William “Bill” Young first got into serious trouble with the law in October of 1860 when he was a young married man of twenty-two living in northern Clark County, Missouri. He, John Baird, and two other young men killed a man named Whiteford, whom Baird had accused of stealing a mare from him. Baird was convicted of first-degree murder and hanged, while the other three were convicted of lesser crimes and got off with relatively short prison sentences. Young was paroled in 1864 after serving three years of an eight-year term for second degree murder.
Young returned to Clark County and took up residence in the Luray vicinity with his wife, Mary, and their son, John, who had been born shortly before Young went to prison. Several more children followed over the next decade, and Young became a prosperous farmer, although many people still considered him a dangerous man.
In January of 1877, Mary died, and from appearances, her husband was grief-stricken by her death. However, just a month later, a young, good-looking divorcee named Laura Sprouse moved in with Bill Young as his housekeeper. Whether Young’s housekeeper was also his paramour is not known for sure, but one thing is certain: Laura Sprouse would play an important role in Young’s life over the next couple of years.
On the morning of August 3, 1877, the Lewis Spencer family, consisting of the father and four children, was found slain at their residence about six miles north of Luray. An ax found at the house with pieces of hair matted in blood was thought to be the primary murder weapon. Spencer was known to keep large sums of money, and robbery was thought to be the motive for the killings.
A suspect was arrested a couple of months later, but the case was dropped for lack of evidence. In October of 1878, over a year after the Spencer murders, a man named Daniel C. Slater arrived in Clark County, fresh from the Illinois State Penitentiary. Adopting the name Frank Lane, Slater claimed to be a detective, and he set about making a case against Bill Young.
Young had started corresponding with a woman named Lydia Bray, who lived in his native Ohio, and during the holiday season of 1878-1879, he traveled back to Ohio for a visit. While he was gone, Lane and a young man named Walter Brown paid Laura Sprouse a visit at the Young residence and succeeded in eliciting incriminating testimony from her against Bill Young in the Spencer murder case.
The fact that Brown was a former beau of Laura’s no doubt played a role in her willingness to talk about her employer. In fact, Laura later married Brown. Some observers at the time also speculated that Laura carried a torch for Young and felt betrayed by his interest in the Ohio woman. At any rate, Lane and Brown took Laura away from the Young farm in early January of 1879, and she appeared before a justice of the peace about a month later to swear out an affidavit charging Young with murdering the Spencer family. A warrant for Young’s arrest was placed in the hands of Frank Lane, and he and his posse took the suspect into custody in late February. Young was lodged in the Clark County jail at Kahoka.
When his trial got underway in early October, Laura Sprouse was the state’s star witness. She gave much incriminating testimony, including the fact that Young had supposedly confessed the Spencer murders to her.
The defense claimed Young’ prosecution was a frame-up instigated by Frank Lane, the so-called detective. Young’s lawyers said Lane was an ex-convict and scoundrel who was more interested in collecting the reward money than in seeing justice done and that he settled on Young as the prime suspect mainly because of Young’s prior murder conviction rather than because of actual evidence in the Spencer case. They said Laura Sprouse had been bribed to give her testimony.
The state produced witnesses to confirm parts of her story, but Young was found not guilty on October 25. Public reaction to the verdict was about equally divided among those who felt either that Young was innocent or that there was reasonable doubt of his guilt and those who felt sure he had killed the Spencers. Among the most adamant in the latter group was Frank Lane, who immediately began agitating for vigilante justice.
Meanwhile, Young celebrated his acquittal by getting married the next day, Sunday, October 26, in Clark County to his Ohio fiancee, Lydia Bray, who’d traveled to Missouri for his trial. The couple took a short honeymoon to Keokuk, Iowa, about twenty-five miles away, and while they were there, Young was warned of the vigilante excitement that was building against him back in Clark County.
He nevertheless returned on Wednesday morning, October 29. A mob led by Frank Lane surrounded the Young home about 11:00 a.m. After a standoff and a brief exchange of gunfire, Young was shot during a ceasefire when he appeared at an upstairs window. The mob rushed the house, took the wounded Young outside, and hanged him to a crossbeam of a gate as he continued to protest his innocence of the Spencer murders.
After the lynching, many people approved of the mob action, glad to be rid of a man whom they considered a dangerous character, while others, mostly friends of Young, considered the deed an outrage.
A coroner’s jury reached the innocuous conclusion that Young had come to his death by hanging “at the hands of a mob,” despite the fact Frank Lane had been cited by name in the evidence. Although Lane was widely seen as almost as big a scoundrel as Young and he continued to add to his notoriety after the lynching, he was never brought to justice for his part in the mob action.
This story is condensed from my book Yanked Into Eternity.
Sunday, May 20, 2018
Sunday, May 13, 2018
Daring to Curse a White Boy
Louis Wright and his fellow members of Richard and Pringle’s famous Georgia Minstrels arrived in New Madrid, Missouri, by train on the snowy morning of Saturday, February 15, 1902. In the afternoon, the black performers gave a street parade, and some of the local white boys taunted the “flashily dressed” minstrels with gibes as they marched through the downtown area. As Wright and one or two of the other performers walked back to the opera house after the parade, two young white men started throwing hard, slush-packed snowballs at them. When the young black men told them to quit, the local toughs responded by hurling insults as well as more snowballs. Growing angry, Wright turned and cursed the white boys. The town marshal showed up just in time to avert further trouble, advising the white boys to go home and the minstrels to stay off the streets.
That evening, a large crowd packed the opera house in New Madrid for the minstrel performance, and a number of boys and young men, including those who had clashed with the minstrels on the street earlier in the day, took seats at the front of the auditorium near the stage. As one of the black performers later recalled, the local youth were still angry that “a nigger had dared to curse a white boy,” and they wanted to find him, take him out, and whip him. The show had barely begun when some of the young white men started making wisecracks about the performers, and the minstrels promptly replied in kind. The banter seemed good-natured at first, but it soon turned ugly. The remarks, loud enough to be heard throughout the auditorium, became more and more insulting as the performance progressed.
Some of the older men in the audience tried to make peace, but just as the performance closed, a half-dozen young white men tried to charge the stage. As they were going through a narrow passageway that led up the stairs onto the stage, somebody pulled out a revolver and fired a shot. Another report said that the white men had already reached the stage and had begun to attack the minstrels with chairs before the first shot was fired.
Exactly who fired the first shot is unknown. The account of the affair that went out to the St. Louis Republic and other white newspapers across the country asserted that the first shot came from one of the black performers on the stage, but one of the minstrels claimed a couple of weeks later that none of the young black men even had a handgun.
After the first gunshot, the place erupted into chaos. Suddenly, “half a dozen pistols were being fired at random by the negroes and white men,” said the Republic. Panic ensued…, and men, women and children rushed pell-mell from the building, screaming and crying.”
In all, about twenty shots rang out. At least one minstrel and one white man received minor wounds. The minstrels escaped out a side door and took refuge in their railroad car, which was parked on a side track nearby.
Local law officers arrived and placed the minstrels under arrest. Taken to jail, they all denied firing any shots or knowing who did, and no weapon was found on any of them. They spent the night crammed into a damp cell with standing room only.
Outside, things died down for the night, but the next day groups of men collected on the corners discussing the shooting affray at the opera house the night before and plotting vigilante action. Meanwhile, throughout the day on Sunday, the prisoners were taken one by one from the jail to the courthouse across the yard for interrogation before a special jury, composed of thirty of the town’s “best citizens,” which had been called to investigate the shooting.
Under an intense “sweating,” one or more of the minstrels revealed that Louis Wright was the person who had cursed the white boys on Saturday afternoon. Most newspaper accounts said Wright was also identified as the man who fired from the stage, but the minstrels denied this.
However, the identification was good enough for the would-be lynchers. Late that night, Sunday, February 16, five men marched to the jail and took Louis Wright out under the ruse that they were part of the special jury and needed to question him some more. Joined by a mob of fellow vigilantes, the so-called “jury” took Wright to a big elm tree at the edge of town and strung him up.
Whether the only offense Louis Wright committed was daring to curse a white boy or he also fired random shots from the stage, one thing seems clear: Wright and his fellow minstrels, as the Independence (KS) Daily Reporter said three days after the incident, were “not the only ones to blame by any means” for the melee that led to his lynching. In turn-of-the-century America, young black men were often lynched if they killed a white person or sexually assaulted a white woman, but some, like Louis Wright, were lynched on even shakier pretexts.
This story is condensed from my book Yanked Into Eternity: Lynchings and Hangings in Missouri.
That evening, a large crowd packed the opera house in New Madrid for the minstrel performance, and a number of boys and young men, including those who had clashed with the minstrels on the street earlier in the day, took seats at the front of the auditorium near the stage. As one of the black performers later recalled, the local youth were still angry that “a nigger had dared to curse a white boy,” and they wanted to find him, take him out, and whip him. The show had barely begun when some of the young white men started making wisecracks about the performers, and the minstrels promptly replied in kind. The banter seemed good-natured at first, but it soon turned ugly. The remarks, loud enough to be heard throughout the auditorium, became more and more insulting as the performance progressed.
Some of the older men in the audience tried to make peace, but just as the performance closed, a half-dozen young white men tried to charge the stage. As they were going through a narrow passageway that led up the stairs onto the stage, somebody pulled out a revolver and fired a shot. Another report said that the white men had already reached the stage and had begun to attack the minstrels with chairs before the first shot was fired.
Exactly who fired the first shot is unknown. The account of the affair that went out to the St. Louis Republic and other white newspapers across the country asserted that the first shot came from one of the black performers on the stage, but one of the minstrels claimed a couple of weeks later that none of the young black men even had a handgun.
After the first gunshot, the place erupted into chaos. Suddenly, “half a dozen pistols were being fired at random by the negroes and white men,” said the Republic. Panic ensued…, and men, women and children rushed pell-mell from the building, screaming and crying.”
In all, about twenty shots rang out. At least one minstrel and one white man received minor wounds. The minstrels escaped out a side door and took refuge in their railroad car, which was parked on a side track nearby.
Local law officers arrived and placed the minstrels under arrest. Taken to jail, they all denied firing any shots or knowing who did, and no weapon was found on any of them. They spent the night crammed into a damp cell with standing room only.
Outside, things died down for the night, but the next day groups of men collected on the corners discussing the shooting affray at the opera house the night before and plotting vigilante action. Meanwhile, throughout the day on Sunday, the prisoners were taken one by one from the jail to the courthouse across the yard for interrogation before a special jury, composed of thirty of the town’s “best citizens,” which had been called to investigate the shooting.
Under an intense “sweating,” one or more of the minstrels revealed that Louis Wright was the person who had cursed the white boys on Saturday afternoon. Most newspaper accounts said Wright was also identified as the man who fired from the stage, but the minstrels denied this.
However, the identification was good enough for the would-be lynchers. Late that night, Sunday, February 16, five men marched to the jail and took Louis Wright out under the ruse that they were part of the special jury and needed to question him some more. Joined by a mob of fellow vigilantes, the so-called “jury” took Wright to a big elm tree at the edge of town and strung him up.
Whether the only offense Louis Wright committed was daring to curse a white boy or he also fired random shots from the stage, one thing seems clear: Wright and his fellow minstrels, as the Independence (KS) Daily Reporter said three days after the incident, were “not the only ones to blame by any means” for the melee that led to his lynching. In turn-of-the-century America, young black men were often lynched if they killed a white person or sexually assaulted a white woman, but some, like Louis Wright, were lynched on even shakier pretexts.
This story is condensed from my book Yanked Into Eternity: Lynchings and Hangings in Missouri.
Saturday, May 5, 2018
The Last Legal Hangings in Jasper County
The U. S. hasn't executed anybody for non-homicidal rape in over fifty years. In fact, I think it has been ruled unconstitutional. But such wasn't always the case, especially in Missouri and a few other states known for "rough justice." In fact, Missouri was the site of the last execution in America for rape without an accompanying murder when Ronald Wolfe got the gas chamber in Jefferson City in 1964. Prior to 1938, when executions in Missouri were still carried out by hanging in the counties where the criminals were convicted instead of by gas in Jefferson City, the death penalty for rape was even more common. The case of the Worden brothers serves as one example.
On Sunday evening, November 15, 1931, Norman Parks, George Mimms, and their high school girlfriends were parked northwest of Carthage when a strange car pulled up beside them. Three men got out carrying revolvers and ordered the young people out of their automobile.
One of the holdup men, thirty-one-year-old Pete Stevenson, escorted the two young men at gunpoint to a nearby chat pile, while his two accomplices, thirty-four-year-old Lew Worden and twenty-six-year-old Harry Worden, held the girls prisoner near the automobiles. The Worden brothers threatened to kill the girls if they didn’t do exactly as they were told. Lew then held one girl at gunpoint while Harry sexually assaulted the other.
After the attack, the girls, seeing no sign of their boyfriends, ran to a nearby farmhouse, and the farmer helped the girls get back to Carthage. The rape victim told her mother the awful news when she got home, and authorities were summoned.
Meanwhile, the highwaymen, an hour and a half after the first attack, held up a taxi cab near Carl Junction. They beat the driver and robbed him and two male passengers, but two young women in the vehicle were not molested.
Then, at ten o’clock the same evening, the desperadoes accosted another carload of young people northwest of Joplin. The young victims were Arthur Poundstone, Tom Wills, and their sixteen and seventeen-year-old female companions. All four were taken to an isolated spot near the present-day Joplin Regional Airport, where Harry Worden guarded the young men while Lew Worden and Pete Stevenson raped the two girls.
The Worden brothers, who’d previously lived in Joplin, were immediately suspected in the crimes because of their prior clashes with police. Shown a picture of Lew, the victims of the assault near Carthage identified him as one of the criminals. The license number of the bandit car was matched to a tag stolen from an automobile near Birch Tree, Missouri, 170 miles east of Carthage, and the Wordens were soon traced to nearby Mountain View. Lew Worden was taken into custody there and brought back to Carthage on November 25.
He admitted his and Harry’s participation in the holdups ten days earlier, but he denied they’d raped anyone. The next day, though, the four young people from the Poundstone vehicle identified Lew as one of their assailants, and he was charged with rape.
Harry Worden and Pete Stevenson were arrested in Illinois in early December and brought back to Missouri. Charged with sexual assault, Harry was transferred to Jasper County, while Stevenson was held in Carter County on a robbery charge.
Both Wordens pleaded not guilty at their initial appearances, but Lew changed his plea to guilty when his trial came up in Jasper County on January 27, 1932, throwing himself on the mercy of the court. However, Judge Harvey Davis was in no mood for clemency, and he sentenced Worden to hang on March 3 at Carthage.
The next day, Harry Worden’s trial began before Judge Grant Emerson. The victim of the Carthage sexual assault took the stand on the 29th and testified that she submitted to Harry Worden’s demands only because he and his brother threatened to kill her best friend if she didn’t do as they said. The girl’s testimony was confirmed in every detail by her companions.
Harry Worden was found guilty and sentenced to hang, but the verdict was appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court and the execution date indefinitely postponed.
Pete Stevenson was finally brought to Carthage on February 18 and charged as the third assailant in the November 15 assaults.
Meanwhile, Lew Worden appealed to the Missouri governor for clemency, but the governor declared that the execution should proceed. Worden was hanged on the early morning of March 3, 1932, on a gallows just outside the county jail at Carthage. About 100 observers were allowed inside the stockade surrounding the gallows, while a crowd of about 500 thronged around the enclosure. Worden was buried in Joplin’s Forest Park Cemetery.
Pete Stevenson was granted a change of venue to Lawrence County. He pleaded guilty there in May and was sentenced to 99 years in the state penitentiary.
In December 1932, the Missouri Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s decision in Harry Worden’s case and reset his execution for January 20, 1933. On January 18, the Missouri governor issued a stay of execution until February 10.
After studying the case further, the governor declined to intervene again, and Harry Worden was hanged in the early morning of February 10 inside the jail building at Carthage in a room on the second floor with about 50 witnesses in attendance. He was buried in Hill Crest Cemetery at Galena, Kansas.
Pete Stevenson had escaped the death penalty, but he died in prison at Jefferson City in May of 1934.
This story is condensed from a chapter in my book Yanked Into Eternity: Lynchings and Hangings in Missouri.
On Sunday evening, November 15, 1931, Norman Parks, George Mimms, and their high school girlfriends were parked northwest of Carthage when a strange car pulled up beside them. Three men got out carrying revolvers and ordered the young people out of their automobile.
One of the holdup men, thirty-one-year-old Pete Stevenson, escorted the two young men at gunpoint to a nearby chat pile, while his two accomplices, thirty-four-year-old Lew Worden and twenty-six-year-old Harry Worden, held the girls prisoner near the automobiles. The Worden brothers threatened to kill the girls if they didn’t do exactly as they were told. Lew then held one girl at gunpoint while Harry sexually assaulted the other.
After the attack, the girls, seeing no sign of their boyfriends, ran to a nearby farmhouse, and the farmer helped the girls get back to Carthage. The rape victim told her mother the awful news when she got home, and authorities were summoned.
Meanwhile, the highwaymen, an hour and a half after the first attack, held up a taxi cab near Carl Junction. They beat the driver and robbed him and two male passengers, but two young women in the vehicle were not molested.
Then, at ten o’clock the same evening, the desperadoes accosted another carload of young people northwest of Joplin. The young victims were Arthur Poundstone, Tom Wills, and their sixteen and seventeen-year-old female companions. All four were taken to an isolated spot near the present-day Joplin Regional Airport, where Harry Worden guarded the young men while Lew Worden and Pete Stevenson raped the two girls.
The Worden brothers, who’d previously lived in Joplin, were immediately suspected in the crimes because of their prior clashes with police. Shown a picture of Lew, the victims of the assault near Carthage identified him as one of the criminals. The license number of the bandit car was matched to a tag stolen from an automobile near Birch Tree, Missouri, 170 miles east of Carthage, and the Wordens were soon traced to nearby Mountain View. Lew Worden was taken into custody there and brought back to Carthage on November 25.
He admitted his and Harry’s participation in the holdups ten days earlier, but he denied they’d raped anyone. The next day, though, the four young people from the Poundstone vehicle identified Lew as one of their assailants, and he was charged with rape.
Harry Worden and Pete Stevenson were arrested in Illinois in early December and brought back to Missouri. Charged with sexual assault, Harry was transferred to Jasper County, while Stevenson was held in Carter County on a robbery charge.
Both Wordens pleaded not guilty at their initial appearances, but Lew changed his plea to guilty when his trial came up in Jasper County on January 27, 1932, throwing himself on the mercy of the court. However, Judge Harvey Davis was in no mood for clemency, and he sentenced Worden to hang on March 3 at Carthage.
The next day, Harry Worden’s trial began before Judge Grant Emerson. The victim of the Carthage sexual assault took the stand on the 29th and testified that she submitted to Harry Worden’s demands only because he and his brother threatened to kill her best friend if she didn’t do as they said. The girl’s testimony was confirmed in every detail by her companions.
Harry Worden was found guilty and sentenced to hang, but the verdict was appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court and the execution date indefinitely postponed.
Pete Stevenson was finally brought to Carthage on February 18 and charged as the third assailant in the November 15 assaults.
Meanwhile, Lew Worden appealed to the Missouri governor for clemency, but the governor declared that the execution should proceed. Worden was hanged on the early morning of March 3, 1932, on a gallows just outside the county jail at Carthage. About 100 observers were allowed inside the stockade surrounding the gallows, while a crowd of about 500 thronged around the enclosure. Worden was buried in Joplin’s Forest Park Cemetery.
Pete Stevenson was granted a change of venue to Lawrence County. He pleaded guilty there in May and was sentenced to 99 years in the state penitentiary.
In December 1932, the Missouri Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s decision in Harry Worden’s case and reset his execution for January 20, 1933. On January 18, the Missouri governor issued a stay of execution until February 10.
After studying the case further, the governor declined to intervene again, and Harry Worden was hanged in the early morning of February 10 inside the jail building at Carthage in a room on the second floor with about 50 witnesses in attendance. He was buried in Hill Crest Cemetery at Galena, Kansas.
Pete Stevenson had escaped the death penalty, but he died in prison at Jefferson City in May of 1934.
This story is condensed from a chapter in my book Yanked Into Eternity: Lynchings and Hangings in Missouri.
Saturday, April 28, 2018
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.
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.
Saturday, April 21, 2018
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."
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."
Saturday, April 14, 2018
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.
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.
Sunday, April 8, 2018
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.
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.
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