Biography
Willis Hester was a white North Carolinian, reported to be about forty-one years old, executed at Pittsboro on May 5, 1855. The Espy and North Carolina execution records classify his offense as aiding a runaway slave. A contemporary Fayetteville Observer notice says the alleged offense occurred in Orange County and that the trial was moved to Chatham County. The brief notice supplies no account of the person Hester was accused of helping and no reliable evidence of his motive.
