He was alleged to have burned down the second courthouse in 1876 (built to replace one destroyed in 1865 by Union forces during the Civil War).

Accounts in the story do not conform to historic facts; for instance, the windows were not installed until February through March 1878, so they could not contain his image.

[citation needed] A total of 15 African Americans were lynched in Pickens County, many in the courthouse square, from 1877 to 1917.

This period was one of turmoil, as the federal government was withdrawing the last of its troops from the South, formally ending Reconstruction.

[citation needed] The whites in town already suspected Henry Wells and an accomplice, Bill Buckhalter, of the arson.

A story in the West Alabamian on December 13, 1876, said that Wells and Buckhalter were also suspected of robbing a store on the night in 1876 when the courtroom was burned.

In the difficult days of the Reconstruction, when materials were scarce and money was even scarcer, rebuilding the courthouse seemed to be an impossible task.

Fewer than twelve years after Union troops had set fire to the town's first courthouse, the new one burned in 1876.

Despite the lack of circumstantial evidence, they identified Henry Wells as a suspect; he was a freedman who lived near the town.

[citation needed] But it was Alabama in 1878, and Henry Wells was a black man accused of burning down a symbol of town pride.

He was charged and arrested on four counts: arson, burglary, carrying a concealed weapon and assault with intent to murder.

As the first few drunken men began heading toward the courthouse, the sheriff took Wells to its high garret and told him to keep quiet.

Just then, a bolt of lightning struck nearby, flashing the image of Wells' face, contorted with fear, to the crowd below.

Early the next morning, as a member of the lynch mob passed by the courthouse, he happened to glance up at the garret window.

Since the photo was taken, the city of Carrollton has installed a reflective highway sign with an arrow pointing to the pane where the image appears.

[citation needed] The legend is related to the racism and white racial terrorism in Alabama during and especially after the Reconstruction Era, including numerous lynchings through the early 20th century.

A white mob stormed the county jail in Carrollton and shot to death in their cells Paul Archer, Will Archer, Emma Fair, Ed Guyton, and Paul Hill, freedmen (and one freedwoman) who had been arrested on charges of burning down the mill and gin house of a white man.

As Alan N. Brown has recounted it, another probate judge agreed to tell folktales to the 5th-grade class from a black school in Birmingham.

"[4] Some version of this story was formed in the years after installation of the courthouse windows, and repeated in oral histories.

In the later 20th century, the mythic account was included in compilations of ghost stories and folk tales published by whites.

McNeil; and Phantom Army of the Civil War and Other Southern Ghost Stories (1997), edited by Frank Spaeth and selected from FATE magazine.