By Jacques Kelly and Frederick N. Rasmussen , jacques.kelly@baltsun.com and fred.rasmussen@baltsun.com|January 10, 2009
William Devereux Zantzinger, the white Southern Maryland tobacco farmer who became infamous because of a Bob Dylan song about his fatal assault on a black Baltimore barmaid in 1963, has died.
Zantzinger, 69, died Saturday and was buried yesterday, according to the Brinsfield-Echols Funeral Home in Charlotte Hall. No cause of death was reported.
The Southern Maryland aristocrat was convicted of manslaughter in the death of 51-year-old Hattie Carroll. His crime never escaped memory after Dylan recorded "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," released in a 1964 album. Dylan changed the name to "Zanzinger" by dropping the T.
Dylan described "Zanzinger" hitting the woman while twirling his cane "around his diamond ring finger."
Zantzinger, dressed in tails and wearing a carnation in his lapel, had complained that Carroll, a barmaid at Baltimore's old Emerson Hotel, was slow in bringing a drink he had ordered at the Spinsters Ball, an invitation-only social event.
"Give me a bourbon," the 24-year-old was quoted as saying in court testimony as he approached the bar. He later upbraided Carroll and struck her with a 26-cent, lightweight carnival-style cane.
After she was struck, Carroll, the mother of 11 children, leaned against the bar and told her fellow workers: "This man has upset me so, I feel deathly ill." She died hours later at Mercy Medical Center.
Zantzinger was also charged with striking another waitress, Ethel Hill, who suffered arm injuries, and a bellman, George N. Gesell.
"Isn't it amazing that Zantzinger is going out as the nation's first African-American president is about to take office," David Bruce Poole, a Hagerstown lawyer whose father was the Washington County state's attorney who assisted Baltimore prosecutors, said yesterday.
"What happened then was a seminal moment in Maryland's civil rights history," said Poole, who has the white cane Zantzinger used in the attack. Poole said he is planning to donate the cane to a museum.
Poole added: "The shame of Zantzinger is that he never mended his ways."
Reached last night, a member of the Zantzinger family declined to comment.
Poole's father, David K. Poole Jr., was the Washington County state's attorney who assisted Baltimore prosecutors, who were trying the case in Hagerstown at the height of the 1960s civil rights movement.
Carroll had a medical history that included an enlarged heart and hypertension. The medical examiner testified she died of brain hemorrhage eight hours after the attack.
