Robert Davis (Execution of)

Robert Davis was hanged at Van Buren (Crawford County) on January 18, 1861, for the murders of a father and son with whom he had been traveling.

Robert Davis, a native of Ozark, Missouri, was described as “a large chested, powerfully-muscled, strong brute” whose “face is roughly bearded, and he has tigery eyes.” Davis and his wife were heading to Missouri from their home in Texas, traveling with a father and son from Denton County, Texas, who were going to Cane Hill (Washington County) to visit friends and to buy a load of apples. Their name was likely Pierson, but various news accounts also mentioned the names Pierce, McMahon, and “Elisha Clary and his son John.”

On September 10, 1860, the travelers reached a fork in the road where one road headed to Cane Hill and the other toward Fayetteville (Washington County). The man and his son wanted to go toward Cane Hill while Davis preferred the other route toward his destination in Missouri.

When they camped for the night, Davis’s wife, who “was not very well,” slept in the wagon while the three men bedded down on pallets on the ground. During the night, Davis got up, “took a stick of wood about four feet long, and as large as his leg,” and “struck the old man one lick, which broke in his skull, killing him instantly. [He] then struck the boy two licks, killing him.” (One account says the “boy sprang at the first blow, and it took two from the strong and brutal arm of Davis to dispatch him.”) Davis threw the bloody stick in the fire, then woke his wife and told her what he had done.

Davis wrapped the dead men in their bed clothes and put them in the wagon, then “took the overland mail road” toward Fayetteville. After riding about four miles into Washington County, he took the corpses about eighty yards from the road and dumped them. The Davises continued into Missouri where “C. G. Gilbreath, esq., and others of Washington county” captured them in Taney, Missouri, on September 29 and brought them back to Arkansas.

Davis confessed to the crime, saying that if the travelers had gone their separate ways he and his wife would have had to continue on foot, “and he made up his mind to get rid of them.” The Fayetteville Arkansian reported that “Davis says he took no money from the dead; that his sole object in killing them was to secure the wagon and team so to enable him to reach his father.” The newspaper added: “He is a savage of the first blood.” His wife was released from custody after Davis said she “knew nothing of the murder, until he informed her after the act.”

He was brought to Van Buren, where “considerable excitement was manifested and a disposition shown to string him up at once,” but people decided “to let the law take its course.”

A special term of the Crawford County Circuit Court was held on December 12, 1860, and the grand jury indicted him “for the murder of two persons unknown.” A trial was held on December 17, and the jury “readily returned a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree.” He was sentenced to hang on January 18, 1861. No accounts of his execution appear to exist.

For additional information:
“Sentenced to Be Hung.” Fayetteville Arkansian, December 22, 1860, p. 2.

“The Murderer Arrested.” Van Buren Press, October 5, 1860, p. 2.

“The Murderer!” Arkansian, October 5, 1860, p. 2.

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas