The Sippican Historical Society hosted a fundraiser heirloom discovery/antiques appraisal at the Marion Music Hall on June 27. Featured appraisers Frank McNamee and Jim Gahan examined a number of pieces of art, jewelry, and artifacts throughout the morning. Photos by Colin Veitch

This story is being run in two parts. Part one was published in the June 25 edition of The Wanderer. If you missed part one, you can find it here: www.wanderer.com/features/the-tar-and-feather-incident-2/ 

At the town hall, Charles saw that about 50 men had gathered, all wearing hooded masks or handkerchiefs covering their faces. The men made their way through the woods to the Potter house with additional men joining the party along the way. At the house, Charles counted perhaps 100 men who had joined the mob. Five of them walked up to the front door and knocked. One of the men asked for a beer. McDonald opened the door just slightly and the men kicked in the door and forced their way inside.

McDonald grabbed a chair and held it up in defense. He yelled for Clara to get his revolver. It was too late. Some of the men grabbed Clara while the others wrestled the chair from McDonald. The men dragged McDonald and Clara into the yard. Clara screamed, “Murder!” She begged them to let her stay with her child that was still in the house. One of the men told her not to worry. He would stay with the child.

McDonald and Clara were taken to a nearby sandpit. McDonald was thrown to the ground and his clothing was torn off. He was blindfolded and his hands bound. Using whisk brushes they painted pine tar all over him and then brought out a feather tick bed. They opened the tick bed and dumped the feathers on him.

While the tarring and feathering was taking place, a man carrying a lantern told the two men that were holding Clara to take her back home. One of the men grabbed her by her collar and led her back home. Outside the house one of the men tore open Clara’s clothing at the waist. The other man tore the hooks off her skirt and let it fall to the ground. The string of her underskirt was broken and her underclothing removed.

All the while Clara pleaded with them not to take her clothing off. They slapped her and said “Shut up!”

“I won’t shut up. Don’t you take off my clothes!” she pleaded.

She tried to scream out. One of the men placed his hand over her mouth. The other placed his hand on her. “If you say anything about this, we will hang you.”

She pleaded with them to let her go in the house.

“Will you behave yourself after this?” one of them asked.

She answered that she always did. They hit her again and told her to shut up.

At that point, another man came up to them and called for the lantern that one of them was carrying. The man with the lantern left. The other man led Clara up to the house. “If I hear anything from you, I’ll hang you. Don’t you dare open your mouth about this.”

He gave her clothing back to her and led her into the kitchen. Standing there waiting for her was a masked man, a man she would later refer to as Mr. Turner, and her husband.

Back at the sandpit, the mob tried to place McDonald on a rail post so they could parade him out of town, but he could not balance on it. Some of the men went to the house of Selectman Henry Ryder. They asked to borrow his democrat wagon. He let them borrow it. He was pleased to see the matter of Charles Potter’s home affairs being handled, though he thought it was “a little rash.”

McDonald was placed on the wagon and several of the men took hold of the shafts and led the cart out to Front Street. They passed Hosea Knowlton’s house and headed for Hiller’s stable. There they attached a horse to the cart and headed back out to Mill Street toward Mattapoisett.

Throughout the ordeal, McDonald swore at the mob and planned his revenge. Every once in a while, his blindfold would slip or angle in such a way so he could see a face. He made mental notes of whom he saw.

Once the mob reached Mattapoisett, many of the men in the mob took switches and hit McDonald. A rope was thrown over a tree branch. At one end, a couple of the men held on while the other end of the rope was placed over McDonald’s neck. The plan was to scare him into thinking he was to be hanged. But someone had miscalculated the length of the rope. When the men holding the rope realized McDonald was suspended in air they let go and McDonald crashed to the ground.

Charles Potter, who had since rejoined the mob, watched as McDonald ran into the woods as people yelled at the naked, feathered man to never come back. Charles headed back home thinking it was all over and justice had been served.

The news of what had happened spread quickly. The next day, newspaper reporters were in town asking questions. Selectman Ryder said the trouble was behind them. There would be no investigation. “Nobody has complained to the selectman about it,” the reporters were told.

Though local authorities appeared to be turning a blind eye to justice, several sheriff county officers arrived in Marion and arrested five men that McDonald had apparently identified. A week later, two more men were arrested in Marion.

District Attorney Asa P. French, who would later be appointed to United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts by President Theodore Roosevelt, called the act against McDonald “mob punishment” in a town that had always been known to “maintain such a high standard of peace and order, and … always been a law abiding community.”

The men were charged with riotous assault. A fund of $5,000 was raised in Marion in defense of the accused. A grand jury indicted the seven men and the case went to trial.

The trial, which began on November 24, was sometimes referred to as the “Whitecap Case” in reference to a lawless movement called whitecapping that took place in the late 19^th and early 20^th century, in which members of a community formed secret societies that enforced community morals. The movement occurred throughout the U.S. taking on an anti-black theme in the rural south.

The trial contained as much drama as the actual events that led to the trial. A witness for the prosecution went missing, but was later found and brought into court drunk. It was thought he had been enticed away by persons supporting the defense and hidden at a hotel in Duxbury. He spent the night in jail to sober up for his testimony.

A witness for the defense was arrested for perjury. The witness, Robert Hiller, testified that he did not see any feathers in the sand pit other than the feathers the chickens were wearing. Deputy Sheriff Hurley and four other witnesses testified that they did see feathers and tar at the site.

To add to the drama, Charles and Clara Potter and James McDonald were spotted walking “arm in arm to the Potter house” one night and then arriving in the courtroom together. Charles even identified in court several of the accused as taking part in the tar and feathering.

On December 1, both the prosecution and defense made their final arguments. At 4:15 in the afternoon, the judge instructed the jury on finding the verdict and adjourned until the jury came back with a verdict. Because of the time it took to hear the case, and the charges on each man would have to be discussed by the jury separately, nearly all of the court officials and spectators of the trial went home. Though the judge and Attorney French stayed in Plymouth, the attorney for the defense, John Cummings, traveled back home to Fall River. There was a lot to discuss and no one expected a verdict for each of the men to be announced anytime soon.

However, just before 1:00 in the morning, the judge was summoned out of bed. The jury had reached a verdict. In a nearly empty courtroom, the jury announced that all of the accused were not guilty. The judge ordered all seven men released, thanked the jury, and went back to bed.

The drama with the Potters apparently did not end with the trial. In January, Charles Potter was found unconscious on the side of the road, his faced bruised and bloody. It was believed that Potter had been attacked due to his testimony against the accused and siding with McDonald. Potter claimed that, while working that day cutting wood, a limb struck him across the face. While walking home later, he said he fainted.

Little is known what happened to James McDonald after the trial. He died sometime in 1905, and he is buried at Union Cemetery in Scituate. His son, James Henry, never spoke of his father out of the shame he brought to the family.

Clara Potter received a letter from Alabama in 1903 filled with racist comments. The letter writer, W. F. Spurlin, described how southerners “hang and burn” black people and warned her she was not safe in her community and invited her to move south, which she seemed to consider. But she did not sell the house and she lived there with Charles until they died. The house is no longer there. The property eventually became part of the Old Landing Cemetery where the Potters lie side by side within sight of where they once lived.

Kyle DeCicco-Carey is a librarian at Harvard University and an avid historian. He recently worked with the Rochester Historical Commission to help organize and preserve hundreds of documents that date back all the way to 1679. This article was compiled through dozens of historical records found during that period.

By Kyle DeCicco-Carey