Sanford, July 30—How a newborn babe, buried under a foot of earth, in turn weighted with a pile of logs, could live for 34 hours is a puzzle that Dr. J.L. Scott, coroner of Lee County, is trying to solve tonight.
Called to a point two miles below Lemon Springs tonight, Dr. Scott found a negro babe that 2 ½ hours before had been recovered from a shallow grave under a pile of logs by passers-by who thought mysterious tracts to the lumber pile led to a store of whiskey. Thought men who summoned him believed the baby dead and had made no disposition of the little earth-stained body, Dr. Scott assured himself with a few thumpings that the infant lived and was rewarded by a plaintive wail. Shortly afterwards a woman living near admitted that the child was her own and gave it nourishment. When Dr. Scott left, the baby was still living, and though its eyes appeared to be badly infected, it gave every evidence of ability to live on. Action against the woman is awaiting the fate of the child.
Anna Johnston, the mother, to whom suspicion immediately pointed after the body of the babe was found, told Dr. Scott that she had given birth to the child in a patch of woods near the spot where the body was found Monday morning about 9 o’clock. The child appeared to be dead, according to the woman’s story, and she unaided scraped up the earth to a depth of about a foot, wrapped the infant in a few soiled rags, placed it in the hole, and filled in the dirt. On top of this, she said, she placed a pile of logs and immediately went back to work in the fields, working the rest of the day Monday and again all day today.
From the front page of the Mooresville Enterprise, Thursday, Aug. 7, 1924
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn93064798/1924-08-07/ed-1/seq-1/#words=August+7%2C+1924
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