HANGING OF GARRISON

At the last interview, April 8, 1943, Mr. Williams said it was 69 years that night since Garrison was hanged. It was at the live oak tree about thirty steps south from the wall of the old cemetery. The limb is still there extending southeast. They made him (Cad) go along to the hanging, but then let him go. He had a herd of cattle bedded down at the Blansit place down the creek and he was afraid that the mob would leave going by in a hurry and cause a stampede of the cattle, because he knew that most of them were from out that way. But it didn’t happen. His brother Hal started on with the cattle and he caught up with them the next day. That was the way he fixed the date. (It seems that would make the date of the hanging April 8, 1884.

(I think this story is written up in more detail somewhere else. Garrison, a stranger with a big red moustache, was member of a ring of horse thieves operating at that time. Horses stolen would be brought from one place to another so they would not be recognized, and in this way passed on out of the country. This man was a bad operator and a bad influence on the younger boys. The law had seemed apparently unable to do anything about them evidently there was an organized conspiracy to get rid of him. Sheriff Sam Terry [S. D. Terry was sheriff from 1884-1886--Elreeta Weathers] seemed to have some business elsewhere, and he detailed Mr. Williams, one of his deputies at the time, with another fellow, maybe Cooper, to go to the jail and guard it, for Garrison had been arrested and locked up at the time. The mob gathered about the square wearing raincoats, though it didn’t look like rain, milling along. Old Judge Pierson heard the noise, came out on the upper porch of the Pierson Hotel in his nightshirt, and they yelled, "Judge, go back in." Mr. J. T. James with his family at that time lived in a building on the west side of the square. Mr. James stepped out the door to see what was going on and was truck with the butt of a rifle and told to get in. Many years later a man named Price Yale, or going by that name, recognized him out in New Mexico, and asked if he remembered the time he made him go back in the house. At the jail, which was in the alley back of saloon row on the north, made of planks nailed one on top of another. Mr. Williams and the other tried to resist the mob, which came surging and threatening on. The other man asked Mr. Williams if they should shoot and he said, no, he had too many friends in the crowd. Under further pressure they had to give up. A saloon keeper yelled out to Garrison, who at first thought it was a rescue party and not a hanging party, :You will be in hell within an hour!" He was led on to the place he was hanged. Next morning Mrs. Ed. Secrest, Aunt Mollie, and her sister, out early looking for their cow, saw a man hanging on a tree. This matter was taken up perfunctorily by the grand jury. They had Mr. Williams as a witness.  "Cad," asked the foreman, "did you recognize any of the men. Then he said that he did.  Foreman: "Are you going to tell their names?" The foreman began to redden. Mr. Williams said, "No, I am not." The foreman, who lived out near Evergreen, looked relieved, as well he might, because he was said to be the leader or one of them of the gang.

The man that built most of old Rock House was Old man Stout.

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