When William Wilcher, the first white person to be executed in Rockbridge County, was hanged at the county jail on Aug. 3, 1906, it was not the culmination of a long, dramatic murder trial fraught with emotional pleas and angry testimony. It was all very matter-of-fact.

Even the murder itself was low-key. When the 23-year-old Wilcher was asked by a reporter why he did it, the condemned man replied that he had shot and killed his friend Henry Smith because the latter refused to go coon-hunting with him. Simple as that.

Wilcher had confessed to the murder right off, precluding the need for a lengthy trial. With the execution scheduled and the scaffold prepared, his last evening was spent calmly smoking cigars and chatting with visitors, telling them as they departed, "God bless you, I hope to meet you in a better world."

The next morning Wilcher was led into a small, canvas-covered enclosure, where he ascended the gallows steps, it was noted, "without a tremor." To one observer he was "the calmest man in the room." When asked if he had any last words, Wilcher said he was ready to go.

At 6:20 a.m. the drop fell and Wilcher plummeted the requisite 9 feet to his death. A few minutes later a doctor pronounced him dead. An easier, or less eventful, execution couldn't have been imagined.