This cache was placed with permission from Hawkinsville City Manager. The cache is located at Orange Hill Cemetery. The cache is not located on any grave site but rather around the edge of the cemetery. Please be respectful of the cemetery, the persons buried here, and anyone visiting when searching for the cache. Below is a summarized history of cache subject if you are interested.
Here lies Tom Woolfolk. Convicted of the largest and most violent murder in Georgia History. Yet most people have never heard of it. I included the coordinates to his grave site as a waypoint.
Sometime early morning Aug. 6, 1887 Tom Woolfolk killed 9 members of his family in west Bibb County with an ax. He cleaned up and threw his clothes in the well and ran to a neighbor's house for help, claiming that someone else killed his family. Law enforcement immediately identified Tom, the sole survivor, as a suspect and he was arrested. The crime made national news all around the country.
Tom was tried and convicted in Bibb County for the murders. But the decision was overturned by a Supreme Court Appeals judge due to courtroom spectators yelling "Hang him! Hang Him!" during the closing arguments. He was tried again in Perry and was convicted again of the murders. His sentence was death by hanging. He was hung not far from the original courthouse in Perry from what is now the Courtney Hodges bridge. Tom's hanging was one of the last public hangings before they were outlawed in GA. Its reported that thousands of people came to Perry for the hanging, some say it was as many as 10,000 people and was much like a fair with food and drinks being sold along the sides of the streets downtown. Tom maintained he was innocent to the very end, newly found evidence suggest that a hired hand actually performed the murders.
The victims are buried in Macon's Rose Hill cemetery. Its reported that thousands of people also came to Macon for the funeral. That they lined the streets of what is now Spring St. and Riverside Dr. as the horse drawn hearses went by. There weren't enough hearses in Macon/Bibb County to accommodate all the victims and many had to be borrowed from surrounding areas. The victims were Richard F. Woolfolk, father, then aged 54; his wife Mattie H (Tom's stepmother)., aged 41; their six children, Richard F. Jr., 20; Pearl, 17; Annie, 10; Rosebud, 7; Charlie, 5; baby Mattie, 18 months old; and 84-year old Temperance West, a relative of Mrs. Woolfolk.
Tom is buried beside one of his sisters from his Father's first marriage to Susan M. Woolfolk. He was the youngest of 3 siblings from the first marriage, his mother passed away shortly after his birth at the age of 24. The sisters from the first marriage were not living with their father at the time of the murders. Tom was 30 years old when he died. His grave stone was vandalized at some point and repaired around 2005. Please be VERY careful around his grave stone as it doesn't seem like the repair is holding up too well.