In September 1916, the eastern Tennessee town of Erwin earned a notoriety that would shadow it for a century, when a five-ton elephant was lynched in the railyard, suspended from a railroad derrick before a crowd hungry for her blood.
Main Street Erwin comes alive for the Great Outdoors Festival, even in the rain.
Today, Erwin has a new elephant story to tell, rich with redemption, creativity, and momentum.
Twenty-odd years ago, I went to eastern Tennessee to puzzle through the story of Murderous Mary, the five-ton Sparks circus elephant who killed her novice trainer in Kingsport one day and died by hanging in Erwin’s railyard the next. I spent time in the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University reading oral histories from those who witnessed the hanging or heard the stories told in the aftermath.
Mary The Elephant
Let this 1916 picture of Mary’s hanging break your heart . . . and then donate in her memory to the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee at Elephants.com.
In the story I wrote for Blue Ridge Country, I shared the convictions of Ruth Piper, who believed then that her town had suffered long enough. Back then, she was a lone voice in Erwin: “Kingsport, the railroad, and Mr. Sparks are to blame for what happened to Mary—not Erwin. People feel so guilty about it—we’ve got to release it. It is a sad, sad thing that happened, but we have to let it go.”
It took a while, but today, Ruth Piper’s words are echoed by many. Erwin, Tennessee is tired of being known as the town that hung an elephant.
What I found when I returned to Erwin was a town determined to make amends for its elephant crime, and in the process, reinvent itself socially and economically.
First things first. Here’s what happened in mid-September, 1916.
The Sparks World Famous Shows was traveling the rails through eastern Tennessee when they picked up a new elephant handler. Walter “Red” Eldridge was a drifter, a dreamer, and a daredevil—the day after he was hired, he rode massive Mary (“The Largest Living Animal On Earth”) through the streets of Kingsport.
When Mary stopped to enjoy some discarded watermelon rinds, Red hit the side of her head with his elephant stick. You can guess the rest: Mary lifted him in her trunk and tossed Red onto the street, then put her foot on his head and “squashed it like a ripe melon,” as Charles Price put it in his 1992 book, “The Day They Hung the Elephant.”
(Speculation later was that Eldridge had hit an infected tooth, causing Mary’s violent response. But since that report came from an alleged autopsy conducted by a veterinarian deep in Mary’s grave several days after her hanging, one can only wonder.)
Circus owner Charlie Sparks didn’t want to kill Mary…she was valued at $8,000 and was a major draw. But Johnson City and Rogersville, scheduled to host the circus later in the week, had banned Mary from their towns, and public opinion was turning fast. Word was that a vigilante group from Kingsport was coming armed with a relic Civil War cannon to kill Mary if Charlie Sparks wouldn’t do it himself.
So the next day, in Erwin, Mary the Elephant was hung from a 100-ton Clinchfield Railroad crane car before an audience of, they say, three thousand. And then she was buried in a massive, hand-dug grave somewhere in the railyard, unmarked to this day.
I meet Jamie Rice in her Town Hall office. She’s the president of RISE Erwin, and she has her hands full: tomorrow is the Great Outdoors Festival, and they’re expecting thousands.
RISE Erwin was born a few years back, when CSX left town and the railyard fell silent. “Four hundred jobs, gone. The town was in mourning,” Rice says. “We had to ask ourselves, ‘who are we?’ We weren’t a railroad town any longer, and we were tired of having the stigma as the town that hung the elephant. We knew we had to create a new identity for ourselves.”
The hundredth anniversary of Mary’s hanging was looming, and the members of RISE Erwin came up with a creative idea. Reaching out to the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee—one of only two certified sanctuaries in America—they offered to do a fundraiser for the sanctuary by auctioning off public-art elephant statues. The Erwin Elephant Revival was born.
“We bought unpainted elephant statues from a business in Denmark called The Elephant Parade. They protect elephant habitats all over the world. We had local artists paint them, and after they were displayed around town for a couple of months, we auctioned them off. The profits went to the Elephant Sanctuary,” Rice says. In the past two years, RISE Erwin has donated $20,000 to the Elephant Sanctuary.
“Tomorrow’s Great Outdoors Festival is the debut of our new herd,” Jamie says. “They’re on display out in front of the Courthouse.”
The elephants are beautiful, with their sunlit colors and whimsical designs. Children wander among them, touching their trunks and leaning against their legs. Cell-phone cameras are everywhere. A hiker who’s come off the Appalachian Trail removes his pack and sits on the Courthouse steps, taking them in. They are mesmerizing, these elephant statues.
Elephants from the Elephant Revival Herd.
Down the street, Glenna Lewis is sitting outside the Valley Beautiful Antique Mall, which she owns with her nephew, Joey.
“My father was there when they hung Mary,” she tells me. “I don’t remember what he said about it…but it happened here.”
More than 5,000 pieces of Southern Pottery are stacked high in the narrow shop, which used to be housed in the Hanging Elephant Antique Mall down the street. Opening in 1916—the year Mary was hung—Southern Pottery was a major employer in Erwin and the parent company of famed, hand-painted Blue Ridge Pottery. The town, with its extensive rail service, was also home to Cash Family, Erwin, Clinchfield, and Clouse pottery.
The Lewises seem to have cornered the market. This is the place to come to if you collect Blue Ridge. Spend an hour with Joey Lewis, and you’ll learn everything there is to know about the beautiful stuff.
I ask about the elephant figurines in the front window. “They’re from the 1920s, made here in Erwin to memorialize Mary,” Joey says. He watches my hand move toward one lustered white elephant: “Southern Potteries Rare Elephant Figural. 18k gold detail. $1,000.”
“She’s half-price—it’s our anniversary month,” he says. “I could go down to $400.”
I take a last, longing look and leave without it. As beautiful and historic as the pottery elephants are, my money would be better sent to The Elephant Sanctuary. (I know this to be true—but the $6.95 red elephant watering can I buy down the street is small consolation.)
In Clinchfield Pharmacy on the morning of the Great Outdoors Festival, there’s a giant inflatable elephant standing to the side of the pharmacy counter. “What’s that thing doing standing there?” a customer asks the clerk.
“Oh, you know, Joe,” she says, pointing to the pharmacist. “He was going to hang it, but he couldn’t find a noose.”
The clerk tells me a slightly skewed version of Mary’s demise, saying it was her owner that Mary killed, not her handler. “Always wondered, why didn’t they inject her with something and put her down that way? The killing happened over in Kingsport—why’d they have to come to our town to kill her?”
It’s an interesting question, unanswerable but inviting speculation.
As the morning passes, Main Street fills. Kids have their pictures taken with Smoky the Bear. A man strolls by with an iguana draped on his shoulder. Volunteers from Kingsport’s Bays Mountain Park have brought snakes and birds of prey. Appalachian Trail hikers stop by the AT booth to share stories. Skateboarding ramps and jumps line a side street. Plants are for sale on every corner. I eat Elephant Tracks ice cream and am happy for RISE Erwin: Despite a questionable weather forecast, the crowds have turned out for their Great Outdoors Festival.
Near the open stage and food trucks at the end of Main Street, Tyler Engle, executive director of the Unicoi County Joint Economic Development Board, stands smiling big. He’s young, and he’s cheerful, and he’s on the front lines of RISE Erwin. He’s an Erwin native who returned with his wife Logan to help bring his home town into a new future.
“This is the most exciting time in the past 60 years here in Erwin,” he says. With the rise and subsequent fall of the railroad and Southern Potteries, the arrival of Nuclear Fuel Services in the 1950s was a major stabilizer. Now Unicoi County’s largest employer with a workforce of 1,000, Nuclear Fuel produces fuel used for Navy nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers.
There’s more. An industrial park. Fiberoptic throughout the county. A new hospital. Rocky Fork, Tennessee’s 55th state park, under construction. Grant-funded waterline extensions. A library housed in the former Clinchfield/CSX Rail Passenger station. The Appalachian Trail and the Nolichucky River. Main Street festivals—this one, and an Apple Festival in its 41st year that draws 110,000 visitors.
And an Elephant Revival. Eyewitness Wade Ambrose ended his account of Mary’s hanging like this:
So they buried the elephant there, and as far as I know, her bones are still there, near the back track, below where the old powerhouse used to be. Sometime, in a hundred, or five hundred years from now, somebody will probably find her and wonder how in the world those bones got there.
I’d like to think that Mary’s bones will stay buried where they are, at peace in this small mountain town, her memory ongoing in elephant revivals, public elephant art, and support for elephants who are a lot more fortunate than Mary was.
The word that comes to mind is atonement.
The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee
Founded in 1995, the Elephant Sanctuary is currently home to 10 elephants who are retired from zoos and circuses. The 2,700-acre non-profit preserve includes specialized habitats for both Asian and African elephants.
The Sanctuary lies 80 miles southwest of Nashville. But if you’re thinking of a visit, think again. Visitors are prohibited, in order to safeguard the elephants and their habitats.
However, through the use of solar-powered cameras, the world can catch glimpses of the elephants. Distance learning opportunities are available to schools and groups around the world. To access, go to www.elephants.com and click on the ELECAM link.
Todd Montgomery, Volunteer and Outreach Manager of the Sanctuary, is grateful to RISE Erwin for its support.
“It’s a cool partnership we have with them. We’re so touched—I guess that’s the best word for it—that an entire community has come forward to support us. For so long, Erwin was known as a town where an elephant was hung. Instead of pretending that it didn’t happen, they’ve found a way to honor the memory of Mary.”
I think Jamie Rice got it right when she said, “If Mary had lived in today’s world, she’d be at the Elephant Sanctuary.”
Everyone Loves a Scandal: Mary in the Press
When we first did a story on Mary, in 1997, there wasn’t much to be found about the elephant’s tragic demise. There was Charles Price’s short book, “The Day They Hung the Elephant,” and the historic materials in the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University.
Today, if you google some variation of “Hanging Mary the Elephant,” you’ll be overwhelmed by hundreds of results. Among them:
- Mary’s been written about in the Daily Mail. The New York Daily News.
- NPR’s “Snap Judgment” did a Mary skit.
- Mary is on Pinterest.
- She’s been alluded to by bestselling novelists Sharyn McCrumb and Jodi Picoult.
- Matthew Carlton’s play, “Hanging Mary,” won first place in the 2012 Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights competition.
- There’s even been a ballad written about Mary, by Asheville songwriter
- Chuck Brodsky.
- Mary is also one of two elephants written about in Mike Jaynes’s book “Elephants Among Us: Two Performing Elephants in 20th-Century America.”
The original Blue Ridge Country article is cited as a reference for much of what’s been published since it appeared in 1997. Let’s hope that this new story of Erwin and its Elephant Revival gets equal attention.