| Henry Berry Lowrie, the Native American “Robin Hood,” in Civil War North Carolina |
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[Civil War]. Archive, 1864-1872. Inventory # 21791 $4,800 .01 “Seely Dial, Allen Lowrie, Martha Lowrie (free negroes) late of the County of Robeson [on November 10, 1863, stole] with force and arms … eight sides of leather of the value of one dollar each, one set of carpenter tools comprising chisels, files, rasps, brace and bracebits, … compasses, …hatchet &c. of the value of one hundred dollars … of one Dugald McDugald.” .02 “To the Sheriff of Robeson County … You are hereby commanded to take the body of Henry B Lowery … to answer the State of North Carolina upon a bill of indictment found against him for Murder…” .03 “You are hereby commanded to take the body of Henry Berry Lowry if to be found in your county … to be held for the County of Robeson … to answer unto the State of North Carolina, upon a Bill of Indictment, for Murder…” .04 “...it would be difficult for the State to have a fair trial … in the County of Robeson, for that there exists in the County … a band of outlaws, known as the ‘Lowerie Outlaws’…” .05-.08 Historical Background: George Alfred Townsend's 'The Swamp Outlaws' (1872), describes Lowrie as being of mixed Tuscarora, mulatto, and white blood: "The color of his skin is of a whitish yellow sort, with an admixture of copper—such a skin as, for the nature of its components, is in color indescribable, there being no negro blood in it except that of a far remote generation of mulatto, and the Indian still apparent." During the Civil War, Henry Berry Lowrie (sometimes spelled Lowry or Lowery) led a group of renegades in Robeson County who refused to abide the Home Guard’s orders to impress their labor for the construction of military fortifications, specifically at Fort Fisher, which protected the critical port city of Wilmington, North Carolina. Many of the men associated with Lowrie were accused of thievery (of which the first item in this archive gives direct evidence), and of harboring escaped slaves and Confederate and Union deserters. After Berry’s apparent murder of two men in late December 1864, the details of which are unclear, the County arrested his father and brother on various charges and promptly executed both. This set off a decade-long guerilla war, during which members of the Lowry Gang were declared outlaws. Lowrie targeted those families who had been part of the Home Guard during the war, and conservative Democrats who espoused white supremacy during Reconstruction. The New York Times ran a story, called “Robin Hood Come Again,” on July 22, 1871: “LOWRY is the name of this robber baron of the period, and his stronghold is an island at the centre of an almost inaccessible swamp in Robeson County, North Carolina. There he dwells in state with his retainers, a motley crew of whites and blacks, runaway slaves of the war time, deserted soldiers of both armies, and miscellaneous outlaws …. His own color it is hard to fix with certainty, as some accounts make him a negro, while others assert, with no less positiveness, that he is a white man … From this secure fortress he is wont to sally forth armed to the teeth and ravage the surrounding farms … Of course the authorities have heard of all this, and they sometimes make feeble efforts to check his career. But he never hesitated to give them battle, and so far with invariable success …. These events, we learn, have plunged Robeson County into a state of terror …. Such a state of things, however picturesque, is simply disgraceful to any civilized community…” On August 14, 1873, the New York Times excerpted and commented on a report from the Wilmington Journal that a young black man, Floyd Oxendine, had been “shot to death by some villain or villains unknown, but generally supposed to be Stephen, the last of the Lowreys.” In this article, John Locklear is mentioned as being someone who may have been sympathetic to the Lowrys. “It is asserted that Jim Dial, John Locklear. and Sinc. Locklear have been lying out for some months past with the avowed intention of taking his life.” The surname, Dial, likely marks kinship with “Seely Dial,” mentioned in the first document in this archive. Henry B. Lowrie disappeared in 1872; according to local lore, he escaped to New Mexico, but some accounts say that he died accidentally while cleaning his own gun. Lowrie has become a popular icon in the area, especially to the region’s Tuscarora and Lumbee Indians, who view him as a hero and leader for the marginalized peoples of southeastern North Carolina. References:
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