Abe Frazier (Execution of)

Abe Frazier was executed at Warren (Bradley County) on November 28, 1884, for killing a man he claimed was stealing from him.

Abe Frazier, age thirty-four, was an African American man “possessed of some little property, and stood high in the estimation of the colored people” in Dorsey County (later Cleveland County). In 1882, he killed a fellow Black man, Lewis Davis, “whom he is said to have caught stealing corn from his crib.”

After Davis’s death, Frazier was arrested, and though no accounts of his early October 1884 trial appear to exist, he won a change of venue to Bradley County, where the case was “hotly fought in the courts.” Some witnesses apparently testified that Frazier had invited Davis into his home, then took him out and shot him to death, placing a sack next to his body to support his claim that the dead man was stealing his corn. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to hang on November 28, 1884.

Frazier was held in the jail in Monticello (Drew County) until the day before his hanging, when he was brought to Warren. On the morning of November 28, he wrote a farewell letter to his wife and four children but was surprised when the family came to see him in jail. After visiting, “they left him forever, all sobbing bitterly.” A pair of ministers then came to the jail to give him spiritual support.

Around 2,000 people had gathered when he was taken from the jail at 1:30 p.m. on November 28, with Frazier riding atop his coffin during the half-mile journey to the execution site. He spoke to many of the people he passed, “declaring his innocence of murder…and protesting that he told the truth about the killing.”

Frazier climbed the steps of the gallows as the “ministers sang and prayed.” The trap door opened at 2:20 p.m., and “not a muscle quivered” as the condemned man plunged to his death. He was declared dead twelve minutes later.

For additional information:
“From Monticello.” Arkansas Gazette, October 8, 1884, p. 6.

“He Paid the Penalty.” St. Louis [Missouri] Globe-Democrat, November 29, 1884, p. 3.

“Murderer Executed.” [Charleston, Missouri] Enterprise-Courier, December 12, 1884, p. 1.

Mark K. Christ
Central Arkansas Library System