Murder of Peter Cooper, 1875 - Smith County, TX

Submitted by East Texas Genealogical Society
P. O. Box 6967, Tyler, TX 75711

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Tyler Democrat, June 26, 1875

A BLOODY MURDER

Yesterday morning Deputy Sheriff J. O. Collier gave us information of 
a murder, which occurred near Canton, in this county on the morning of 
the 19th inst; as follows:

On the night of the 18th Peter Cooper, Ike Boyd and Wiley Sims, all
colored, were out coon hunting.  About daylight Saturday morning
according to their own admissions, Boyd and Sims struck Cooper with
an axe on the head, killing him instantly.  They concealed the body
in the brush during the day.  At night they stole Cooper's mule out
of his lot, lashed the dead body on the mule, carried it a mile and
a half and threw it into a dry well twenty feet deep.  Cooper being
missed, the neighborhood was aroused, and the body was found.  
Whites and negroes of the neighborhood acting together, hunted up 
the murderers and arrested them - the negroes making the arrest.  Mr.
Collier brought the murderers here on the 24th and committed them to
jail.  Peter Cooper is said to have been an industrious freedman, and
his death is generally regretted.  The only reason given by the 
negroes for the murder is that Peter Cooper was a conjurer, and had
threatened to conjure them.  Mr. Collier declared that this doctrine 
of conjuring is very deeply seated in the minds of many of the most 
intellignt negroes in the country and yet they vote and sit on 
juries.