On the morning of July 11, 1898, Julia Hotopp, then twenty years old, reported having been assaulted by a black man near the gate of her family’s estate, Pen Park, about two and a half miles east of Charlottesville. According to her account, which appeared in that afternoon’s edition of Charlottesville’s
Daily Progress newspaper, she had ridden into town between eight and nine o’clock to have her horse shod. Upon returning, she noticed that the gate, normally latched, was instead bound with wire. She freed the gate, but as she turned to remount her horse, “someone approached her from behind and struck her, and then grasped her by the neck, forcing her to the ground, when she became unconscious.”