Few men in the annals of the American Old West represent the phrase “frontier justice” as well as Judge Isaac C. Parker, the infamous “Hanging Judge” of Fort Smith, who ruled over the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas with an iron hand from 1874-1895.
Fort Smith is quickly coming up on its 150th anniversary and the Parker legacy is a big part of that history.
During his 21-year tenure on the bench, Parker presided over 160 cases that resulted in the sentence of death and 79 of those men met their final fate at the end of a hemp rope attached to the wooden and mortar gallows that defined and justified the nickname “Hell on the Border” on the Arkansas-Indian Territory border.
In later life, Parker was quoted as saying, “I never hanged a man, the law did,” and it was the keen sense of adherence to the law that allowed the court to operate and clean up what had become a lawless civilization in the years after the Civil War.
These are ten tales of men who met justice under the gavel of Issac C. Parker:
10. September 3, 1875 — Seven men were sent to the gallows under Parker’s predecessor Judge William T. Story, but when Parker was appointed to replace the corrupt sitting judge that was under impeachment he set an immediate tone that fueled his legend. On Sept. 3,1875 the first executions ordered and carried out by Parker’s court sent six men plunging to their death simultaneously when hangman George Maledon released the trap door on five white men and one Cherokee Indian.
The Indian, Smoker Mankiller, had killed his neighbor over a land dispute. James Moore, a notorious cold-blooded killer with seven notches in his pistol grip, was convicted of killing Officer William Spivey while resisting arrest and Samuel Fooy, a gun for hire, murdered a school teacher for a $250 payout.
Edmund Campbell was hanged after killing a man and his wife over a perceived insult, while William Whittington and Daniel Evans were condemned for killing their traveling companion, 19-year-old William Seabolt, in the Creek Nation for the goods and money he carried.
That execution spectacle set the tone for Parker’s reign. In the 21 years that followed, there would be 17 more multiple hangings in Fort Smith.
9. June 30, 1891 — A number of those facing hanging by the court went to the gallows silently and defiantly while other had to be dragged to meet their maker.
But all of the condemned were allowed to address the assembled crowd with “final last words” before the hood was slipped over their heads.
Boudinot Crumpton, also known as “Blood Burris” was an outlaw that “liked to pull the plug” on a whisky bottle and in a drunken rage one night shot and killed his traveling companion.
Crumpton proclaimed his innocence right up until the moment ne addressed the assembled spectators on June 30, 1891.
“To all present, and especially young men; when you are about to drink a glass of whiskey, look closely in the bottom and see if you cannot observe therein a hangman’s noose”, were Crumpton’s final last words. “There is where I first saw the one which now breaks my neck.”
8. April 27, 1892 — A case of adultery led a former United States Deputy Marshal to kill an active one when Marshal Barney Connelly tried to serve a writ of arrest on a philandering Sheppard Busby at his home near modern Muldrow, Oklahoma.
A Kentuckian by birth, Busby had served in the in 56th Illinois Infantry and 50th Missouri in Civil War. Conneley knew Busby personally and chose to serve the court papers on a man he considered an old friend.
Busby, 57, lived in the home with a 22-year old woman that was the mother of two of his children and another 15 year-old female who was described as his “fiancé.”
Busby and his son, 23- year old William, fled after the shootout but William later turned himself in to authorities and was sentenced to 10 years in the Detroit Federal House of Corrections.
Sheppard Busby died for his crime on April 27, 1892.
It is thought to be the only time in the history of the US Marshal Service that a former U.S. Marshall was executed for the murder of an active U.S. Marshal.
7. July 20, 1896 — The final execution in Fort Smith, which had been ordered by Parker before he essentially retired from the bench in 1895 from complications from “Bright’s Disease,” occurred July 20, 1896.
George Wilson, also known as James Casherago, was convicted of the murder of his traveling companion Zachariah W. Patch due in part to some frontier forensic work conducted by investigating marshals.
Wilson was seen with blood on his trousers in possession of Thatch’s team and wagon leading to suspicion and marshals later located the crime scene.
Wilson had burned a fire over the spot where Thatch had bled out after being bludgeoned by an ax but the cracked, dry earth of the Oklahoma prairie allowed blood from the murdered man to seep into the ground.
Deputies were able to dig up the soil and produced several chunks of blood infused red clay which was introduced into evidence at the trial.
6. October 7, 1887 — A large crowd of spectators were on hand during the first week of October 1887 when two men convicted of separate crimes had their final date with the Grim Reaper ate thee Fort Smith.
Seaborn Kalijah had been arrested on minor charges in January of the same year and left in the custody of three posse men by Deputy John Phillips.
When he returned the next day to collect the prisoners he found the three — William Kelley, Mark Kuykendall and Henry Smith — dead at the campsite from stab wounds.
Kalijah was rearrested and convicted of the murders.
Hampton, an 18-year old Cherokee, was sentenced to hang for the killing of a white farmer by the name of Abner Loyd for a pocketknife and $7.50 cash. When captured he reportedly pleaded with deputies “Don’t take me to Fort Smith; kill me right now”
The hanging represented one of eight times that two men swung from the scaffold on the same day during Parker’s tenure.
5. March 17, 1896 — One of the hangings in Fort Smith that captures the imaginations of Old West enthusiast is the one on March 17, 1896 when a man who had been sentenced to death by Parker not one, but twice.
William Goldsby, also known as “Cherokee Bill,” was already in custody in the basemen jail at the courthouse for the murder of Ernest Melton during the robbery of a store in the Cherokee nation.
Goldsby, a full-blooded Cherokee, used a gun smuggled to him by a confederate to kill a jail guard when being transferred on Jul 26, 1895.
The escape attempt failed and Goldsby was immediately recaptured, convicted of murder for a second time and sentenced to death again. On his death walk to the gallows on March 17, 1896 Goldsby told the assembled crowd hat “this is about as good a day as any to die.”
4. April 27, 1888 — A murder conviction in the wake of domestic violence, the death of a prominent merchant in 1884 and the killing of a rancher on the Red River by a cattle rustler determined the fates of a trio of men who died on a rainy April afternoon in 1888.
U.S. Deputy Marshals located a black outlaw by the name of Owen Hill, wanted for the murder of his wife and mother-in-law, when Hill wrote to a friend inquiring if his wife had died from her wounds.
Jackson Crow, a Choctaw Indian, had killed a merchant by the name of Charles Wilson in the Choctaw Nation and George Moss got into a shootout and killed a rancher while stealing cattle along the Red River in southwestern Oklahoma.
The hat trick execution represented one of only four times three men were executed by the court on the same day.
3. August 29, 1879 — Seldom did a Harvard and Yale educated doctor find themselves sentenced to hang on the western frontier, let alone go to his death in tandem with a notorious outlaw that terrorized four states for several years.
Dr. Henri Stewart had been a well-established physician with an Ivy League education when he abandoned his family in Illinois in 1877 for the life of an outlaw. He was among a gang of train robbers and killed another doctor, J. B. Jones during one such crime.
His gallows-mate on that hot August day was William Elliot Wiley, also known as “The Colorado Kid.”
Wanted for crimes in four states, Wiley was suspected of being a one time member of the infamous Dalton Gang and may have been responsible for as many as six murders, including one of three in the Indian territory that resulted in his execution.
2. August 30, 1889 — US Deputy Marshal William Irwin had arrested a horse thief by the name of Felix Griffin and was on his way back to Fort Smith in April of 1886.
Ambushed on the road by a gang of man including Jack Sevier AKA Jack Spainard, Marshal Irwin was shot and killed to facilitate the escape of Griffin. Although several men were thought to be involved in the shooting only Sevier was captured and found solely responsible for the murder.
William Walker, a gunslinger of some note, killed a man named Calvin Church in the Choctaw Nation in December of 1888. Although Walker confessed he claimed to his dying breath he had been hired by an unidentified man to kill Church for two quarters of whiskey and a $10 gold piece.
1. July 1, 1896 — In 1895 a gang of five full-blooded Indians embarked on a thirteen-day wilding spree through the eastern half of Indian Territory, killing at least two people (including a US Marshal), shooting up a half-dozen others, committing random robberies and raping seven women.
The “Rufus Buck Gang” led by a Euchee Indian, were apprehended after a seven- hour shootout and despite all their other crimes faced the docket in Fort Smith for the rape of Rosetta Hansen.
Buck along with Creek Indians Maoma July and Sam Sampson and Creek freedmen Lucky and Lewis Davis all were “hung by the neck until dead, dead, dead!” after the sentencing by Parker.
The incident represents what is thought to be the largest mass execution for sexually related crimes in US history.