My friends - I had planned on posting another of Dr. Gordon Wilson's essays on this New Year's Eve. However, a subscriber asked recently if I had any information on lynchings(as opposed to legal hangings, as related in a post of several years ago about the hanging of Pud Diggs) in the JP region. The earliest lynching of which I am aware occurred in Calloway County on 8 May 1870. There were probably others that occurred before or after this date(and during the years of the War Between the States, associated with guerilla activity), but the story of this one appeared in the Murray Herald in the period 1888-1890. A note of caution - this story is a graphic one. Here is the text of the story: "On Sabbath night, May 8th [1870], nine men in disguise made their appearance in this county, in the neighborhood of Mr. T.J.Chandler's, coming from no one knew where. They visited the houses of Mr. Chandler and Mr. Jones Matthews, staying at each place for just a few moments. They next proceeded to the house of Mr. John Childress, where they found Mr. George Barnett, whom the took into custody and carried away with them. They made no threats nor alleged any cause for their act. Five days after this, nothing having been heard from Mr. Barnett, his brothers, five in number, instituted a search for him in which they were joined by numerous friends of the family. On Monday, May 11th, the body of the missing man was found in the woods, about three miles from Mr. Childress' home. The body was in a state of decomposition, but still had marks of abuse the most outrageous. Coroner Miller held an inquest over the body, but no evidence was deduced as to who were the murderers. The remains were interred in the family grounds at Sage Hill. The most utter indignation and excitement prevails throughout the county." The Coroner's notes indicated that Mr. Barnett had been stabbed, hanged, castrated, his tongue cut out, and his eyeballs gouged out. About two weeks later, Mrs. Barnett and her mother were murdered, apparently by the same group of men, and their bodies placed in burlap bags and thrown in the Tennessee River, where they washed ashore near Paducah some days later. Mr. Barnett's wife was Mary Collier by maiden name and her mother, Mrs. Collier, was an Owensbey by maiden name. The possible cause put forth for this grisly set of murders was a feud between the elder Mrs. Collier and her niece Polly Minter, over who was entitled to land in Baxter County, Texas, which had been used as pay for the service, in the Mexican War, of William "Bill" Owensbey, brother of the elder Mrs. Collier and Mrs. Minter. No one was ever brought to justice for the lynching and the other associated murders. Since tomorrow is New Year's Day, I will not send a data posting. We are approaching the 7th year of operation of the JP List. We have had about 3500 posts from all sources in that period of time, and my postings number about 1900. My impression is that we have done well over those years, establishing a network of subscribers who are ready and anxious to assist those in their research in the JP region. We carried out the JP Homecoming event in 2000, which was a success in most aspects, and, perhaps most importantly, we have done a good deal, I believe, to carry forward the generational history of both the families in the region, as well as the region itself. I send my best wishes to all of our wonderful subscribers for all good things to be yours in the year 2004. -B =====================================================================