Casteel (Lynching of)

A man named Casteel was lynched on November 14, 1868, in Prairie County for stealing pigs. It was the first recorded lynching in the county.

The only apparent reference to this murder is a short article in the November 17, 1868, Des Arc Weekly Citizen, which states that a man named Casteel who lived on Bayou Des Arc about six or seven miles from Des Arc (Prairie County) “was taken from his house…and shot. It is said the parties committing the act charged him with making too free with his neighbors [sic] swineherds.” The 1860 U.S. census has no listing of a man named Casteel in Prairie County, however.

Casteel was the first of four men who would be lynched in Prairie County. The others were Jeff Johnson in 1869, Henry Smith in 1881, and George Bailey in 1909. Other men lynched for supposed hog theft were Alf Davis in Lonoke County in 1894, Presley Oats in Pope County in 1897, and an unknown man in Jefferson County in 1897.

There are no other apparent references to this event in any other state or national news media. Some lynchings were reported widely and in great detail, while others received little or no attention. Casteel’s death falls among the latter and illustrates how some lynchings might be unknown to twenty-first-century researchers.

For additional information:
Des Arc Weekly Citizen, November 17, 1868, p. 3., col. 1.

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas