Hopkins Co., TX - Hanging - John Williams 1894 ***************************************************** This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb by: June E. Tuck USGenWeb Archives. Copyright. All rights reserved http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm ***************************************************** From the files of June Tuck WILLIAMS, JOHN - Sulphur Springs, Texas, June 28th - Last evening at about 9:30 o'clock, A. L. Waits and wife, living about a mile and half east of town, returned home from a visit to Waits' brother, who lives a short distance from them. When they had entered the house, Mrs. Waits started to close the door, saying to Mr. Waits, "Come, take your coat off the door." He reached her side, when some one shot through the window, two buck-shot entering her head just above the left ear, causing part of the brain to ooze out. Mr. Waits received two squirrel shot just below the right eye and his wounds are slight. Suspicion at once pointed to John Williams, a negro, who had been a tenant on the farm, and who in April last had been arrested on Waits' complaint, charging him with the theft of $2.10 in money. The grand jury failed to find a true bill against him, and he was released, since which time he has boasted more than once to members of his own race that he would play even. So when the crime became known suspicion was at once pointed to him and a numerous posse made him the object of their search. All night were the woods shelled, the negro houses searched and the byways watched by determined citizens. The wires were worked and a posse made up and started this way from Mount Pleasant. At about 7 o'clock this morning, Byrd and Buster Tollar, living ten miles east of here, met the much-wanted negro on the road, making his way east. He was shoeless and nearly fagged out. They immediately took him in charge, starting to town with him, and he was here in charge of the officers before hardly any one knew it. He was immediately taken to the sheriff's office, upstairs in the Whiteworth building. Hopkins county, at present, being without a jail, keeps its prisoners in the Hunt county jail. The news spread like wild fire around the square that the guilty one had been caught. Soon the crowd began to congregate, and the whole street below, it being a corner building, was a seething mass of humanity, most of them bent on the same object. While the Gazette correspondent was in the room with other newspaper men and the officers, the mob made the first break, getting up the steps and reaching the door, which they broke in, but were firmly received at the point of Winchesters in the hands of Officers Littlefield and Knight, who would listen to no argument, but threatened to kill the first man who crossed the threshold. Soon Sheriff Sherman and his deputies returned from the chase and took their positions in the windows and doors of the building. Sheriff Sherman, addressing the crowd, told them that it was his sworn duty to protect the negro and uphold the law, and under no condition would he swerve from his position, and asked them as law-abiding citizens to help him. Time wore on, and the crowd still hung around, engaging in whispered conversations here and there. Soon it was given out that Scott Waits, an old resident here and brother of the injured man, would be here on the 3 o'clock Cotton Belt. As quick as he reached town he was called in consultation by the leaders, among whom were numbered best citizens of the town. Soon the crowd began to sway and start for the building, which they reached in double-quick time. The officers began to shoot over their head. The shooting set the crowd wild and made them even more determined. The officers were brushed past. The negro was located in the scuttle. He was caught, rushed through the top of the Henderson building, adjoining on the west, and in spite of the ominous Winchesters which had been poked through the windows all day, was dragged with a rope around his neck across the square to a telegraph pole at the corner of the First National bank, where, amid the cheering of the crowd, he was strung up, and then his lifeless body riddled with bullets. He was a chocolate colored negro, about five feet eight inches tall, and weighed probably 160 pounds, with pearly white teeth and a mean, low countenance. In conversation with Sheriff Green Dickson, of Titus county, who has known him a long time, he gave his version of the tragedy as told him by the fictitious character of John Fisher and another darkey, whose name he did not know. He said that he managed to get Waits' gun, the one used, by climbing through the window, and placing three buckshot over the load of squirrel shot in the gun, they secreted themselves by the window, where they committed the deed. Mrs. Waits still lives, but it is only a question of a few hours with her. She was a Miss Fullmore before her marriage to Mr. Waits last fall. While the crowd were making the rush for the negro every officer was covered by two or three guns and one fatal shot would have meant a hundred. (Terrell Times-Star, Fri., July 6, 1894) (There is a Mrs. Florence Fulmer Waits, d. Aug. 21, 1894, buried in Odd Fellow cemetery. J. T.)