Town frozen by fear pinned its hopes on posse

The communique addressed to Virginia Gov. Claude A. Swanson was chilling.

It was from the citizens of Arvonia in Buckingham County and was drafted in late September 1908. Despite the message’s authenticity and obvious serious tone, Swanson must have found what he was reading hard to believe.

“Conditions here intolerable,” the text begins. “Gang of assassins strongly entrenched three miles away; one citizen shot in back; others threatened. County authorities appear powerless. We need detectives and bloodhounds. Can you come down?”

It had been nearly 20 years since historian Frederick Jackson Turner had declared the American frontier “closed,” but this sounded like something right out of the Wild West. And the missive hadn’t even mentioned that a local outlaw gang had threatened to burn Arvonia to the ground and lynch all its citizens.

Although the Thomas-Zimmerman gang never got the widespread publicity of, say, Jesse James’ outfit of ne’er-do-wells, it wasn’t for the lack of trying. The band of outlaws was numbered to be around 100 strong, and consisted mostly of members of the two families, which had intermarried.

The gang’s stronghold was located near Arvonia and strategically placed between the James and Slate rivers. The renegades had been terrorizing the little hamlet for years, and things had reached the breaking point.

Shot in the back

What finally made townsfolk say enough was enough was the cowardly shooting in the back of local businessman N.W. Gregory. It was believed the shooting was an act of revenge against Gregory for having provided testimony that helped convict Arthur Benjamin Zimmerman and Charles and William Thomas of looting the meat house on his Swin Island farm.

Unfortunately for Gregory, the bad guys broke out of jail soon after being convicted. Before lighting out for the tall grasses, the jail breakers took time to pen a note proclaiming that the next time they would be in the Buckingham County jail cell it would be as corpses.

The good people of Arvonia were fine with that. In fact, the Rev. Plummer Jones, who ministered to the Presbyterians in the town, had this to say about the gang:

“I could kill any one of them without a pang of conscience,” the man of the cloth said. He happened to be one of the people the gang had threatened directly with lynching.

Jones took the threat so seriously that he didn’t travel to New Kent for a Sunday service, because getting there would have taken him through an area under control of the gang. Although the citizens of Arvonia loathed the outlaws, the crooks apparently enjoyed at least some support from the country folks in the area.

This was likely provided because of fear. Rural residents were much more isolated than their city cousins, and it was reported that some of them had been forced under the threat of death to furnish the desperadoes with food.

Enough was enough

When Gregory was ambushed and shot in the back by a person lying in wait, it was the final straw. The threat to wipe out the town and everybody in it just added fuel to the fury.

A piece that appeared in The Daily Progress on Sept. 30, 1908, reported, “The women of the town [Arvonia] are panic-stricken, many fleeing to larger communities in anticipation of bloodshed.”

The able-bodied men of the town loaded up their shooting irons and created defensive positions around the perimeter.

Woe to anyone approaching with a firebrand, or even a menacing scowl.

For nearly a week armed citizens patrolled the streets of Arvonia and waited for help to arrive from Richmond. When the help hadn’t arrived by the end of September, another message was sent to the capital.

The telegram stated that if law enforcement hadn’t arrived within the next few days, the citizens of Arvonia would march on the outlaw camp on their own and shoot to kill. This ultimatum had an immediate effect.

On Oct. 1, 1908, Edmund W. Hubbard, commonwealth’s attorney for Buckingham County, and Sheriff L.W. Williams led an armed posse out of Arvonia and headed toward the outlaws’ lair. Now national newspapers such as the New York Times were running stories about the situation.

A “desperate battle” was expected when the posse located the crooks. The terrain favored the outlaws, and a story in the New York Times described why.

“The territory in which the outlaw gang is fortified is as wild as any jungle,” the story reported. “The outlaws themselves are said to be well prepared to resist any effort to dislodge them.

“They are hiding like rats in the ivy-covered cliffs, with food enough in their possession to withstand a long siege.”

The posse had hired guides familiar with the area of interest, but it didn’t help. Sweeps through the rough terrain turned up nothing.

The outlaws must have realized that there was no winning a stand-and-fight battle with an opponent that could bring unlimited firepower to bear. The safety of their wives and children certainly would have been considered as well.

So the gang simply split up, and those with warrants out for their arrests left the area. Charlie Thomas, one of the jail breakers, was arrested in Waynesboro in late October.

William Thomas also was arrested and charged with shooting Gregory, who had survived. With the crisis passed and Arvonia and its citizens no longer in danger, the story went from the front page to the last and finally out of print altogether.

Further information on what ultimately happened to the gang couldn’t be found in the archives. Nonetheless, one of the messages the long-ago incident provides is as relevant today as it was then.

Bullies and outlaws may hold sway for awhile, but they will be dealt with. And there is no fiercer creature on the planet than law-abiding citizens protecting hearth and family.