Lilburne Lewis

Lilburne married Jane Woodson, with whom they had five children. They moved to Kentucky and settled near Smithland. Jane died in1811. Lilburne then married Letitia Rutter of a prominent Livingston County, Kentucky family. They had one child.

Lilburn killed himself in 1812 after he and his brother, Isham, brutally killed an enslaved young man named George.

Murder of Slave George https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lilburn_Lewis#Murder_of_Slave...

On December 15, 1811, Lilburne and Isham had been drinking. The brothers brutally murdered Lilburne's 17-year-old slave named "George", who had dropped and broken a pitcher of their mother's, with an axe in front of their other slaves. Lilburne warned his slaves that this is the treatment that they would receive for disobeying him or telling anyone about their murdering George. One of the enslaved man was forced to dismember George and put his remains in the fire. That night, the first New Madrid earthquake struck the region. The brothers tried to hide the remains of George, but his body was revealed two months later, when a chimney collapsed in one of the major aftershocks. The brothers were arrested and charged with the murder. The murder was not discovered for three months when a dog unearthed a part of George's remains and which was seen by a neighbor. Lilburne and Isham were indicted by a grand jury, the trial was delayed for three months and they returned to Rocky Hill to await the court dates.

After the murder of George, Lilburne killed himself during a double-suicide attempt with his brother. Isham was considered an accomplice to the suicide and was put in jail. After 23 days, he escaped and was said to have gone to Natchez where he was married. He fought in the Battle of New Orleans and died in 1815.

In 1953, Robert Penn Warren published a lengthy poem entitled Brother to Dragon: A Tale in Verse and Voices that retells the story of the Lewis family and the murder of George.

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