On Saturday morning, September 10, 1898, Benjamin Jones, a 68-year-old man who lived near Randolph in Clay County, Missouri, volunteered to take his neighbors’ eleven-year-old daughter, Annie Montgomery, to the county fair in Liberty about ten miles away. The girl’s parents agreed to the arrangement, and Annie rode to Liberty with the old man in his big wagon.
During the morning, Jones took the girl shopping, and during the afternoon they went to the fair. As evening approached, they started back to Randolph, and during the return trip, the old codger sexually assaulted young Annie. Perhaps hoping the girl wouldn’t tell, Jones continued the journey after the assault and delivered her to her home.
But Annie broke into tears upon entering the house and told her parents the whole story. Her father immediately notified local constable David C. Roberts, who found Jones not far away, still on the road in his wagon. A posse of citizens who flocked to the scene talked of lynching the old man on the spot, but they finally let the officers deliver him to the county jail.
Jones was taken to Liberty and thrown in the clink on Sunday morning. As word of the previous day’s assault spread, “the indignation of the Clay county people knew no bounds,” according to the Kansas City Journal.
Despite the ominous mood in Liberty during the day, few people were on the streets Sunday night, and most of the citizens were asleep when the town’s electric lights were suddenly extinguished shortly after eleven o’clock and a masked mob of about a hundred men converged on the courthouse. They pounded open the jail door, rushed in, and dragged Jones out, begging for his life and with a rope already around his neck. They took him to the front porch of the courthouse and tossed the other end of the rope over an overhead railing. The leader of the mob asked the old man whether he had anything to say. Jones admitted the deed but said he was drunk at the time, as he kept pleading for his life.
“Swing him up,” the leader said, and the command was promptly obeyed. A single shot rang out almost as soon as he was suspended, and life was quickly extinct.
After the lynching, the gang leader ordered everybody to go home and keep their mouths shut, and the mob quickly dispersed. Jones’s body was cut down and taken to a local undertaking firm. An examination revealed that Jones had been shot in the neck.
According to the Journal, many of Liberty’s citizens were surprised to learn of the lynching upon awaking the next morning, but they largely approved the extralegal proceeding, many of them “freely expressing admiration for the quiet, effective work of the benevolent association.”
This story is condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Show-Me Atrocities: Infamous Incidents in Missouri History.
3 comments:
I was surprised that it was mentioned that the "electric lights" in the town were shut off. What surprised is that they had electric lights at all at that time. However I found a old map of Liberty on MU's site and sure enough on a map dated 1889 there is a building labeled, Incandescent Elec. Light Plant.
Yes, the fact that Liberty had electric lights at this time surprised me, too, but I just accepted it since that's what it said in the newspaper. Glad to hear that you've confirmed the fact.
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