Written by Craig Dominey

The picture hung in my parents’ home for years before I finally asked about it: a pencil sketch of a gentle old man looking like some unkempt, nomadic Santa Claus, cradling a baby goat in his strong, leathery hands. Behind him, a team of older goats pulled a ramshackle, trash-strewn wagon, a placard on its roof screaming “GOD IS NOT DEAD.”

As a kid, I dismissed the drawing as yet another curiosity that my parents would buy in the folk art galleries and antique stores that surrounded our North Georgia mountain home. But when I began writing columns for the local paper and became hungry for story material, I asked my mother one day about that strange old man on the wall. She flipped the picture around with a smile, revealing a manilla folder full of newspaper articles taped to the back, waiting for the day that I would ask.

That was how I first became acquainted with the fascinating life of Mr. Ches McCartney, a.k.a. the “Goat Man.”

For over five decades, the Goat Man roamed the highways and byways of the South, fueled by little more than simple wanderlust. Most of this time was spent in a goat-powered, scrap wood wagon covered with cooking utensils, dented signs, old furniture, rusty lanterns and whatever else he could find on the roadsides. “The Goat Man’s coming!” became a common refrain on radio stations and newspapers across the region. Traffic would back up for miles as curiosity seekers stopped to gawk at him. Some schools would even let out early so that the children could see this modern day pioneer.

After his “retirement” from traveling in 1987, rumors circulated in the press that the Goat Man and his team had been killed on a rain-slickened highway by an out-of-control truck. But back in 1998, I discovered he was indeed alive and well at the Eastview Nursing Home in Macon, Georgia. After arranging for a visit with the staff, I drove down to see him.

As I was led into the crowded television room, I spotted a short and frail old man sitting alone on a bench. He was indistinguishable in his clean plaid shirt and pressed khaki slacks, a new baseball cap covering what was left of his brittle white hair. He constantly rubbed the stubble on his face, as if he were feeling for the fuller beard of his youth. His hearing was nearly gone, and he mumbled almost unintelligibly when he spoke. But the minute he smiled at me, the gentle, road-tested wanderer from my parents’ picture suddenly appeared before my eyes.

He immediately spotted a Goat Man biography under my arm and motioned for it. Without my asking, he took out a pen and signed his name twice on the cover page. Although pictures and framed magazine articles on the Goat Man hung throughout the nursing home, the other residents seemed oblivious to the fact that a celebrity was in their midst. “Ain’t no lies in that book,” he said, excitedly tapping his long fingernails on the cover. “I don’t tell nothin’ but the truth. ”

The nursing staff around us smiled. No one is sure how many of the Goat Man’s stories are fact or fiction. He claimed to be around 105 years old, although nursing home records at the time estimated his age to be somewhere in the mid-to-late 90s. He said that his goats were on display at Disney World, although no one had ever seen them. He also claimed to have spent the night in the White House as President Carter’s guest, although I found no official record of such a visit.

But most accounts of Ches McCartney’s life agree that he began his traveling days in 1915 when, as a teenager, he ran off to New York City from his home in Iowa. According to one of his self-published booklets, he sold newspapers on a street corner before embarking on a whirlwind romance with a 24-year-old Spanish knife thrower. Struggling to make ends meet, the couple put on a traveling circus act in local taverns where, upon arrival, Ches would take down the dart board, get up on the wall and allow his new bride to throw twenty-five keenly sharpened knives in his direction.

The performing duo eventually split up, and Ches returned to Iowa. Thinking he had quenched his wanderlust, he remarried, had a son, Albert Gene, and settled into a life of farming. Ches was first introduced to the benefits of “goat power” when he used them to plow his fields after he lost his horses during the Depression.

The McCartneys eventually lost their entire farm in the Depression, and Ches went to work cutting timber for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). It was during this time that a tragic event occurred that would forever alter his life. While working deep in the forest, a tree fell across him, shattering his left side and pinning him to the ground for hours. According to Ches, when a search party finally arrived, they presumed he was dead and took him to the local funeral home. He later awoke on the embalming table, much to the shock of the mortician.

Ches eventually recovered, but his left arm was forever mangled. Unable to work, Ches nevertheless refused go on the public dole, wanting to be his own boss. “I decided to do what I could,” he would later write, “and so my life with the goats began.” Inspired by one of his favorite books, Robinson Crusoe, he had his wife sew goat skin outfits for him and his son, while he designed two goat skin-covered wagons. The family then set off for parts unknown.

His wife eventually grew tired of the road and left him. Albert Gene stayed in Iowa to attend school, rejoining Ches on his vacations. But Ches traveled on, gaining notoriety across the country as the “Goat Man.” His goat skin outfit eventually gave way to several layers of greasy, sooty clothes, which he would peel off depending on the weather. He never shaved or bathed, and it was said that his smell would roll into town long before he did. “[The goats] don’t care how I smell or how I look,” he later wrote. “They trust me and have faith in me, and this is more than I can say about a lot of people.”

At its height, the Goat Man’s junk-filled “goatvoy” consisted of two wagons pulled by a team of over thirty goats. The larger billies were hitched to the front of the wagon with homemade leather leads. Nannies were tied to the back with a couple of strong billies that served as the “brakes” on steep hills. The Goat Man also collected stray and neglected goats that he found during his travels, including a three-legged goat that rode in a special box on the front wagon. He referred to the goats as his “babies,” and called each of them by name as he walked beside them.

He slept with the goats in the back wagon, which he dubbed the “maternity ward” since it was where the females gave birth. At night, visitors to his campsite would frequently find him curled up with his goats in the back wagon, reading Robinson Crusoe or The Bible under the warm glow of a kerosene lantern. “On cold winter nights, my goats are the finest electric blanket I can find,” he would say.

Upon arriving at his chosen campsite, usually on the outskirts of some town, the Goat Man’s first responsibility was to feed and water his goats. He would then build a campfire out of whatever sticks and trash he could find lying around and cook his dinner. The final touch was to throw a couple of junk tires on the fire that he kept stocked in his wagon. He claimed that the thick, acrid smoke chased the mosquitos away and added a distinct flavor to his food. But the burning tires more than likely served a more ingenious purpose: to attract visitors.

Thinking there had been a car wreck, those curiosity seekers who were already held up in traffic behind his slow-moving caravan would rush over to the campsite at the sight of the smoke. There, they would find the Goat Man drinking flesh goat milk from his herd, which he claimed had kept him healthy for years. He would then offer up a plethora of novelties for sale: booklets on his travels, picture postcards, proprietary medicines, sewing materials. Whether folks bought something or not, he always thanked everyone for coming out.

All of the money he raised either went to the maintenance of his goats or to a series of churches he planned to build throughout the South. The Goat Man claimed to have been ordained by the Pentecostal Church, and refused to travel on Sundays so that he could preach in a booming voice to the crowds gathered around his wagon. One of his tiny churches, the Free Thinking Christian Mission in Jeffersonville, Georgia, stood for several years until vandals burned it down. When I asked him about this, he sadly shook his head. “Takes all kind of people to make a world,” he said. “And I think we got ‘em, all right.”

For those hardy visitors who could stand the stench and the constantly bleating goats, the Goat Man would eagerly recount stories of his travels and offer opinions on his three favorite subjects: God, politics and women. He claimed that modern day preachers were only interested in the Almighty Dollar, and warned of upcoming race wars and economic depressions. He also tried to generate interest in a run for the Presidency on a third party ticket. By the late 1960s, he claimed to have been married three times, fathered children by each of his wives, and to have received over 25 additional marriage proposals. “The Good Lord gave me three wives, which proved to be three too many,” he would often say. “The Good Book says that there’ll be seven women for every man. Somebody can sure have my other four.”

One subject that continued to haunt the Goat Man in later years was Vietnam. He claimed to have another son missing in action, and my mere mention of the subject brought about an unexpectedly angry response. “The money people just kept sendin’ the boys over there, killin’ ‘em all,” he said. “People know how to kill, but they don’t know nothin’ about savin’.” At one time, he even considered camping out with his goats on the White House lawn until he received an answer on his boy’s whereabouts.

Over the years, the Goat Man became a problem for law enforcement. Due to heavy traffic jams behind his wagon, he was frequently rerouted at various state lines. Humane societies charged him with cruelty to animals, although he was never convicted. In the 1940s, he was even suspected by some Twiggs County, Georgia residents of being a Nazi spy. After a short investigation, the local police decided that his mountain man appearance was not a disguise. “[The whiskers and long hair] have something to do with professed religion,” they concluded.

Unfortunately, the Goat Man’s herd proved irresistible to vandals. One of the worst violations occurred on a snowy Christmas morning in 1964 when the Goat Man awoke to find Old Billy, his oldest goat and so-called “companion of companions,” wounded by a hunting arrow. Kind passers-by helped bring the goat to a veterinarian, but he died of complications four months later. The Goat Man later eulogized him in one of his autobiographies with the heartbreaking poem, “In Memory of Old Billy.” The vandals were never found.

Despite this setback, the Goat Man traveled on, eventually covering, by his count, some 100,000 miles and 49 of the 50 states. The only state he missed was Hawaii, due to logistical problems and his concern that, as he told an Alabama newspaper, the “goats might eat the grass skirts sight off the hula girls!”.

As superhighways were constructed across the country in the late 1960s, it became more dangerous for the Goat Man to continue his odyssey. But it would take two more tragic events to knock his caravan off the road for good. While traveling through Chattanooga, Tennessee late one night in 1968, the Goat Man was violently mugged. He later awoke in a hospital with a gash in his head that required twenty-seven stitches to close. His goats were not so lucky; eight were found dead, their throats slashed.

Horrified by his ordeal, the Goat Man and his herd were driven to Conyers, Georgia to recover. While there, two of the remaining goats were stolen. One was believed to have been tied to a railroad track, while the other was never found. This proved to be too much for the Goat Man, who finally called it quits in 1969.

His livelihood gone, the man who prided himself on being his own boss finally moved into a one room wooden shack in Jeffersonville and lived off Social Security. One evening, he forgot to extinguish his makeshift stove after dinner, and fire swept through his shack while he slept. Luckily, he escaped with only his hair and beard singed, but his shack burned to the ground. Sympathetic Jeffersonville residents bought him and his eldest son Gene an abandoned school bus to live in.

Domestic life eventually became too dull for the Goat Man, and he soon became a common sight limping along Highway 80 between Jeffersonville and Macon, decorating himself with various objects he scavenged from the roadsides. He would also hitch a ride into Macon every week to socialize at the senior citizen’s center. Frustrated with his shrinking Social Security checks, he vowed to renew his cross-country odyssey, this time with the help of airplanes and buses.

In October 1985, the Goat Man followed through on his threat. He was reported missing to the Twiggs County Sheriff’s Department, and did not resurface until three months later, when a doctor from Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles called to report that the Goat Man was hospitalized there after being mugged. The Goat Man claimed to have traveled to Hollywood with the intention of romancing actress Morgan Fairchild. Instead, he was robbed at gunpoint of his watch and two government bonds. After his release, friends purchased a plane ticket back to Georgia for the dazed Goat Man.

The California trip effectively ended the Goat Man’s wandering days – that is, to everybody but the Goat Man himself. He considered his stay in the Eastview Nursing Home to be only a temporary thing. “I’m on the go all the time, bud,” he repeatedly told me. He then scratched his stubble with a smile, saying how anxious he was to grow his flowing beard back.

As my visit ended, I asked the Goat Man if he would allow me to take a picture of him to put in the frame of my parents’ drawing. He smiled and guided me out onto the sunny deck, allowing me to take all I wanted. Our task completed, he stayed back in the dining room as I told him goodbye.

“God be with you,” said the Goat Man. He then turned and stared silently out the window at the open blue sky.

ADDENDUM: Not long after my visit, tragedy struck Ches again as his son Gene was shot to death on their Twiggs County property near the old school bus, a murder which remains unsolved. Gene is buried in a donated plot in Jeffersonville, Georgia. A few months later, Ches passed away at his nursing home at age 103.

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Photo/Artwork Credits:

Home Page:

“Face Of A Legend.”  Pencil drawing by Larry K. Martin.  Copyright by Larry K. Martin. Printed with permission of the artist. This subject and others are available as prints from larrykmartin.com.

Story Page:

1. “America’s Goatman – Mr. Ches McCartney.” Pencil drawing by Larry K. Martin.  Copyright by Larry K. Martin. Printed with permission of the artist. This subject and others are available as prints from larrykmartin.com.
2. Postcard of the Goat Man handed out at his stops, photographer unknown.
3. Home movie of the Goat Man provided by Robert Bonner.
4. Picture of Goat Man in 1998 by Craig Dominey.

Other Goat Man Links:

Facebook group for The Goat Man
Great slide show of Goat Man photos
Wikipeda entry on The Goat Man
The Goat Man, America’s Legend
America’s Goat Man
New Georgia Encyclopedia entry on The Goat Man

Additional Resources:

Darryl Patton,  America’s “Goat Man” (Mr. Ches McCartney) (Gadsden, Ala.: Little River Press, 1994).

Written by Craig Dominey

WARNING: Some images below might be disturbing

Before the days when television, DVD players and the internet beamed countless entertainment options into even the most remote American communities, the traveling circus was small town America’s ticket to worlds of magic and wonder. Each year, young and old alike would excitedly fill the streets to watch the parade of gaily colored wagons, clowns, performers and animals roll into town. As railroad systems spread into the outermost corners of rural America, more circuses of all sizes fought for the hard earned dollars of American families.

But when Sparks World Famous Shows, a mid-sized, 15-rail car circus, rolled into the mountainous community of Erwin, Tennessee on September 13, 1916, they promised a bizarre spectacle that no circus had ever offered before. After the matinee performance, they promised Erwin’s citizens a free, public hanging of who was then the most notorious killer in Tennessee, “Murderous Mary…”

…A circus elephant.

What you are about to read is a true story. Some events leading up to the hanging of Murderous Mary have been clouded over time by faulty memories, the oral tradition and outright lies and exaggerations. To this day, some of Erwin’s citizens refuse to even discuss the incident.

But there is little doubt that an elephant was hung in the Erwin rail yards on September 13, 1916 – an event that would forever label this little known community as the “Town That Hung the Elephant.”

Throughout his life, Charlie Sparks, owner of Sparks World Famous Shows, knew how to please an audience. He was the son of English music hall performers and, by age eight, was performing as part of the highly regarded Jack Harvey Minstrels as a drummer and World Champion Clogger. When his father died, he sang and danced on street corners to support his widowed mother.

Charlie’s circus days began when, during a tour stop in Utah, he and his mother met a vaudeville performer named John H. Weisman at the hotel where they were staying. Weisman was quite impressed with young Charlie’s performing skills, and quickly befriended both Charlie and his mother. They became such good friends that, when Charlie’s mother fell seriously ill with tuberculosis, she asked Weisman to care for Charlie. Shortly thereafter, Weisman not only adopted Charlie, but took the unusual step of changing his own last name to Sparks – perhaps because it was a more “circus sounding” name.

Father and son performed together as an after show act until 1890, when John H. organized his first small circus, the Sparks and Allen Wagon Show. It was later renamed John H. Sparks Virginia Shows and, for a small horse and wagon operation, was quite successful. In 1901, when Charlie was 25, his father grew weary of touring and bought a hotel near Winston-Salem, North Carolina, adding a fishing lake and a small zoo. In an ironic twist, John H. was bitten by a lion cub in this zoo, causing an infection that would lead to his death two years later.

This tragedy left Charlie in full control of the circus. He knew that, for his show to thrive, it had to latch onto the vast network of railroads that were spreading across the country at that time. Sometime after 1903, he moved the show on the rails, starting with just one rail car, performing horses and ponies, and draft stock.

As the railroad grew, so did the show, which was later renamed Sparks World Famous Shows. By 1916, it had ballooned into a successful, 15-car circus with clowns, acrobats, horses, lions and elephants. Some of Charlie’s performers were so skilled that mighty Barnum and Bailey Circus tried to steal them away. Charlie became a trusted and well-respected figure in the circus world, and was a common sight strolling down the street in his Stetson hat and cane, a smoldering cigar in his mouth.

Without a doubt, the star of Sparks World Famous Shows was Mary, a giant Asian elephant. She was advertised on Sparks posters as “The Largest Living Land Animal on Earth,” weighing “over 5 tons” and standing “3 inches taller than Jumbo,” the star elephant of the Barnum and Bailey Circus. Crowds throughout the country roared with delight as Mary performed tricks like standing on her head, playing musical instruments and pitching a baseball. But it was her size that awed many people from rural communities who had never seen an animal this large or exotic. Mary was valued anywhere from $8,000 to $20,000, and was the primary reason many people came to the show.

But Mary was more than just a performer to Charlie Sparks. His father had purchased Mary in 1898 when she was four years old, and she had been the family pet ever since. After Charlie married Addie Mitchell, the circus’s head cook and animal doctor, Mary, in essence, became the child that this childless couple never had. Charlie firmly instructed his employees to be kind, gentle and respectful to all his animals, especially his beloved Mary.

Despite the show’s success, it still lagged behind its major competitor in the South, John Robinson’s Four Ring Circus and Menagerie, which boasted 42 railroad cars and larger numbers of performers and animals. Competition between the two circuses and other traveling shows became so fierce that each resorted to unique tactics to separate itself from the others.

Being a family-owned circus, Sparks World Famous Shows advertised itself as a “100% Sunday School Circus,” meaning that it was fair and honest with the public, and allowed no short changing of customers. To avoid tipping off rival shows, Charlie kept his routes under his hat, and rarely advertised in circus trade papers. Mere days before his show arrived in town, his scouts would plaster the area with colorful posters.

On the morning of September 11, 1916, before the circus arrived in the small mining community of St. Paul, Virginia, a local hotel worker named Walter “Red” Eldridge spotted one of these posters. He was about to change the life of the Sparks circus forever.

To this day, little is known about Red Eldridge except that he was between 23 and 38 years of age, worked at the Riverside Hotel in St. Paul and, when the Sparks circus arrived, approached head elephant trainer Paul Jacoby for a job. Despite Eldridge’s inexperience, Jacoby hired him as an under keeper of the elephants. Eldridge’s job responsibilities included watering the elephants and preparing them for the parades and shows. For the next few days, Eldridge was instructed according to Sparks’ “gentling care” philosophy when it came to the animals.

After the show, Eldridge left his job at the hotel and traveled south with the circus to their next stop in Kingsport, Tennessee. Kingsport then looked like a town out of the “Wild West.” The Carolina, Clinchfieid and Ohio Railroad (known simply as the “Clinchfield”) had recently been completed, linking Kingsport with the coal fields to the north and turning it into an industrial boom town. Workers streamed into Kingsport, with many having to stay in temporary tent shelters in the center of town. The streets were muddy and clogged with wagons, wild animals and crowds.

On September 12, Kingsport was putting on its first county fair, and Sparks World Famous Shows was going to be a part of it. Crowds from the surrounding hills came into town, swelling Kingsport’s already overcrowded streets. Sometime during the day, crowds lined the roadsides to watch “Mighty Mary” and her fellow elephants – Queen, Topsy, and the two babies, Ollie and Mutt – march through town, trunk to tail.

What happened next has been debated for years, but the most popular version of the story is that the elephants were being led to a watering ditch between shows. Eldridge used a bull hook – a stick with a hook on its end – to guide Mary, but had been warned in his training to nudge her gently and not to provoke her.

According to this story, sometime during the procession, Mary suddenly stopped. Several eyewitnesses claimed that she had spotted a piece of watermelon on the ground and was reaching down to grab it with her trunk. Eldridge forgot his training and roughly prodded her with the stick. Enraged, Mary suddenly grabbed Eldridge with her trunk, lifted him in the air, and flung him against what some claim was a drink stand. Then, according to eyewitness accounts, she stomped over and, with her massive foot, crushed Eldridge’s head like a ripe melon.

The crowds screamed and ran for their lives. Some say that a local blacksmith fired shots at Mary, but the bullets bounced off her thick hide. Hearing the screams, Charlie Sparks rushed over and put his arm around Mary’s trunk, calming her down. He then saw the mangled body of Red Eldridge, the magnitude of Mary’s actions suddenly apparent.</p> <p>But what was even more frightening was the chant coming from the crowd. Anger had burned away the fear in many of the onlookers. Now their voices rang out in unison: “Kill the elephant!”

Kingsport officials quickly “arrested” Mary and staked her by the county jail, where more onlookers gathered around her. Meanwhile, Charlie Sparks and his staff had a gut-wrenching decision to make concerning Mary’s fate.

In those days, “rogue” elephants who injured or killed someone could quietly have their names changed and be sold to another circus. But the story of Eldridge’s gruesome death had spread like wildfire throughout northeastern Tennessee. The newspapers had already nicknamed the elephant “Murderous Mary,” and claimed that she had killed before. The mayor of nearby Johnson City, the circus’s next stop, had banned Sparks World Famous Shows from setting foot in the city as long as Mary was with them, and more cities were almost certainly to follow. What’s worse, it was rumored that a lynch mob was on its way to Kingsport to kill Mary – armed with an old Civil War cannon.

Charlie was a smart businessman, and he knew that, if he didn’t satisfy the public’s desire for swift justice, his show could be financially ruined. But his final decision ultimately came down to his concern for public safety. “A human’s life is something I don’t want charged against me,” he later claimed in a 1924 interview. “If people in the business get hurt, that’s our lookout. But with an outsider – that’s different.”

With great reluctance, Charlie decided that Mary had to be put to death publicly. But how? Shooting her in the four soft spots on her head would be both difficult and dangerous with the large crowds that would certainly gather around to watch. Mary was too smart to eat food laced with cyanide, and there wasn’t enough electricity in that part of Tennessee to electrocute her. Even more gruesome scenarios were brought up and quickly dismissed.

Finally, he decided that the only “humane” way to execute Mary would be to hang her. Clinchfield Railroad had huge, 100-ton derricks that they used to unload lumber off their freight cars. If these derricks could handle those heavy items, they could surely handle a five-ton elephant.

But then more problems arose for Sparks. The summer of 1916 had brought torrential rains that caused floods and wash outs all over the mountains. Clinchfield refused to send a derrick car all the way to Kingsport when an emergency might require it south over the Blue Ridge Mountains. If Charlie wanted to use a derrick car, he would have to take his circus south to Clinchfield’s headquarters and repair facilities in Erwin, Tennessee.

And so, on the morning of September 13, the circus train carrying Mary and the rest of Sparks World Famous Shows chugged south toward Erwin, and that city’s date with history.

Erwin in 1916 had been transformed by the Clinchfield Railroad from an isolated mountain hamlet of about 500 people into a boom town of over 2,000. Clinchfield imported hundreds of skilled workers for its repair facilities, and the newly relocated Blue Ridge Pottery employed many more. Like Kingsport, Erwin had a “western flavor,” with muddy streets, boardwalks for sidewalks, and many workers with disposable incomes eager for entertainment and spectacle.

Sparks World Famous Shows pulled into Erwin on a dreary morning. An all night rain had turned the ground into a sticky quagmire, and drizzle continued throughout the day. They would first put on an unscheduled performance without Mary that day – but it was only a sideshow for what was to come. Several eyewitnesses claim to have spotted Mary chained outside the Sparks tent, swaying back and forth nervously, seemingly sensing that something was wrong.

After the show, thousands of people from Erwin and surrounding areas rushed over to the rail yard. They filled every available boxcar, engine and tower, jostling with each other for the prime viewing spots. Some Erwin citizens and Sparks performers couldn’t bear to watch the execution, and quickly fled the scene.

In an attempt to calm Mary, Charlie decided to have her walk to the derrick with the other elephants, trunk to tail, like they did most every day. But several eyewitnesses claim that Mary didn’t appear fooled for, according to them, she hesitated several times and trumpeted loudly.

When Mary reached the derrick, some circus roustabouts quickly chained her legs to the rail to keep her still. The other elephants were led away out of sight range of the horrible event that was to come. Meanwhile, about 500 yards down the track, another group of roustabouts and railroad laborers were hastily digging a large grave with a steam shovel.

An eerie hush fell across the crowd as one of the roustabouts threw the derrick’s 7/8-inch chain around Mary’s neck, fitted the end through a steel ring, and signaled the derrick operator to lift her. The operator threw the handle forward, the winch squealed and the chain tightened around Mary’s neck. She struggled as her front feet slowly lifted off the ground.</p> <p>Several eyewitnesses claimed that the roustabouts forgot to release Mary’s ankle chains as she was lifted, and they could hear the gruesome sound of her tendons being torn.

Suddenly, a loud crack shattered the silence. Mary fell to the ground with a loud thud. The neck chain had broken! The crowd screamed and started running away, fearful that this “mad elephant” would kill them all. But Mary sat stunned on the railroad track like a giant jack rabbit, the fall having injured her gravely.

When order was restored, a roustabout climbed up Mary’s back and attached a heavier chain around her neck. Mary fought less this time as the derrick hoisted her into the air again. The chain held, and within a few minutes, Mary fell limp and died.

Before Mary was buried, a photograph was taken for posterity. Although Argosy Magazine later claimed that this photo was a fake, most researchers agree that it is indeed real, although noticeably touched up due to the foggy weather conditions.

With nothing left to see, the crowd dispersed. Mary was lowered off the derrick and buried in her makeshift grave. The other elephants were led back to the circus train. According to historical articles on the Sparks circus, the elephants trumpeted loudly as they were taken away, sensing that Mary was missing. These same articles claim that it took several performances for them to adjust to Mary’s sudden absence.

One of the more persistent and bizarre stories surrounding this event is that, in an attempt to reclaim some of his financial losses, Charlie Sparks ordered his roustabouts to dig Mary up and cut off her tusks for a touring exhibit. This highly doubtful story is made even more so by the fact that Asian elephants don’t even grow tusks. And, if the picture of her hanging is to be believed, then it’s obvious that Mary never had tusks at the time of her death.

Another story claims that the Associated Press asked Charlie Sparks to dig up Mary and hang her again for a photograph. Again, this is another story that is placed in the “highly doubtful” category.

The story of Mary’s execution occasionally pops up in magazines such as Playboy and the National Enquirer. It was even used as a question on the game show Jeopardy!

But the exact spot where Mary was buried remains a mystery to this day. The railroad now belongs to CSX, and there is no marker or memorial to be found. Because of the embarrassment and shame later-day Erwin residents felt because of this event, some city leaders would like to keep it that way.

An ironic footnote to this story is that Middle Tennessee now has its own elephant sanctuary. The Elephant Sanctuary, located about 65 miles southwest of Nashville in Hohenwald, contains 100 acres of designated grounds for sick, old and needy elephants to roam in peace, as well as heated barns containing comfortable stalls.

Perhaps if such an organization had been around in Mary’s time, it could have provided an alternative to the gruesome spectacle that took place that rainy September day and forever linked Erwin, Tennessee and “Murderous Mary” in American history.

- THE END -

Story Credits | Story Background

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