The jailer held up his lantern, and standing there before him was a woman dressed as all mountain women dressed back in that day. She had on a high-neck blouse and a billowing dress that reached below her ankles to her heels and practically swept the floor as she walked, and under that dress were several petticoats. Her head was in a sun bonnet that all but concealed her face, and by the dim light of the lantern, the jailer recognized Miss Bernard, the wife of the condemned man. She had come to plead with the jailer to let her spend this last night in the cell with her husband who was to be hung when morning dawned.
Now, the jailer was a kindly man, and he granted her request. The next morning, as first light was breaking in the east, the jailer went to let Miss Bernard out. There was one last embrace in the cell with the wife and the husband, and then the wife, with her sun bonnet pulled low and her head bowed in her hands as she wept openly, followed the jailer down the corridor outside and then disappeared around the corner. An hour or so later, the jailer took the last breakfast to the doomed man’s cell, and sitting on the side of the cell cot, dressed in man’s clothing, was Miss Bernard, who the jailer thought he had let out of jail an hour earlier.
It turns out the crushed, weeping figure that he had walked out of the jail was in fact Martin Bernard, the husband, and the wife had swapped clothing during the night, and Bernard’s friends had a horse waiting for him, and he made good on his escape all the way to Texas, where his wife rejoined him several months later, and they were never seen again. Somehow, he had escaped justice in this world, at least. Even today, there is a marker that commemorates the lives of the Weston family that were lost that night in 1871. The marker can be found at Round Hill Baptist Church Cemetery in Union Mills, North Carolina. May the Weston family rest in peace.
