The Murder of Jerry White

I lived in Houston (MO) for a year in the 1970s, and my mother's family was originally from the Houston area. I always thought of the place as quiet, law-abiding community, but I guess even a quiet community can occasionally be disrupted by violence. Such was the case for Houston in the wee hours of the morning of October 30, 1874.

On Thursday night, October 29, Jerry White, John Hubbard, and two or three other men were playing cards in an upstairs room above White's saloon in downtown Houston. Sometime after midnight, Hubbard left the game to go after liquor as Oliver Kirkman took his place at the card table. When Hubbard returned, he shared the liquor with the others but did not resume playing cards. Instead, he just watched. 

After a while a shot suddenly rang out without warning, and White cried out that he had been shot. Hubbard dashed downstairs proclaiming, "I have shot Jerry White." He ran to a horse that was hitched to the courthouse fence, cut the rope by which it was tied, and sprang into the saddle to make his getaway, proclaiming once again as he rode through town that he'd shot Jerry White.

The gunshot hit White in the chest, just above the left nipple, and ranged downward toward the spine. He lived just a few hours before dying, but he was fully conscious during this time. He made final preparations for the disposition of his property and arranged other details surrounding his impending death. He even said he forgave his assassin. 

It appeared there had been no quarrel between the two men, and nobody seemed able to assign a motive for the crime, except that Hubbard had been drinking heavily. A son of the local doctor, Hubbard was said to have had a good reputation and a mild disposition except when he was drinking. 

A large posse went out in pursuit of the fugitive but without success. Nothing more was heard from Hubbard until about a year later when he and two other "rough characters" showed in the Houston area, where they laid low for a while, until lawmen from Newton County came to the Houston area in search of them for allegedly having killed a man at Newtonia. The three fugitives left Houston headed south, and one of them was overtaken and captured on the Eleven Points River. 

The captured man said Hubbard had mostly been in Arkansas since the White murder, and he acknowledged the killing the three of them had committed in Newton County. He said they killed the man for his money but found only 25 cents on his person. 

Apparently, Hubbard was never captured, or at least I have been unable to find any evidence to suggest that he was. 

 

The "Lynching" of Henry Duncan

Probably the most prevalent reason why black men were lynched during the late 1800s and early 1900s in America was for supposedly molesting white women. And often it didn't take very much to be considered molestation. For a black man even to associate with a white woman was seen as a blatant threat to white, male authority. Take the example of Henry Duncan of Webb City (MO). 

On Saturday, August 20, 1904, Henry sent an unsigned note to Mrs. Minerva Owens, a forty-two-year-old widow, stating that he would come by the Owens place on Sunday evening and asking her to meet him at the back fence. The letter was not actually addressed to Mrs. Owens but to "the woman in the hammock who smiled and nodded" at him. He said that he had "an important message" for her. 

According to newspaper reports, Minerva was "greatly shocked and unnerved at the receipt of such an epistle," and she notified the Webb City police. Two officers were dispatched to lie in wait at the Owens residence on Sunday evening. When Duncan showed up, Mrs. Owens asked him whether he was the person who had sent the note, and, when he replied that he was, the officers sprang from their hiding places and took him into custody.

Charged with disturbing the peace and of "low offensive conduct and indecent utterances against Mrs. Owens," Duncan appeared in police court on Monday morning, August 22, and pleaded not guilty. His employer, H. W. Currey, put up his bond, and Duncan was released with the stipulation that he return for trial at 7 p.m. that evening.

However, Currey, who was a lawyer, assumed he'd be able to get the case continued until Tuesday morning and told Duncan that he need not appear on Monday evening. The judge had other ideas, though, and when the case was called at 7 p.m., he denied Currey's request for a continuance, partly because angry sentiment against the defendant had been building throughout the day in Webb City and a mob of about 100 men jammed the courtroom demanding "justice." An equal number were milling around outside.

Two officers, in company with Currey, were dispatched to the Currey residence to bring Duncan back to court. Some of the mob made threats of what might happen if Duncan wasn't brought back pronto. 

After a half hour or so had elapsed and the officers still had not returned with Duncan, some of the mob traipsed to the Currey residence and learned that Currey had convinced one of the officers to take Duncan to Joplin for safekeeping. 

The mob found the officer and Duncan at a nearby streetcar stop waiting for the next streetcar to take them to Joplin. The crowd started making threats that Duncan should be taken back to police court or else they would take the law into their own hands, and the officer decided that it would "be best to yield to the wish" of the mob and take the prisoner back to court rather than risk inciting them further. The officer managed to get Duncan back to the police station by holding the crowd at bay with a drawn handgun.

By the time they got back, however, the judge had tired of waiting and postponed the hearing until the next morning. The mob dispersed, but in the wee hours of August 22, a smaller, less boisterous but more determined crowd formed and took Duncan out of the unattended city jail. They whipped him severely with a bull whip and drove him out of town with orders not to come back. 

So, in titling this post "The 'Lynching' of Henry Duncan," I am using the word "lynch" in its strict meaning of any extralegal punishment, not in its popular sense of being hanged to death.