Bob (Lynching of)

Bob (no last name recorded) was a formerly enslaved African American man who attempted to encourage a slave revolt in Washington County in 1859 but was shot dead by members of a posse.

Bob was enslaved by Chares W. Deane, a Fayetteville (Washington County) doctor who in 1860 would own $5,500 in real property and $15,000 in personal property, including thirteen enslaved people. In 1858, Deane sold Bob in Memphis, Tennessee; he was soon sold to a plantation owner in Desha County.

In the spring of 1859, Bob and two other enslaved men, Cameron and Dick, escaped from their Desha County plantations and headed north. When they were near Lewisburg (Conway County) on May 23, 1859, J .W. Davison, who lived near Springfield (Conway County), attempted to arrest them, and Bob shot him with a double-barreled shotgun, killing him.

On June 26, 1859, the three reached Deane’s farm near Fayetteville, with Bob still armed with the shotgun and one of the others carrying a pistol, possibly taken from Davison. They said they planned “to make a rise” and then head to Kansas and freedom. They also visited the farms of editor Josiah Washbourne and Hiram Davis, “asking for ammunitions, &c.” Bob was recognized.

Two days later, their “place of concealment” was found about a mile from Fayetteville “in a very dense thicket” on the road to Mount Comfort (Washington County). A posse was raised in Fayetteville and surrounded the thicket. According to the Arkansian newspaper, “the negroes broke from their covert and endeavored to escape, they were called upon to surrender, but they showed not the slightest disposition to do so.”

Bob held the shotgun “presented as though in the act of firing,” and he was shot and killed. Cameron and Dick continued running and also were shot, one in the left eye and the other in the back. James Barnes, a member of the posse, was also accidentally wounded, and was later reported as doing well “though suffering considerably.” The three men’s wounds were “not considered mortal, though dangerous.”

Dick and Cameron were jailed, and newspaper notices were posted telling the owners of the plantations from which they had fled that they could come to Fayetteville and claim them. Cameron was described as “rather black, six feet high, weighs about two hundred pounds, has marks of the whip on his back,” while Dick was “black, about five feet seven inches high, weighs about one hundred forty pounds.”

If they were in fact retrieved, then Cameron was returned to the Desha County plantation of George Graddy, age forty, where he would have been among the twenty-eight slaves counted in Graddy’s $65,615 in personal property in 1860 (Graddy’s real estate was valued at $161,600). Dick would have returned to the farm of Henry Johnson, age thirty, who in 1860 reported $70,660 in real estate and $68,350 in personal property, which included fifty-nine slaves.

For additional information:
“Arrest of Runaway Negroes.” Arkansian, July 2, 1859, p. 2.

“Runaway in Jail” advertisements. Arkansian, July 2, 1859, p. 3.

Mark K. Christ
Central Arkansas Library System