The Murder Ballad Still Echoing in The Hills: The Story Behind “Tom Dooley”

Tom Dula's grave in Wilkes County

Selah Greer, Editor of The Spark

“Hang your head, Tom Dooley / Hang your head and cry / You killed poor Laurie Foster / And you know you're bound to die.”

“Gentleman, do you see this hand? Does it tremble?’ Dula called out to the crowd gathered to witness his execution, holding his right hand high. “I never hurt a hair on that girl's head.”

These would be Tom Dula’s last words. Moments later, his body would hang lifeless from the Statesville gallows, swaying gently in the spring breeze.

But, even death itself could not silence Tom Dula (pronounced “Dooley” by mountain folk). As his body was laid in the earth, a legend of epic proportions was springing up from the thawing ground - one that will flourish in Appalachian storytelling for more than a hundred years, and, eventually, reach a national audience.  

 “The story of Tom Dula was one of the popular legends or ballads that people sang about and passed it down from generation to generation,” said Wanda Critcher Scott, whose family has called Watauga county home since the early 1800’s.

The oral and folk history that Scott recalls was instrumental in preserving Dula’s story in the Appalachian area, and despite the variability of spoken history, the legend maintains many aspects of the real life, and death, of Tom Dula and Laura Foster. 

Tom Dula was born and raised in a small community in Wilkes County. Those who knew him described him as handsome and carefree, while others remarked on his affinity for female companionship. Mack Greer, a Watauga county native who grew up hearing stories of Tom Dula, recalls one of Dula’s sweethearts - Laura Foster.

“He had a girl, Laura Foster. And then he went off to the service. Civil War, I guess, it was,” Greer said. “And then when he came back home, he started dating another woman.”

This “other woman” was Ann Melton, and the love triangle between Foster, Dula, and Melton would eventually have far greater consequences than adultery when Laura Foster was found buried in a shallow grave, her blouse stained by the blood that had gushed from a knife wound in her chest. Dula had fled to Tennessee, riding hard up the wagon trail that wound through Watauga to the state border, but was apprehended there and returned to North Carolina to be tried -and executed - for the murder of Laura Foster. 

Many locals have questioned whether Tom Dula actually murdered Foster, a lingering mystery that has contributed to the popularity and longevity of the legend in Appalachia. Some believe a jealous Ann Melton was the one who plunged the knife into Foster’s chest, and Dula was only present for the hasty burial. There have been multiple attempts to have Dula posthumously pardoned by the North Carolina governor, and citizens of Wilkes County have signed a petition to exonerate Dula for the murder. Wanda Critcher Scott is one of the many who has questioned the trial's outcome. 

“I think from my belief in hearing about the story is that he was innocent,” Scott said.

One of the primary ways the story was kept alive was through the folk music that has chronicled Appalachian culture for centuries. Scott recalls hearing “The Ballad of Tom Dula” at public gatherings where family members and friends would strum the banjo, pick up the fiddle, and sing - but also, on the radio. How did an Appalachian folk song describing a murder in the backwoods of Wilkes County appear on national broadcasting? 

The story of the now-iconic song’s rise to fame begins nearly a century after Dula met his fate at the Statesville gallows, when a northerner named Frank Warner and his wife traveled around Western North Carolina collecting local folk songs. Watauga native Frank Proffitt was one of the singers they recorded, and one of the songs Profitt played for the curious visitors was a song he had heard in his community all his life ---a song that told the story of a man in a nearby county hanged for the death of his sweetheart. 

A few years later, a group called the Kingston Trio happened upon the recording of Profitt singing the folk song and decided to feature it in their album. The Kingston Trio’s Tom Dooley rendition was an instant hit, climbing to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and winning a Grammy in 1959 for Best Country and Western Performance. When Frank Proffitt saw The Kingston Trio singing Tom Dooley on the Ed Sullivan Show, his son recalled him exclaiming, “Oh great goodness, they are singing Tom Dooley!” 

Like Profitt, many in Watauga County were shocked that a piece of their local oral history had achieved national fame. 

“Well, the song Tom Dooley came out in 1958,” said Greer. “And it became popular, and everybody was listening to it. I was in the fifth, sixth, seventh grade at Parkway School, and I liked the song, and all my friends liked the song, and all my family knew about Tom Dooley, because they grew up knowing about the story, since he was from Wilkes County. Everybody in Watauga knew the Tom Dooley story and would talk about it, especially when the song first came out, because they knew about the story, even before the song.”

I met her on the mountain / There I took her life / Met her on the mountain / Stabbed her with my knife

That fateful day on the gallows marked not the death of Tom Dula, but the beginning of a story that would reach generations, and, eventually, an entire nation. But most importantly, the hillsides where the tragedy unfolded --- where the soil was warmed by the seep of Laura Foster's blood and flung awry by Dula’s galloping horse, where the banjo picked the tune of a condemned man and echoed his story to each generation ----will never forget the Ballad of Tom Dooley, because forgetting has never been the way of the mountain people, and despite each passing decade, their stories continue to live on.