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Second of two parts about the 1856 murder of Martha Penix in the Deep River area.

At the time of her murder, 20-year-old Martha Penix was about six months pregnant.

She was found with her throat slashed and a shotgun blast to her head in October 1856.

Romulus Chipman — whose roommate testified that Chipman received a letter from Penix the day before the murder, borrowed a horse and rode off with a shotgun — was convicted of her murder but escaped police custody.

In 1877 — 20 years after Chipman’s trial, conviction and escape — Gov. Zebulon B. Vance granted Chipman a pardon.

Seven years after the murder, one of Chipman’s cousins, Paris C. Stewart, told his brother that he had killed Penix. Stewart had promised to marry her but did not want to, so he killed her. He had married someone else.

With the Civil War well under way, in early July 1863, brothers Temple and Paris Stewart , both officers in the state militia, were called to Greensboro for active duty.

During that period, Paris confessed the murder to his brother.

“Temple, I am the boy that killed Martha Pinnix,” he said, according to Temple’s affidavit. “Romulus did not do it. He is as clear of it as you are.”

Paris urged his brother to tell Julia Watkins, Chipman’s sister, so she could get word to her brother.

Penix was not killed on Saturday, as believed, Paris continued, but on Sunday night.

Temple didn’t tell Watkins about the confession until 10 years after Paris, too, had died.

Affidavits sent to Vance in 1877 offer details about Paris’ death.

Temple was on militia duty in Greensboro in early July 1863 and had been given a message and pistol from Paris, who had taken up his militia duty post guarding the railroad bridge at Jamestown.

Thomas T. Ayers, age 74 at the time of his 1877 affidavit, spoke to Paris at the bridge the night he was killed.

On the night of July 7, 1863, Ayers took the train back from Greensboro, getting off at the Jamestown depot about 11 p.m. and walking west toward home.

When he reached the railroad bridge over Deep River, he said he found Paris “sitting in a chair near the east end of the bridge, and upon the sheet iron which covered the sills between the rails under the said bridge.”

Ayers visited with Paris Stewart and Peter Perry, a member of Paris’ command, for about 15 minutes.

Paris was killed by the train heading to Greensboro 20 to 25 minutes later.

Ayers heard about Paris death the next morning. He returned to the bridge, where he “had it pointed out to him where the body of said Stewart was thrown off and the position of the body and chair and found the next morning.”

It appeared that the chair and Paris were struck in the position in which Ayers first saw him. The chair appeared to have wheeled to the right but not thrown off, “casting the body off the track and down the embankment near the southeast abutment of the bridge.”

John T. Poe, who was acquainted with the Chipman and Stewart families, heard of Paris’ death the next morning when Perry came to his home.

Perry told him that Paris had been sitting on a chair on the track over the bridge between the rails of the track, that Perry and other guards wanted him to rest and let them stand guard, but Paris insisted on remaining on guard during the night.

Poe later told Paris’ mother that not long before these events, Paris had pointed out where he wanted to be buried at Deep River Meeting. Poe said he noticed a “decided change” in Paris’ manner and that he appeared depressed and troubled.

Temple said he waited for an opportune time to tell Watkins, Chipman’s sister, about the confession.

Watkins and her husband, Claiborne Watkins, lived in Madison in Rockingham County, and in the winter of 1873, they visited her parents before making a planned move to Texas.

Temple was determined to talk to her, but found no opportunity because of the number of people present.

However, when Claiborne asked Temple to help him move a wagonload of items from Madison to the Chipman home, Temple had his chance to privately tell Claiborne the whole story and ask him to tell Julia.

Temple himself did not see Julia until 1876, when she visited her parents again, but it was she, probably with her mother, who organized the successful appeal to Vance based on what he revealed.

Soon after my 2007 column about Penix’s murder, I heard from Steven Wojcik, whose wife, Ann Rose, is Romulus Chipman’s great-great-granddaughter. He told me quite a lot about Chipman as his descendants knew him.

In Tampico, Mexico, where Chipman settled after his flight from Greensboro, Chipman was known as Santiago Saunders, combining the common Spanish name for Saint James — Santiago — with the Spanish custom of taking the mother’s surname. Saunders was Romulus’ middle name and had been the surname of his paternal grandmother.

Tampico is on the Gulf Coast of Mexico, about 325 miles by road from the United States border at Brownsville-Matamoros. There were salt mines nearby, and it was a lively maritime trading center in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Saunder s’ portrait shows a handsome man with a fashionable scraggly beard. From all accounts, he was a personable fellow, and we know he had a better-than-average education. He went to work for a man named Lopez, married his widow, Mercedes Vasquez Lopez, probably inheriting the business, and became a successful merchant and trader.

The Santiago Saunders family had four children, all baptized and reared as Catholics: Juliana (Ann Rose Wojcik’s great-grandmother), Lucinda, Sebastian Guillermo and Julio.

Steven Wojcik said Juliana married Don Bartolo Rodriguez de Leon, a wealthy rancher and sugar refinery owner and member of a distinguished old Spanish family, the Rodriquez de Montemayor family who arrived in the 16th century, founded Monterrey and became the largest landowners in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, just south of Texas.

Their children went by the name Rodriguez Saunders. Juliana’s mother-in-law was a descendant of an early Spanish family, the DeLeons, which received the land grant for what became Victoria County, Texas.

Juliana’s son, Rafael Rodriguez Saunders, attended Georgia Military Academy in the early 1900s. Juliana has many descendants in Tampico and Mexico City, and also in the United States, including Ann Rose Wojcik.

In 2007, the Wojciks, who live in Virginia, visited the Jamestown and the Deep River area. I want to thank them most sincerely for sharing this family history that brings us up to the present.

Mary Browning is a longtime resident of Jamestown. Contact her at maryab30@triad.rr.com.