The Tale of Tom Dooley (cont.)

After leaving Laura's place at dawn that Friday morning, Tom was seen by several people. Carl Carlton and Hezekiah Kendall each saw Tom on a footpath that ran roughly parallel to the river road but also led to the Bates place. When Kendall asked Tom if he had been "after the women," Tom replied, "No, I have quit that."

As Tom passed by Lotty Foster's place after breakfast, he stopped to visit briefly. He still wasn't returning the mattock he'd borrowed from her; instead he asked for a half gallon of milk. When he left, Lotty assumed that he had been at the Melton house, and was now headed home to his mother's. Mary Dula was not home at the time, though. She had left her house after an early breakfast, so for a few hours nobody was actually aware of Tom's whereabouts. He was at home lying in bed when his mother came home for lunch. He didn't eat, and stayed in bed the rest of the day complaining of chills.

Later, while Mary Dula was getting supper, Tom was feeling well enough to take off for a while, ostensibly to do some "work about the barn." The Meltons were having a bit of a party that Friday night, and Lotty Foster's teen-age son Thomas was getting ready to leave for the Melton house when he and Lotty both saw Tom Dula walking in that direction on the Stony Fork Road "before the turn off to the Bates place." They thought no more of it, figuring that he was also going to the Meltons' house. About 15 minutes later Thomas Foster went on horseback to the Meltons', where he was welcomed by James, Ann, and Pauline. Neighbors Washington Anderson and William Holder were also there, but Tom Dula was not.

An hour later, Tom Dula returned home, ate some supper, and went to bed as usual. His mother said she awakened later, and heard him moaning in the night.

Over at the Melton house, Laura's father, Wilson Foster, arrived around sundown. He informed the group that he had been looking for Laura all day, joking that he didn't care if he ever saw Laura again, but he wanted his horse back. He had followed the prints "made by one of her hooves which I had commenced to trim, but left unfinished," tracking the mare to an old field by the Bates place, where he lost the trail. Pauline offered to find his mare "for a quart of liquor." She later suggested to Wilson Foster that Laura might have run off with a colored man. He agreed it might be so.

Two or three hours after dark, the group called it a night. The neighbors went home, and Laura's father left to spend the night at his friend Francis Melton's. Young Thomas Foster stayed at James and Ann's house, to spend the night in bed with Pauline.

All was quiet the next morning. As Saturday dawned, both Tom Dula and Ann Melton were home in their respective beds. Pauline Foster was working the field early, planting corn with the men, when "the cows came home" about 8 or 9 a.m. She returned unexpectedly to the house for a milk pail, and found Tom by Ann's bedside, talking quietly with her. He told Pauline he had come for his fiddle, and to see about getting his shoes mended. Ann remarked that she had gotten up during the night, and Thomas Foster and Pauline had not noticed. Pauline remembered talking to Wilson Foster about his missing daughter the night before and told Tom, "I thought you had run away with Laura Foster."

Tom laughed and replied, "I have no use for Laura Foster."

Ann and Tom waited together as Pauline went back outside, and even though she only had one cow to milk, by the time she returned from doing that, Tom was gone.

When Wilson Foster left his friend's house and made the five-mile trek home that day, he found his mare waiting there, the lead rope broken and dangling from the halter, as if it had escaped being tethered. Search parties were quickly formed and over the weekend men came from several miles away to help hunt for Laura. J. W. Winkler searched for seven or eight days, but despite these efforts, no clues could be found to indicate Laura's fate.

By the third week of June, even though Laura Foster had not been found, dead or alive, rumors were circulating that Tom had killed her. It is not hard to believe that a young man, somewhat "reckless and demoralized" to begin with and corrupted by the "horrors of war" that he had seen, could murder a woman who had maimed his manhood. After all, that was about all he possessed in those desperate times. On June 22 or 23, Pauline Foster overheard James Melton telling Tom that the Frederickses thought he had killed Laura. At the accusation, Tom laughed and said, "They will have to prove it— and perhaps take a beating besides."

But the rumors began to worry Tom. He decided to head for Tennessee, after spending an emotional night at the Melton house with Ann and Pauline. Tom told Pauline that he was leaving because people were telling lies about his having killed Laura but that he would return at Christmas for his mother and for Ann as well.

According to Pauline's testimony: "Thomas Dula came back a little after dark, he looked disturbed. James Melton came in afterwards. We sat up until bed time. I offered to fix a bed for Dula, he declined. He threw himself across one of the beds with his clothes on. Mrs. Anne Melton laid down on my bed, I got in behind her. I found she was crying. After a while he [Tom] came from his bed, which was at the foot of ours, into ours, getting in on the other side from me. I heard them both sobbing. Ann Melton arose and went out. He followed her. They embraced and parted in tears."

Around dawn, Tom set out on a solitary hike north up the Elk Creek Road toward Watauga County.

On Sunday, June 24, J. W. Winkler and his neighbors went out searching once again. Tom's departure a day or two before may have been the impetus. Laura had been missing for a month, so they were obviously no longer hunting for a runaway girl; they were looking for a body.

They formed a line "like a line of battle" and scoured the forest from the Bates place to near Tom Dula's home. This time they found the other end of the rope that had tethered Wilson Foster's mare, still tied to a dogwood tree amidst some bushes, 75 yards from the road at the Bates place.

A hundred yards from the dogwood tree were signs, including two piles of dung, that the mare had also been tied to a whiteoak. About 15 steps off from this latter place the searchers found "a discolored spot on the ground" about the size of a man's hand, where "the earth smelled offensive." They decided the spot was blood— Laura Foster's blood. They continued to look for Laura's body, but to no avail.

The next day, June 25, Justice of the Peace Pickens Carter issued a warrant for the arrest of Tom Dula.

A week or so later, about July 2, Tom hiked the gap between Rich Mountain and Snake Mountain, and crossed into Johnson County, Tennessee. Entering the town of Trade, he made his way to the home of a Col. James William Moore Grayson, a wealthy landowner who was a dealer in real estate and livestock.

Grayson was a member of the Tennessee legislature who was well-known locally. He served with distinction in the Union Army as Lt. Colonel of the 4th East Tennessee Volunteer Infantry Regiment. He was one of the Loyal Unionists who met in several meetings called East Tennessee Conventions in unsuccessful hopes of staving off Tennessee's entry into the Confederacy. Their efforts were for naught, though, as the State of Tennessee pulled out of the Union, and Confederate authorities hounded several of those East Tennessee loyalists. Many fled eastern Tennessee just a step ahead of the Confederate conscript officers.

Lt. Colonel James W. M. Grayson was one of these loyalists who were "piloted"— or pushed— over the mountains into Louisville, Kentucky, where his regiment was formed. Original records list the unit as the 4th East Tennessee Volunteer Infantry, as it was still thought that East Tennessee would secede from the State of Tennessee, as West Virginia had, to become a Union State. But without a Federal Army's presence in the area, that separation was never possible.

Dula introduced himself to Col. Grayson as Tom Hall, and asked to work on Grayson's farm to earn money for a new pair of boots. It was obvious that his were in tatters after his flight over the mountains from North Carolina. As a loyalist, Grayson probably had little love for former Confederates. But transients were common in the troubled times of Reconstruction, so Grayson put Tom to work as a hired hand, and in the interim, Tom used a pair of boots borrowed from Grayson's son, Frank. After about a week Tom had earned enough money for his own new boots, so he set off again.

On July 10th, just a few hours after Tom left Grayson's home, authorities from Wilkes County came to Grayson's looking for a man named Tom Dula. Grayson realized from the description that they were looking for his hired man. He said he would help the posse find Dula, saddled up, and led them to nearby Taylorsville to get the sheriff. There, they learned the sheriff was in Shady Valley, some miles away. Grayson decided not to wait; he figured he could find Dula without the help of a local official.

Led by Col. Grayson, the posse from Wilkes County eventually located Tom Dula nine miles further west of Taylorsville at a place called Pandora. Tom was sitting on a rock at the edge of Doe Creek, soaking his feet because his new boots had rubbed blisters. Grayson dismounted, picked up a large rock, and told Tom he was under arrest. Besides the rock, Grayson was wearing a seven-shot, rimfire Deemore .32 caliber pistol that he had worn during the war. Tom decided it was futile to oppose Col. Grayson, who was backed by one or two officers, also armed. Against standard procedure, Tom Dula was arrested before a body was found; even before there was any hard evidence that a crime had been committed at all. And he was being extradited from Tennessee illegally.

Col. Grayson took Tom back to his farm outside Trade. He tied Tom up, locked him in a corn crib and had his twelve-year-old son William guard him during the night. The next day, after Tom made an unsuccessful escape attempt, Col. Grayson brought Tom Dula into Wilkesboro with his hands shackled behind his back, and his feet bound beneath the belly of the horse. Bringing up the rear with guns at the ready were deputies Bennet Ferguson and John Adkins. The suspect was turned over to sheriff William G. Hix and incarcerated in the Wilkes County Jail.