Found an interesting article in the book, about a murder and hanging in Heard County and Carroll County, GA area. As with all written histories, there may be more to the story than told in this accounting. How sad for both of the families involved in any case. Georgia's Last Frontier, by James C. Bonner page 124, 125, 126 " Disorderly conduct, even violence and murder, were not unusual for Carroll County in the 1880's and 1890's. Attendance upon Superior Court trials and viewing an occasional public hanging were acceptable social diversions for men, although women were always among the spectators. The most sensational murder in the community's annals occurred in Heard County near the Carroll line in 1884. This crime involved John Smith, a notorious character who lived south of Roopville. Smith's career as a desperado began in 1876 when he was twenty-three. He and a cousin John Craven, became involved in a Christmas brawl at the house of Green Huckaba, at Blue Shin in Heard County. Smith's companion, Craven, was stabbed to death by Robert Huckaba, an act later adjudged as justifiable homicide. A feud between the Huckeba family and their relations on one hand, and the Craven and Smith families on the other, increased in intensity over the ensuing years. Smith was said to have killed a number of men during this period and he became a terror to the community. In January 1884, the family feud erupted in a second brawl. Encountering Robert Huckaba in the woods near Black Jack Mountain, John Smith dismounted from his horse and fired several shots at him without warning. However, none of the shots were fatal. A year later, Smith, his brother An? and A.S. King came to Samuel Barker's farmhouse near the Carroll-Heard line. With drawn pistol, Smith cursed Barker and his wife, struck the former a blow, and then shot him to death in the presence of three eye witnesses. The crime was called "the most willful and cold blooded murder that ever disgraced the annals of the local history. For several days Smith was hunted by a posse of several hundred men and finally was captured three miles south of Roopville on a ruse organized by Sheriff James Hewitt and his deputy John Skipper. Secreted for a brief period at the home of John Roop, he later was brought to the Carrollton Jail. Because of Smith's numerous and prominent connections in Heard County where he was indicted, it was difficult to obtain a qualified jury to try him. However after a trial lasting three days, in January 1886, he was sentenced to be hanged. Smith's execution did not take place until June of the following year. In the meantime desperate efforts were made to have his sentence commuted and once Governor John B. Gordon granted him a brief respite from death. While languishing in jail, he was married to Mit Levens, who had been threatened with prosecution on a charge involving the illegality of their former relationship. Smith had been married on two previous occasions and was the father of two children. The significant aspect of the execution was it's bizarre character at a public spectacle. "A good many Carrolltons speak of going down to the John Smith hanging at Franklin today", wrote the editor of the "Free Press" on June 17th. Later the paper carried several columns captioned "Heard's Terror John W. Smith hangs in presence of 3,000 people." The "Free Press" did not omit a single gruesome detail of the execution, including events immediately preceding and following it. Before taking Smith from the jail to the gallows, which had been erected a half mile away, Sheriff John Lipscomb had placed a hangman's noose around the condemned man's neck. "The crowd rushed through the town, throught he woods, down the hill like a sweeping mighty avalanche", wrote an eye witness. During the divine service preceeding the execution, men and boys climbed trees with shouts and laughter. In his remarks to the crowd, the weeping prisoner proclaimed his innocence. In a somewhat contradictory statement, he attributed his conviction to lies and his own downfall to whiskey. He pleaded with the Sheriff not to proceed with the execution. The Sheriff bade him farewell three times before springing the trap. The rope was afterward torn into thousands of pieces by souvenier seekers. Smith's body was brought under guard to Roopville where it was interred in the James D. Green Cemetery, two miles north of that village. ....The 1890 decade was perhaps the most lawless in Carroll's postwar history. In 1893 alone, a year of depression and Populist politics, two people were cut to death in fights, two others were shot in brawls, and a few robberies were committed. Three murder cases were tried in the new courthouse during the first year of it's use. The day is not far distant when Carroll County can furnish some Rube Barrow's, Jesse James and brutish outlaws, one said...."