Stokes Folks Recall Holiday Murder New Documentary Sheds Light on Lawson Family Tragedy A newspaper photograph from December 1929 shows the Lawson Family caskets on display for the public. A new documentary explores the murders and how the event changed the small North Carolina town of Germanton in Stokes County. By Jeff Eason It was a tragedy that shook the foundations of the rural North Carolina area of Germanton in Stokes County in 1929. It was a murder so heinous that it inspired country ballads, ghost stories and loads of rumors that persist to this day. What was it that made upstanding family man Charlie Lawson shoot and bludgeon to death his entire family before taking his own life on Christmas Day? Was it the onset of the Great Depression and his own shaky finances? Was it a head injury he had incurred at a sawmill months before? Or was it personal demons that finally drove him to the dastardly deed? These are some of the questions posed by a new documentary on the Lawson Family Tragedy of Christmas Day, 1929. It’s called A Christmas Family Tragedy and is a wonderful treasure trove of southern oral history even if it doesn’t answer the age-old questions of why Charlie Lawson inexplicably butchered his wife and six of his seven children. A Christmas Family Tragedy was created by filmmakers Eric Calhoun and Matt Hodges of Break of Dawn Productions, a small independent film company based in Winston-Salem. It will be released this holiday season and is currently enjoying private and public screenings around the state. It will be shown at The Garage in Winston-Salem on consecutive Thursdays, December 14th & 21st at 8 p.m. and at the Germanton Elementary School on Saturday, December 16th at 7 p.m. Musician Lauren Myers of the band Easybake will be on hand at the Garage screenings to sing “Ballad of the Lawsons,” and old country song based on the events. Through extensive interviews, the documentary makes good use of the few remaining people in Stokes County who are able to give firsthand accounts of the events in 1929. Although only a handful of them knew or were related to the Lawson family, just about everyone in the county from that era remembers the hoopla following the murders. Over 5,000 people attended the Lawson family funeral and newspapers all over the south cut short their reporters’ holiday vacations to send them to Stokes County to cover the event and interview Germanton residents. Although nobody saw the tragedy coming, a few pertinent facts are indisputable. Farmer and family man Charlie Lawson took money out of his bank account in the week before Christmas and took his entire family to town for dinner and to buy new suits and dresses. On the morning of the murder he sent his oldest son, Arthur “Buck” Lawson into town to see if he could buy a few supplies. After meeting with a few friends and neighbors on Christmas morning, Charlie shot his two youngest daughters, Carrie and Maybell, finished them off with the butt of his shotgun, and dragged their bodies into a barn. There he gently laid them on their backs and folded their arms on their chest. He then killed his oldest daughter, Marie, on the porch of the farmhouse before entering the building and killing his wife, Fannie, and their two young sons, James and Raymond. Visiting friends and family discovered the bodies soon after the massacre but could not find Charlie or Arthur. Later that afternoon, deputies heard a shot in the woods and eventually found Charlie’s body, shotgun and two suicide notes. Soon after the tragedy, Charlie’s brother turned the farmhouse into a tourist attraction and charged visitors 25-cents apiece to see the bloodstained floors. The surviving son, Arthur, eventually married and had children of his own, but died in a truck accident at the age of 35. The new documentary makes the viewer simultaneously glad that someone took it upon themselves to record the oral history of people who remember the tragedy and sorry that someone didn’t do this much earlier when more key participants were still alive. Like any such documentary, there are conflicting accounts, rumors taken as fact, and facts obscured by time and innuendo. All of that simply adds to the enjoyment of sitting around listening to old timers tell of their region’s most notorious crime. Listening to various members of the Stokes County community speculate on the importance of a raisin cake that Marie Lawson baked on the morning of her murder is to witness how seemingly insignificant details can become key plot points in the mouths of storytellers. A percentage of the film’s proceeds is earmarked to benefit domestic violence organizations and help build a women’s shelter in Stokes County. “As part of this effort to use history as a tool to better future, we are working with domestic violence agencies to create events in conjunction with the film that will assist in combating domestic violence in their own communities,” said Eric Calhoun. A Christmas Family Tragedy had its world premiere at the historic Downtown Cinema Theater in Mount Airy, North Carolina on December 3rd. It will available for rental and purchase on DVD in 2007.