I just did a google search and ran across this page. My grandmother recently passed away. While sorting her personal belongings, we ran across a hand-written paper with the words to this song. Grandma grew up in southern Illinois and my mother remembers Grandma and Grandpa talking about the Shelton family - they actually knew them. Here are the words as Grandma had written: Near a little country schoolhouse, in a county know as Wayne, it was down on Pond Creek Bottoms, one day a man was slain. He was riding on the highway to see about some grain, when they shot him down from ambush, Carl Shelton was his name. How little did he know the morn he started out, these hoodlums would be waiting there, along this murder route. He had no one to warn him, and he feared no earthly harm, as he drop his jeep that morning to work down on the farm. At the county seat of Fairfield, they could not find a bill, but we all know it's not right, our fellow man to kill. They even shot him when he fell, and left him there to die. Some day this mystery will be solved, in a courthouse in the sky. He had four loyal brothers, two sisters and a wife, to mourn his sad departure, the day they took his life. Maple Hill they laid him, so peacefully there to rest, but his presence it still lingers, with the ones that knew him best. He left his dear old mother, in sorrow there alone, living down near Marion, in her little country home. May the angels hover over her, for she hasn't long to stay, and I hope she meets her darling, in a better world someday.