Tom Dula

"Hang down your head Tom Dooley, 

Hang down your head and cry, 

Hand down you head Tom Dooley, 

Poor boy your bound to die."

-The Ballad of Tom Dooley, originally performed by the Kingston Trio

I remember my Nana used to sing that ballad to me and my sister when she would tuck us in at night. Every time we spent the night at her house, there it was, we couldn't sleep without hearing it at least once.

My Nana never told me the real story of Tom Dooley, but the song was enough for me then. I knew that Tom had killed a girl and that they were going to hang him for it.

But the older I get, the more I've wondered about that story.

Tom Dooley was actually named Tom Dula, the name was just pronounced "Dooley" by locals, and he became known as Tom Dooley because of the popular song.

Thomas C. Dula was born on June 20 or 22, 1846 into a poor Appalachian family. Tom had a sister named Eliza, and 2 brothers.

Tom was a lady's man, that is one thing that everyone can agree on. 

Tom grew up with, or at least knew from a very young age, a woman named Ann Foster. Ann and Tom had an affair, that was not exactly a secret. Some say that Ann's mother found the two of them in bed once. At this time, Tom and Ann were only 14.

When Ann was 15, she married James Melton, a 22 year old farmer, although it wasn't because her affairs with Tom were over.

On the 15th of March, 1862, Tom joined the Confederate Army as a musician. His love of music seems to be another commonly agreed on fact. He served in Company K of the 42nd North Carolina Infantry Regiment, not the in Zebulon Vance's 26th North Carolina as popularly believed. Tom's two brothers also joined the army, leaving only his mother and sister at home.

Flash forward 3 years to July of 1865. Tom was finished in the army, so he came home to the North Carolina mountains. 

Ann Foster, now Ann Melton, apparently still has a thing for Tom, or she just has no moral standard at all, because as soon as he is home, they resume their affair. Many people say that Tom and Ann would be in bed together, while he husband was sleeping soundly in another bed across the room.

Now, I'm not sure if Ann's husband knew what was going on or not. I suspect (no evidence for this) that he probably knew, or at least suspected what was going on. Perhaps he had only married Ann because she needed an excuse to get away from her mother, who, by the way, was also extremely promiscuous. Perhaps James Melton knew that Ann still loved Tom and didn't want to say anything. Or maybe he was just a really heavy sleeper. 

A lot of people believe that James was old and senile or perhaps Tom intimidated him, being the war veteran that he was. Author Sharyn McCrumb claims otherwise.

It's 1866. Pauline Foster, Ann's cousin, enters the story.

It's a commonly known fact that Tom ended up with syphilis. Some people say that when he discovered he had the disease, he vowed to kill the woman who gave it to him, leading many to believe that it was Laura Foster who gave it to him, but that may not have been the case.

Pauline Foster came to live with her cousin Ann while she was in the area, because she was visiting a doctor who told her he could cure her. And guess what it was that she needed curing from?

Yep, syphilis. 

I don't think that Pauline and Tom ever really cared at all for each other, not really, but according to some, Ann didn't want the locals thinking that she, a married woman, was having an affair (although the locals had known them since they were children and probably all knew exactly what was going on), so she asked Pauline to sleep with Tom.

Pauline knew she had syphilis.

Bad idea.

So then Tom got it, and then he gave it to Ann.

Living somewhere nearby, another cousin to Ann, Laura Foster, gets added to the weird love triangle, so of course now she has syphilis too. 

No, abstinence was not something that was ever taught to the Foster girls. 

It's hard to say when Tom and Laura Foster met. Some people say it was as children, which might make sense, seeing as how she was cousins to Tom's lover, Ann, and the fact that she lived within 5 miles of them. 

Other people say that they were probably older when they met, perhaps after Tom came back from the war.

Either way, now Pauline, Ann, Tom, and Laura (who had a reputation for sleeping around anyway) all have syphilis.

I don't know if Tom really ever plotted to kill whoever gave him syphilis, but if he had, he would have known that it probably wasn't Ann. Pauline and Laura happened around the same time, Pauline showing up in March 1866, Laura and Tom beginning their affair in April. Pauline knew that she had it, and, given Laura's reputation, she probably did too.

According to legends, Laura Foster became pregnant, although people who have done in depth research tend to doubt the validity of this claim. More likely it was just something that the locals made up to give the story an even more tragic twist.

On May 25, 1866, some of the neighbors saw Laura riding out on her father's horse, a bundle of clothes with her. She told passersby that she was going to the Bate's Place to meet someone.

There was talk, of course, that Tom and Laura were planning on getting married, and that was where she was going.

Laura Foster rode into the woods that morning and never returned. She was only 18.

Nobody alive today knows what really happened to Laura that day, only that she was murdered. 

People began to get worried and look for Laura, but to no avail. Many believed that she had probably just run off with Tom.

Sometime after Laura's death, probably about 3 weeks, since that is what most people say, Laura's horse returned home. It's halter was broken, some say the horse chewed through it, and tragically thin, as if it had been tied up and starving all that time.

From what I understand, Tom had been under suspicion for all this time, forcing him to flee into Tennessee, where he changed him name to Tom Hall and began working as a farm hand for a man named James Grayson. 

He had left Grayson about a week after he arrived, and when the police approached Grayson, asking if he had seem Tom Dula, he knew who they were talking about.

Tom was shortly located and arrested without incident for the suspected murder of Laura Foster. Once he was found, he seemed to go quietly.

One day, Ann confided in Pauline that she knew where Laura's body was. She took her to a shallow grave, hidden somewhere, and checked to make sure it hadn't been disturbed. 

While I'm sure Ann had wanted Pauline to keep quiet about it, she didn't, and led the authorities to the body.

Laura had been stabbed once, in the chest. The wound had, of course, been fatal. Her body had then been stuffed into a grave only about 2 feet deep, which of course led to speculation that a man would have dug a deeper hole, so it couldn't have been Tom.

Tom was taken to court and defended by a man named Zebulon Vance, who was able to get the trial moved from Wilkeboro to Statesville, because he believed that Tom would not get a fair trial in Wilkes county.

Tom was eventually ruled as guilty, and sentenced to be hanged.

Given Ann's knowledge of where the grave was, she too was arrested, but Tom swore that he had been alone in the task, even writing a note before he died saying that he had had no accomplices.

Ann was released from jail. 

On May 1, 1868, two years after Laura's murder, Tom Dula was hung, not in a 'lonesome valley' on a 'white oak tree' as the song says, but instead he was hung in the middle of Statesville, for all to see. Some people say that the rope didn't snap his neck at first, like it was supposed to, so he had to hang there for a good 10 minutes before he finally suffocated to death.

More legend and myth surrounds the story of Tom Dula than actual facts, so it's hard to say how accurate any of the tales are. Yes, Laura was brutally murdered, yes, there was a difficult love triangle, and yes, Tom was convicted of the crime and punished, but the question remains, did he really kill her?

Some say yes, it was Tom. According to some, Tom swore to kill whoever had given him syphilis, and he believed that it had been Laura. One doctor says that he had treated Tom, Ann, Laura, and Pauline for syphilis, so who really knows how he got it? Nobody seemed to believe in abstinence or sleeping with only one man/woman, so who knows? He could have gotten it from Ann. This particular version of the story sets Tom up as a total playa' and womanizer, (which he kind of was) and a vengeful, angry, hard man, (which he could have been after the war). Because he had been in war, he had no doubt seen many killed, and probably taken lives himself, so is it a far stretch of the imagination that he killed her? Not really.

Some say that it was Ann. According to some, Ann was jealous of Laura, because she still loved Tom, which makes sense, seeing as how Tom and Ann had been having a passionate affair since they were at least 14. Jealousy is a powerful motive. That, coupled with the facts that she knew exactly where Laura's grave was, and that the grave that Laura was buried in was so shallow (the thought here is that a man would have been able to, and probably would have, dug a deeper hole, especially one who was fueled by fear or anger). They say that Tom probably still loved Ann too (which makes me wonder, why would he marry Laura? Perhaps so that people would think the affair between Ann and Tom was over), and that is why he swore that he had done it, so that Ann would be free to live. Or perhaps he did love Laura, but he still felt something for Ann, and either way, he wanted to protect his life long friend and lover.

I personally have a third theory that I wonder if anyone thought of at all. I'm not sure if Laura actually said that she was going to marry Tom, or if people just assumed it because they slept together often, or if maybe she really was pregnant and people thought it was Tom's baby, but Laura seemed to have a reputation for sleeping around. What if (and I really don't have any evidence here, just a theory) Laura was meeting someone else, and just let everyone assume it was Tom? What if there was another man, who was another of her lovers, perhaps someone who really loved her, or perhaps someone who was angry because she slept with Tom? What if another man killed Laura Foster? As I said, this is just a wild theory based on really no facts. 

The truth is, we will probably never know who really killed Laura Foster, but we do know that Tom Dula was hanged for it. Pauline could have done it for all we know. 

Most evidence points to either Ann Foster Melton or Tom Dula. 

Laura Foster's body was, of course, moved to a proper grave, although not the one that it is supposed to be in. Because of the fame of the story, Laura's family moved her body to a secret location.

Tom was supposedly buried about 5 miles away from Laura, after his death.

Tom Dula was immortalized in song and legend. The popular song, "Ballad of Tom Dooley", tells the tragic tale of a romantically horrible murder. The story has, of course, as most tragedies, been romanticized and the facts twisted until there is almost nothing left that we can be certain of in this story.

The reason I chose this tale is because it all happened in the mountains that I live in, and the story is one that has been sung to me since I was a very little girl. 

The mystery of it all keeps me spell bound. As I have been researching this, unwinding the tale, I've caught myself wondering about it all. A scandalous family all get tangled up with the wrong man, making the tale end in tragedy. I will say one thing about it, it certainly has the feel of the Appalachian mountains.

"This time tomorrow, 

Reckon where I'll be, 

In some lonesome valley, 

Hanging on a white oak tree"

-The Ballad of Tom Dooley