Capt. Styron Found in Bed With Young Girl; Fined $100; She's Sent to Home for Wayward Girls, Feb. 20, 1920

From the front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Feb. 20, 1920

Fined $100 for “Feeding” Girl. . . Taking Girl to Hotel Cost Coast Guard Keeper a Tidy Sum

Capt. A.W. Styron, Keeper of Coast Guard Station No. 180 at Gull Shoal near Salvo, N.C., was fined $100, and Mattie Copeland, a young white girl of this city, was sent to Samarcand Manor by the Recorder’s Court of this city yesterday morning.

Capt. Styron carried the girl to the Southern Hotel in this city Tuesday night. He registered as A.W. Styron of Beaufort, N.C., and registered the girl as a Miss Berry of Massachusetts. They took separate rooms, but the police found them in the same room the following morning. Capt. Styron submitted in the case, arranged for the payment of whatever fine would be imposed, and left town. The girl alone appeared in police court yesterday morning. The girl is a daughter of Jack Copeland, who lives on Beech Street, and has given her father and the police a lot of trouble. It was brought out in the Recorder’s Court that she has occupied rooms at numerous hotels and boarding houses form time to time, in every case her room being paid for by men. One night she stayed out with a Crank all night. Miss Hettie Creecy’s rooming house at the corner of Church and Road Streets was one of the places mentioned in the evidence.

In regard to her affair with Capt. Styron the girl testified that she met Capt. Styron coming in on the train Wednesday night. She told him she was hungry and he begged her to go to the Southern Hotel with him and get breakfast. She said she didn’t consider that any harm. Asked why she didn’t go home and get breakfast she said Capt. Styron wouldn’t let her.

The Copeland girl's if the fourth to be sent from Elizabeth City to Samarcand Manor, the state home for wayward girls, within recent months.