Oral history and numerous retellings of the same story report that Hezekiah Clem was the first person hanged in Harlan County in 1860. What if Hezekiah wasn’t hanged?
In Part 1, we recount who Hezekiah Clem is, his family ties, and his notoriety, and in Part 2 we cover the crime and trial.
On the motion of the defense attorney at the end of the September 1859 trial, the case was continued until April 1860 and the witnesses were to remain under a bond of appearance of $100 each. On 11 April 1860, Hezekiah Jennings and George B. Turner were appointed to superintend the guards around Clem.
“No person but a sober discreet sensible man to be summoned & if anyone gets drunk it shall be good cause for dismissal.”[1]
On the following day, April 12, Clem was brought into court and…
“being informed of the nature of the indictment, plea, and verdict, was asked if he had any legal cause to show why judgment should not proceed against him.”[2]
It was then decreed by the court that,
“the defendant be taken to the jail of Harlan County and there be safely kept until the 15th day of June 1860 on which day between the sunrise and sunset the sheriff of Harlan County shall hang him by the neck until he is dead at a convenient place on the bank of the Cumberland River about 3/4ths of a mile from the town of Mount Pleasant and above the mouth of the Poor Fork at or near the Buggar holler the particular point to be selected by the sheriff.”[3]
Each of the stories state that court documents have not been located that the hanging actually took place. After much searching through books, newspaper articles, diaries, blogs, and other sources and resources online,[5] oral history seems to be the only accounts that the hanging did occur in August 1860, with one source giving August 30th as the date.[4] Only four oral accounts of the hanging, in chronological order, with analysis, could be found:
- 12 April 1898: Wood Lyttle, the grandson of David Y. Lyttle who had earlier defended Clem and Nolan in 1854, relates to travelling missionary Reverend John J. Dickey, “Clem was hung in 1858 for killing Ben Irvine in Mt. Pleasant. Lyttle and Dishman prosecuted. The trial excited great interest.”[6]
Wood Lyttle’s account is the closest to a first-hand witness of the hanging. Lyttle states he was born on 15 November 1829, moved to Harlan in 1846, and moved eight miles further from town on Clover Fork, a water course running due east from town. Lyttle would have been 31 years old in 1860. However, Clem was arrested and indicted in 1859 and sentenced in 1860 for the murder of Irvin, not 1858, and his grandfather David Lyttle as Clem’s defense attorney in 1854 seems like a conflict of interest to prosecute him six years later.
- 24 August 1947: In a published story, Circuit Court Clerk Moses Howard states, “They say he was taken there, and a wagon driven under a tree. A rope was tied around his neck and to a branch of the tree, and the wagon was then driven out from under him.”[7]
Howard’s account is also as a non-witness and, in his own words, “they say” he was hung. With access to the court records, Howard would have been able to read verification that he was hung and clearly make a statement to that effect. That he used oral history implies that the court records have no proof of the hanging. Maybe it was a poor choice of words.
- 1978: Curtis Burnam Ledford in a book written by John Egerton, “John Clay was already dead when [Governor] Cassius [M. Clay] came to our house that time. He had been shot from ambush and killed by a fellow named Carr Clem, way back before the Civil War. They arrested Clem and hung him. I remember one of my grandfathers telling me that story.”[8]
This account implies Clem was arrested and hung for the killing of John Clay. It also uses a name for Hezekiah not previously mentioned, “Carr,” which would later become the middle name of his son Hezekiah Carr Clem, and used as additional evidence that perhaps Hezekiah didn’t hang. By his own admission, Ledford’s account is passed down from his grandfather. Further, the source is a dramatized story per author John’s Egerton’s own words in which he states, “if you tell me everything you know… and I put it together with everything else I can find out, I could write Aley’s [Ledford] story just as if it was in his own words…[9] I explained to [Burnham Ledford] again the technique I had used to dramatize and personalize the story…”[10]
- 2006: In an interview with Chester Clem, he states, “First hung in Harlan was a Clem. They hung him for horse thieving. Hadn’t done it.”[11]
Chester Clem’s account is that Hezekiah was hung for horse thieving, when the Commonwealth of Kentucky vs. Hezekiah Clem court minutes clearly prosecute him for the crime of killing Irvin. While Clem may be a distant relative of Hezekiah, this does not necessarily mean that he has intimate knowledge of the hanging.[12]
When analyzing each of the oral accounts above, none of the sources were witnesses to the hanging, some of the accounts are inaccurate, and all of the sources have more than two points between witness and source (i.e. heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend, etc.)
As more time passes, the recollection of the event becomes more hearsay and honorable mention rather than an eyewitness account. It may have even reached mythical status akin to American history full of “facts” such as Betsy Ross invents the stars and stripes, Benjamin Franklin flies a kite in a thunderstorm, George Washington cuts down a cherry tree, George Washington Carver invents peanut butter, Albert Einstein was a terrible student, and other false stories we accept as truth. And it isn’t confined to history; many believe medical falsehoods like we only use ten percent of our brains, or that most of our body heat escapes through our heads.
Wood Lyttle’s statement that the “trial excited great interest” is an interesting recollection. The Clem hanging has been perpetuated through almost story and forum post as “the first hanging in Harlan County.” Yet after a trial that “excited great interest” of a “notorious outlaw” in a day and age when newspapers were filling their pages with “little Johnny has a cold”, there are no newspaper reporters covering the crime, trial, sentencing, or upcoming execution. In a search of local newspapers, there are the only two “articles” that could be found and both are a brief one-line mention of the case decision and appeal.
It would be incorrect to state that the newspapers were not interested in death and/or crime reporting – it seems they were importing crime reports from other states and countries.
The front page of the 12 June 1860 Louisville Daily Courier reported on the crime statistics in New Orleans (Louisiana), a duel involving double barrel shotguns at 40 paces in Savannah (Georgia), activities of pirate and murderer Hicks, a 21-year-old stranger dying at a hotel in Bates County (Missouri), a 46-line account of a divorce for cruelty and domestic violence, a riot in Greencastle (Indiana), “homicide by a lunatic” in Pennsylvania, a child drowning, the accidental shooting of 14-year old Hiram Metzel, an Indian war in San Antonio (Texas) in which 18 were killed, theft, drunken women, and other drunken disorderlies… and that was page one out of four pages.
In contrast, the next time Harlan County hung a man was in 1896 when Buford Overton was executed for killing peddler Gus Loeb and his wife at Martins Fork. In addition to Overton’s crime, capture, sentencing, escape, and recapture, his impending execution was covered in multiple newspapers across Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Kansas, and Indiana. Years later in 1937, Blind James Howard and Mary Turner each recorded a ballad of the event.[13]
Further complicating the claim that Clem’s hanging “was the first in Harlan County” is an article in the 06 September 1895 edition of The Hickman (KY) Courier:
“October 18 has been set as the time for the execution of Buford Overton for the murder of Gus. Loeb and wife in Harlan county. It will be the first legal hanging in Harlan county. A change of venue has been granted Charley Hensley and Wils Scott, charged as accessories to the murder and they will be tried at Pineville.”[14]
In a search of more modern lists, the hanging of Hezekiah appears in only one book and it is the only source that has a 31 August 1860 date attached to it.[15] Online databases of executions in the United States from 1607-1976 such as Death Penalty USA, Death Penalty Information Center, and other such resources have no record.
Other vital records also suggest that he didn’t hang.
To be continued in Part 4…
[1] Lewellyn, Jim Bill. “A Hanging In Harlan County.” Facebook.com. 28 October 2016. Retrieved 08 April 2018:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/506299452738457/permalink/1133095666725496/
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid. The same source also claims that on 11 April 1860, the guard is charged to keep Clem “safe until he is executed. Upon the day of execution to take Clem to the place of execution and to stay there until he is executed. And then to deliver said Clem to his relations if they desire them to do so and if they do not to bury his directly.”
[4] Ibid.
[5] Personal time and expenses prevent travelling to Harlan County and inspecting any existing records. Also, a search of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History (kentuckyoralhistory.org) did not yield any results.
[6] Dickey, Rev. John J. “Wood Lyttle, Manchester, Kentucky, April 12, 1898”, Reverend John J. Dickey Diary; p.2230-2236.
[7] Lawson, Ruby. “There Were 3.” Our Harlan County KY Page (Angelfire.com). 24 August 1947. Retrieved 08 April 2018:
http://www.angelfire.com/ky/mossierose/overton.html
[8] Egerton, John. Generations: An American Family (1983); p.31. On page 70, Ledford in referring to Governor Cassius M. Clay states, “I always believed he was a brother to John Clay of Harlan Co, whose daughter Lavinia was my great-grandmother. I never could prove that, though…” Cassius and John were not brothers.
[9] Ibid, p.48.
[10] Ibid, p.80.
[11] Portelli, Alessandro. They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History (2012).
[12] For example, even after years of researching my family tree, I personally still do not have any intimate knowledge of my third great grandfather Lewis Farmer in the 1860’s. In fact, I have no knowledge of my first great grandfather Carlos Buell Farmer other than what I can find online in birth, census, and newspaper records. After a little fact checking, I have found that my grandmother’s stories are untrue, such as her father John Brogan Linville was the sheriff of Knox County.
[13] Howard, James. “The Peddler and His Wife” (1937); Turner, Mary M. “The Hanging of Buford Overton.” The Lomax Kentucky Recordings (15 September 1937).
Available to listen here:
http://traildriver.com/web%20content/projects/appalachia/native%20kentucky%20ballads/059%20peddler%20and%20his%20wife/A01%20The%20Peddler%20and%20His%20Wife.mp3
[14] The Hickman Courier, 06 September 1895, p.1.
[15] Hearn, Daniel Allen. Legal Executions in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky and Missouri: A Comprehensive Registry, 1866-1965 (2016); p.188. “08/31/1860, Hezekiah Clemons, Harlan, Murder.”
Philip Farmer assists families with breaking down their genealogical brick walls. He is currently assisting three families find information on their ancestors. Philip is also the author and publisher of “Edward Farmar and the Sons of Whitemarsh,” a biographical history of Major Jasper Farmar’s family immigration from Ireland to Pennsylvania. Their story continues with their immigration out of Whitemarsh Township into North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee, concluding with a biographical sketch of Stephen Farmer who settled in Harlan County, Kentucky. The continuation of Stephen’s story is currently in work.
