Ransom Boyatt
Ransom Boyatt (1869-1933) was a Scott County man who was among five people killed in 1933 as part of the Jerome Boyatt tragedy. He was Jerome Boyatt‘s father.
Biography
Born Aug. 16, 1869, at No Business Creek in what is now the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area, Ransom Boyatt was the son of Jordan Boyatt (1828-1900) and Mary Ann Slaven (1847-1925). His paternal grandfather, Thomas Boyatt, was the first settler at Foster Crossroads west of Oneida. His mother’s paternal grandfather, Richard Harve Slaven, was the first settler of the Big South Fork region.
Ransom Boyatt had a large number of siblings. Among them: Joel Boyatt (born 1870), George Newton Boyatt (1874-1941), Melvina Boyatt (born 1874), Albert Boyatt (1876-1950), Ollie Boyatt (1876-1910), Alford Boyatt (1878-1910), Bertha Boyatt (1880-1904), Florence Boyatt (1882-1969), Sebert Boyatt (born 1883), Una Boyatt Pugh (1884-1968), Ella “Nellie” Boyatt Kidd (1886-1954), and Daisy Boyatt (1888-1910).
Jordan Boyatt was first married to Elizabeth Buttram. His children with her, Albert’s half-siblings, included William Boyatt (1845-1930), Mehala Ann Boyatt King (1851-1887), and Arminda Boyatt Simpson (1855-1907).
Ransom married Poppie Litton (1884-1978), the daughter of George Washington Litton (1857-1935) and Helen Emily Terry (1856-1933). Their children included Delma Boyatt (1907-1911), Jerome Boyatt (1911-1933), Eugene Boyatt (1913-1951), Lola Boyatt Burke (1915-1979), Violet Boyatt Kidd (1917-2012), Bonnie Boyatt Chambers (1920-2001), Plez Boyatt (born about 1923), and Dulcie Irene Boyatt Burney (1925-2004).
The Jerome Boyatt Lynching
On Friday, April 21, 1933, Ransom’s brother, Albert Boyatt, got into a fight with his nephew, 22-year-old Jerome Boyatt, at a Stearns Coal & Lumber Co. logging camp near Rock Creek in eastern Pickett County, near the Scott County line.
The fight was said to have been over bootleg liquor, which both Albert and Jerome were known to deal in.
The Chattanooga Daily Times reported on April 22, 1933, that “Jerome Boyatt is said to have beaten his uncle, Albert Boyatt, almost to death during a quarrel…”
The superintendent of the logging camp held the men in a railroad car — along with Jerome Boyatt’s brothers Eugene and Ted, and Walter Crabtree, Charlie Crabtree, and Lige Terry — and phoned for law enforcement. Some reports indicated that he told Pickett County Sheriff George Winningham that there had been a murder.
Winningham arrived on scene a short time later with two of his deputies, including his son, Floyd Winningham, and Brahm Garrett.
When the lawmen arrived on scene, shots were fired by both parties, although it has always been disputed who fired first. Jerome Boyatt killed Floyd Winningham instantly, striking him in the face, and shot George Winningham in the stomach. The elder Winningham died the next day at a Nashville hospital.
Jerome Boyatt fled the scene, triggering a large-scale manhunt led by another of George Winningham’s sons, Willie Winningham, who served as the sheriff of Clinton County, Ky. With emotions running high in Pickett County, where George Winningham was said to have been the most popular sheriff in the county’s history, Jerome Boyatt’s parents and siblings were arrested and taken to Byrdstown, Tenn.
Several days after the Boyatt family was taken into custody, Ransom Boyatt was released to return to the family farm at No Business. There, he would be allowed to tend to chores and the livestock, and — some newspaper accounts said — attempt to persuade his son into turning himself in.
Whether Ransom Boyatt made contact with his son while he was on release is not clear. He returned to Byrdstown and signed an affidavit stating that his son would not turn himself in. Later, he was released again. This time, according to Hendricks in Once Upon A Lynching, it was made clear to him: it would be Jerome’s life, or his own.
Several days after Ransom Boyatt was last seen at his No Business farm, concerned neighbors entered the home and found his decaying body lying on his bed. An inquest was held, and it was determined that he had been killed. A suspect was not named. It has always been assumed that Boyatt was hanged in the barn, then his body carried to the home and left on the bed. But the body was so badly decomposed by the time it was discovered that it was impossible to say for sure how he had died.
Witnesses who were present that day always said that Ransom Boyatt’s neck appeared to have been broken. And fueling speculation that he was hanged was a rope that was found in the barn, though others said that the rope was used by Ransom Boyatt to tie his mule. Another problematic detail was that the neighbors who were checking up on Boyatt had to retrieve a spare key from a neighbor; the door to the Boyatt home was locked from the inside.
Nevertheless, an inquest ruled Ransom’s death a homicide.
The death of his father convinced Jerome Boyatt to give himself up. He was jailed at the old Scott County Jail in Huntsville. However, on June 9, 1933, an armed mob kidnapped Boyatt and another accused murderer, Harvey Winchester. Their tortured and bullet-riddled bodies were discovered near U.S. Highway 27 in Helenwood the following day.
Willie Winningham was regarded as the most likely perpetrator of the mob, though many suspected the involvement of Scott Countians, as well. No one was ever charged.
The rest of the men in the boxcar that night in April 1933 — Ted Boyatt, Eugene Boyatt, Charlie Crabtree, Walter Crabtree, and Lige Terry — were cleared of wrongdoing by a Pickett County grand jury. They were released from jail on June 15, 1933.
See Also: The Jerome Boyatt Lynching
Aftermath
Ransom Boyatt was buried at Boyatt Cemetery on the family farm at No Business. His oldest daughter, four-year-old Delma, had been buried there in 1911, and his mother had been buried there in 1925. His sister, Bertha Boyatt, who was born with dwarfism, was buried there in 1904.
Ransom’s wife, Poppie, remarried to Rev. John Sevier Smith, the son of James Washington “Wash” Smith and Louisa Roysdon, on July 12, 1937. His first wife, Lakey Jane Pennington, died in 1936.