Frankie Silver: The confession that history forgot

Editor’s Note: Readers can find the full transcript of Frankie Silver’s “confession” in the online version of this week’s edition of The Paper.

This year marks the 192nd anniversary of one of the most haunting and controversial executions in North Carolina history: the hanging of Frances “Frankie” Silver in Morganton on July 12, 1833. She is widely believed to be the first white woman ever executed in North Carolina.

Her story has persisted through nearly two centuries of retellings, folklore, ballads, and books—but a lesser-known, newly resurfaced document that I recently ran across may be the most gripping account yet.

I recently transcribed a rare version of Frankie’s “confession,” printed in the Southern Citizen newspaper out of Asheboro on Feb. 25, 1837. This was over three years after her death and almost a year after the more widely circulated version of her supposed confession appeared in The Lenoir Topic.

But the document I found is markedly different. It doesn’t read like the dramatic, moralistic ballads that came later. It’s not stylized or poetic. It’s raw. It’s chilling. And frankly, it feels real.

The confession was reportedly sworn by Frankie herself inside the Burke County jail on May 23, 1833—just two months before her execution—and witnessed by then-attorney (and later judge) William Casper Bevens and Deputy Sheriff Thomas Wilson. Bevens, a Charleston native who studied law in North Carolina and married in Burke County in 1828, went on to have a long legal, civic, and political career, lending historical credibility to his role in documenting her words. Wilson is identified in the article as a deputy sheriff, though his background remains harder to trace. Regardless, their names at the bottom of the statement anchor it in the legal record. Frankie’s words, delivered not to a crowd but to these two men in a jail cell, are anything but theatrical. They are weary, intimate, and often heartbreaking.

“Never yet had I ever made the first attempt to fend off any of his blows,” she declared. “I then loved him, and had not as yet, the most distant intention to do him an injury.”

In this lengthy, plainspoken confession, Frankie details a years-long cycle of abuse by her husband, Charles Silver. She recounts physical assaults, emotional torment, and threats against her life, often in front of family. What emerges is not the cartoonish image of a cold-blooded murderess, but rather a battered young woman, cornered by poverty, violence, and the moral expectations of the early 19th century. Her story is not one of justification, but of despair.

“I then flew into a passion,” she says, “and swore I would be damned if I did not have [my things], if I had to sell my cow to buy a gun to kill him with, or burn the house over him.”

Most North Carolinians who’ve heard of Frankie Silver know her through the mournful ballad she allegedly sang at the gallows, or through novels like Sharyn McCrumb’s “The Ballad of Frankie Silver.” But there is little historical evidence that Frankie ever sang a word that day. In fact, she may not have even been allowed to speak at her own trial.

Women were not permitted to testify in their own defense in North Carolina courts at that time. Her story, as we know it, was largely told by others—judges, lawyers, townspeople, and eventually, balladeers.

Over time, Frankie became a tragic symbol. In some retellings, she’s a jilted lover; in others, a crazed killer. But this confession paints neither. It shows a teenager, married at 16, giving birth while enduring regular beatings, denied protection, and ultimately snapping in what she describes as a moment of terror and fury.

“He told me he was not my friend, neither did he intend to be,” Frankie recalled of their early days together. “But wished I would go back to my father or friends and remain.”

Even her method of disposing of the body—burning it in a fireplace rather than attempting to hide or bury it—speaks to a chaotic, panicked state of mind, not premeditated malice.

“I just rolled him into the fire, whole as he was,” she said, “without touching him with any edged tool and did not cut him in any way at all.”

Her words ring with sorrow and finality:

“I thought if I could only call back the lick I would give ten thousand worlds.”

To be clear, Charles Silver was the victim of a brutal death. And Frankie never denied that she killed him. But the more we learn, the more it becomes apparent that her trial was less about justice and more about making an example.

What makes this version of her confession so compelling is that it resists the moral overtones of the era’s writers. It’s not just informative; it’s human. There’s remorse, yes, but also context. And it’s context that has been stripped away by time and storytelling.

This anniversary is a good time to revisit Frankie Silver’s case not as legend, but as history. Local author Maxine McCall did just that in her thoughtful book “They Won’t Hang a Woman,” which reexamines the case through the lens of gender, justice, and cultural mythmaking. Like McCall, I believe it’s vital to challenge the version of events we’ve inherited—and this newly resurfaced confession, if legitimate, adds another critical piece to that puzzle.

Based on my own research, and the fact that several 1833 newspapers made reference to her confession—quoting some of these very same lines—I personally believe this is Frankie’s true confession. Whether this was truly her voice or a very early and unusually sympathetic fabrication, the document deserves to be heard and to be made part of the historical record. It forces us to consider not just what she did, but why she did it—and whether, in 1833, that even mattered.

History has many ghosts. Frankie Silver is just one of ours.