By PRICE PARKER
Did Elizabeth Dale, the notorious lady of Hazel Green, murder the six men who took her hand in marriage? - or was she a victim of slander?
Mountain Legend lends strong evidence that she indeed did murder Mr. Gibbons, Mr. Brown, Mr. Flanagan, Mr. Jefferies, Mr. High and Mr. Routt, keeping a top hat of each ex-mate as a grisly memento.
However, to this day, some students of the case proclaim that the lady was a victim of the gossip spreaders..
Elizabeth Dale was. born Oct. 28, 1795, in Worcester County Maryland one of the ten children of Adam Dale and his wife Mar; Hall. No. picture of her has survived the years, but it is said that she was most beautiful, very charming, well educated and she always wore the finest clothing; of the times.
When Elizabeth was a mere two years old, her family moved to
Tennessee and settled in a tumbled-down shack in what is now DeKalb County, where Adam Dale is recognized as that county's first settler.
When a youngster of 12, Dale, had raised a company of boys to oppose the progress of Lord Cornwallis through Maryland during the Revolution. Later he commanded a company of 100 men, when Gen. Andrew Jackson was fighting the Indians in and around Huntsville. Dale's company pitched camp near a large spring in Meridianville, some eight miles north of Huntsville- -not far from the scene of his beautiful daughter's future notoriety.
Pretty Elizabeth Dale was only 17 when she pledged vows with Samuel Gibbons, a 20-year-old Baptist preacher. The two were happily married for 18 years, and no scandal was attached to the wife.
During the summer of 1830, Gibbons fell victim to yellow fever, commonly called the black tongue. The horrible manner of his passing was typical. of the course of the fearful disease. His swollen, distorted features and the darkened tongue would be remembered in later years when the swift winds of gossip were flying toward "Liz."
After the death of her husband, Elizabeth settled in Columbia, Tenn., where her brother, Edward W. Dale, was a very prominent citizen. (He too would the under a heavy cloud--committing suicie after some trouble at the bank.)
In the early 1830's Elizabeth married a Mr. Flanagan. No information on husband number two is available except he died shortly after the ceremony.
For the sake of propriety, only three marriages are recorded for "Liz" in family circles, for in those days only three trips to the altar were considered proper for a lady of decency and quality. The Flanagan marriage is one of those her brother-in-law omitted in the family annals.
But the family knew of the marriage. Her name was recorded as Elizabeth E. Flanagan when she married Alexander Jefferies in Columbia, Nov. 6, 1833. Jefferies, a native of Culpepper, Va., lived in a log cabin in Hazel Green. He became the father of Elizabeth's only children--William Jefferies, born in 1834, and Mary Elizabeth Jefferies, born when her mother was 50 years old.
This marriage is the one which brought Elizabeth to North Alabama. Jefferies died in 1845 and was laid to rest beneath the sod of his homeplace at Hazel Green.
Shortly after the funeral, Elizabeth married a Mr. High and was soon to be a widow again.
Absalom Brown stepped forward to take the hand of Elizabeth. Husband number five lived long enough to replace the log hut with a larger, more substantial home. When he passed on, he was buried immediately, by the light of a flickering candle. 'I, In 1848 "Liz" married Willis Routt, a resident of Fayetteville. They made their home in Hazel Green, but he too soon died. By now gossip was spreading like a four-alarm forest fire through the little community. When prospective husband number seven appeared on the scene things became worse. This would be D. H. Bingham, a school teacher In Meridianville. At this time "Liz" was involved in a revolving feud with a neighbor named Abner Tate, who possessed one of the sharpest tongues of all the lady's critics.
Tate, bitter because some of Elizabeth's cattle hid stalked onto his land and wrecked his cotton crop, set out to run the woman out of town.
Adding fuel to the flame was an extremely easy task. All he bad to do was fan the gossip already smoldering in the community circles.
Gossip made the rounds daily. Mysterious deaths of six husbands had caused many eyebrows to flicker. Brown's unexplained funeral after dark; Jefferies' death had never been fully explained; nor had High and Routt's demises.
Then someone recalled she had been married briefly to Flanagan. The loose tongues were really clattering now. Finally tales of the Rev. Samuel Gibbons' ghastly death were brought back to mind ... it had to be death by poison, said the back roads' lawyers.
While the battle was raging, one of Tate's slaves shot him, wounding him severely. Quicker than cat, all blame for the shooting was attached to the widow Routt. Popular opinion had it that she had hired one of her own slaves to shoot her antagonist and the slave in turn paid off one of Tate's slaves to do the dirty work.
It all led to the law suit stage.
Tate, bent on revenge, charged that Elizabeth's bridal chamber was a charnel house, and she was the bride around whose marriage couch six grinning skeletons were already hanging.
Liz, not to be denied, came right back with a damage suit against her tormentor for $50,000--a staggering sum in those days--for defamation of character.
Public opinion was clearly stacked against Liz. She was guilty and farmer Tate became the hero of the valley.
Elizabeth sold her home in 1855 and moved to the free state of Mississippi; but the Idle gossip did not stop. Some contended that she murdered her father.
Her dad, Adam Dale, had died in her home at Hazel Green In 1851 and was buried in the Jefferies family cemetery behind the house.
His widow Mary returned to Columbia to live with her daughter, a Mrs. Vaught. Elizabeth's troubles disturbed her aged mother almost to the breaking point. The mother was unhappy about her husband being buried in such an unfriendly place.
To please his troubled mother-in-law, Vaught had Dale's body removed from the little graveyard at Hazel Green to Columbia.
When Dale's body was exhumed, It was found that it had petrified and turned dark. This unnatural state gave fuel to the Ill-founded rumor that poor ole dad had gone the way of the husbands.
Less than a year after she moved to Mississippi, Elizabeth had the body of her beloved husband of her youth removed from Centerville, Tenn. to Columbia. His tombstone is in the shape of a pulpit with an open Bible on the top.
Many folks completely discount the stories that she killed Gibbons and Routt. Many historians say her only crime was being married six times.
They point out that Kate Routt, said to be a close relative of Willis Routt, married Elizabeth's nephew in 1851. They think It highly unlikely that she would have married into the family if there had been any truth to the rumors.
Even to this day the debate still goes on. Was Elizabeth Dale a murderess--or simply the victim of malicious gossip?