Lewis Holder (Execution of)

Lewis Holder was hanged at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) on July 25, 1894, after being convicted in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas of killing a companion in the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).

Lewis Holder, about fifty years of age, and George Bickford, age thirty-five, went on a hunting and trapping trip into the San Bois Mountains in the Choctaw Nation in late December 1891. Sometime around Christmas, Holder showed up in the Poteau River bottoms near Fort Smith with Bickford’s mules and wagon and wearing his clothes, saying he had made a trade with Bickford for the wagon and team and switched clothes with him. He said that Bickford “had gone to Texas.”

On January 29, 1892, a man traveling through the San Bois Mountains left the road to get water from a creek, where he found a corpse. Going to a nearby house, he returned with several Choctaws and found documents showing the dead man was George Bickford. A deputy U.S. marshal arrested Holder, who still had the mules and wagon, on February 5, and Holder claimed that he had killed the man in self-defense.

Holder maintained that claim in his August 1892 trial in Judge Isaac Parker’s court but was convicted of first-degree murder. On September 19, 1892, Parker sentenced him and four others to hang on November 2, though a newspaper reported that “the attorneys for the condemned men have taken appeals to the Supreme Court and the day of execution will doubtless be postponed.”

A year after the scheduled execution date, on November 2, 1893, the Supreme Court affirmed Holder’s conviction, and on April 23, 1894, Parker again sentenced him to hang, this time on July 25, 1894. On July 17, President Grover Cleveland announced that he would not give Holder a pardon.

On the morning of July 25, Holder met with a Catholic priest and “received the last sacred rites of the Church and expressed himself at peace with all mankind.” The death warrant was read to him at 10:40 a.m., after which he walked to the gallows.

“Holder mounted the steps leading to the trap unaided” and “advancing to the point of the gallows asked all of those having had any hand in convicting him to step forward.” No one did, but Holder said that “he forgave them all, but thought Judge Parker should resign his office, get down on his knees and ask the Lord for forgiveness.”

Executioner George Maledon then tied Holder’s arms and legs and placed a black cap over his head before the trap door opened, “and in an instant the condemned man shot downward into space. His neck was broken and in two minutes the attending physician pronounced him dead.” He was buried in Fort Smith’s Catholic 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.

“Death Sentences Affirmed.” Pine Bluff Daily Graphic, November 2, 1893, p. 3.

“Five Will Hang.” Arkansas Gazette, September 20, 1892, pp. 1, 2.

“Holder Must Hang.” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 18, 1894, p. 3.

“Lewis Holder Hanged.” Arkansas Gazette, July 26, 1894, p. 2.

“Lewis Holder Hanged.” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 26, 1894, p. 3.

“Sentenced to Hang.” Arkansas Gazette, April 24, 1894, p. 6.

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas