James Howard Miller (Execution of)

James Howard Miller was hanged at Ozark (Franklin County) on February 27, 1880, for the crime of murdering a woman with whom he lived and had children, though he denied being guilty.

James Howard Miller was born in Montgomery County, Illinois, around 1850. When he was fifteen, the family moved to St. Clair County, Missouri. He was described as being “of medium height and slender build,” with blue eyes and black hair. Miller “belonged to the Baptist, Methodist, and Campbellite Churches, but was excommunicated from all.” He had a wife and two children in Missouri.

Apparently abandoning his family, he moved to Arkansas around 1876 and met sixteen-year-old Mollie Smith, with whom he lived in Altus (Franklin County) and had three children. And though “they had never been married,” she was commonly referred to as his wife. He went by the name James Howard in Arkansas.

On January 16, 1879, the couple went to a party at the home of a neighbor named Page, who lived about one hundred yards from their house. Mollie had danced with a boy and was preparing to dance with a man when Miller “rushed in, seized her by the hair and dragged her out of the room.” Miller pulled her outside to a wood pile, where he beat her until she cried “Oh, don’t Jim, I’ll go.” They went to their house, and the fight continued. Page stood outside listening and heard her say, “You are choking me to death,” but went back to the party.

Around 4:00 a.m., Miller came to Page’s and said, “Page, come over to my house. Mollie is dying.” The neighbor followed him, and as Miller wept, Page saw that “her lips were bruised and on her neck were finger marks.” He told Miller she was dead, and he replied, “Poor thing…she suffered all night with smothering spells. She said she could taste blood.” Miller, “making no effort to escape,” was arrested on the evening of January 17.

Miller was convicted of first-degree murder in Franklin County Circuit Court sometime around June 1879 and was sentenced to hang on July 25; the execution was postponed while he appealed the sentence to the Arkansas Supreme Court, which affirmed it in January 1880. He was sentenced to hang on February 27, 1880, and on February 24, Governor William Read Miller refused to commute the sentence.

A scaffold was built near the railroad depot in Ozark close to a bend in the Arkansas River, and on the morning of February 27, “the people poured in by daylight and by twelve o’clock there were no less than five thousand present.” Miller was taken from the jail at 12:30 p.m. and, smoking a cigar, “exhibited a coolness very seldom seen on an occasions like this” as he was taken to the gallows on a wagon.

As he mounted the scaffold, Miller sat down and professed his innocence and said, “My last words are, Meet me in heaven. I have nothing more to say.” The two ministers accompanying him sang a hymn and said a prayer as Miller “moved his lips as if in earnest supplication, now and then exclaiming: ‘Glory to God! Bless Jesus!’” Stepping onto the trap door, he yelled, “Remember me, Oh God!” as a black hood was lowered over his head and a noose fitted around his neck. The trap door opened, and “his neck was broken. Not a muscle of the man moved after the trap fell.”

Miller was declared dead about twenty minutes later, and his body was “put into a beautiful casket and buried decently” in the town’s potter’s field. The Arkansas Gazette published a letter Miller had sent to his sister in Missouri in which he bade farewell to his family and children, writing, “I hate to die a Hangmans death and Bring the Disgrase [sic] on our Relatives, outside of this I have no trouble since I found peace in God.”

Miller was one of two men hanged for murder in Franklin County in 1880, the other being Thomas Edmonds, who was executed on May 28, 1880.

For additional information:
“Dance of Death.” Arkansas Gazette, February 28, 1880, p. 1.

“Howard’s Last Letter.” Arkansas Gazette, March 6, 1880, p. 8.

“Local Brevities.” Arkansas Democrat, February 25, 1880, p. 4.

“Local Paragraphs.” Arkansas Gazette, February 26, 1880, p. 8.

“Local Paragraphs.” Arkansas Gazette, January 31, 1880, p. 8.

Russellville Democrat, July 31, 1879, p. 2, col. 1.

Russellville Democrat, June 5, 1879, p. 2, col. 1.

“Supreme Court.” Arkansas Gazette, January 11, 1880, p. 8.

“A Trip to Ozark.” Russellville Democrat, March 4, 1880, p. 2.

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas