A Shooting in Speedwell

A strange sound awoke an uneasy William Archer Hall in the early morning hours of October 15, 1929. It was a strange noise and sounded like metal was grinding against metal.

Early in the last century Mr. Hall had invested in the telephone fervor and was awarded rights to operate the local telephone service. The newfangled telephone calling was the going thing.

The switchboard was inside his General Store which was located in Speedwell, Tennessee, about halfway between LaFollette and Harrogate. It also housed the Speedwell Post Office. His son Charlie Hall was the postmaster.

Mr. Hall manned the switchboard on some nights, plugging in each call on the board and disconnecting them after they were complete. As the night wore on there were less calls and he slept the long periods between. Each house on the system had a distinct ring that signaled when it was their call. The ring for Hall’s personal phone at home for example was one long ring followed by two short rings.

There went that grinding again and it made Mr. Hall uncomfortable. It was the middle of the night and he was all alone. He decided to check on his wife “Sis” at their home across the meadow. There was no answer and he felt she must be fast asleep.

“Oh, she’s alright,” he said to himself. “That sawing noise is coming from nearby not over at our house.” Hall quietly arose from bed, grabbed his gun and slipped into the dry goods section of the store.

He thought the best thing to do would be to frighten them and they would leave. He pointed the gun toward the bottom of the door and fired.

The sound of the blast filled the room. After the shot he heard a groan and then a brief clamor. He listened and soon heard men running up the road that led to Harrogate.

Mr. Hall stepped to the window and in the moon-light he saw someone being assisted down the road by one or two men and into a car. The car sped off without lights until it was nearly out of sight. Hall turned on the Delco light, which was commonly used in that period, and called the Claiborne County Sheriff and then called his wife. This time he was successful in reaching her.

“I think I just shot someone breaking into the post office,” he told her, shaking and his voice cracking. “I’m afraid I shot someone.”

She knew that her husband was upset. Hall was a devout Christian and it bothered him deeply when he found a pool of blood on the front porch of the store.

Word came the following day that a young man by the name of Landon Herteage was being treated in the Morristown Hospital for a serious gunshot wound in the abdomen. Hall had intentionally aimed low not knowing that Herteage, on the opposite side of the door, was down on his knees as he sawed on the door lock.

The grieving Hall prayed for the young man as he drove to Morristown that day. Although he did not see Herteage he did talk with his parents and wept as he told them what had happened. He said he was sorry that he shot their son. Word came later that Herteage had died.

The Herteages knew their son was wrong and did not blame Hall but later the Speedwell native received threats on his life. A bomb was put in his mailbox in the front of his store and he received several threatening letters.

“Killing was a sin to Grandpa,” Hazel Wilson Hatcher, his granddaughter, wrote in her book titled Speedwell Seasons. “He never quite got over having shot the young man. Grandpa was protecting government property. They sent him a reward check but he sent it back. He said he just could not accept money for killing someone.”

The threats against Mr. Hall stopped after a few months. He died in 1937.

lance writer from Harrogate, TN. His stories are both historical and nostalgic in nature. Thanks to Lincoln Memorial University, Alice Lloyd College and the Museum of Appalachia for their assistance.

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