Dead Body Found.
A Colored Fisherman Encounters Ghastly Object Last Thursday.

Some little excitement was caused on last Thursday evening when Wright Coleman, colored, came in town and reported that he had found a dead body on the river.

A number of citizens and several of the officers went out to the place.  The body was first discovered where it had lodged against a large limb going down into the river from a tree which overhung the water’s edge.  Coleman said he was fishing on the river, having with him a lad of his own color, when the object suddenly caught his eye and he investigated it and found it to be a dead body.  A number of negroes being in the crowd that had gathered, the work of getting the body to the bank was attempted with success.  It was badly decomposed, almost the entire head being gone.  Coroner Frank Patterson was notified and reached the place on Friday morning and getting together a jury investigated matters pertaining to the body.  Evidence showed that it was Ben Robinson, colored, and the jury so rendered a verdict, but with no statement as to the cause of death.  Ben Robinson was a negro about 35 years of age and for some time ran a dray for Mr. D. F. Bradford.  One evening last January, the negro told Mr. Bradford that he had been accused of trying to kill his aunt, and Mr. Bradford believing the negro’s mind affected, told him to go along to work and gave him some packages to deliver at the house in which his aunt lived.  He delivered the goods, then flew by the dray, which he left standing near the gate and fled wildly to the woods.  Search was made for the negro but he could not be found, though it was learned he had gone in the direction of the river.  It was not known that he was seen alive any more.  It is supposed by some that he went to the river and threw himself in to free himself from imagined trouble.