The Death of Young Love

June 10, 1910


Mumford Parker Love was the son of John Askew Love and Margaret Tyson Palmer Love. He was born in Stanly County and the family resided in Furr Township in the western part of Stanly County near the present town of Locust.

John Askew Love

Love's Chapel Church was founded by members of the Love family.  


Mump, as he was called, was a well-respected farmer in both Stanly and Cabarrus Counties, where he lived. Mump was born in November of 1848 and in 1868, at the age of 19, he married Martha Jane Garman of Cabarrus County, daughter of Michael Garman III and Jincy Little Garman. 

The couple had a number of children who died as children, which was tragic, but typical of a family in this era. They were fortunate, however to have 6 that lived to adulthood. They were:

1872 Adam Jones Love
1881 Jeanette "Nettie" Love
1883 John B Love
1886 Cornelia Jane  "Nellie" Love
1888 Thomas Cleveland Love
1890 Hugh Love

Second son and third child, John B. Love, was the subject of the lead-in article. Not much is known about John. He lived a quiet life, not making many ripples in the water. 


The Enterprise
(Albemarle, North Carolina)12 Jul 1906, Thu  • Page 3



He went on a picnic as a teen, but that was the only time he made the paper until his death.


The Loves were a very handsome family. They were respected in both counties and were a church-going people. Each generation passed on to sizeable families and few black sheep ever appeared in the bunch. So being a troubled young man in the Love bunch was a rarity, not the norm. 

The below paragraph is from "The History of the Love Family" as recorded by Myrna Love Norwood. This clip describes father, Mumpford P. Love.

 Mumpford Parker Love (Grandsire Mump) was the third child of Jonah Askew and Mar­garet Love. He was born on 24 November 1848 and died 10 April 1939 in Stanly County. He was known as a "Gentleman Farmer, hand­some with black hair and blue eyes. He married Martha Jane Garmon on 13 January 1868 inCabarrus County. She was born on 24 June 1847 in Cabarrus County, the daughter of Michael Garmon III and Gensey Little and died 7 July 1914 inStanly County. Upon her death, Mumpford married Dewbelle Arella Love Furr on29 November 1917 in Stanly County at age 68. Dewbelle was a 51 year old widow when she married Mump.  
Submitted by Myrna Love Norwood, Polkville, NC . -from ancestry.com






The 1900 census shows the Mumpford Love family living in Furr Township. Young John is helping his father as farm labor, as are his siblings. It was the benefit of free labor from a large family in the era that allowed farm families to prosper. 

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Name:	John Love
Age:	17
Birth Date:	Aug 1882
Birthplace:	North Carolina
Home in 1900:	Furr, Stanly, North Carolina
Sheet Number:	16A
Number of Dwelling in Order of Visitation:	279
Family Number:	282
Race:	White
Gender:	Male
Relation to Head of House:	Son
Marital Status:	Single
Father's name:	Mum Love
Father's Birthplace:	North Carolina
Mother's name:	Martha Love
Mother's Birthplace:	North Carolina
Occupation:	Farm Laborer
Months not employed:	2
Attended School:	2
Can Read:	Yes
Can Write:	No
Can Speak English:	Yes
House Owned or Rented:	R
Neighbors:	View others on page
Household Members:	Name Age Mum Love 50 Martha Love 58 Netta Love 19 John Love 17 Nellie Love 16 Thos Love 11 Hue Love 10

Ten years later, 

Family of J. Askew Love

Ten years later, not much has changed. A few siblings have married, or struck out on their own. John, youngest brother Hugh, and sister Cornelia "Nellie", are left to help Mump and Martha on the farm. They are living in the same place, with pretty much the same neighbors.

Name:	John B Love
Age in 1910:	23
Birth Year:	abt 1887
Birthplace:	North Carolina
Home in 1910:	Furr, Stanly, North Carolina
Race:	White
Gender:	Male
Relation to Head of House:	Son
Marital Status:	Single
Father's name:	Muma P Love
Father's Birthplace:	North Carolina
Mother's name:	Martha Love
Mother's Birthplace:	North Carolina
Native Tongue:	English
Occupation:	Farm Laborer
Industry:	Home Farm
Employer, Employee or Other:	Wage Earner
Able to Read:	Yes
Able to Write:	Yes
Out of Work:	N
Number of weeks out of work:	0
Neighbors:	View others on page
Household Members:	Name Age Muma P Love 60 Martha Love 63 Nellie Love 24 John B Love 23 Hugh Love 19

John B Love, by all appearances, was a normal young turn- of- the century farm boy. There were no prior indications, in records at least, that anything was wrong with him. He was not listed as insane or as an "idiot", the archaeic term they used in those days for the mentally unwell. There were no reported trips to Broughton for him in the newspapers.

Unexplainably,  one day, at the age of 25, something had come over him. The paper reported he had been ill for he past two months. What kind of illness it did not say. He was very nervous. Was he a victim of unrequited love? Had he come upon some kind of mood-altering chemical? What was happening in the life and body of this young man? We may never know. 

John B Love died on June 17, 1910, one month after the 1910 census was taken. He was buried at Love's Chapel.

The Haunted Post

This is a post about a post. A disappearing post. A possibly haunted post.



For literally weeks, I had been working on a post about Julius Caesar Murray, the oldest son of John Monroe Murray. It included alot of information on the town of Wadesboro around the turn of the century, and about the gang of ruffians that Julius hung out with during the early part of the 20th Century.

Upon my first attempt, I was very close to the end. So glad to be wrapping it up, as the post seemed more of a book. It had gotten incredibly long.

I attempted to load a photo off of my phone, as I have the blogger app there, too. However, it does not work very well.

The picture loaded, but all that remained of the post was the very first page (phone view page) of the post.




This is the picture I downloaded. It is a photo of the beautiful and historic Star Inn in Star, Montgomery County, NC. And this is my second attempt to post it here.


I became more disappointed with frustrated at this event, and more bewildered than frustrated. At first, I just wanted to let it go, move on. Forget this story. Leave its telling alone.

Then, I decided to pull myselft up by my bootstraps and attempt it again. It was much easier the second time as I kind of knew my way around the post already, had my research materials readily available and all. Recreation is much easier than origination. Of course there were variances. Some details I decided to leave out as they really added nothing to the story. Other things I added in to beef out the tale of the entire family, as they were close and the whole family experience was a big part of the life of Julius Murray at any rate.

Progress was going well. I had been working on it for two days. Hours, and I mean H O U R S. I went to change tabs on the computer and came back...and there was nothing to come back to.

The post was gone. Disappeared. Blank. Not there.......

I searched the web. I searched Blogger. There was no recall button to bring up anything that had been accidentally deleted. That is the only thing that I can figure out that may have happened to the blog is that it was accidentally deleted. I mean, how else do you explain it?

It just disappeared into cyberspace.




This time, I'm just letting it go. If the ghost of Julius don't want his name out there, so be it. Maybe, just maybe, I might attempt it again. But this time in shorter blocks. No more mini-series in one setting. If it disappears a third time...I'm calling Ghost Hunters.

The Foretelling: The Bad Murray Blood.

I've mentioned often the Murray bad temperament that seemed to weave in and out among generations. How a kind and Christian father in this family gene pool could have a temperamental, and unscrupulous, even cruel son.




Old Ben Murray of Tyson Community in Southern Stanly County, was recorded as being one of the latter. His son Edmond, known as by both surnames of Murray and Coley, was one of the former. As was, presumably his son Jesse II, named for Ben's father, Jesse I. But in the grandsons the Murray fury raged.

 Alexander, son of Edmond, was known for his anger and hostile temperament, while his brothers John and Ben, not so much. The same could be said for Jesse II's son Benjamin P. Murray, while the youngest son John M. Murray, born during that deathly Murray trip to Arkansas that old Ben took his family on, was without doubt a manifest of the bad blood gene.

He had been born at th onset of the Civil War in Arkansas and had returned to Stanly County,NC with his grandmother by 1867.  Arkansas had taken his Grandfather, Ben Murray Sr., his parents, Jesse Murray II and mother Jenny Poplin Murray, his uncle by marriage, Henry Hudson and cousins, James Washington "Wash" Turner and Wesley Murray. Wash and Wesley actually had remained in Arkansas and passed away after Martha's return. Old Ben's widow, Martha "Patsy" Ross Murray had returned with her widowed daughter Rebecca Murray Hudson and Becky's daughter Mary Elizabeth Hudson, who like John was born in Arkansas. She brought back John and his two siblings, Mary Ann Murray and Benjamin P. Murray, who were born in Stanly County before the trip. They were afterwards raised by their mother's people, the Poplins.

The story of John Monroe Murray is an interesting one to tell, and this post will be followed by more of that.

The following article tells a bit of his caustic and cruel personality, that led to his ultimate fate.


The Farmer and Mechanic
(Raleigh, North Carolina)23 Jan 1884, Wed • Page 3



This article, from 1884, tells the story of John Murray, from whose swagger and attitude wholy tells us that he was most likely a good-lookin and arrogant young man. His behavior from start to finish reminds me of that of a narcissist. He had promised to marry this young lady and all of the arrangements had been made. Then he never showed up. 



Instead, it was learned that he had taken up with a Union county girl and had taken off to South Carolina the night before to be married, "without license" the article noted. The article doesn't name the jilted girl, it only states that she was from White Store, a community near the North Carolina - South Carolina border in the Southwestern most corner of the county. 

Name:	John Murray
Age:	17
Birth Date:	Abt 1863
Birthplace:	Arkansas
Home in 1880:	Wadesboro, Anson, North Carolina, USA
House Number:	145
Dwelling Number:	274
Race:	White
Gender:	Male
Marital Status:	Single
Father's Birthplace:	North Carolina
Mother's Birthplace:	North Carolina
Occupation:	Laborer
Cannot Write:	Yes
Neighbors:	View others on page
Household Members:	Name Age John Murray 17

In the 1870 census, John and his older sister are living in Stanly County with his maternal grandmother and uncle, while his brother, Ben, is living with another uncle. In 1880, he is in Anson County, age 17 and working for a man named Asbury Bailey. It may have been one of Baily's daughters that was the jilted bride. We don't know. But what we do know is that in 1884, he married Willie Henrietta Horne, daughter of William Bennett Horne, who died a year after her birth in the Civil War, and Mary Adeline Green Horne, who remarried to William James Thomas. And from all indications, she grew up in Anson County. 

J. M. Murray and Henrietta had 4 children between 1885 and 1890 and he remained in Wadesboro and learned the ins and outs of being a businessman from L. J. Huntley. From 1893 to 1900, he made several purchases of property. Some on Carr Mount Road near the silk mill, and the intersection with the Salisbury - Cheraw Road, and others on Rutherford Street. 


Below is another story of how the bad attitude and mean mouth of John Monroe Murray nearly got him killed. 




The Messenger and Intelligencer
(Wadesboro, North Carolina)20 Oct 1898, Thu  • Page 3


That could have been the end of J. M. Murray, but his time was not up...not yet. Murray came away with a broken arm and Robinson came away with jail time, but that bad Murray blood kept J. M. from learning a thing. He would, in time, meet his match in the form of a 14 year old boy.