The Ouachita Telegraph - 
John Ellis, Jr. Lynched for Killing of John Lavell

Date: Oct 2000
Submitted by: Lora Peppers <lpeppers@ouachita.lib.la.us>

************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm
************************************************

The Ouachita Telegraph
Saturday, January 1, 1887
Page 2, Column 2

Lynching at Arcadia Louisiana.
 ARCADIA, LA., Dec. 27. – John Lavell an inoffensive Irishman, ditcher and
brickmason by trade, and a man that was generally known and liked through
his country, was found breathing his last in the grocery store of R.E.
Harris on the morning of December 25th, about daylight.  Some unknown party
had entered the grocery house of Harris, where Lavell was sleeping, as he
usually done (sic), and it appears he had struck Lavell on the head with a
deadly weapon while asleep, cutting a fatal wound.  He was found in the bed
as he was asleep.  No blood was found on the floor or anywhere except on the
bed.  On finding the corpse the coroner was sent for and arrived at about 3
p.m. the same day and proceeded with the inquest, which lasted until Sunday
evening about 4 o’clock without discovering any clue to the murderers.  John
Ellis, Jr., was arrested this evening charged with the murder.
 Ellis was taken from jail and lynched by a party of the neighbors.
 When the east bound passenger train passed the tree, the body of the corpse
was still swinging awkwardly to the tree with the limbs stiffened by death,
and showing by the position the last dying agony of Judge Lynch’s victim.

#  #  #