Mayhayley Lancaster

Mayhayley Lancaster (1875-10-18—1955-05-22) was an American lawyer, political activist, midwife and teacher best known for having participated in two of Georgia's most high-profile murder trials, involving defendants Leo Frank in Marietta and John Wallace in Coweta County. She was involved in Leo Frank's defense and in the Wallace case as a witness for the prosecution.

She was born Amanda Mayhayley Lancaster and grew up in Heard County, Georgia, where she lived for most of her life. She is buried in the cemetery at Caney Head Methodist Church.

Mayhayley Lancaster was 39 years old in 1915, during the Leo Frank case, a widely-known miscarriage of justice exacerbated by anti-semitism, in which the Jewish defendant, on flimsy evidence, was falsely accused of murdering 13-year-old employee Mary Phagan. Lancaster was one of the few public voices in Georgia to defend Frank. Thirty-two years later, in 1947, the 71-year-old Mayhayley Lancaster took part in the Wallace trial, later described in the book Murder in Coweta County. In the 1983 same-titled made-for-TV movie, she was portrayed by 54-year-old June Carter Cash whose husband, Johnny Cash, played the key role of the persistent sheriff determined to bring to justice the arrogant John Wallace (Andy Griffith).

She ran for the Georgia legislature in 1926, the first woman to do so. She ran on a platform advocating roads and railroads into rural counties, public schools, and the passage of a law that mandated that doctors must deliver babies regardless of the family's ability to pay fees. She did not win, but some of her ideas were eventually carried out.

Mayhayley Lancaster died five months before her 80th birthday. In addition to her legal, political and educational activities, she was also described as a noted fortune teller, numbers runner and self-proclaimed "Oracle of the Ages".

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Name	Lancaster, Mayhayley
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Date of birth	1875
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Date of death	1955
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