FIRST MAN TO HANG ON THE FT. SMITH GALLOWS

Spotlighting some of the more famous cases tried in the court at Ft. Smith, one that stands out is the first hanging on the gallows.

His crime was vicious and cold blooded and recalled for many years by people who lived in Van Buren and Ft. Smith.

John Childers, a half-blood Cherokee was charged with killing a peddler named Rayburn Wedding. Childers was the son of John Childers, a white man and KatyVann, his Cherokee wife. He was born May 3, 1848 on Cowskin Creek. This was located in the Cherokee Nation, later to become Oklahoma.

On October 14, 1870, the young man would commit a crime that eventually led him to the newly constructed gallows outside Judge Parker’s Court in Fort Smith, Arkansas. His crime wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone who knew him. Childers had a wicked past. He belonged to an organization composed of Indians and whites, whose main object on this earth was to murder and plunder. They were a close knit bunch, and so whatever one of them did, the others stood behind him.

Deputy Marshal Vennoy, a native of Kansas, had run-ins with Childers on several occasionas. He had admitted to killing a man over in Kansas to get even for some imagined wrong doing. So on this particular day, he spied a very fine black horse that he knew he had to have the moment he saw it. No matter that it belonged to someone else. Namely, a fellow by the name of Rayburn Wedding, a peddler who made his living traveling through the Indian Territory trading flour and bacon for hides and farm products.

Accustomed to getting what he wanted, one way or another, Childers told Rayburn he’d make him a trade for his fine black horse, but Rayburn wasn’t interested. Not willing to take no for an answer, Childers dropped back a ways and and then rode up on the unsuspecting trader. He dismounted, tied his horse to the peddlers wagon and climbed up in the seat beside him. After chatting until they reached Caney Creek, he drew a knife and cut the peddler’s throat from ear to ear. He dumped the body in the water, saddled the black and left his own horse there, riding proudly away on his new acquisition.

Childers was captured and scheduled to be taken to Kansas, but he dreaded that, so he escaped his irons. He was again arrested and then conveyed to Van Buren. He was held to await the action of the Grand Jury. No court was in session. Judge Caldwell then the Federal Judge, adjourned court in December, 1870. Court was reconvened at Fort Smith the following month with William Story as Judge. Judge Isaac Parker had not yet been sent to Ft. Smith.

Determined to escape justice, Childers and six other prisoners broke out and took to the woods. He might never have been recaptured had it not have been for a woman of whom he was enamored. The woman saw her chance to make some money, lured Childers into her arms, then eagerly took the $10 reward she’d been promised to aid in his capture. Deputy Marshals Vennoy and Joe Peevy easily dragged him from her arms and led him back to jail.

The beginning of the second week of the first term of Federal court ever held in Fort Smith, the Grand Jury returned eleven true bills of indictment, naming sixteen persons charged with various crims. John Childers was at the foot of the list. He was arraigned on Thursday, May 18 of 1871. The trial lasted from Novemeber 6 until the 18th before he was judged to be guilty of murder. He was kept confined in the garrison dungeon until May 19, 1873 when he was sentenced to be hanged. On August 15, the gallows, still smelling of fresh cut lumber, served it’s first duty and saw Childers hung from the neck until dead.

For 23 years the gallows took the lives of 88 more criminals, all sentenced to be hanged by a man who would become known as The Hanging Judge, Isaac Parker.

Facts for this story taken from the book, Hell on the Border

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