Rice Dunbar - Family Black Sheep Part 3

Prison Life
The Huntsville Penitentiary was the only prison of the eleven Confederate states still standing at the end of the Civil War, Built in 1849 Huntsville had one brick building surrounded by temporary log buildings. It was strictly a white person’s (for both men and women) prison until the Civil War. Until then, blacks were punished by being hanged or whipped. After the war, Huntsville was the first racially integrated prison. Prisoners were most often housed two to a cell, and the number of inmates serving time fluctuated widely, generally ranging in the neighborhood of 500.

The increase in lawlessness at the end of the war resulted in more persons being sentenced to prison, at a time when state government found itself virtually bankrupt. The public was unwilling to support tax increases to provide for additional prisons to house the larger number of inmates. Looking for a way to support the prison, the state entered into lease arrangements with private individuals who hired state prisoners to work on private farms, on railroads, and in mines and quarries.

Prisoners not leased out remained in the prison where they worked in a variety of shops producing goods for sale on the open market. Inmates also made a number of permanent improvements to the Huntsville facility. Prisoners built workshops, new cellblocks, warehouses, and outbuildings; remodeled existing structures to provide room for a hospital, a chapel, and a library; constructed residences for senior prison officials; and undertook major renovations and expansions of the outside wall.

Rice entered the prison on August 4, 1875 to serve his two year sentence.  He was described as 27 years old, married, a smoker, 175 pounds, dark hair, grey eyes and fair skin.  5”10.  He had a common education, but he was known to have an unpredictable and volatile temper. He arrived with fourteen other convicted felons from Fannin County. Most were for robbery. Half were black. Rice was from Illinois and served as a Union soldier … in a southern prison.

Immediately, Rice Dunbar, as part of the prisoner lease program, was assigned to work on wood chopping crew. There was a large forest near Huntsville where wood was used for many projects.  These prisoners would leave the prison each day to work.

On September 30, 1875, having been in prison for less than two months, while on this wood chopping crew, Rice suddenly died.  Was it a fight with the Southern men?  Was it his volatile anger getting him in trouble?  Or the heat of the Texas sun?  We will never know.  The convict records state “No cause given”. 

So we now know why Rachel was a widow in the 1880 census.  What happened to her, her sons and the other people involved in this case.

Shortly after Dunbar and Vanvickle’s trial on July 27, 1875, the court found that there was no evidence against M.G. Bobbitt. He was free.

In exchange for his testimony, William Truitt’s arrest warrant was dropped on October 30, 1875, as unfounded, by the Sheriff, J.W. Dunn. He appeared before the court several times between 1875 and 1877, each time the sheriff reported the evidence against William Truitt was unfounded. He remained single and live in Texas most of his life.

Thus, all the southerners served no time for the crime.  Dunbar, the only Yankee, was the only one found guilty.

Meridon Gentry Bobbitt – a Confederate Soldier, he married Virginia in 1876.  They raised six children, living in Kaufman County TX most of their lives. Worked as a farmer.  Died in 1917.  He and his wife received a pension for his service as a Confederate soldier.

Winfield Scott Vanvickle – After being found innocent in the trial, no other information could be located.  His parents and siblings lived in Missouri for many years.

Of the 15 prisoners that entered Huntsville with Rice, eleven served their sentence and were released.  Three, including Rice, died on the wood chopping force; two the cause was unknown and one died of typhoid fever.

Rachel, his wife, married Howard Boyer in 1883.  They raised their five children in Leavenworth, Kansas and where Rachel died in 1908 in an accident.  Rice’s son, John married three women and had 12 children.  Luther and Mary Alice never married.  

Amos Emory Gibson married Mary Lake in 1876, Fannin County They raised one son, who gave them three grandsons. Amos worked as a laborer in Texas, then to Oklahoma. In 1897, he was found guilty of theft, but was pardoned in 1898.  Amos was killed in 1900 when a renter named HD Hudson, hit him over the head with a pistol.