Sallie Curry of West Campbell Branch, Texas

Sallie Curry of Campbell Branch, Texas is based on the true story of the May, 1876, murder of a pretty fifteen year-old girl named Sarah Ann (Sallie) Curry who lived on the West Campbell Branch of a small creek that flowed into the Lavaca River just north of Hallettsville, Texas. The story is based on events leading to her murder and the reasons for it, and of the equally tragic events of the investigation. It was the only time in Texas history that an angry mob of such a large number estimated to be 300 to 500, took the law into its own hands, took by force the suspects, brothers aged 17 and 28 who allegedly hung Sallie Curry and shot her “full of holes.” There never was an eye witness to the murder though circumstantial evidences pointed to them as suspects. Both maintained their innocence but without the benefit of a trial that angered others, the suspects were hung from both ends of the same rope wrapped around a tree limb and left to hang for two days to give the curious time to see them after newspaper articles about the hangings appeared the next day. An article entitled “Sally Curry” in the July 6, 1876, Colorado Citizen (Colorado City, Texas) was headlined: “A Murder Most Foul, Strange and Unnatural” but what did “Strange and Unnatural” mean? The book in part speaks to the meaning and the how and why of Sallie’s murder. It is a history of pertinent documents as well as a novel. Much of Sallie Curry of Campbell Branch, Texas is also a history of the 1800s pioneer era of Texas with its fun-time and endearing friendships between two fifteen year-old girls who shared coming-of-age experiences and anxieties little different among those of today. Girls then were still just girls talking as girls do and doing as girls do and having to deal in life with the cards dealt them. Fun times in the story were romances and of such things as young love, square dancing and skinny-dipping.