November 25, 1873

Sid Wallace managed to take control of the Clarksville (Johnson County) jail and shoot at citizens from the jail window, killing Thomas Paine, who had testified against him in a murder trial. Wallace, a “noted desperado” attempted to assassinate a Mr. Dickey, a St. Louis drummer (or a railroad foreman, depending upon the source), in the spring of 1872, was suspected of murdering Judge Elisha Mears in 1873, and was convicted of murdering Constable R. W. Ward of Clarksville. Wallace had witnessed his father’s murder by Union soldiers (or by local bushwhackers disguised as Union soldiers) when he was twelve years old and, after his twenty-first birthday, traveled widely to eliminate the men responsible.