[Granville-Hough] 10 Mar 2009 - Death Throes Nightmare

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 07:57:16 -0800
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: Death Throes Nightmare - 10  Mar 2009


I had a question about Wild Bill Sullivan, so here is 
the answer.
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        (Notes to Maxine (Richardson Watts in 2003.)
I just wonder if you got to meet with Mitchel Sullivan and discussed
his grandmother Mrs. Ellen "Tooty" Sullivan.
     And I also wondered about Wild Bill Sullivan and his legends.  You
confirmed for me that his wife was a Rollins, who I think was related to
our ancestress, Celia Rollins, wife of Joseph Price, Granpa Richardson's
grandmother.  I could never trace either Celia or Joseph beyond Georgia.
(Actually, we later found that Wild Bill's wife was a Keyes, related to
my Aunt Nannie (Keyes) Kennedy.)
     I once or twice hauled cotton to the gin before school from the
Rufus Yelverton cottonhouse which had been the cabin where Wild Bill and
Neese hid out after one of their killings of a neighbor.  It was just a
simple log cabin the size of any old cotton house where the chimney of
clay had fallen down and had been boarded up.  It had also been
floored at ground level.  It was in a back field from the Rufus 
Yelverton home on old
Highway 20. It was on the edge of the "The Big Woods," about 25 square 
miles of rough cut-over land but once a great hunting area on the 
headwaters of Hatchitabalou Creek.
     I will repeat one story which passed through the countryside when
Wild Bill died in 1932.  He died in terrible agony, and people said in 
hushed
tones he was facing his doom in Hell.  He did not regret any killing of
his neighbors or any other of the dastardly deeds he had done and said
so.  What he heard in his dying hours were the screams of a little black
nigger baby he had held over the campfire flames until she slipped out
of his hands into the fire.  It seems that he and his cohorts were on a
trip to Ellisville and camped near Leaf River when they observed a negro
family camped nearby.  They all got drunk and decided to raid and
terrify the negro family, just for fun.  Wild Bill grabbed the baby out
of the arms of the mother and held her over the campfire in a stunt of
bravada.  The baby's kinky  hair caught fire and she wriggled out of his
grasp straight down into the fire.  Her screams and those of her family
were what Wild Bill heard on his deathbed, and I hope continues to hear,
all through eternity.
     What was remarkable about this story is that everyone believed it.
I did, and I still do.  It caused sober reflection among some hardened
and mean people.  Sullivans never repeated it nor recorded it.  There 
are some things you simply do not do.