Nell Cropsey and Jim Wilcox

BY: DR. WILLIAM E. DUNSTAN, AUTHOR AND HISTORIAN

In 1898 young Jim Wilcox, son of a privileged family in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, begins courting Nell Cropsey, a newcomer from Brooklyn, New York. Her father, William Cropsey, a potato farmer, rents both land and living quarters. The young lovers eventually drift into spats and disagreements. People whisper that Nell is involved romantically with a married man.

Twenty-year-old Nell Cropsey, who claims to be 19, has angry words with Jim Wilcox on her front porch on the raw night of November 20, 1901, and disappears from her rented riverside home. Within days her mysterious disappearance becomes a national sensation. Local mobs point angry fingers at Jim, but has another person covered up an unthinkable sin?

JAMES “JIM” WILCOX, ca . 1900. Colorized 2021.

Courtesy of the Museum of the Albemarle

ELLA MAUD “NELL” CROPSEY, ca . 1901

Courtesy of the Museum of the Albemarle

On December 27, 1901, the river surrenders Nell in almost perfect preservation. The authorities charge Jim with murder. William Cropsey hurls angry words at Jim. Elizabeth City teeters on hysteria. Jim’s bizarre trial unfolds in the Pasquotank County Courthouse in March 1902. Rope-wielding mobs lurk in nighttime shadows around the courthouse and vow to lynch

Jim as well as the entire jury, unless the men return a unanimous guilty verdict. Jim’s determined enemies arrange for his trial to be disrupted. Hundreds of spectators stamp from the courthouse, and then a horse-drawn fire engine clangs and races up and down the street.

The prosecution presents no convincing evidence against Jim. The jury returns with a guilty verdict, and the seemingly surprised judge sentences him to be hanged until dead. The Supreme Court of North Carolina grants Jim a new trial. The second trial, at Hertford, results in a prison sentence of 30 years.

Jim proves a model prisoner. In 1918 Governor Thomas Bickett becomes convinced of Jim’s innocence and frees him. Jim returns to an icy reception in Elizabeth City. In 1934 Jim Wilcox, destitute, broken in body and soul, commits suicide with a shotgun blast, professing his innocence to the very end.