Cropsey family, 1898, Elizabeth City, NC
I have a book with an interesting story about the Cropsey family:"In Apri 1898, there moved to Elizabeth City, North Carolina a family, by name Cropsey.There were Mr. W.h.Cropsey and wife and Misses Ollie, Lettie, Mamie, Lou and Nellie Cropsey their daughters.The Cropseys located in the suburbs a few hundred yards of the Albemarle fair grounds.It was here that the first scenes in our story occur.It was, but natural that these pretty northern girls should soon be entertaining callers."
"In June of 1898, they made the acquaintance of James Wilcox, who became a regular caller....He began paying attention to Miss Nellie from the first..... All went well until the fall of 1901, when they began to have their little spats...there was an interval of several weeks when Miss Nellie would not speak to him.In November they began speaking again, but Miss Nellie refused to see him to the door.On the night of November the 20th, Jim Wilcox called at the Cropsey home.Shortly after eleven o'clock he started home.As he passed into her hall, he asked Miss Nellie to accompany him to the door.There was something in his request that made her curious and she followed him.From that hour Ella Maude Cropsey was never seen alive."
"It was late when her presence was missed, and Jim Wilcox was sent for.He was brought by an officer.He seemed indifferent and swore that he was ignorant of Miss Cropsey's whereabouts......On the morning of December 27, 1901, Mrs. Cropsey, sitting at an upper window espied some object floating in the water directly opposite where she was sitting.There were a couple of fisherman in the river, they too saw the object.Turning the prow of their boat, they tied the body to a stake and hurried ashore with the news.Ella Maude Cropsey had been found."
"....the beautiful girl had been rendered unconscious by a blow on the head and thrown into the water.The autopsy showed her to be a virtous woman.For 37 days the dark waters of the Pasquotank had held the secret of Nellie Cropsey's whereabouts."(It was later proven that she died from the blow on the head; she did not drown.)
"Jim Wilcox being the last man seen in her presence was naturally the firs upon whom suspicion fell.At first there was little to connect him with the crime, but graduallly a chain of circumstances was woven around him and he was incarcerated....Sentiment was high against him.It had been proven beyond a doubt that Nellie Cropsey had been murdered."
During the trial Mr. A.G. Cropsey, of New York, arrived; he was accompanied by his daughter Miss Carrie.(It is later stated Carrie was from Manuet, New York.)During W.H. Cropsey's testimony he mentioned his brother Henry went with him to the Wilcox home to question Jim.
"The courts actually never discovered exactly what had happened.Wilcox was sent to prison on circumstantial evidence.In March 1902, he was convicted of first degree murder in Pasquotank County and sentenced to be hanged.Since there had been disorderly demonstrations outside the courthouse during his trial, Wilcox managed to have his case retried in March, 1903, in Perquimans County - twenty miles away.There he was found quilty of second-degree murder, and sentenced to Thirty years in prison......Jim Wilcox was pardoned by Governor Bickett of North Carolina on Christmas Day 1920.He returned home but was unable to get a job anywhere."
"In the fall of 1933, Jim Wilcox killed himself with a shotgun in his room over John Tuttle's Grocery on South Road Street."
This is from the "Year Book of the Pasquotank Historical Society, Vol. 4;" 1983.I have printed only part of the information given in this book.