Long ago, when I was learning fractions and diagramming in elementary school, when I played sandlot football in the fall, baseball in a friend’s front yard in the spring, and Civil War in the woods behind our house all summer long, fighting Yankees and riding merrily alongside Jeb Stuart and his cavalry, I heard the Kingston Trio sing of Tom Dooley. The song played on a jukebox in Grady’s Café in Boonville, N.C. Twenty-five miles west of Winston-Salem, this small town with its single stoplight—it still has only one light—was the birthplace of a romance between a boy and a song. I loved that ballad then, and I love it now.
Over the years, I have read, in a haphazard way, several accounts of the life and legend of Tom Dooley, all of which provided different insights into his character, his trial, and his hanging for murder. The most recent of these examinations—and certainly the most comprehensive—is John Edward Fletcher’s The True Story of Tom Dooley: From Western North Carolina Mystery to Folk Legend.
Fletcher brings an interesting set of skills to his writing. He is not a professional historian, but instead he has spent his life in the fields of science and mathematics, having taught in various universities, worked for Lockheed Martin and the National Institute of Health, and engaged in various research projects. Using his research skills coupled with an amateur interest in genealogy, he meticulously examines Laura Foster’s murder and Tom Dula’s trial and execution for that murder. Writers, including Fletcher, use both the name Dula, which was Tom’s real name, and the name Dooley, which is from the ballads, to describe the protagonist. Fletcher is related to the Melton and Foster families, who were in turn intimately involved in the story.
Several aspects of this book should attract readers interested in the legend of Tom Dula and in the post-Civil War South. First and foremost is Fletcher’s careful use of court records and personal reminiscences of the time to recreate the murder and subsequent trial. He takes apart the tangled personal and sexual relationships among Laura Foster, Ann Melton, Laura’s distant cousin Pauline, and Tom, showing with some certainty that Laura was killed because she had passed a case of syphilis to Tom, who in turn infected Ann. The result was that both swore vengeance against her. Like a detective, Fletcher takes us step by step through the crime and its aftermath, carefully documenting each event. He also looks at the reasons for the legend that cropped up around this murder and ends his book with a discussion of the folk songs that followed Dula’s hanging.
What also is admirable in The True Story of Tom Dooley is that Fletcher speculates about possible motives, but he always makes perfectly clear that it is speculation. Did Ann Melton kill or help kill Laura? She had a history of violence and knew where Laura was buried, yet Fletcher states that we never can really know what part she played in the crime. Did Tom Dooley deserve hanging? Fletcher shows us that witnesses and evidence point to him as an accessory to murder, but there was no irrefutable evidence that he committed the murder himself. Fletcher admirably extends this same reserve—the reserve of a good historian, the unwillingness to pass judgment without the necessary facts, the ability to recreate events without forcing conclusions—to all the people in this book.
Finally, in the last two chapters of The True Story of Tom Dooley, Fletcher examines the myths and outright lies about Tom Dula in ballads. Those who know of Tom Dula through the Kingston Trio will be fascinated to follow the evolution of their song. Ludlow Music, which had copyrighted a book of folk songs John and Alan Lomax collected, successfully sued the Kingston Trio for recording the traditional folk song. Though the suit was settled out of court, the principle that a collector could “own” an American folksong will strike many readers as somewhat strange.
In addition to a lengthy bibliography, Fletcher includes a good number of photographs, ranging from pictures of local landmarks in North Carolina’s Wilkes, Caldwell, and Watauga counties to those of documents and people involved in the trial.
Readers interested in local history, the post-Civil War years in Western North Carolina, a well-written account of a murder trial, and a good story will find many pleasurable moments in The True Story of Tom Dooley.