George Tobler (Execution of)

George Tobler was a Black man hanged at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) on January 30, 1890, after being convicted in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas for killing a romantic rival.

On the evening of April 29, 1889, a group of Black people were attending a dance in the Choctaw Nation about twenty-five miles west of Fort Smith when “a shot startled the dancers, and their fiddler, a negro named Irvin Richardson [actually Richmond] fell from his chair dead, a Winchester ball having passed through his body.” George Tobler, who had quarreled with Richmond over a woman earlier, was found alone outside and arrested.

Tobler was tried in September, and though he produced witnesses who said there had been other men passing by the dance, prosecutors “produced evidence of so convincing a character, which the defense failed to rebut, that the jury soon returned a verdict of guilty” on September 19, 1889. Newspapers reported after his conviction that two of Tobler’s brothers had been hanged in Wichita, Kansas, in the fall of 1888.

Judge Isaac C. Parker sentenced Tobler, another convicted murderer named Charley Bullard, and a group of Choctaw men to hang on January 16, 1890. The Choctaws were executed, but Tobler and Bullard had their death dates respited to January 30 while their pleas for commutation were considered in Washington DC. On January 29, they received word that Bullard’s sentence had been commuted to life in prison, but President Benjamin Harrison “declined to interfere” in Tobler’s case.

Tobler and Bullard talked long into the night before going to sleep. Tobler woke up at 9:00 a.m. on January 30 and “ate a hearty breakfast of the usual prison fair [sic]” before changing into the new clothes provided for him. The doomed man requested a white necktie, which was provided, and he proceeded to “dress himself for the grave.” The Arkansas Gazette noted that “he has taken the matter all along with the utmost indifference, but at all times asserted that he was innocent.” Tobler did, however, tell Bullard during their discussion that he had dreamed about the man he killed.

The death warrant was read to him at 10:45 a.m. on January 30, 1890, and “the condemned man walked forth to die, cool, stoical and with no outward emotion.” While religious services were conducted on the scaffold, “he weakened for a moment or so, but soon braced up and when he stepped on the trap he looked as cool and defiant as usual.”

Tobler declined to make a final statement from the gallows, “and in short order his legs and arms were pinioned, the black cap drawn, rope adjusted, and the trap sprung at 11:05. His neck was broken, and his death was instantaneous.” He was buried in Fort Smith’s Oak Cemetery.

For additional information:
Akins, Jerry. Hangin’ Times in Fort Smith: A History of Executions in Judge Parker’s Court. Little Rock: Butler Center Books, 2012.

“All Over B.I.T.” Muskogee Phoenix, January 30, 1890, p. 1.

“Murdered the Fiddler.” Indian Citizen [Atoka, Indian Territory], May 18, 1889, p. 4.

“Local Notes.” Weekly Chieftain [Vinita, Indian Territory], October 3, 1889, p. 3.

Riley, Michael Owen. “Capital Punishment in Oklahoma: 1835–1966.” PhD diss., University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, 2012. Online at https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/518/ (accessed December 4, 2025).

“The Seventieth Man.” Arkansas Gazette, January 31, 1890, p. 4.

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas