Entry Category: Criminal Activities - Starting with E

On November 6, 1873, George Alexander “Dock” Eagle, his son Will, and his nephew Robert J. (R. J.) Eagle were murdered in Lonoke County, allegedly by a group of African Americans. Some newspapers erroneously described the murders as a lynching. The Eagles were members of a prominent local family. George “Dock” Eagle was the uncle of William H. Eagle (one of the county’s wealthiest landowners and a member of the Arkansas General Assembly) and the brother of James P. Eagle, who served both in the Arkansas legislature and as Arkansas governor. Dock Eagle was born in North Carolina in 1826 and was the son of Joseph and Rosanna “Sena” Furr Eagle. According to the census, in 1870, he was living …

On April 25, 1898, three men were shot to death in Lonoke (Lonoke County). These killings—and the conflicts that took place before and after—have come to be called the Eagle-Booe Feud. The prominent Eagle family of Lonoke County, including the brother of a former Arkansas governor, was roped into the feud and ended up being defended in court by a distant relation who would became governor himself, and later a U.S. senator. Approximately a week before the killings, on or about April 19, 1898, an unknown assailant shot Charles (Charley) Booe (wrongly spelled sometimes as Booie) outside of his law office in England (Lonoke County). Charley Booe, for reasons unknown, accused Robert (Bob) Eagle of shooting him. Booe’s father, William …

Questionable balloting procedures and fraudulent vote counts began early in Arkansas’s political history and were a regular component of the state’s politics, especially in rural areas, until about 1970. The state’s tradition of one-party rule in which consequential elections were decided in party primaries, the absence of unbiased political information in the form of independent newspapers, and a traditionalistic political culture in which the activities of the ruling elite were generally unquestioned by the masses all contributed to an environment in which fraud—fundamentally problematic for a representative democracy—could persist. Such fraudulent behavior in Arkansas had its roots in the politics of “The Family,” the Democratic regime that controlled the state’s politics in the period following statehood. This Johnson-Conway-Sevier-Rector cousinhood accumulated …

Two African-American men named Elligin and Anderson were lynched in September 1877 near DeWitt (Arkansas County) for the alleged crime of murder. This was the third lynching event to occur in Arkansas County. The two men lynched were likely Jordan Elligin and George Anderson. The 1870 census records both men living in Villemont township in Arkansas County (the township would be annexed to Jefferson County in 1889). Elligin was fifteen at the time of the census, while Anderson was twenty-four and working as a farmer. An account of this event appeared in the Indicator, a newspaper published in DeWitt. According to this account, published on Saturday, September 22, and reprinted in the Arkansas Gazette, Elligin and Anderson had been confined …

On June 13, 1919, Clyde Ellison was lynched at Star City (Lincoln County) for allegedly assaulting the daughter of a local farmer. Little is known about Clyde Ellison’s background. When he registered for the World War I draft on October 25, 1918, he was living in Florence (Drew County) and working for farmer Ernest Lytle. He was unable to give his date of birth and listed no close relatives. By June 1919, Ellison was living near Star City. According to an article in the Arkansas Gazette, it was alleged that he attempted to assault eighteen-year-old Iselle Bennett, who lived three miles from Star City. She was alone at the family home; her parents were out, and all of the hands …

On Saturday, December 12, 1891, an “unknown tramp,” apparently a white man, was hanged at Emmet (Nevada and Hempstead Counties) for having allegedly attempted to rape a schoolgirl named Bettie McGough. According to a report in the Arkansas Gazette, on Tuesday, December 8, McGough and schoolmate Hattie McFarland, after the dismissal of school for the day, started to make their way to the home of a Mrs. Rosenberry, where they planned to spend the night. The road to Mrs. Rosenberry’s house led through a wooded area, and “when the young ladies reached the thickest part of the timber,” they found that a “dirty tramp” had been following them. The two girls fled in separate directions, but McGough “became entangled in …

Cal Emory was lynched in Dover (Pope County) on June 13, 1881, after his sentence of death was commuted to twenty-one years in the state penitentiary. Cal Emory’s name is rendered a number of different ways in newspaper reports. Some give his last name as Embry or Emery, while others have the first name “Cal” being an abbreviation of either Calhoun or Charles. The 1880 federal census records Cal Emory, age twenty-eight, residing at the time in nearby Ozark (Franklin County) as a prisoner, and the June 9, 1881, Russellville Democrat reported that he was a resident of Franklin County. According to the Arkansas Gazette account of his lynching, Emory “and a partner first raped and then murdered the woman …

Albert England, a white man, was lynched on the night of November 2–3, 1895, near Vilonia (Faulkner County). After being arrested and charged with burglary, he was taken from custody and murdered. Some at the time believed that the mob was composed of fellow criminals intent upon silencing England and protecting themselves from exposure. The exact identity of Albert England is difficult to determine. There was an Albert England reported on the 1880 census as twenty-six years old and from Lonoke County; however, there is a brief line in the November 28, 1895, Arkansas Gazette noting that an Albert England who was resident at the state asylum (now the Arkansas State Hospital) had died, and his body was being shipped …

A shootout on the night of September 16, 1922, in Enon (Boone County), a sprawling, unincorporated area located east of Omaha (Boone County), left four people dead. The event known as the Enon Massacre sparked a running feud for generations to come. Although some have suggested that the Enon Massacre was the result of two groups of bootleggers in Boone County fighting over territory, most believe that the murders stemmed more from a long-running feud between various families in the area. The events that led to this gun battle started when twenty-nine-year-old Ebenezer (Eb) Badley (referred to in some newspaper accounts as “Ed Dadley”) rode to a dance near his home in Enon with his best friend, twenty-two-year-old Henry Blevins, …