Micajah McPherson, a trustee of Freedom Hill Wesleyan Methodist Church and an abolitionist, was lynched about a mile and a half southeast of here. Although different stories survive about the lynching, they agree that he was an innocent man attacked by vigilantes whom the authorities protected. According to his descendants, after the Confederate conscription act was passed in 1862, riders came to McPherson’s house demanding to know the whereabouts of his service-age son Tommy, who was hiding. The Hunters—the Chatham County sheriff’s men, Home Guards, and McPherson relatives seeking conscripts—were trying to find him. Father and son had arranged a plan so the boy could be fed without forcing his father to lie: Tommy returned an empty food basket with a note telling where to deliver the filled basket, allowing McPherson to say truthfully that he did not know where his son was. Unsatisfied with his denials, the Hunters dragged McPherson to a split-rail fence, forced his hands into the narrow space between two rails, and jumped up and down on the upper rail. When his answer did not change, they took him into the woods, fired a shot at his house to frighten his family, and hanged him from a large dogwood tree by the creek. McPherson survived, later saying that a noise startled the Hunters and made them flee, and he heard one of them say, “I do not believe the old SOB is dead yet.” According to tradition, years later at a church service McPherson recognized a stranger and told him, “You are one of those that hanged me,” after which the man left and never returned.