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Cyrus Guy

Cyrus Guy was a 24-year-old Afro-Indigenous farmer from a free family of color. Around December 1, 1869, masked Klansmen seized him and hanged him on the High Rock Road above the Orange County Poorhouse; he is one of six people documented as lynched in the county.

Source: Orange County Community Remembrance Coalition: Those We Honor

1 work about Cyrus Guy is indexed here. 1 held at OCPL →

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Life and Orange County connections

Storylines this person is part of, in date order. Each has its own page.

StorylineRacial-terror lynchings in Orange County1869–1898 · 41 events · Six people are documented as lynched in Orange County: Washington Morrow, Thomas Jefferson Morrow, Daniel Morrow, Wright Malone and Cyrus Guy in 1869, and Manly McCauley in 1898. Sworn testimony before Congress in 1871 gives the same count for 1869, four men hanged and one shot (Josiah Turner Jr.), or five Black men killed (constable W. G. Turrentine), though names differ: the Senate committee's list and two Orange witnesses name a man called Wood, hanged east of Hillsborough, and two sources a William Guy, who may be Cyrus Guy. In September 2022 the county commissioners apologized for racial-terror lynchings and approved markers, citing five cases without naming the victims.

Dated events connected with this person, in date order. See these 3 dated events in the chronology →

  1. Cyrus Guy is lynched by a masked mob in western Orange County A masked mob seized Cyrus Guy, a 24-year-old Afro-Indigenous farmer from a free family of color, and hanged him from a tree on the High Rock Road near the Alamance County line, above the county poorhouse. The Hillsborough Recorder reported that an inquest held under Sheriff Turner found out nothing, and Ben Johnson recalled in 1937 that the body was left hanging for four days. People: Cyrus Guy Place: High Rock Road, near the Alamance County line, Orange County · Also named: Ben JohnsonOrange County Community Remembrance Coalition: Those We Honor
  2. Ben Johnson, born enslaved near Hillsborough, recalls the Klan lynching of Cyrus Guy for a WPA interviewer Interviewed at 85 in Hecktown, Durham, by Federal Writers' Project worker Mary A. Hicks, Johnson said the Ku Klux came for Cy Guy a hundred strong, tried him in the woods and hanged him over the road. He said nobody would touch the body for four days, until the sheriff took it down. Place: Orange County · Also named: Ben Johnson, Mary A. HicksSearch the index · Library of Congress: Federal Writers' Project Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 11, North Carolina, Part 2 (full text)
  3. Soil collection ceremony at the Orange County courthouse honors Cyrus Guy and four other 1869 lynching victims The Orange County Community Remembrance Coalition held a soil collection ceremony for Washington Morrow, Wright Malone, Daniel Morrow, Thomas Jefferson Morrow and Cyrus Guy, all lynched in 1869. One jar for each man was to go to the Equal Justice Initiative's memorial collection in Montgomery, Alabama, and a second jar was to stay in Orange County. People: Daniel Morrow, Jefferson Morrow, Washington Morrow, Wright Malone, Thomas Jefferson Morrow, Renée Price Place: Orange County Courthouse, HillsboroughSearch the index · Chapelboro: 'Do Not Forget Us': Soil Collection Ceremony Held for 5 Orange County Lynching Victims (May 1, 2023)

Indexed works

Works about or by Cyrus Guy. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it. Background reading appears below.

Orange County, N.C. Road Records

Dunaway, Stewart E. · 2008

Three volumes of historic Orange County road records compiled by Stewart E. Dunaway and self-published through Lulu.com in 2008, with maps. The documents, reproduced as facsimiles and sometimes transcribed, include petitions for new roads, requests for road upkeep, bridge records and papers explaining why roads were rerouted. Road petitions name the householders along a route. The third volume also gathers records connected with Cyrus Guy's lynching in Orange County in 1869.

Included because: Their name appears in the record.

✓ Held at OCPL · NC 388.1 ORANGE NC Cardinal Durham

Places in this person’s story

Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows them all.

Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange, Orange County GIS, OpenStreetMap and a few other published sources named on each site’s page; town and community pins show approximate locations.

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Research sources

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Background

Collections and databases

  • NC LIVE: prepared search for Cyrus Guy Library card Search NC LIVE for this subject and Orange County. You can change the search terms. Sign in through your North Carolina library to access the materials.
  • Ancestry Library Edition In the libraryOrange County Public Library Census, birth, death and marriage records, and more, free on the public computers at OCPL libraries

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