•February 21, 2018•

By Eden Martin
NP Guest Columnist

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of articles dealing with the lynching on the Moultrie County courthouse lawn researched and written by Sullivan historian, native and retired attorney Robert Eden Martin.

On November 23, 1891, in Shelby County just south of Sullivan, Ulysses Grant Atteberry and his brother Ed killed their father David Atteberry, blowing off part of his head with a shotgun.

But that isn’t why five years later a lynch mob of Sullivan residents hanged Grant Atteberry from a tree in the Court House yard.

I. The Players

In 1891 David J. Atteberry was a 62 year-old farmer living in Shelby County. His wife Cynthia Jane had died one year earlier leaving him with nine grown children.

The second son — Ulysses Grant Atteberry, whom the family called “Grant” — was 32 in 1891. Grant was married to the former Annice Louisa Stoltz. They had three children: Myrtle, Emma Jane, and Clark Mackin.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.