This is ALL I know about the subject. Anyone have any more information??? ------------------- Supreme Court Records in Nashville, TN Copy of the Zebediah Payne's Pronouncement " Zebediah Payne, you are found guilty of the murder of William Coltart, in the county of Franklin, on the tenth day of June 1840. Your youth, just developing into manly beauty, your apparently ingenuous countenance, and your sensibility are all calculated to excite the sympathies of the court. They would seem to indicate that you were destined for better things. Unfortunately for you, and for the country, early discipline was wanting, by which to restrain the luxurious passions of youth, and industrious habits, by which to simplify its wants and furnish the means of enjoyment. Your dissolute habits required the expenditure of money and you were reckless enough to resolve upon obtaining it at every hazard. With this in view, you joined yourself to the deceased as a traveling companion. You found he had money and you determined to take his life, and make the treasure your own. While the journeying together, and on his part, doubtless in the full confidence of social companionship, you set upon him with the ferocity of a beast of prey, and with your knife, mangled his jaw, and finally succeeded in cutting his throat, so that he died. In the wilds of Texas, where you supposed the murderer would find a secure refuge, you sought to avoid detection. But justice overtook you. You were apprehended there and brought back to the county where you From the did the murder, and have been tried and found guilty. The court finds no error in the record, and so plainly was your guilt made to appear, that the evidence has not been certifyed to this court. Your crime is of the deepest dye. Your victim a youth like yourself, one would have thought that your natural feelings of humanity would have rebelled against the horrid temptation, and withheld your hand. The judgement of the law is that you must die" Joint sentence for Payne and four others to be hung on the 10th day of Feb [no year, probably 1843/4] and hung at the public gallows "And may God have mercy on your souls" -------------------- >From Franklin Co Historical Review book 20-21 1990-1991 [2 Feb 1999- Hv library] Hurrican Springs "The country around was Thinly settled and in ante-bellum days was known as an area where "dark deeds" were committed" It was in that vicinity that Pain killed Coltart for money the unfortunate had left in the bank at Shelbyville before starting on a journey to Winchester. Fifty cents reward was the compensation for Pain's murder, and he was hanged alongside of Carrol at Nashville afterward. All were swung off at a single drop" -------- -Feb 11 1842 Hv newspaper Thomas McINTIRE is believed to be an important witness for the State on an indictment now pending in Circuit Court of Franklin Co, TN against Zebediah PAYNE for the murder of William COLBERT [COLTART?] Mr McINTIRE would confer an important service to the public by attending next Circuit Court of this place. When last heard of he was in Blount Co. AL