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Subject: [NCHaywood] George Washington Gunter: Andy Gunter
Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 09:12:02 -0600

Web site: http://www.mozartconsulting.net/rrfha/1991/Sept1991.htm


This Newsletter is an official publication of the RAWLIN(G)S-ROLLIN(G)S
FAMILY HISTORY ASSOCIATION, a. non-profit membership society for
RAWLIN(G)S-ROLLIN(G)S genealogical research, published quarterly at 4918
Kenneth Avenue, Carmichael, CA 95608. Subscription is $7.50 yearly.

The editor is Katherine Rawlings.


R/RFHA Newsletter, September 1991, P.8

From Johnnie Rollins DelBuono, 344 Brookmeade Drive, Gretna, LA 70056

Found in an old newspaper in Hartford, Cocke Co., Tennessee
...discovered in the Library in Hartford.

"Around the turn of the century the ROLLINS and the Gunter family of
upper Cosby, Tennessee, had a quarrel which ended in the deaths of at
least three of them. It is said it all started when a dog belonging to
the ROLLINS family, attacked a cow belonging to the Gunter family, and
tore her tail off. In those days, it was a penitentiary offence to so
disfigure a cow, but the people of Cosby believed that the law and the
mail stopped at the post office, and figured residents were pretty much
a law unto themselves.

So when Andy Gunter, a son of George Washington Gunter, said he could
testify to witnessing the incident, the quarrel turned ugly. One of the
ROLLINS boys was heard to say he would "take care of that", or something
to that effect.

Before the trial, two strangers were seen hanging around the village for
a couple of days. After working one day, Andy Gunter stopped at his
sister's house on his way home and, while seated by the fireside eating
bread and milk, a single shot came through the window and killed him.
Later, the two strangers were heard to say they had killed a man for
five dollars and a gun, and then went off to sleep in the sawmill.
During the night the sawmill blew up, a swift retribution indeed.

Then another Gunter was killed at Rock Creek a time later. There used to
be a log and a ford where the bridge now crosses Rock Creek, just below
Campbell's camp. JOHN ROLLINS was accused of being the murderer, but he
claimed it was just an argument over a woman, so it seems no charges
were filed.

Sometime after this murder, it was a ROLLINS who was killed at Sandy
Place, a spot close to the Gunter residence, and near where a large
chestnut tree had fallen back in the woods a little ways from the road.
It was five or six feet in diameter and a man could stand behind the log
and take aim from it. It was believed that was where the murderer had
stood to kill ROLLINS.

JOHN ROLLINS was said to have killed three or four people, two of the
Gunters and a seventeen-year-old boy, Johnson Hopper. But he, in turn,
was eventually killed by a deputy."



ED. NOTE: I took the liberty of editing and shortening this interesting
story. And does anyone know who this particular JOHN ROLLINS was?

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