Posted by On December 25, 1929, in Germanton, North Carolina, tobacco farmer Charlie Lawson killed his wife Fannie and six of his seven children, then took his own life. Only his eldest son Arthur survived, as his father had sent him on an errand. The motive has never been clarified: theories include a head injury, the economic crisis and a terrible family secret.
On Christmas Day of 1929 Charles Lawson killed his wife and six of his seven children with a shotgun. The causes remain unknown.
Biographical notes
Charles Davis Lawson, known as Charlie, was born in 1886 in a community known as Lawsonville. In 1911 he married Fannie Manring, who gave him 8 children. Sadly the third, William, died of an illness in 1920, aged just six.
In 1918 Charlie’s younger brothers, Marion and Elijah, moved to the Germanton area to grow tobacco, and he decided to follow them with his whole family. There he worked as a sharecropper until, in 1927, he managed to save enough money to buy his own farm on Brook Cove Road.
The Lawson family massacre
A few days before Christmas 1929 Charlie, who was 43, took his wife Fannie, 37, and their seven children into town: Arthur, 19, Marie, 17, Carrie, 12, Maybell, 7, James, 4, Raymond, 2, and baby Mary Lou, 4 months. They bought new clothes for everyone and had a family portrait taken.
Today it may seem completely normal, but in 1929, for a farming family, it was very unusual, which is why many thought the act was premeditated. It must be said, though, that Charlie had recently bought his farm and that the day after the massacre the Associated Press described him as a “well-to-do farmer”: so the Christmas shopping may not have been that strange.
On the afternoon of December 25 Charlie started with his daughters Carrie and Maybell, who were setting out for their uncle and aunt’s house. He waited for them by the tobacco barn and, when they were in range, killed them with a 12-gauge shotgun. Then he hid their bodies in the barn.
He then went back to the house and shot his wife Fannie, who was on the porch. Their daughter Marie, inside, heard the shot and screamed. Charlie went in and killed her too.
James and Raymond, aged 4 and 2, tried to hide, but their father found them and killed them as well. Last, he killed little Mary Lou, just 4 months old.
The end of Charles Lawson
After the massacre Charlie went into the woods near the house where, a few hours later, he took his own life. Meanwhile word had spread and many people had gathered at the farm. A police officer who was with Arthur ran to the woods and found Charlie’s body, together with some letters to his parents.
The only one to escape the massacre was the eldest son Arthur, 19, whom his father had sent on an errand shortly before.
The victims’ bodies were found with their arms crossed over their chests and rocks under their heads.
Shortly after the tragedy Marion, Charlie’s brother, opened the house to visitors as a tourist attraction. Among the objects on display was the cake Marie had baked on Christmas Day: visitors began picking off the raisins to take home as souvenirs, so it was placed under a glass cover, where it stayed for many years.
Possible causes
A few months before the massacre Charlie had suffered a head injury while working on the farm. Some friends and relatives thought the accident had changed his mental state and was related to the massacre. It is not the first time head injuries have been linked to changes in behavior: I am thinking, for example, of the cases of Nannie Doss and Raymond Martinez Fernandez. In Charlie’s case, however, the autopsy and analysis of his brain at Johns Hopkins Hospital found no abnormalities.
Another cause could have been the beginning of the Great Depression, with the Wall Street crash at the end of October 1929, just two months earlier.
Finally, the most widely cited theory involves a terrible family secret: according to some testimonies, collected only many years later in the books White Christmas, Bloody Christmas (1990) and The Meaning of Our Tears (2006), Charlie had abused his daughter Marie, who reportedly told a friend she was pregnant. Out of respect for Marie, who was only 17, I will not go into details. According to this theory Charlie killed his family so that the secret would not come out, but there has never been any proof.
Remembering the massacre
The case inspired several songs, including the ballad The Murder of the Lawson Family, recorded in 1930 by the Carolina Buddies for Columbia Records and covered in 1956 by the Stanley Brothers. It was also featured on the podcast Criminal and in the Netflix series 28 Days Haunted (2022). The house kept drawing curious visitors for decades, until it was demolished.
Arthur, the only survivor, died in a car accident in 1945, aged 35, leaving a wife and four children. The Lawson family rests in a small family graveyard in Germanton, North Carolina.
🦋 Emadion lives through its readers. If this story kept you up at night, buy me a coffee: it helps me bring you the next nightmare.
☕ Support Emadion on Ko-fi
