290. The Hamlet Wreck


290

The Hamlet Wreck

On Thursday morning, July 27, 191 1, a special train carrying 912
Negro passengers — men, women, and children — left Durham on the
annual excursion of the St. Joseph's African Methodist Episcopal
Sunday School. The destination was Charlotte, but those who
reached it were carried there on cots. On a long curve, in front
cf the roundhouse at Hamlet, the special collided with a freight
train. According to a report of the wreck in the Charlotte Daily
Obscrz'er, July 28, 191 1, 8 were killed, 60 seriously hurt, and 28
slightly injured. Later reports increased these numbers.

Out of the remembered disappointment and horror of the disaster,
meditated and tentatively sung about in the Durham tobacco fac-
tories, Professor Brown thought, a song emerged, its date of com-

* So the manuscript; read, of course, "you need not look for succor."

 

NORTH CAROLINA BALLADS 675

position unrecorded. The Brown Collection contains a broadside
of 'The Hamlet Wreck* (with music), apparently ascribing author-
ship to Franklin Williams and William Firkins. Of this Professor
Brown noteil : "This is the form of the song as it appeared in a
broadside published by The Reformer Publishing Company, a Negro
printery in Durham. The song was almost surely not composed
by Williams and Firkins, who were operatives in the Liggett and
Myers Tobacco Company's factory in Durham. Grew up in the
tobacco factory perhaps." Professor N. I. White notes "two similar
versions [in the Frank C. Brown Collection], one omitting stanzas
4 and 5." The Durham Morning Herald, of Sunday, March 17,
1929, contains an article giving details about the excursion and
quoting the ballad (with a few minor variations) attributed to
Williams and Firkins. Apropos of this, Professor White adds:
"In the late 1920s I heard the following stanza:

The niggers was all excited,
Like hot ashes poured on worms.
There was one carload from Oxford,
And two carloads from Dur'ms."

1 See the women and children going to the train.
Fare-you-well, my husband, if I never see you again.
The engineer turned his head

When he saw so many were dead.
So many have lost their lives.

CJwrus:

Isn't it sad, isn't it sad?

Excursion left Durham, going to Charlotte, North

Carolina.
Isn't it sad, isn't it sad?
So many have lost their lives.

2 Some of us have mothers standing at the train.
'Farewell-well-well, my daughter, I may never see you

again.'
And the train began to fly.
And some didn't come hack alive.
So many have lost their lives.

3 The fireman said to the engineer, 'We are something late ;
We don't want to meet up with the local freight.'

The local was on the line.

And they could not get there on time.

So many have lost their lives.

4 When the news got to Durham, some said it was a lie,
But some was in the hospital almost ready to die.
And their poor old mothers, you know.

They were running from door to door.
So many have lost their lives.

 

676 NORTH CAROLINA FOLKLORE

5 Now, colored people, I will tell you to your face,
The train that left Durham was loaded with our race,
And some did not think of dying

When they rode on down the line.
So many have lost their lives.

6 They put the dead in their coffins and sent them back to

town.
And then they were taken to the burying ground.
You could hear the coffin sound
When they let those bodies down.
So many have lost their lives.