George Washington Peck was lynched in Poolesville, Maryland in 1880, just as the era of Jim Crow was beginning. Peck had lived in the Poolesville area his entire life, having been born there in 1858 as a slave owned by William Poole, whose family gave the town its name. Freedom came after the close of the Civil War and his name is recorded in the 1867 census of freed slaves although any family members he had are unknown. However Peck probably maintained contact with another former slave of Poole's, Louisa Lear, and her children, who continued to reside in the area after being freed. The 1870 census reports 12 year old Peck living with the family of a Howard Griffith near Beallsville.Peck was about 21 as 1880 began and working for Lemuel Beall, a local shopkeeper who also employed Louisa Lear as a cook. During the previous year, Beall had also hired an 11 year old white girl named Ada Hayes, whose family had recently moved to Poolesville from Virginia; her widowed mother had remarried to a man named Hyrocles Reeves. It is not known exactly where they were living at the time when Ada was killed and it may be that they all boarded with Beall or else lived somewhere else and the girl was living alone with him as hired help at his shop.
On the morning of January 10, Rev. Calvin Amy heard screaming coming from a barn near his house and supposedly found George Peck in there trying to rape Hayes. Amy had a loaded revolver which he threatened Peck with and later told Beall of what he saw. Peck went back to his duties on Beall's property and a doctor examined Hayes and found she had no injuries outside a few scrapes and bruises. Amy and Beall went to fetch Constable John Miles. When Peck saw Miles coming, he dashed into some nearby woods but was soon apprehended. He was taken to Poolesville and brought before Judge Stephen Donohoe where he allegedly confessed and said he would have raped Hayes had Rev. Amy not caught him.Constable Miles did not immediately transport the prisoner to the Rockville jail 14 miles away, a four hour journey from Poolesville at a time when automobiles still lay in the future and transportation relied entirely on horse power. Instead, he put Peck in the Odd Fellows Hall in Poolesville with the intent of waiting until Monday to take him to Rockville. This was clearly putting Peck's life in danger as locals knew he was there and almost totally unguarded from mob justice. As word spread around town, an angry mob started forming. Miles realized the mob was looking for Peck and decided to take him to his own house for the night.
By 11:00 PM, he believed the coast was clear and took the shackled Peck with him as he headed over to William Walter's general store to pick up some grocery items on his way home. Some accounts claim this was near midnight, although it seems unlikely that the general store was still open at that time. Someone discharged a gun and a mob of between 35 and 100 men swarmed into the store and grabbed Peck--the low number seems more likely as Poolesville was hardly more than a village in 1880; it was not a census-designated place until 1900 when only 236 people are recorded as living there. A few men were masked but most made no attempt to hide their identities. Miles was knocked over and sustained bruises and contusions trying to fight off the mob and one account claims they knocked over a wooden stove in the store, almost setting the place on fire.Peck was seized, a rope tied around his neck, and he was dragged across the road and thrown over a fence into a vacant lot across from a church. He begged for mercy but it did no good. He was hanged from a locust tree after which the crowd dispersed. Some accounts claim he was also shot at. The body was cut down at about mid-morning the next day. Newspaper accounts of the lynching claim Peck was an ex-con implicated in numerous crimes in the area, but this seems highly unlikely as he would not have found employment in the town he'd lived his whole life in were that the case and there are no known records or other accounts of these supposed crimes.
After the body was cut down, it was buried in a field nearby. Local blacks dug up Peck shortly afterward and reburied him in the churchyard of Elijah United Methodist Church just outside of town. It also seems unlikely that Peck would get a burial on consecrated ground if he was a known felon and the burial records for the church were destroyed in a fire in 1950.A memorial to George Peck was erected in 2019 by the Equal Justice Initiative.
>>18347103>>18347102>>18347099>>18347096So in other words they erected a memorial to a man who tried to rape a child.
>>18347125no proof he did this. back then all you needed to do was kick the shit out of a black guy to elicit a false confession.
>>18347138Except the minister saw him and he confessed to the judge? That not good enough for you, LBJfag?
>>18347096This Poole fellow any relation to our dearly beloved website founder?
>>18347096>>18347099No one cares, Tulsa Tranny.
>George Washington PeckWtf is up with negros naming themselves after the full names of presidents?
>>18347096Not really a surprise. This part of MD had a lot of Confederate sympathizers during the war and the state was segregated just like the rest of the South, albeit not as brutally as Mississippi for example. >>18347125>>18347145He was abducted from custody and killed before the full legal process.
Montgomery County voted 55% for Winfield Hancock in the presidential election that year suggesting its Southern Democrat bent.
>>18347485Yeah MD leaned Democratic historically, though not 100%. In recent history that area has been solidly Democratic too but it's not as Southern. More like the typical Mid-Atlantic vibe
Wow Whites are so racist and dangerous.We should IMMEDIATELY put all the White people in White only no-go zones to protect BIPOC bodies and folx of color.
>>18347125He dindu nuffin doe
