A Hanging Like Any Other

Neither cold, nor snow, nor lack of lodging dissuaded them. By noon, they had entirely filled the Square - all eyes were upon the gallows - they had come for the hanging. 

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Friday / October 30, 1874 / Bethany, Missouri: A piercing northwest wind swirled icy cold & and a powdery haze of falling snow through the crowd. The bitter weather, along with ever more people had been blowing in since the night before. Bethany was little more than a village. There was no way to accommodate all these folks. Many camped by their wagons on the bottom land north of town. Neither cold, nor snow, nor lack of lodging dissuaded them. By noon, they had entirely filled the Square – all eyes were upon the gallows – they had come for the hanging.

Every ending has a beginning.

Four years before - in March of 1870 – Joseph F. Hamilton, hired on as farmworker to Elisha W. Hallock. Joseph was 16 at the time. Hallock was 45. Hallock’s wife was 27.

Her name was Caroline Lewellyn.

Caroline had been married to Hallock only briefly. She had recently arrived from Blackford County, Iowa - a widow with child in tow. There was talk going ‘round that her standing in society was, “not desirable”. Despite that, Elisha married her. He was a widower with children of his own. Perhaps he thought they needed a mother.

Elisha seems to have been the sort of honest God-fearing man who guilelessly trusted the intentions of others. Maybe he was just too busy to be bothered with suspicion. In any case he trusted young Hamilton. In May 1871, Mr. Hallock went to Pennsylvania on business leaving Joseph to attend to the farm.

All went uneventfully - for a while.

Joseph’s room was on the second floor, Caroline slept below in the main bedroom. About two weeks after Mr. Hallock’s departure Caroline (perhaps feigning fear of being alone) asked Joseph to move his bed to a room downstairs. A few nights later Caroline called to Joseph in the dark. Joseph went to her and asked what she wanted. She roused, and said she must have been dreaming. Joseph returned to his bed. Two nights later she again called to Joseph. She said she was afraid to sleep alone. She followed this remark by pulling him down into her bed.

Next morning she accused him of rape.

Joseph said all this, “confused his mind”, because he didn’t know what the law was in such cases. Caroline thought of a way out of his confused dilemma. She told Joseph that if he would, “put away”, Mr. Hallock she would be free to marry him and that would be an end to the matter. She offered poison. Joseph refused. She kept working on him. A few days later, she gave him six dollars to buy a revolver.

He took the money.

All this was described in the court records as, “criminal intimacy”.

Hamilton went to the neighboring Flaherty farm. Only Mrs. Flaherty was home. He asked if she had a revolver in the house that he might buy. She did. He explained that the revolver was for Mr. Hallock, whose life had been threatened. He also wanted to buy a bullet mold and caps. Mrs. Flaherty said there were some bullets already molded. Joseph took bullets, caps and revolver and left. He returned to the Hallock farm where Mr. Hallock had also just returned, from his business trip to Pennsylvania.

Before noon, Joseph and Mrs. Hallock went upstairs, where they remained for some time. Mrs. Hallock finally returned, saying Joseph was sick. However Joseph came down when dinner was ready. They ate together. After dinner, Caroline and the children went to pick blackberries. Hamilton and Hallock went to work stacking hay.

Around 2:00 that afternoon, field hands at an adjoining farm heard three pistol shots in rapid succession - followed by another… then one more.

A boy, Jewell Hage, who was a quarter mile away, said he heard shots coming from the direction of Hallock’s stable. Looking up he saw Mr. Hallock running toward the house with Hamilton in close pursuit. He testified that Hamilton shot Hallock twice before Hallock fell dead just short of the house.

At that point, not knowing he had been observed, Joseph mounted a horse and rode off to where Caroline and the children were picking blackberries. He told them that Mr. Hallock had been shot. This attempt to put himself beyond the murder was completely futile. Within the hour neighbors gathered, arrested him, and turned him over to the sheriff.

Hamilton protested, saying that he hadn’t even fired a revolver that day. A subsequent search turned up the revolver hidden under the quilt of Joseph’s bed. Joseph said he had hidden it there because he knew Mr. Hallock’s life had been threated, and he was afraid Mr. Hallock might shoot someone in panic. Five rounds had been recently discharged. A sixth round remained in chamber.

There was no mystery; it was all quite clear - On July 14, 1871, Joseph F. Hamilton shot and killed Elisha W. Hallock. Eyewitness testimony was backed up by the physical evidence of the murder weapon. Trial, sentencing, and punishment would surely unfold without complication.

The trial revealed complication.

Two days before the murder, Mr. Hallock found a letter threating his life. It was signed, W. H. N. and it demanded that $1,000 be sent through the Princeton Post office to an address undisclosed by the court records. Mr. Hallock did not send any money anywhere, but he was, now, in fear of his life. Caroline had written the letter. What she thought it might accomplish isn’t clear.

She seems to have plotted several different schemes. Two weeks earlier, before leaving for a trading trip to Princeton with Mr. Hallock, she asked Joseph to lie in wait at Muddy Creek (about a mile from the Hallock farm) and shoot Elisha on the return trip. Joseph testified, ”I rather consented be there, but did not go”.

Before leaving with the children to pick blackberries, she once more asked Joseph to kill her husband. She said she had hidden the revolver behind the stable door. Again she asked for his promise. Satisfied, she walked away adorned with children and blackberry baskets.

What happened next was told by Joseph in his sworn testimony:

“We had been hauling hay, but had finished. We put the horses up in the stable. I had about concluded to make a clean breast of the whole matter to Hallock, have a settlement with him and leave. Whilst in the stable I began telling him of the plot between his wife and myself to take his life. He at once became enraged, and called me a liar - and other hard names. When I then

reached out and got the revolver. He struck me on the head with a pitchfork, and also stuck the fork into my left breast. And then was the terrible deed committed. I had no desire, or inclination of my own to seek, or take, Hallock’s life, nor would I have done so had I not been persuaded and scared into it by Mrs. Hallock. The first night after the murder she came to me, after I had been arrested, and promised me money to defend myself, and that she would swear me clear if she could.

Joseph F. Hamilton

Subscribed and sworn to before me this 24th day of October 1874. William C. Heaston, Clerk, County Court, Harrison County MO

Joseph’s testimony could be thought of as an attempt to mitigate his guilt by pointing out Caroline’s role in the murder. I don’t think so. First of all, I don’t think Joseph had much talent for mitigating anything. Second, He never spoke harshly of Caroline at any time. I think He was just dryly laying out the plain facts of what happened, and why.

(For reasons unknown to me, Caroline’s trial came sooner: December 1873. There was also a change of venue from Mercer Country to Putnam County. She was tried - and acquitted).

The jury, after barely an hour and a half returned their verdict: guilty of murder in the first degree. The judge pronounced a sentence of death by hanging. Throughout verdict and sentencing Joseph remained impassive.

Legal appeals followed, along with public petitions for commutation of the sentence to imprisonment for life. Hamilton had sympathizers. By now the whole story was out. There was a sense of injustice. Yes, he was guilty but… Several hundred people from six Counties signed the petitions – all to no avail. The Governor refused to interfere with the court’s decision.

During the time between trial and execution Hamilton had been held in the Chillicothe jail. This was a precaution taken because of rumors that Hamilton’s friends and sympathizers, some of whom were whispered to be, “desperate characters”, were plotting to free him. On the night before the execution Sheriff Graham, along with several deputies, escorted Hamilton from Chillicothe to Bethany. They reached Bethany near sunrise. 12:30 o’clock p.m. – A posse of forty men under the command of Col. W. P. Robinson were stationed along the 275 yards from jail to. the northeast corner of the square where the hanging scaffold grimly towered. There was great rushing about as the crowd surged through bitter wind and snow, pushing for better position. The curving hill to the south of the scaffold provided a sort of amphitheater for the spectacle.

The emotional excitement rippling through the mass of people was so great that some observers thought it verged on madness.

Sheriff Graham and Joseph ascended the scaffold, followed by a cortege of ministers and

physicians. All stood by as the sheriff read the death warrant. Asked if he had anything to say,

Joseph stepped forward and said:

“I have been brought here today to be executed. I have nothing to say regarding my crime. I know I’ve been wicked, but I believe my sins are forgiven. The officers of the court have treated me with kindness. George Graham, the sheriff, has always treated me as a gentleman. I hope all will forgive me as I have forgiven all. I have nothing more to say”.

Joseph F. Hamilton’s contrite words, so earnestly delivered, seemed to soften the hearts of many In the crowd. His slight form and moist brown eyes conveyed an impression of youth innocently undone by inexplicable and uncompromising evil. He faced his death bravely and with dignity. Nonetheless, the trap was sprung, the body fell, and Joseph was dead.

He hung for 17 minutes before being cut down and officially pronounced dead.

Caroline was not at the hanging. Wherever she was, I’m sure her standing in society. was, now even less “ desirable”, than before. The crowd – now subdued, melted away. The trampled, dirty slush in the square was soon hidden beneath the new falling snow.

Hamilton’s guilt was unquestionable. The circumstances were extenuating. The crowd had come to witness justice righteously done.

They left with their own extenuations.

It was a hanging like any other.

Coda: Many years ago, while casually sorting through family photos and papers, I came across a few pages describing a murder and hanging. The murderer and the man hung, was Joseph F. Hamilton. The hanging was done in Bethany, Missouri. This got my attention. I was born in Bethany. My Great Grandfather was Alfred Hamilton. Was Joseph F. a distant cousin? It was a mystery. Nobody in my family had ever talked about this hanging. Maybe they didn’t want to bring up such a shameful memory. Maybe it had all just been forgotten - except for these few pages. The pages were typewritten; by whom, or when, or why…no clue. Why were they mixed in with our family papers? Was Joseph F. Hamilton really a distant cousin of mine? I reasoned: 1. There were never many people in north Missouri. 2. Any Hamilton in the area was probably related to every other Hamilton in the area. 3. Therefore, I am probably related to Joseph F. Hamilton. My reasoning was sound, my conclusion was wrong. I checked with my cousin Donna. She and my Aunt Maudine, had done quite a lot of searching into family genealogy. It turns out that there were three clans of Hamilton in north Missouri. Alfred Hamilton was in no way related to Joseph F. Hamilton. OK. So, who typed the papers I had found? Why were they in my possession, at all? I still don’t know.

I decided to write about it, anyway. It’s an interesting story with curious particularities, yet it seems universal - almost classical - in its retelling of a tale often told.

Lady McBeth and Caroline Lewellyn Hallock had much in common.

By K. L. Shipley

Website: https://www.eclectisessays.com