Hat­tie Car­roll was a 51-year-old mother of eleven chil­dren who worked on the kitchen staff at the Emer­son Hotel.

Late on the night of Feb­ru­ary 9, 1963, Car­roll was work­ing the white-tie Spinster’s Ball when William Dev­ereux “Billy” Zantzinger arrived to the soiree already drunken and bois­ter­ous. The 24-year-old Zantzinger was a scion of a wealthy Charles County tobacco-farming family.

By all accounts, Zantzinger assaulted at least three work­ers at the Emer­son Hotel and the Eager House restau­rant with a toy cane. At the Spinster’s Ball, Zantzinger struck a 30-year-old wait­ress with the cane and called her “nig­ger,” caus­ing her to flee in tears.

Moments later, angry that Car­roll did not serve his bour­bon quickly enough, Zantzinger struck her across the shoul­der and head with his cane, call­ing her “nig­ger” and “black son of a bitch.” Zantzinger then attacked his then-wife, Jane, knock­ing her to the ground.

Car­roll told co-workers, “I feel deathly ill, that man has upset me so,” and col­lapsed. She was rushed to the hos­pi­tal and died eight hours later. Her autopsy showed hard­en­ing of the arter­ies, an enlarged heart and high blood pres­sure. The cause of death was iden­ti­fied as brain hemorrhage.

Zantzinger was arrested for dis­or­derly con­duct after the ball, and charged with mur­der after Carroll’s death the next day. A team of pricey lawyers were hired, who won a change of venue to move the trial to Hager­stown. A three-judge panel reduced the charge from mur­der to manslaughter.

After a three-day trial in August, Zantzinger was found guilty and fined $125 for assault­ing hotel employ­ees and sen­tenced to six months in jail and fined $500 for the death of Car­roll. The court deferred Zantzinger’s jail sen­tence until Sep­tem­ber 15 to allow him to har­vest his tobacco crop.

The Her­ald Tri­bune quoted Zantzinger on his sen­tence: “I’ll just miss a lot of snow.” Jane was quoted as say­ing, “Nobody treats his nig­gers as well as Billy does around here.”

Bob Dylan recorded “The Lone­some Death of Hat­tie Car­roll” on Oct. 23, 1963, which is included on his 1964 album, The Times They Are A-Changin’. The song cemented Carrol’s role — and Zantzinger’s noto­ri­ety — in Amer­i­can pop­u­lar cul­ture. Here, Dylan sings the bal­lad on the Steve Allen show in 1964:

After his jail sen­tence, Zantzinger returned to his Car­roll County farm. Even­tu­ally, he turned to real estate, and in the early 1990s was charged with fraud and decep­tive prac­tices, accused of rent­ing run-down shacks with no run­ning water. He died on Jan­u­ary 3, 2009

MORE INFO:
Wikipedia: The Lone­some Death of Hat­tie Car­roll
Life after a Lone­some Death

Hat­tie Car­roll is buried at Bal­ti­more National Ceme­tery along with her hus­band, James, in lot 40 of Sec­tion K.

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