Jerdon Grinder (Execution of)

Jerdon Grinder was hanged at Van Buren (Crawford County) on February 3, 1871, for a murder he would claim was accidental.

Jerdon Grinder was the son of former slaves in Harrison County, Texas, who moved to Van Buren in July 1869 and went to work for a Black man named Sam Crawley on the Hollis Farm in Crawford County. Dick Turner, another Black man, had an adjacent farm, and among his workers were “two or three white women of disreputable character,” according to contemporary newspaper accounts. Robert Monroe (sometimes spelled Munroe), who was Black, was “cohabitating with one of them by the name of Ellen Anthony.”

Several of Crawley’s workers, including Grinder, would go to Turner’s farm at night “at the cabin occupied by these women playing cards and frolicking,” which made Monroe jealous to the point that he threatened Grinder with an axe.

Early in the morning of November 8, 1870, Monroe was mortally wounded by a gunshot, and Grinder was arrested, though apparently claiming innocence. The Crawford County grand jury happened to be in session at the time, and “a bill was found and trial, conviction and sentence had within ten days after the murder was committed. The evidence was all circumstantial, but so strong that no doubt was left in the minds of the Jury of the guilt of the prisoner.” He was sentenced to hang on February 3, 1871.

On the night before his execution, Grinder told a reporter for the Van Buren Press what had happened. He said that he was at the cabin at the Turner place on the night of November 7, 1870, when Anderson told him she was afraid of Monroe and wanted him to scare him off. Grinder agreed and said he would come back later; Anderson told him to wake her up when he got there.

Grinder returned with two colleagues to the Crawley farm and borrowed a pistol from one of them before all three went to bed. As the others slept, Grinder said that he went back to the cabin and shook the door to awaken Anderson, who after stepping outside and seeing him proceeded to make a large fire to illuminate the room before lying down on a blanket in front of it. Grinder removed some mortar from between a couple of logs and fired a shot toward the sleeping Monroe before returning home with no one else being aware that he had left.

His shot had hit Monroe in the chest, and he died fifteen or twenty minutes later. Grinder told the reporter that “I did not have any intention of taking the life of Munroe. I thought I would scare him, so that he would leave there and could not believe it, when told he was dead.”

On the morning of February 3, 1871, “people from the county to ‘see the hanging’ commenced flocking to town at an early hour.” Between 200 and 300 “men, women and children” would witness the execution.

Grinder’s spiritual advisor “had a season of prayer and exhortation at the jail yard, between 10 and 11 o’clock, and Grinder appeared deeply affected…and shed tears” before he got onto a wagon bearing his coffin and proceeded to the graveyard where the gallows was erected. After prayers and hymns, his limbs were tied, and he declined final words, saying his previous confession would suffice. He shook hands with the lawmen on the scaffold and then “seized earnestly the hand of his spiritual counselor, and with tears streaming down his face bid him a last adieu.”

The noose was placed around his neck and a cap over his face, “and at 20 minutes after 12 o’clock, Jerdon Grinder payed [sic] the full penalty of the law for the murder of Robert Munroe.” He was buried in Van Buren’s Fairview Cemetery.

For additional information:
“The Execution of Jerdon Grinder for Killing Robert Monroe.” Van Buren Press, February 7, 1871, p. 2.

“State News.” Arkansas Gazette, February 12, 1871, p. 3.

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas