Adolph L. Dial, a historian and teacher, recorded these stories from Lumbee community members from 1969 through 1971.

The Deeds of Henry Berry Lowry

Mabe Sampson: They tried to drive him [Henry Berry Lowry] to the batteries in the Civil War, and he refused to go. He was then an eighteen-year-old boy. He went for the woods. Then they got in behind him and tried to catch him. They couldn’t catch him. He was too sharp for them. Old Brantley Harris, an old white man, got in behind him and tried to catch him, but they didn’t catch him.

Henry Berry went there [Lumberton], took Andrew and Boss out of jail, and killed old Sheriff Cane [King]. They robbed the bank and took the safe and put in on a dray. Along in them times, they had a two-wheeled dray to horse up. Put that bank on that dray, come across the river, blowed it open, and got the money all out.

Adolph L. Dial: Where was that?

Sampson: Right there. Robbed the safe over to Stanley McCloud [McLeod]. Took his safe and got all the money there was in it. Walked across the river, dynamited it, blowed it open, and got all the money that was in it.

Dial: I take it that you have a great deal of respect for the Lowry gang in that they really did something for the Indian people.

Sampson: Yes, you know why Henry killed? They tried to send him down there, and you know why he killed that gang? They went there, old Brantley did, and killed his brother, Allen. I believe John was the other one. He made them dig their own graves and killed them, being they wouldn’t tell where Henry was. He was in the bushes dodging, and he wouldn’t go to Wilmington.

A Robin Hood

Dial: What is your view on Henry Berry? Do you look at him today as a man of respect and a justified cause?

Clifton Oxendine: I think of him as sort of a Robin Hood: he took the part of the underdog, the group that was underprivileged. He was trying to help the Indian people, who were discriminated against when it came to entering the Confederate army and helping to bear arms but were used as manual laborers the same as the slaves were. I think he was rendering a service there.

What Happened to Henry Berry Lowry?

Dial: Over the years, did anyone tell you what they thought happened to Henry Berry Lowry?

John W. Dial: Yes, my grandfather’s wife told me that they took him up to Tom Lowry’s and said the other boys was in the house. They heard a gun fire and said when they went out there, he was standing, he gone up that way looking around and aturning around, and he fell. Never spoke to none of them.

Willoughby Jones: My father, Phillip, said that he stayed with him some, that Henry Berry was a mighty respectable man, had a lot of respect for women and children and so on. Later on, as he disappeared, someone said that he was killed. My dad said that he was well acquainted with him, that he absolutely was not killed, that he was left from here. He remembered he absolutely knowed that he was shipped. He was shipped off in a large box. He just absolutely knew that he was not killed.

Dial: Mr. Godwin just arrived. Mr. Godwin, what do you think happened to Henry Berry Lowry?

John Godwin: He got accidentally killed. He had been trying to shoot the load off of his gun for a long time. Back then all of them had a hammer and a tube. If they didn’t get powder in that tube and put the cap on it, it wouldn’t fire. He forgot about it and didn’t take the cap off. His gun loaded out with a rod with a hook on the end of it, and he slipped. His knee struck that hammer, it fell back and fired off. The load went right up through here, my mother said, and blowed the top of his head off.

Dial: Where do you think Henry Berry was buried?

Godwin: He was buried, she said, over there by Thunder Port. You don’t know where that is, though. Back Swamp across the other side of Deep Branch Church. There used to be a bridge there. They called it the Sampson Bridge. You crossed the Back Swamp. He was buried above to the right of that road in a slew. That’s where she said that the outlaws told where they buried it.

Dial: In a slew in Back Swamp.

Godwin: Where the water had run over it, nobody ever did find it.

Sampson: Uncle Sampson used to say, “Come on if you want to see him the last time.” He told him he didn’t want to see him. Go ahead.

Dial: Mr. Sampson feels and many people feel that Henry Berry Lowry was quite an outstanding man for the Indian people. What is your feeling?

Godwin: Yes sir, he was, according to the reports that my mother said about him.

Dial: You feel he was justified in doing what he did?

Godwin: That’s right, yes. He didn’t do anything unless you bothered him. He’d always send you word if you got in his business. He’d send you word not to do that anymore, and if you did, why he’d go hunt you.

Dial: All of us know that Henry Berry Lowry’s death is still a mystery today. We’re not sure what happened to him. What do you think happened to Henry Berry Lowry?

Sampson: Henry Berry left here and was sent off by a white man, loaded right here at Moss Neck. He never was killed.

Dial: Go ahead and tell that story.

Sampson: Thirty years afterward he was in Oklahoma. He run a toll booth there across that river.

Dial: Where did you get this story?

Sampson: From the old folks.

Dial: Mr. Oxendine, how old are you?

Charlie Oxendine: I’m eighty years old.

Dial: Did you ever know Rhoda Lowry, the widow?

Oxendine: We stayed right there, half a mile of her.

Dial: Can you remember her well?

Oxendine: Oh, yes.

Dial: Did you ever hear her talk any about Henry Berry Lowry?

Oxendine: Yes.

Dial: What are some of the things you remember she said?

Oxendine: He disappeared, and ain’t none of them ever knowed what went with him.

Dial: Did she ever say what she thought happened to him?

Oxendine: No, she didn’t say, but Henry Berry’s sister, Aunt Pert, come up their home and married in that family. She said that the day before he disappeared—now this is what she told us—he come there at the house where her and her mother was and said that he shot robins all day. She said he got them up, robin birds, you know. “Well,” he says, “I’m leaving now.” He said, “I’m going away now,” and she said they never did know another thing about him. She said he just disappeared. He said, “I’m leaving now.”

Dial: Who said that?

Oxendine: Henry Berry said, “I’m leaving.”

Dial: Do you think he died with his own gun or went away?

Oxendine: There’s all kind of stories told about it. But there’s one thing, nobody never did get the $10,000.

Agitating Women

Dial: His wife was put in jail once, was she not? Will you tell us about this?

George Ransom: Yes, they came out there, captured his wife and put her in jail. Along the way, she got contact with him.

Dial: Was she taken to Lumberton?

Ransom: She was taken to Lumberton. She was put in jail there, and they kept her in there. He wrote a note and sent it over there, telling them he’d give them so long to get his wife back home, or he’d tear up the town.

Dial: I believe he said he would destroy Lumberton and put it in blood and ashes, something along that line.

Ransom: That’s right. He said he would put it in blood and ashes, yes. The women of Lumberton got rough about it and they got out on the streets and got them to turn the woman out and let her go home.

Lowry’s Fate

Willoughby Jones: My father Philip said that he stayed with him some, that Henry Berry was a mighty respectable man, had a lot of respect for women and children and so on. Later on, as he disappeared, someone said that he was killed. My dad said that he was well acquainted with him, that he absolutely was not killed, that he was left from here.

Adolph Dial: He seemed to think he left.

Jones: He remembered he absolutely knowed that he was shipped. He was shipped off in a large box. He just absolutely knew that he was not killed.

More Legends

Many legends about Lowry can be heard today in and around Robeson County.

Friend and Foe

Not everyone remembers Henry Berry Lowry with awe and respect. Some people consider him a common criminal. People debate his character and reputation through the legends they tell.

I think one of the stories that helped form my opinions and my impression of Henry Berry Lowry as a person and what he was doing was related to me when I was a young child. I was living in Pembroke, it was in the fifties, and there were two old maid sisters that were very close to my family, wonderful wonderful women. White women. Which is, you know, important only from the standpoint that it was their perspective. They were relating a story about him that had been passed down to them from their mother when she was a child.

And the story that stands out in my mind was when their mother was a young girl, Henry Berry Lowry and his band appeared on their farm and asked her grandmother if she would be kind enough to cook a meal for him and his men, because they were hungry and apparently they had been riding for quite some time, and she said that she would.

And she said that he was just as polite, that her mother said that nobody could be politer to anybody than he was to her and her mother and their family. I don’t think her daddy was there at the time.

And the only thing he said, that he told her mother, that he hated to ask her to do it when she finished the meal, but would she take one bite from every dish that she cooked. And she said why of course, and she did. And they ate, and he thanked her profusely for feeding them and complemented her on what she had prepared, and told her that if she ever needed him for anything, all she had to do was get word to him, and that he would come and, you know, anything that she needed he would do it.

—Charles McBryde, Lumberton, 1999

There is a story that the soldiers that were hunting him [Henry Berry Lowry] down were eating lunch out there at the swamp one day, and he walked up to them and just started talking to them. And they didn’t know who he was, and they were hunting him. So he just walked up there, started talking to them, I don’t know if he sat down and ate lunch with them or anything, but, you know, and just walked off. They realized who he was later.

And even stories that he would get on the train and have a drink or something on the train, and ride the train.

There’s another story where he dressed up like a soldier and hunted himself.

—Jefferson Currie, 1999

Henry Berry Lowry was an unusual character. He wore boots with the heels in front part of the time so that he could not easily be traced. He was always courteous to strangers. It was not unusual to see a company of soldiers marching along the road and Henry Berry and the commanding officer at the rear.

—Dr. Earl C. Lowry, grandnephew of Henry Berry Lowry, in the News and Observer (Raleigh), 1937

Escape Artist

They were having the wedding and the law came in, arrested him, and took him to Wilmington. They put him in jail, kept him there a while and he got out of there.

He said the jailer carried him his supper one night, he left the cell door unlocked. He come out of there, got a blanket, tore it up, and made a rope. He tied it around a musket and there was a hole in the chimney where someone else had gotten out of jail and he went down to the ground on that rope.

—George Ransom, Robeson County, 1969

[Henry Berry Lowry’s] wife cooked a cake and carried [it to] him. Inside was concealed a small pistol. When the jailer next came in, Henry Berry surprised him with the pistol, took the keys, and unlocked the jail, escaping, throwing the keys in the river and swimming across.

—Dr. Earl C. Lowry, in the News and Observer (Raleigh), 1937

The Killing of J. Brantley Harris

Regardless of the objections raised by the Indians, of having to go and work at Fort Fisher as slaves, the Confederate authorities drafted some of them, and used them to help build the immense sand fortifications at Fort Fisher. The work was hard; the Indians complained or murmured, but to no avail. George Lowry, his [Henry Berry Lowry’s] brother, had several sons. Two of these sons were carried to Fort Fisher to work during the year of 1863. After remaining there about a year, they were granted furloughs for a few days. For some reason they never returned to Fort Fisher. Finally, J. Brantley Harris, a member of the Home Guard of Robeson County, arrested them as deserters. He put them aboard the train at Moss Neck Station, which was four or five miles away, to send them back to Fort Fisher. On the way to the station, Harris killed both of these boys—nobody knows why—instead of sending them back to Fort Fisher.

—Clifton Oxendine, Robeson County, 1969

The Fate of Henry Berry Lowry

Henry Berry Lowry disappeared in 1872 after the robbery of the sheriff’s office and Pope and McLeod’s store in Lumberton. Since his disappearance, many stories have circulated in the Lumbee community to explain what happened to him. The stories often conflict, but no one disputes the fact that the reward for Henry Berry Lowry, dead or alive, was never paid.

I’ve probably heard all the stories that everybody’s heard. I guess the stories that stick out in my mind that I’ve heard, of course, is the one where he accidentally killed himself, around Moss Neck somewhere, cleaning a gun. Another one is where he left deer blood and apparently some, you know, tissue, deer tissue, to make somebody think that, that he had been killed.

—Charles McBryde, Lumberton, 1999

On May 8, 1937, Dr. Earl C. Lowry spoke at the Indian Normal School (now the University of North Carolina at Pembroke). The next day, the News and Observer (Raleigh) reported that Lowry had insisted Henry Berry Lowry did not die but faked his death with the help of family and band members.

Armed with two small pistols and dressed in a Federal soldier’s uniform, Henry Berry Lowry boarded the train as it pulled out of Pates. His trusted bodyguard, Andrew Strong, stood guard at a box car 50 yards away. At Moss Neck another member of his gang waited at the station platform “in case he was needed.” Henry Berry Lowry drew pay for 4 years from the army before his discharge.

—Dr. Earl C. Lowry, in the News and Observer (Raleigh), 1937

Henry Berry Lowrie & The Lumbee