Newbern Daily Progress, 24 September 1859.

I have not found him in records, but Joseph Boone was likely a member of the small extended Boone family of free people of color who migrated into Nash County from adjoining counties to the north. After allegedly killing Uriah Ricks, he fled to Wilson, where he hopped a train south, most likely on the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad. Note Boone’s description — “about one-fourth free negro, but generally passes for white.” Race was more fluid in nineteenth-century North Carolina than we credit.