A Singular Case.

Col. Henry D. Capers, who has been attending court this week, gave us a short history of a man who lives below Adairsville, which, if we could get all of it, would no doubt prove interesting reading.  The story reads:

Near Hall’s Station, on the Western & Atlantic railroad, there lived, in a miserable hut, a former minister of the Church of England, who gave his name as Rev. Charles Thompson.  He had a wife and four children who have grown up in ignorance and poverty, though he gave evidence of culture and refinement, and appeared as if he had seen better days.  When Col. Capers first visited the hut, the father was ill, and in January last died.  The mother then told the Colonel that her husband had been drawing the interest on 500 pounds sterling from England, and engaged him to look into the matter for her. He opened a correspondence with relatives of the deceased in Nottingham, Eng., and found that an aunt, who was wealthy, had placed that amount at interest for him, and that at his death the whole should go to his children.  Col. Capers is now in correspondence with the executors of the aunt, and thinks he will get the money for the children in short time.

The singular part of the story is how came this man, who was well educated and with good connections, to be hid away in such a place, with an illiterate woman for a wife, dragging out a miserable existence in wretchedness and poverty.  It is said by his wife that he once had charge of a church in Nottingham, but the whole of the story has not yet been told. –Calhoun Times.

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March 11, 1886
Page 3

The Hall’s Mill Story.

In our last we copied a notice from the Calhoun Times, in which was cited a peculiar case found to exist near Hall’s Mills, in this county, as told to that paper by Col. H. D. Capers.  Since the article has been published we learn that the old gentleman the article speaks of – Charles N. Thompson – belonged to the 6th Georgia regiment, and was well known to our fellow-citizen, Mr. A. J. Buford, who was kind enough to furnish us with some facts concerning that mysterious old gentleman.  Mr. Buford says that Thompson was a finely educated man, and often told him, as well as others, his history.  He claimed that at one time he belonged to the church of England, and was a minister thereof.  He, for some reason, deserted this church and began preaching on his own hook, for which he was censured by his family and things were made unpleasant—so much so that he came to America.  He soon settled down as a minister at Dahlonega and there he met and married his wife.  She was a pretty, stout, blooming mountain lassie, totally uneducated and minus the manners and customs of high-toned society.  It was purely a love-at-first-sight affair, as later developments show.  As soon as the minister’s relatives over in England heard of his marriage they disinherited him, save an old aunt, who, feeling for the brilliant young man, placed 500 pounds sterling in the Bank of England for him, and from which he was to draw interest.  Matter grew bad for the young man.  Easy-going and clever, he gave way to the crude whims of his wife, and soon was a total wreck and almost an outcast.  He, however, preached whenever he could, though opposed by his wife in doing so, and she, to prevent him would hide his best clothes very often.  He would steal them out occasionally and enlighten an audience with grand eloquence, for he was smart, and the surrounding country was not long in finding it out.  These are statements that we gathered from Mr. Buford, who seemed to know the man thoroughly as well as his interesting history.