The Lynching Tree

Published in the Denton Record Chronicle on Saturday March 5, 1927, this newspaper article describes a lynching that occurred in 1864 on a tree that still stands on Texas Woman’s University campus. The article tells of an African American man named Nelse who was lynched on a tall oak tree just a few feet from the newly built library at TWU, formerly known as College of Industrial Arts (CIA, 1905). Nelse was an enslaved man owned by C.C. Daugherty. C.C. Daughtery and his two brothers T.W. Daugherty and Boome Daugherty all served in the confederate army. The enslaved man lived in the Negro quarters behind the home of three women, Mrs. T.W. Daugherty, Mrs. D.H. Fry, and Mrs. Burris. Nelse was said to have been ill-mannered towards one of the women in the household. Citizens were horrified and outraged, so they sought the help of “Lee’s Army,” presumably a group of individuals that inflicted racial violence against enslaved peoples, union troops and their supporters during the civil war. This group of individuals waited until nightfall to “quickly and quietly” extract Nelse from his quarters, without any of the other enslaved individuals noticing. Nelse was found hanging in this tree by an older enslaved woman who lived in the Negro quarters with him. She recognized him saying, “That looks like Nelse!” Terrified, she returned to tell her mistress and the and the other enslaved individuals in the quarters what she saw that morning.