Frank Williams (Execution of)

Frank Williams was hanged at Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) on August 1, 1884, after being convicted of first-degree murder in the shotgun slaying of his wife.

Alabama native Frank Williams, a middle-aged “mulatto” man described in the Arkansas Democrat as “turbulent in disposition, and indisposed to seek useful employment,” lived in Arkansas County with his wife (who was a widow) and her sixteen-year-old daughter, who was “the occasion of strife and quarrel in the household.”

He returned home from squirrel hunting at 8:00 one morning in December 1883 to find his wife doing laundry. He ordered her to go to work in the cotton fields, but she declined, saying she needed to complete her current task. Williams went to a local tavern and “got himself into a beastly condition of intoxication.” Returning at around 11:00 a.m., he found his wife and stepdaughter at work in the cotton fields and fired one barrel of his shotgun, killing his wife. The teenager, fearing she was next, fled but was wounded by a shot from the gun’s other barrel.

Williams fled but was captured by a posse a few days later. Charged with first-degree murder, he received a change of venue to Jefferson County, where he was tried in May 1884. After hearing testimony in which “the bloody recital filled everyone in the court room with horror,” a jury “of both races” took less than an hour to return with a guilty verdict. He was sentenced to hang on August 1, 1884.

The condemned man did “the principal part of the work” in an escape attempt from the Pine Bluff jail in which inmates “tried to drill their way out…but were detected and foiled.” On the day before he was to hang, the Democrat reported that he had “spiritual advisors with him for the past week, and was baptized…but has not yet made ‘peace with God,’ or confessed to the crime for which he was convicted.”

On the morning of August 1, 1884, “streams of country people—men, women and children—came pouring into town….The dense crowd filled the jail yard, which occupies an area of half an acre…and also the streets on Court Square.” The crowd was estimated to be 5,000.

Williams left the Pine Bluff jail at 11:30 a.m. “under a heavy escort of armed men” and walked two miles to the execution site, where he “with a firm tread, ascended the gallows.” As the hymn “Why Do We Mourn at Departing Friends or Shrink at Death’s Altar” was sung, Williams “waved his body to and fro in a sort of religious ecstasy.” After hearing a prayer from his preacher, the condemned man confessed and “imputed his crime to the hateful use of liquor, and warned all to beware of its dangers.”

The trap door opened at 12:30 p.m., “and his soul realized the mysteries of another world” as his neck broke in the fall; he was declared dead seventeen minutes later. The Democrat summarized: “He was serene and composed, and died game.”

For additional information:
“Hanged.” Arkansas Democrat, August 1, 1884, p. 1.

“Miscellaneous.” Iowa Plain Dealer (New Oregon, IA), August 7, 1884, p. 4. Online at https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83025167/1884-08-07/ed-1/seq-4/ (accessed August 3, 2024).

“Pine Bluff Specials.” Arkansas Democrat, July 31, 1884, p. 3.

“State News.” Arkansas Gazette, July 22, 1884, p. 7.

“Suspensions.” Highlight Weekly News (Hillsborough, OH), August 6, 1884, p. 2. Online at https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85038158/1884-08-06/ed-1/seq-2/ (accessed August 3, 2024).

Mark K. Christ
Central Arkansas Library System