Jasper Gordon (Lynching of)

Jasper Gordon was lynched in Monroe County’s Pea Ridge community on November 6, 1893. While sensational initial reports described him as “a notorious outlaw,” subsequent events indicate that was likely not true.

Newspaper reports in November 1893 that appeared across the country said that “the notorious bandit and outlaw” Jasper Gordon “was found hanging to a tree….His body was riddled with bullets” and that “it was generally believed he was one of the Iron Mountain train robbers,” a reference to a November 3 robbery at Olyphant (Jackson County) in which a railroad employee was killed. One account said that Gordon “was lynched by a division of Sheriff [M. H.] Patterson’s posse” that was seeking the train robbers.

The reports said that Gordon was wanted in several states “for murder, arson and burglary” and that he had “been committing depredations in the Pea Ridge locality for several months and a feeling of general relief exists over his death.” Also, “everybody in the vicinity disclaim any knowledge of how he came to his death.”

However, sometime after the lynching, “a citizen of Monroe County called on Gov. [William] Fishback and laid before him a full history of the facts in the mobbing of Jasper Gordon,” after which Fishback offered a $200 reward “for the arrest and conviction of the leader of the whitecap murderers of Jasper Gordon,” as well as members of the mob that had lynched Dan T. Nelson near Varner (Lincoln County) a week after Gordon’s death, “with the further hope of suppressing similar acts of violence.”

In December 1893, a judge asked a Monroe County grand jury to make a “special inquiry” into Gordon’s lynching, telling them that “on the night of November 6, some unknown persons enticed a citizen of this county from his home and mobbed him, murdered him without form of law”—contradicting the description of the victim as a “notorious outlaw.” No report of the inquiry appeared in newspapers, and Gordon’s killers apparently were never captured.

Gordon may have been W. J. Gordon, who was listed in the 1880 federal census as a farmer living in Monroe County’s Cache Township north of Clarendon (Monroe County).

For additional information:
“Jasper Gordon’s Murderers.” Arkansas Gazette, November 22, 1893, p. 4.

“Judge Thomas to Grand Jury.” Forrest City Times, December 8, 1893, p. 4.

“A Notorious Outlaw Lynched.” Southern Standard, November 17, 1893, p. 1.

“The State in Brief.” Southern Standard, December 1, 1893, p. 1.

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas