Pioneer history of Ingham County, compiled and arranged by Mrs. Franc L. Adams, secretary of the Ingham County pioneer and historical society.

INGIIAM COUNTY H-ISTORY

139

the outrage, and they have long since gone to their reward. It
was unfortunate for the city, for its prosperity seemed to have
received a check from that day. Our ears have tingled with
shame more than once while riding on the train to have the tree
pointed out to those on the cars with the remark, 'That is the
tree on which Mason folks hang niggers.'
"It is hoped that Mason has lived down the odium she so unjustly suffered on account of that tragedy which occurred at her
door.
"D. B. HARRINGTON."
James Thorburn, Sr., now night watchman in this city (1920),
tells how he and another boy about his age were standing near
where the IHarper school house is between ten and eleven o'clock
on the night of August 23, and saw wagon load after wagon load
of men go by from the north, and although they suspected their
destination and errand, they were not positive until the following morning. Mr. Thorburn tells how Mr. Harper found the
partially buried body of the colored boy in the hole by the roadside
near his home, when he went out the morning following the execution of the boy by the mob, and called some of his neighbors
together for a conference. It was decided not to leave the grave
so near the highway, and Mr. Harper gave permission for the
second burial to be made in some wild land which he owned, onefourth of a mile southwest of Harper Crossing.
"William and James Somerville, James amd Asher Harper,
James Thorburn, who furnished this story, and his father, all
helped in this, and when they took up the body found only a
headless torso, as a doctor from either Holt or Lansing had secured the head. A few weeks later William Maxwell came from
the East and bought a portion of the land owned by James Harper,
and erected a house, on which Henry M. Brown, now a deputy
sheriff living in Lansing, did the carpenter work.
"Mrs. Maxwell did not learn of the grave only about sixty feet
from the new house until the building was nearly completed, and
she refused to move there until the body had been exhumed and
taken away. James Thorburn and Henry Brown one night took
the remains away and buried them in the woods one-half mile
from there. It is told that the doctor who had the head was the