The Lynching of Ras Brown

When twenty-two-year-old Erastus “Ras” Brown left his home near St. Clair, Missouri, on or about Friday, July 2, 1897, he told his young wife, Julia, he would bring back medicine for their sick baby. The next thing Julia heard about her husband was that he was accused of assaulting a young white woman, and rumors of lynching the “black fiend” were running rampant. A teenage mother of two, Julia was worried sick about her deathly ill child, and now her husband of less than two years was in deep trouble.
After leaving St. Clair, Ras tramped toward Gray Summit where he’d grown up. Whether he made it to Gray Summit is uncertain, but what is known is that he didn’t made it back home. Instead, he got sidetracked late on the morning of the 2nd when he saw twenty-one-year-old Annie Foerving walking along a lane near Villa Ridge, between St. Clair and Gray Summit.
A “pretty country girl,” Annie had been to Villa Ridge to shop and was on her way home when she started down a wooded path about a mile southeast of the village. According to her later story, someone sprang out of the brush and hit her head with a rock, knocking her to the ground. Stunned but conscious, she sat up and saw a black man hovering over her. She screamed and struggled as he pounced on her, but he quickly choked her into insensibility. When she regained consciousness, her attacker was gone.
But that’s not the story that spread like wildfire in the Villa Ridge vicinity and was initially reported in area newspapers. A “mulatto ravisher” had assaulted Miss Foerving, he had been frightened away by farmhands responding to her frantic cries for help, and whether he had “accomplished his purpose” was uncertain. Even after two doctors examined Annie and found her suffering only a scalp wound and “nervous prostration,” many in the community remained convinced that she’d been sexually violated, and reports continued to assert that her condition was critical.
Ras Brown was immediately suspected of the assault because he’d been seen hanging around the vicinity, and he seemed to fit Miss Foerving’s description of her attacker. A posse located Brown on Saturday morning along a railroad track near St. Clair and arrested him without incident. They took him back to Villa Ridge, where Annie reportedly sat up in bed and cried out that he was the man who’d attacked her.
Realizing that mob fever had spread throughout the area since the attack on Annie Foerving, the posse that had captured Brown implied he’d been taken to the woods and lynched when, in fact, three of the posse members had whisked the captive away to the Franklin County Jail in Union. When the other men who’d been hunting Brown realized they’d been duped, they rode to Union on the night of July 4th with lynching on their mind but were deterred when the jailer put up a staunch defense.
But the vigilantes of Villa Ridge would be heard from again.
At his preliminary hearing on July 6, Brown admitted he’d attacked Miss Foerving but said his only motive was robbery and he’d taken “no undue liberties” with her. On the same day as Ras’s hearing, his wife, Julia, started for Gray Summit with her sick baby to see a doctor, but the infant died in her arms during the trip. Although her husband’s reputation might have been less than sterling, Julia and her parents were well liked and considered “respectful, industrious and honest.” Ras’s parents were also known as “respectable colored people.”
But the good name of the two families wasn’t enough to save “Black Rastus,” as he was known in the white community.
About 1:30 a.m., July 10, another mob, larger than the one that had made a halfhearted attempt to lynch Brown five days earlier, rode into Union from the direction of Villa Ridge. They broke into the jail and dragged Brown outside with a rope around his neck. He was placed in a spring wagon, taken to the eastern outskirts of Union, and hanged from a big willow tree.
A coroner’s inquest the next morning reached the usual conclusion when black men were lynched in America during the turn-of-the-twentieth-century era: that the victim had come to his death by hanging at the hands of parties unknown. Julia Brown and her in-laws were notified of Ras’s fate, and they came to Union to claim the body. Ras was buried near Gray Summit.
The story above is condensed from a chapter in my book Yanked Into Eternity: Lynchings and Hangings in Missouri.

Sham Marriage Causes a Sensation

On Sunday, July 18, 1880, at Brookline, Missouri, 26-year-old M. C. McConnel and 19-year-old Edwina James were in company with another young couple, Henry Adams and Mattie Gibson, having a good time and carrying out practical jokes. They started challenging each other to see who could come up with the most daring deed, and it finally came to such an extremity that McConnell and Miss James sought out a local minister, J. W. Grubbs, and asked him to perform a marriage ceremony, just for fun. Grubbs went through with the ceremony but carried it a bit further than the couple had intended.
On July 20, the preacher filed a record of the marriage with the Greene County recorder, and the recorder entered it into the marriage book. "The couple were placed in an extremely awkward predicament," said one observer at the time. "To admit the marriage and obtain a divorce was impossible, because there was no legal grounds for a divorce."
The only loophole the couple could find was to adopt the argument that no bonafide marriage existed to begin with. So, a warrant was sworn out for the arrest of Rev. Grubbs on a complaint that he had unlawfully caused a false entry of a pretended marriage to be made in the county records. Grubbs was tried before a Springfield magistrate in front of a curious audience. He was found guilty and fined $25 and court costs.
However, the result, according to one reporter, did "not settle satisfactorily to the minds of the young couple the question whether or not they are married."

The Lapine Murders and a Double Hanging

When Washington County sheriff John Clark trailed John Armstrong and Charles Jolly into neighboring Jefferson County in late November, 1870, after the two villains had slaughtered five people, including Louise and Mary Christopher, the lawman stopped near Hematite at the home of the young women’s mother to inform her of the tragedy. The officer was surprised, according to the Washington County Journal, by the mother’s stoical manner and indifferent reply: “Well, I knew they were bad girls, but I think the two men have done enough now; they ought to be taken up.”
And that’s exactly what happened. Tried and convicted of first degree murder, Armstrong and Jolly were sentenced to hang and were “taken up” at Potosi in late January of 1871, just two months after their heinous crime.
On Saturday, November 19, 1870, forty-year-old Armstrong and thirty-five-year-old Jolly, lead miners living north of Potosi, had gone into town to sell their mineral. Also with them was Jolly’s sixteen-year-old brother, Leon. The men, who were cousins, spent the day drinking and then started back home, still imbibing from a jug of whiskey they’d purchased in Potosi.
A mile and half north of Potosi, they stopped at the home of another cousin, fifty-year-old David Lapine. Living with Lapine as his wife was twenty-three-year-old Louisa “Fanny” Christopher, and the couple had small child together. Also living with the family was Fanny’s twenty-two-year-old sister, Mary Christopher, and her baby.
Lapine had worked the mines in the area for years and was considered an inoffensive old man. The women of the house, though, bore dubious reputations, and Armstrong and Jolly were considered dangerous and worthless characters.
Arriving at the Lapine place, Armstrong and Jolly went inside, while Jolly’s teenage brother stayed outside in the wagon. After a while, Leon Jolly got cold and started to go inside. Approaching the cabin, he was startled by loud curses coming from within.
He stepped closer and, peeking through a crack, saw Armstrong and Charles Jolly engaged in a heated argument with Mary Christopher. Lapine tried to intercede, and Jolly drew his revolver and shot him four times, killing him almost instantly. When Fanny Christopher rushed to her husband’s aid, Jolly knocked her down and then shot and killed her, too. In the meantime, Armstrong picked up an ax and hit Mary in the head with it. He then chopped her head off and also severed the heads of the previous two victims. The two children roused from their beds and made a dash for freedom but never reached the door. Armstrong struck one of them in the head with the ax, while Jolly hurled the other one against the stone hearth, dashing its brains out.
The monstrous villains then set fire to the cabin with the bodies inside. Meanwhile, Leon Jolly slipped back to the wagon and pretended to be asleep when his brother and John Armstrong returned from their deadly work.
The murderers drove to the nearby home of Jolly’s brother-in-law, where they stayed until early Monday morning, November 21. Then, leaving Leon Jolly behind, they started north into Jefferson County on foot.
Because Lapine’s cabin was in an isolated part of the country, the crime scene was not discovered until late Monday. An alarm was raised, and the entire community flocked to the scene. After Sheriff Clark arrived, Leon Jolly readily confessed that he had witnessed the crime.
After hearing young Jolly’s story, the sheriff and two deputies set out on horseback on the trail of the murderers Monday evening. The search took them into Jefferson County, where the fugitives were arrested late Tuesday afternoon.
They were brought back to Potosi on Wednesday the 23rd and lodged in the Washington County jail. Late on the night of November 26, a mob tried to take the prisoners from the jail, but Sheriff Clark offered a strong resistance. The crowd was finally dispersed after both sides opened fire and one of the vigilantes was shot and killed. The next day, a state militia detail took Armstrong and Jolly to St. Louis for safekeeping.
They were brought back to Potosi for trial in late December and convicted of first-degree murder on the 22nd. Judge J. H. Vail sentenced the prisoners to die by hanging on January 27, 1871, and they were again taken to St. Louis to await their date with death.
On the early morning of the appointed day, Armstrong and Jolly were brought to Potosi by train, arriving about noon. The condemned men were led from the railroad station to the courthouse grounds, where a gallows had been erected beside the jail. At approximately 1:00 p.m., Armstrong and Jolly were dropped into eternity before a crowd of about 3,000 curious spectators.
The story is condensed from a chapter in my book Yanked Into Eternity: Lynchings and Hangings in Missouri.

Triple Tragedy in Dallas County

On the morning of August 15, 1898, a man called at the farm of German immigrant Charles Duffner living about five miles north of Fair Grove, Missouri, in southern Dallas County and bought some wine from Duffner and his wife. As the customer was leaving, he said he'd probably be back for more wine that evening. About dusk, two strangers showed up, and Mrs. Duffner, who was standing in the yard with her husband, remarked that their morning customer must have returned. Instead of asking for wine, however, one of the men, who was wearing a false beard, demanded Duffner's money.
Duffner at first thought it was a joke and started laughing, and Mrs. Duffner walked up to the man and pulled off his fake beard. He immediately pulled out a revolver and shot at the woman, barely grazing her. Duffner raced to his wife's aid and grabbed hold of the assailant. Duffner was able to pull out a knife and cut the villain across the throat, and the would-be thief fell to the ground mortally wounded. Meanwhile, Otto Duffner, the couple's grown son, arrived on the scene and helped his mother hold the other culprit. The elder Duffner started toward the second man and slashed at him with the knife, but a third robber suddenly appeared from his hiding spot and started shooting. When one of the shots struck and killed Charles Duffner, Otto turned loose of the man he was holding, and the two remaining crooks made their escape on horses stolen from the Duffner barnyard.
A hastily formed posse trailed the robbers north and found the two Duffner horses shot to death about four miles north of the crime scene, but no trace of the bandits could be found after that.
Back at the Duffner place, a revolver was taken off the dead robber, and a satchel that one of the robbers had dropped in scaling the barnyard fence was also found. It contained three cups with the names of Silas Sprague's three children etched on them. This led authorities to believe the crime might have been the work of Sprague and his notorious brothers-in-law, the Jones boys. Sprague was a 29-year-old ex-schoolteacher who was married to Sarah Jones, daughter of Sam Jones, a farmer who lived about three miles south of Buffalo. About 1892 or 1893, Sprague and his brothers-in-law Tom and James Jones had been arrested on a charge of robbery. Sprague was convicted and sentenced to five years in state prison. Tom Jones took a change of venue to Webster County, escaped from jail at Marshfield, and had not been heard from since. James Jones had also somehow escaped or jumped bail, and he and Tom made their way to Texas, where James was charged with killing a lawmen who was attempting to arrest him. He and Tom stayed on the run, roaming into Montana and other western states, and they were reportedly joined by their younger brother, George, in their criminal pursuits about four years before the Duffner killing.
On September 20, five days after the murder of Charles Duffner, George Jones was arrested in Springfield on suspicion of participating in the crime. He was released for lack of evidence, and he later unsuccessfully sued a Springfield newspaper, claiming the paper had libeled him by suggesting that he was one of the culprits who had killed Duffner. Meanwhile, his brothers, who were still suspected of the Duffner killing, stayed on the run. Sprague was apparently cleared of involvement in the crime.
On October 22, 1898, just slightly over a month after Charles Duffner was killed, his 16-year-old daughter, Freida, was shot and killed with the same pistol that had been taken off the dead robber. Freida and a Duffner hired hand named Powell, were sitting at the dinner table in the Duffner home when young Powell picked up the weapon and it discharged. They were alone at the residence at the time, and Powell claimed Freida's death was an accident. He was nonetheless arrested on suspicion. It was thought by some that Powell might have been working in cahoots with the men who had killed Charles Duffner and that he had killed Frieda because she was a potential witness against them, but Powell was later released for lack of evidence.
In early August of 1900, James Jones was killed in western Kansas after he and another man had held up a train in eastern Colorado a few days earlier. The pair were trailed into Kansas to a farmhouse, where they holed up. James was killed in a shootout with the posse, and the house was set on fire. The charred body of the second man was found inside the house after it had burned. It was thought at the time that he was Jim's brother Tom, but this is not certain, because a later report said Tom was arrested in Missouri after being on the run for almost ten years.
A third tragedy in less than three years occurred at the Duffner farm when Leo Herzog, a brother-in-law of another Duffner daughter, was accidentally killed on June 11, 1901, when lightning spooked the team of horses he was working. His leg became caught in the cultivator the runaway horses were pulling, and he was dragged a considerable distance, mangling his entire left side and crushing his skull. Young Herzog had come from Germany to visit his brother and had been in the United States less than a month. He was buried at the nearby Union Grove Cemetery, just across the Polk County line.
On a personal note, I'd like to thank Fair Grove native David Beckerdite for putting me on the trail of this story.