[Illustration: A Queer Case 241]
A very queer, not to say mysterious case, was brought to trial in Jones
County in 1837, at the April term of the Superior Court. It has had no
parallel in Georgia before or since, and had none in any other country,
so far as the present writer is aware, until the celebrated Tichborne
case was brought to trial in England a few years ago. The Bunkley case
created quite as much excitement, and caused quite as much division in
public opinion in Georgia, as the Tichborne case did in England.
Jesse L. Bunkley belonged to a good family in Jones County, and when
he came of age would have fallen heir to an estate worth forty thousand
dollars. An effort was made to give him all the advantages of education,
but these he refused to accept. He was a wild boy, and was fonder
of wild company than of his books. He went to school for a while in
Eatonton, but got into some scrape there and ran away. He was afterwards
sent to Franklin College, now the State University, where he entered the
grammar school. Such discipline as they had in those days was irksome to
young Bunkley, and he soon grew tired of it. He left the college, and,
after roving about for a while, returned to his home in Jones County.
In his twentieth year, 1825, being well supplied with money, he left his
home for the purpose of traveling. He went to the Southwest, and in that
year wrote to his mother from New Orleans.
No other letter was received from him during that year or the next, and
in 1827 word was brought to Jones County that Jesse Bunkley was dead.
The rumor, for it seems to have been nothing more, was regarded by the
family as true. At any rate, no attempt was made to investigate it.
Jesse was the black sheep of the family; he had been away from home a
good deal; his conduct when at home had not been such as to commend
him to the affections of his people; and his mother had married a third
husband, a man named Lowther: consequently the vague news of the young
man's death was probably received with a feeling of relief. There was
always a probability that such a wild and dissipated youngster would
come to some bad end; but with his death that probability ceased to
be even a possibility, and so, no doubt with a sigh of relief, young
Bunkley's people put aside the memory of him. He was dead and buried.
Those who survived him were more than willing to take the care and
trouble of managing the estate which young Bunkley would have inherited
had he returned and claimed it.
But in 1833, Major Smith of Jones County received a letter purporting to
be from Jesse L. Bunkley, and it related to matters that both Smith and
Bunkley were familiar with. In December, 1833, Mrs. Lowther, his mother,
received a letter from a person claiming to be her son Jesse. The letter
was dated at the New Orleans prison. It appears from this letter that
the family of Bunkley had already taken steps to disown the person who
had written to Major Smith, and who claimed to be Jesse Bunkley. The
letter to Mrs. Lowther was very awkwardly written. It was misspelled,
and bore no marks of punctuation; and yet it is just such a letter
as might be written by a man who took no interest in his books when a
schoolboy, and had had no occasion to look into them or to handle a pen.
He said in this letter that he wrote to convince his mother that he was
her own child, though it appeared that she wished to disown him. This,
he declared in his awkward way, he knew no reason for, unless it was on
account of his past folly. He then went on to relate some facts about
the family and his own school days. The mother did not answer this
letter, because, as she said afterwards on the witness stand, she did
not consider that it was from her son. She was satisfied, she said, that
the letter was not in her son's handwriting.
The person claiming to be Jesse L. Bunkley reached Jones County some
time afterwards. His case, in the nature of things, excited great public
interest. Hundreds of people who had known Jesse recognized him in this
claimant. On the other hand, hundreds who had also known Bunkley when
a boy failed to recognize him in the claimant. Meanwhile those who had
charge of the Bunkley property took prompt action. They went before the
grand jury, and had the claimant indicted for cheating and swindling;
and thus began the celebrated case of the State against Elijah Barber,
alias Jesse L. Bunkley.
The claimant came to Jones County in 1836, was indicted in that year,
and his case was brought to trial in the Superior Court in April, 1837.
A great deal of time was taken up in the investigation. More than one
hundred and thirty witnesses were examined. Ninety-eight, the majority
of these being disinterested persons, declared that they believed
the claimant to be an impostor. More than forty disinterested persons
declared under oath that they believed the claimant to be Jesse L.
Bunkley, and the majority of these last witnesses had known Bunkley long
and intimately.
The efforts of the prosecution were directed to showing that the man
claiming to be Jesse Bunkley was in reality Elijah Barber, who in
1824-25 was a wagoner who hauled lumber from Grace's Mill near Macon,
who was also known in Upson County, and who had served in the Florida
war. Some of the witnesses who had never known Bunkley recognized the
claimant as a man who had called himself Barber. Some of the witnesses
who had known Jesse from his boyhood testified that they recognized the
claimant as Bunkley on sight. Bunkley had various scars on his face,
neck, and body. The claimant exhibited all these to the jury. One of the
witnesses remembered that Bunkley bore the marks of a snake bite on one
of his legs. The claimant immediately showed these marks. Hundreds of
questions had been put to the claimant to test his memory. A great many
he answered correctly, a great many others he failed to answer; but his
replies to all vital questions were wonderfully clear and satisfactory.
The jury was out but a short time before it returned, bringing in a
verdict of guilty; and the claimant was sentenced to the penitentiary,
where he served out his term.
[Illustration: The Bunkley Trial 245]
This verdict and sentence settled the case in law, but it remained as
unsettled as ever in the public mind. The writer of this has heard it
discussed on more than one occasion among old ladies and gentlemen who
knew Bunkley, and who saw the claimant; and, without exception, they
declared that the verdict of the jury was cruelly unjust.
And yet, if any wrong was done, Bunkley himself was to blame for it.
Being a young man of fortune and of the fairest prospects, he owed it to
himself, his family, his friends, and to society at large, to become
a good citizen, so that his ample means might be properly employed.
Instead of that, he became a rowdy and a rioter, spending his days and
his nights in evil company and in dissipation. If the claimant in this
mysterious case was really Jesse Bunkley, it may be said of him that his
sins had found him out.