I was very amused when I returned home this weekend and found all the messages about the "Hanging Tree" on Durham Road. The tree was located on the property that my grandparents, Mitchell and Dorothy (Evans) Priddy owned for about 50 years until about 1990. The story that my mother and the grandchildren grew up with was that the hanging occurred in the early 1920's when my grandmother was a teenager. The woman who was reportedly raped worked at the commissary post office for the mines. A black man was accused of raping her and was chased through the woods and eventually caught on the bluff to Fugat's (Fuggat's?) Creek which runs about 50 to 100 yards into the woods from the tree. He was then hung and left there for some time while local men took shots at his body. The reason the tree never grew was probably from all the bullets fired into it. My mother remembers that you could still see where the bullets went into the tree many years later. There was never a trial and later it was local gossip that it actually was not rape but that the two people were actually just caught in a unacceptable relationship. The fact that my great grandfather participated in the lynching and shooting of the man is one of those things that doesn't make you very proud when you dig into your family history. Denise DeBerry