Ninety-four years ago today, Warren McCants walked down the river bank to invite "Frenchy" to have Thanksgiving dinner with the McCants family. What he found has become Kingstree and Williamsburg County's most enduring mystery.
Frenchy first arrived in Kingstree around 1906. He was an itinerant umbrella repairman, and many in town would bring him their broken umbrellas to mend. At that time, he didn't stay, but moved about from town to town offering his services. However, when he was in Kingstree, he took time off from his umbrella work to fish in Black River.
In 1916 or 1921 (sources vary), he set up a permanent camp on the banks of the river not far from town. Although he kept mostly to himself and was known as a recluse, he often came into town, and the local teenage boys regularly visited him at his cabin.
Warren McCants knew something was wrong as he approached the cabin on Thanksgiving Day, 1926. Frenchy's huge, black dog, who was always chained near the cabin, was not there, nor did McCants hear him barking. McCants tried the cabin door, only to find it locked. Walking around the building, he found a trail of what appeared to be blood, leading toward the river. He then forced the lock on the door but found nothing disturbed inside the cabin. Some news reports also indicate that McCants found a bloody axe and a log spattered with blood near the cabin. Others state that he went down to the river's edge where he found Frenchy's blood-soaked clothing, although the coat he always wore was missing. At that point, he headed back to Kingstree and notified the sheriff's office.
The next day law enforcement dragged the river and used dynamite in an attempt to locate the hermit's body. John Blakely, using long jigs to probe the river bottom, discovered Frenchy's head, which appeared as if a blow from the axe had almost severed the jaw from the rest of the head. That same day, the dog's body was pulled from the water, its skull split open and the body butchered into several pieces. It had been placed in a bag with several iron railroad spikes and thrown in the river, according to an account in the News & Courier written by Lewis Wallace on the seventh anniversary of Frenchy's murder. At the time of the murder, Wallace was 15-years old and one of the teens who often visited Frenchy at his cabin. Frenchy's head was buried, along with the remains of the dog, on the riverbank by his cabin, Wallace wrote.
Wallace also noted that several months later, Frenchy's right leg, cut off just below the hip, was discovered lodged in debris at the river's edge, just a few yards downstream from where his head had been discovered.
The Associated Press story which ran in many newspapers nationwide the day after the grisly discoveries began, "The strange life of a hermit, known only as "Frenchy," who for five years has hidden himself in the Black River swamps, has ended in mystery with the finding of his head severed from the body, in the river near his rude hut."
Most of the newspaper stories noted that no one in Kingstree knew Frenchy's name, that when asked he spoke with such an accent that it was unintelligible. This later proved to be untrue, for many in town knew his name was Ovid, or Oved (sources vary the spelling) Gilbert. Kingstree residents, the papers said, believed he had been born in France, was at one time married and had a son, but either had divorced or left his family before becoming a hermit. He spoke French fluently, the papers noted and was "past middle age with a full black beard." Many Kingstree citizens also speculated to reporters that they felt that because he had chosen to live as a hermit and because he always kept a vicious dog close that he was fearful of undisclosed enemies.
In his article seven years later, Lewis Wallace described Frenchy as 50 years old, five-feet, three inches tall, weighing about 140 pounds. While most accounts describe him as having dark hair and beard, Wallace wrote that he was "gray-haired, with a heavy gray beard and twinkling blue eyes." He was always dressed completely in black, black shoes, black trousers, black shirt, and black slouch hat. A short, smudgy black pipe was always in his mouth, Wallace wrote.
Wallace also noted that while Frenchy was not talkative, he said he was born in France, graduated from a university in Paris and had attended colleges in Montreal and New York City. "He spoke excellent English when he wanted to," Wallace wrote, adding that Gilbert spoke fluent French.
Within days of the murder, on a tip from an unidentified friend of Frenchy's, police arrested 13 railroad workers. Garfield Matthews of the New Hope community in Florence County and 12 Black section hands were working on the railroad and had made camp about a quarter mile from Frenchy's cabin. Matthews was charged with murder and the 12 workers were held as witnesses. The 12 men were Henry Edmunds, Tony Giles, Harrison Humes, George Frederick, Henry Humes, Fred Keith, Marsh Cooper, George Shaw, Elliot Humes, Sam Mouson, Abe Koster and Francis Small.
The tip which led to their arrest was that trouble had arisen between Matthews and Frenchy over payment for a string of fish Matthews had bought from Frenchy. The tipster said Matthews had threatened Frenchy after Frenchy refused to sell him any more fish until the first string had been paid for. Another story noted that Frenchy had told two people in Kingstree on Tuesday morning of the week he was killed that he and Matthews had had words over a string of fish.
Neither Matthews nor the section hands retained legal counsel. They were soon released for lack of evidence, and law enforcement continued to investigate.
In May 1927, another man, John Gorman, was behind bars charged with Frenchy's murder. A state detective arrested Gorman, a man in his mid-30s from Philadelphia, when the detective found him at the site of Frenchy's old cabin. The detective testified before magistrate J.G. Gamble that he believed Gorman had been in Kingstree in November 1926 and had now returned to the scene of the crime. Gorman said he had just arrived from Philadelphia and had never been in Kingstree before. Gorman was represented by Kingstree attorney Edwin Hirsch. The Grand Jury refused to indict him in June, and the murder remains unsolved.
A year later, in May 1928, there was much excitement when John W. "Preacher" Davis and Joe Coward discovered a reportedly headless, badly decomposed body while fishing in Black River. The body was discovered draped over a tree limb two bends in the river below Frenchy's cabin, and many residents thought that recent flood waters might have finally unearthed the hermit's body. However, when Coroner S.C. Anderson and law enforcement officials attempted to remove the body, they found that the head had not been totally severed from the body but was hanging from the spinal cord as the throat had been cut. They also found remnants of blue overalls on the body. The official report described the body as that of an unidentified white or mulatto male between 40 and 50 years old, believed to have been in the river for about a month.
On November 26, 1933, The News & Courier published Lewis Wallace's account on the seventh anniversary of Frenchy's murder. Wallace was the son of Richard K. and Dora Wallace, and the grandson of Dr. W.L. Wallace, one of Kingstree's longest serving medical professionals. Lewis Wallace wrote that he had developed a close friendship with Frenchy, so much so that when the river flooded, driving Frenchy from his cabin, the hermit would stay in a little house located in the Wallaces' backyard on West Main Street until his cabin dried out enough for him to return.
Wallace remembered that Frenchy's cabin was located 200 yards east of the railroad trestle on a bend in the river. It was "situated among moss-laden trees." The dog was always on guard and so vicious that no one could visit until Frenchy tied him up. When the boys from town came calling, they would always yell as they approached so Frenchy would know to tie up the dog. The dog, however, truly loved Frenchy and would obey him. Wallace reasoned that the murderer(s) no doubt had to kill the dog in self defense.
Wallace wrote that Frenchy befriended the Kingstree boys, allowing them to borrow his boats to use for fishing or just to paddle up and down the river. He wrote that Frenchy always took care of them when they visited.
He wrote, "One day he severely reprimanded me for something I had done without thinking, but which in my youthful mind made a great impression on me. I had taken one of his boats and gone paddling in it, but the boat was half full of water. I should have known better, but I didn't. When I got back and he saw the water in the boat, he let out a few expletives and told me never to get in a boat with water in the bottom, adding that it was so easy to overturn. At that time, I couldn't swim a stroke, and the water was very deep. Since then I have always followed his advice."
Another story related by Wallace told about sharing a meal with Frenchy. "One day a friend of mine and I were down there fishing. About noon, he invited us to come over and have dinner with him. We were hungry and accepted his invitation. The menu consisted of black coffee, cornbread, and some sort of fish stew cooked down real low. It was delicious, and we ate with ravenous appetites. After dinner he asked us if we knew what was in the stew. We said that we did not. 'Well,' he said, 'it was just a mixture of cooters, eels, and catfish with a little seasoning.' We were open-mouthed with astonishment at having such things as eels and cooters, which we would have never done if we had known what the stew contained. But, nevertheless, we enjoyed it while we were eating it."
Wallace concluded his article by writing, "His young friends still have fond memories of him."
In 1936, Lewis Wallace became co-owner and editor of The Georgetown Times. Unfortunately, he became ill in 1946 and died after a month's illness at age 34.
Meanwhile, 94 years have passed since Frenchy's murder. During that time, speculation and rumor about potential suspects have kept the mystery alive. Nothing has ever been proven, however, and the story is still, these many years later, Kingstree's and Williamsburg County's greatest and most enduring mystery.
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