Lynching of George Graham

Shortly after one o’clock on Tuesday morning, April 27, 1886, a large body of horsemen rode into downtown Springfield from the west and surrounded the courthouse at the corner of College and the public square. Almost all the men were armed, and nearly all had handkerchiefs across their faces. They numbered about one hundred and fifty and appeared well-organized. Eight or ten of them dismounted at the jail, located on College Street at the rear of the courthouse, and they rapped on the door.

            When night watchman R. W. Douglas opened the door, the small mob presented their weapons and marched Douglas into the sheriff’s quarters, where two of them grabbed Sheriff F. M. Donnell as he was rousing from bed and putting on his pants. Donnell offered no resistance, against the heavily armed men.

            They told Donnell they didn’t want to hurt him but they would if he didn’t let them have George Graham, who had recently confessed to killing his first wife and dumping her body in an abandoned well on a Brookline farm owned by nationally known temperance revivalist Emma Molloy. Fearing for her husband’s safety, Mrs. Donnell turned over the key to a drawer where the jail keys were kept.

            After the mob retrieved the jail keys, two vigilantes guarded Donnell while the rest, taking Douglas with them, unlocked the door leading to the cells. Douglas refused to say which cell was Graham’s, but one of the men looked into Graham’s cell and recognized him. The mob soon had the door to Graham’s cell open.

            The prisoner thought the men were bluffing at first, but realizing they weren’t as they entered his cell, he became defiant, calling them Brookline murderers. One of the men put a shotgun to Graham’s head and ordered him to shut up and put on his clothes. Graham sobbed briefly as he dressed but quickly regained his composure.

            The vigilantes tied Graham’s hands, put a rope around his neck, and herded him outside. They put him into a spring wagon, and they made Douglas get in the wagon as well. The cavalcade started east on College Street, crossed the public square, and turned north on Boonville. Aroused by the commotion, many curious onlookers trooped along behind “the march of death.” Periodically the rear guard of the night riders stopped to warn the spectators back.

            The march continued north to within a couple of blocks of Division Street, then wound its way west, finally halting beneath a blackjack oak tree about 300 yards north-northwest of the woolen mill on or near the site of present-day Weaver Elementary School.

            The rope around Graham’s neck was tied to a limb about nine feet off the ground and the wagon driven out from under Graham. However, the rope was too long, allowing his feet to hit the ground. Two of the gang lifted him up while others adjusted the rope around the limb. The ones holding Graham up then let go, and he swung with his feet barely touching the ground until he finally choked to death. 

            It was after 3:00 a.m. when most of the gang rode away to the south and then went west out of town. About thirty men remained at the tree, but they, too, rode away a half hour later, leaving the curiosity seekers free to approach the body.

            They found Graham dead with blood oozing from his mouth and nose. Pinned to his coat was the following message:

When the Coroner is in possession of this paper, Geo. E. Graham will be dead, and as little punishment will have been inflicted as if he had been hanged by legal authority.
It is a matter of right to the community and justice to humanity that we, “The Three Hundred," ignore the law in this instance.
We recognize that our criminal statues are not equal to all occasions, therefore we have resolved to remove from our midst the worst criminal who has ever infested our country before he gets the “benefit of clergy,” that we may hereafter and forever live and be without his presence and vicious influence.

                       

            The note cautioned other criminals to stay away from Greene County and warned that anybody who tried to discover the identity of the lynchers would be “speedily DISPATCHED TO HELL.” It ended with a warning to Sheriff Donnell to keep his mouth shut if had recognized any of the vigilantes, or he would “die the death of a dog.”    

Released after the lynching, night watchman Douglas returned to town to get the sheriff, and the two lawmen went back to the tree to cut Graham’s body down. It was taken downtown, where a coroner’s jury later that day concluded that George Graham “came to his death by being hung by the neck until dead by parties to this jury unknown.”

            Speculation arose after the lynching as to the identity of the mob, but a grand jury failed to return any indictments. Critics of Mrs. Molloy, who had been charged as an accessory after the fact in Sarah Graham’s murder, suggested the lynching might have been instigated by her Springfield friends to keep Graham from revealing incriminating information about her.

            The available evidence does not support such a conspiracy theory. Instead, the lynch mob was probably organized in the Brookline area, where the murder had occurred.

            This blog entry is condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Bigamy and Bloodshed: The Scandal of Emma Molloy and the Murder of Sarah Graham.