Alf Family Lynched in Austin, Indiana

Provided by a reader, who found it a piece of paper in a folder labeled “Blacks and Scott County” at the Scott County Public Library in Scottsburg Indiana:

Dr. Bogardus: -

In a conversation with Mr. Geo. Everhart on Thurs. June 4th. 1964, I asked him what he knew about the reported lynching of some negroes many years ago. He said this was told by a Mr. Jess Everhart who was of an older generation, as told to Delbert Julian.
An old timer by the name of Adam Wiesman lived north of the old Oard Spring school house and farmed a lot of bottom land aplong the M. creek. It was reported that he had brought in a family of negroes to provide cheap labor on the farm. This was resented by some of the inhabitants who banded together and took the man and wife along with the children, two boys and a girl to a sycamore tree and hanged all of them.
They then were taken to the old farm of Perry Kendall whose house was just west of where Austin Smith lives, and buried all of them along the lane near the road.
Geo. was born in 1873 and this happened two or three years prior to that. Geo. says the tree is still there, and thereafter the land was known as the Alf or Black Bottom • The name of the negro family was Alf.

C.L. Sarver