Henry Berry Lowrie

Any visit to North Carolina should include a stop in Robeson County’s Lumbee Indian community, not far from Interstate-95. This place is rich with the voices of ancestors, with the dark waters of the Lumbee River, and with the vibrant culture of the Lumbee.

Henry Berry Lowrie, Rest In Peace

In 1865, Henry Berry Lowrie, a young Indian boy living in Robeson County, North Carolina, witnessed a horrifying event that changed his life forever—his father Allen and brother William were shot to death by the Confederate Home Guard, accused of stealing food and harboring Yankee prisoners. Allen and William did nothing of the kind, but were made to pay for the crimes of others.

Henry Berry, along with his brothers, cousins, and his black and white neighbors, rose up against the local authorities that ordered the murders and kept the South a place of misery for the poor. Over the next seven years, he and the Lowrie band, as they came to be called, avenged the murders of Allen and William Lowrie, all the while avoiding capture thanks to their reputations for kindness and generosity to poor people. Only one member of the gang was ever arrested and tried in the courts. In 1872, his work completed, Henry Berry mysteriously disappeared into the swamps of Robeson County.

People spread the rumor that he accidentally shot himself while cleaning his guns, but the truth is far from certain—since that time, the people have whispered of his return visits to Robeson County to see his wife Rhoda, of his grave in the hills of east Tennessee or the piney woods of Georgia, and of the legacy he left behind.

For more print and internet resources about Henry Berry, please visit the Resources page.

Click here for an article about Henry Berry’s life written by Lumbee historian Adolph L. Dial.