USA > Iowa > Jackson County > History of Jackson County, Iowa; Volume I > Part 37
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A. T. Wasson: Reside at Cottonville ; keep a store ; cannot tell when Wat- kins first paid me money after the murder, but think sometime in February; he paid me money several times ; it must have been the fore part of February ; he came in and got some cigars and paid for them ; this was the first time ; he run a small bill a short time before the murder ; he would come in and get cigars and somtimes when others were in would treat; I had a party before Feb- ruary 22d, one on the 22d, and one after. Several came in to the party, Wat- kins among the rest; think it was young George Nelson who spoke of going home; Watkins spoke to him and said he had better not go, and asked him why he could not stay ; he said he had not come prepared-could not pay his
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bill; Watkins said he would lend him money to pay his bill, and handed out a ten-dollar bill and wanted me to change it; I told him I could not do it, for I did not like to spare the small bills I had; Watkins then said, "Lend me a dollar until tomorrow, then I will pay you." I handed him the dollar, and the next morning he came in and handed me a ten-dollar bill and I gave him back nine dollars; can't tell the date, but think it was some time in February ; I can't tell when I had the first party ; it must have been at a dance before the 22d when he paid the bill, as the dance after the 22d was free.
Daniel S. Baker: I was with my sister, Mary Baker, that night, visiting my uncle, David Baker, one-half mile east of Cottonville; started for home at II o'clock, and my cousin, Melvin Baker, drove the team; we met defendant south of Cottonville when going home; drove moderately as the road was rough; there are hills between my uncle's and Cottonville; was twenty-five or thirty rods from corners when I saw the man in the field ; could not tell which way he was traveling, but think he was walking toward the fence; there were some trees along the road, and a house ; saw no cattle or horses in the field ; there are no obstructions to the view from where I was to by road, except a few trees near the corners and the house of Thomas Abbey. After we met Watkins we drove down past the schoolhouse to our house ; saw no one or heard nothing unusual to attract my attention.
John A. Hunter: At the tree where horse was hitched, where murder was committed, I saw two tracks-one No. 9 and the other No. 7; saw a little blood in one of the tracks; I live between where murder was committed and Phillips' ; heard teams going west at 8:30; saw them from the door and think they were wagons; saw defendant Nelson try his boot in one of the tracks; it was a size larger than Nelson's; when the team's passed, my wife remarked that it was late ; I looked at the clock, it was half past 8; the house stands ten or fifteen rods from the road; teams are constantly traveling along the road ; don't think I could hear a man passing my house on horseback ; at 9 o'clock I heard my father's dog barking; I should say there were no bells on these teams.
Alfred L. Palmer : I paid Cronk five dollars just before he was murdered ; prior to this he came to my office and wanted to sell me a note against some parties by the name of Reid, and I told him that I did not want to buy the note ; he said, "You may think I am hard up," and showed me his wallet; saw two or three twenty dollar bills and some tens.
B. F. Thomas: Reside in Andrew ; am an attorney ; know defendant Wat- kins ; between March 25th and April 16th defendant applied to me for money ; secured him twenty dollars ; did not let him have any the winter previous, and never let him have any but that time. This twenty dollars was advanced upon a bounty claim I got for Watkins, and was nearly two months after the mur- der of Cronk; let him have the money before he was arrested the second time.
Thomas Ray: Reside in Andrew ; am a blacksmith ; think these two pieces of clevis have been joined together at some time ; they are not now as I saw them ; one piece has been struck on something and dulled at the point ; one man evidently made both pieces; there is two kinds of iron in the two pieces, one soft and the other hard; before it was dulled the point fit it exactly.
James Thompson : Reside in Andrew ; am justice of peace ; Watkins, when before me on preliminary examination, made a statement in regard to the time of his arriving at Bucklin's, which was taken down in writing. When Mc- Combs brought the news of finding the horse I was in the sheriff's office and saw Watkins; he said nothing for a few moments and went out with me to Mr. Thomas' office ; on our way there he remarked : "I am sorry, I am sorry," but did not say for what; I made no reply ; do not recollect that he made any other remarks.
James Sawtell: Was in the wagon on the road when Whitley picked up the stick of wood; it was about eighteen inches long; on splinters on stick
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were several hairs and stains of a dark reddish cast, which I took to be blood ; saw Dean bring the piece of clevis to Whitley and give it to him.
This concludes the evidence on the part of the state.
Watkins was sentenced to be hanged February 21, 1868. An extension of time was granted until April 17th. Bucklin and Nelson, who had been ar- rested as accomplices, took a change of venue to Clinton county, and were ac- quitted, because the county commissioners objected to the expense of sum- moning so many witnesses. Watkins having been convicted on the theory of conspiracy, and that theory failing to convict the other conspirators, gave grounds for a new trial for Watkins.
It was generally believed that if Watkins was tried again that he would be cleared. The bugaboo of the great and useless expense that would be made, was talked up, and the prosecution was abandoned, and Watkins was turned loose. After his release he went to Clinton county, worked on a farm, and for a time clerked in a hardware store in Clinton. We believe the last heard of him in Clinton for years was of his being out with a man one night on a kind of a spree ; the next morning the man was found with his head split open, and Watkins had disappeared. His next exploit that we hear of was in Monona county.
While Watkins, Bucklin and Nelson were confined in Andrew, awaiting trial, a mob of two hundred men was organized to hang the three men. The mob, or vigilance committee, entered Andrew one evening and took possession of the town, giving out that they would hang the culprits next morning at 9 o'clock ; they had no idea of any resistance being attempted, and neglected the precau- tion of securing the prisoners, knowing full well that the old jail would offer but little resistance. But Sheriff Winfield Scott Belden, who had learned dis- cipline during three years of war, had but little respect for a mob, and had no thoughts of surrendering his prisoners to them. He had an interview with a boy during the night and persuaded him to carry a letter to the deputy sheriff in Maquoketa. 'Very early next morning the boy mounted a horse bareback and told the guards that he was going after his mother's cows, but when he got outside, rode straight and swiftly for Maquoketa. The sheriff in the meantime had taken a few determined men whom he could rely upon, and re- moved the prisoners from the jail to the third story of the courthouse, where a few men could stand off an army without artillery. When the mob had breakfasted and were ready for the hanging bee, they found that they had made a fatal mistake in not remembering the old adage about catching before hanging.
While they were parleying with the sheriff, the deputy arrived on the scene with a small army from Maquoketa, and the hanging was indefinitely post- poned. In less than a year these same men were quite willing to have Wat- kins turned loose, to save the expense of another trial, and no one ever offered to molest him.
To show the wonderful nerve of Watkins: we are told that while he was under the sentence of death, some young ladies from Cottonville called to see him one day in the jail; while in conversation with him a load of lumber was brought to the jail for the scaffold. Watkins watched the men unloading it unconcernedly, and remarked it was his valentine.
THE DEATH OF WATKINS RECALLS FAMOUS MURDER. BY WILLIAM GRAHAM.
The death of Watkins, the life prisoner in the penitentiary, whose applica- tion for pardon would have come before the next legislature, removed one whose career in Jackson county gave rise to one of the most notable and sensational trials for murder which that county ever knew. At our request, one of his coun-
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sel has given us an outline of the case, which at the time attracted great attention in the eastern part of the state.
On the morning of January 24, 1867, the body of a man was found by some children on their way to school, lying just over the fence by the side of a cross road, and only a few rods from what was known as the Hunter School- house, one mile south of Cottonville. The man had evidently been murdered, as his head was smashed in by a blow on his forehead over his eyes, and there were two other wounds on the back of his head. His hat and trousers had been carried off, the body having been carried to the fence and thrown over and two rails laid across it. The footprints of those who carried the body were plainly visible, and also the mark of another peculiar shoe in the snow, which had been scraped up in the road to cover the blood where the man had been killed. An alarm was given by the school teacher, a young lady, and the neighbors removed the body to Cottonville, where it was recognized as the body of Samuel S. Cronk, a resident of Andrew, who had been a soldier in the Thirty-first Iowa, and had spent an hour or two in Cottonville the day before.
It seems that a case was to be tried before Hon. A. R. Cotton at Andrew on the 23d and Sheriff Belden engaged Cronk to go to Lamotte to serve a subpoena on Hon. John Wilson, while he himself went to Bellevue to notify the writer. Cronk stopped at Cottonville on his way to see some of his old soldier friends, and they persuaded him to attend a party there, and serve the subpoena after- ward. He reached Lamotte about 2 o'clock in the morning, and after rousing up Mr. Wilson, went to bed at the hotel there and slept until about 9 o'clock. After breakfast he returned to Cottonville, and there met Samuel P. Watkins, who had been his comrade in the army, belonging to the same company, and occupying the same bunk in winter quarters, and the same tent in summer, and sleeping under the same blanket when on the march, and who had also attended the party the night before. They had a little conversation in Purdy's saloon, and then Cronk went to a shoe shop, across the street, and there took out his pocket book and showing quite a lot of money. At the party the night before he had boasted that he had sold his farm for one thousand, three hundred dollars, and had "the money in his breeches." This boast was not true, but it probably cost Cronk his life. He had bargained to sell his farm; but, as he was not quite twenty-one, he could not give a good deed for a month yet, and the money he had in his pocket book was probably about one hundred and twenty dollars which he had received from other sources. He was undoubtedly murdered by parties who were trying to rob him of the money he had boasted of having.
After Cronk's visit to the shoe shop, he returned to Watkins, and after a lit- tle conversation, they went off together on foot, leading Cronk's horse, telling parties who saw them that they were going to the house of George Nelson, a farmer living some two miles or more southeast of Cottonville, who was the father of two rather attractive daughters. They spent the afternoon there, and Watkins expected to stay all night. But about sundown Mr. Nelson, who had been away, returned, bringing with him another daughter and her children, and a son-in-law came to spend the night, which, with Nelson's family, made a pretty full house. The young people spent a merry evening together, but the old man was not at all pleased with their company, and quite early began to make prepa- rations to go to bed in the sitting room they were occupying. The young men took the hint and left on foot, leading Cronk's horse as before. Their road this time took them directly toward the Hunter schoolhouse, distant about a mile and a half away. But half a mile from Nelson's there was a byroad through the fields leading to Cottonville, which left the main road at the house of Mr. King. Watkins insisted that here he and Cronk shook hands and bade each other good night, and Cronk mounted his horse, and started for Andrew on a canter. Mrs. King heard some one approaching her house, and went to the door, expecting to meet a neighbor who was to have come that evening on an errand. She did not see any one, but heard some one pass her house whistling, and heard a horse
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going west on the road faster than a walk. Some young people, returning home from a visit, saw by the bright moonlight some one walking on this byroad near the Cottonville end, and on turning a corner met him and recognized him as Watkins, and spoke to him. This was just a mile from the scene of the murder, and a mile and a half or more from where he claimed to have parted with Cronk.
Shortly afterward Watkins, John B. Bucklin, with whom Watkins lived, and Calvin Nelson, a brother-in-law of Bucklin and a son of George Nelson, were arrested, charged with the murder, but as nothing could be proved against them they were discharged. Cronk's horse had disappeared, and the community was settling down to the belief that the murder had been committed by some parties who had taken the horse, and left the country. But on the first Sunday in April John Matthews, passing through the woods on his way home, discovered the carcass of Cronk's horse. It had been fastened to two trees growing near each other and left to starve to death. The poor animal, in its agony, had gnawed off both trees, one nearly six inches in diameter, but unfortunately just above where the halter and straps had been tied instead of below, and in its efforts to get loose strained at its bonds until the headstall had cut through skin and flesh to the very bone.
The finding of the horse, within a short distance of the residence of the par- ties who had been suspected, aroused new interest in the case, and the neighbors, on searching the surrounding woods, found Cronk's hat not far away with the lining torn out, and his empty pocketbook near a fence, and in the snow which had fallen early that year the footprints of three persons, and the measurements of one of the tracks exactly corresponded with a very peculiar shoe worn at that time by Bucklin, and were similar to the track in the bloody snow at the place of the murder. The other footprints were the same size of those found at that place and all corresponded with the sizes of the shoes worn by the prisoners.
A further search discovered Cronk's pantaloons under a brush heap not far from Bucklin's house. All the linings had been torn open, showing that those who were responsible for Cronk's death were in search of the thirteen hundred dollars which Cronk had boasted he "had in his breeches." A further search of Bucklin's house revealed a piece of an iron clevis broken at "the goose neck," but no importance was attached to that until a few days afterward when a man picked up in a plowed field within fifty feet of where Cronk had been killed the other piece of the clevis with a strip of blue drilling attached to it, which parties remembered having seen Bucklin's little boy drag around the house as a play- thing. On examining Cronk's body, this piece of iron exactly fitted the wound over his eyes, which had crushed his skull.
Excitement rose to fever heat. Watkins, Bucklin and Nelson were again arrested, and while the two latter were admitted to bail, Watkins was held with- out bail. An impromptu vigilance committee was organized to hang Watkins, and only the determination of the sheriff, aided by the other county officers, who successfully defended the stairs leading to the sheriff's office against the mob, prevented the lynching of the prisoner. At one time the sheriff despaired of be- ing able to protect him much longer, and told him that he believed the mob would hang him within the next quarter of an hour. "Let them hang, and be d-m," was Watkins' answer, and he asked for a sheet of paper, and began writing what those with him at the time thought was a confession, but which proved to be a letter to his girl. His coolness and selfpossession all through were remarkable. Soon after he was placed in the jail at Dubuque for safe keeping to protect him from mob violence.
The grand jury in September following indicted all three of them for willful murder, and the case came on for trial at the December term, 1867. At the re- quest of the prisoner, the court appointed William Graham, who had recently removed from Jackson county to Dubuque, and D. A. Wynkoop, then of Belle- vue, to defend him, and set the case for trial next morning, refusing counsel further time to prepare for trial.
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The late C. M. Dunbar, of Maquoketa, volunteered to assist the defense, and they were also aided by B. F. Thomas, of Andrew, who had appeared at the preliminary examination. Hon. Lyman A. Ellis, of Lyons, was district attorney, and was assisted in the prosecution by Hon. J. S. Darling, now of Clinton, who then resided in Andrew. Hon. J. Scott Richman, of Muscatine, one of the best judges in the state, was on the bench. Hon. Geo. L. Heberling, afterward mem- ber of the legislature and late United States marshal; Captain Hustis, a retired sea captain, and Forest Miles, on whose land the town of Miles was afterward built, were on the jury. The judge and the district attorney, and Mr. Wynkoop and Mr. Dunbar have since died; the others are still living and are in full practice.
The trial began on December 12th and the remainder of that week was con- sumed in obtaining a jury. About a hundred talesmen- were examined, and nearly all were excused because of having formed an opinion adverse to the prisoner. On Saturday afternoon a jury was obtained, and on Monday the case was opened and the taking of testimony began, and, the court sitting day and night, was closed late Saturday night. The most intense interest was manifested, and the excitement rose higher day by day.
Popular opinion was all against the prisoner, and permeated the jury as well as the audience, and unconsciously affected the bench. The trial was a battle royal, the stake being a young man's life. The counsel for the state had no superiors as trial lawyers in the Seventh district. The district attorney was serv- ing the fifth year in the position which he filled for sixteen years successively, and Judge Darling was in the full maturity of his powers. Cronk was the son of an early pioneer of Jackson county, who was killed while crossing the plains to California, and his sister, who had been adopted by the family of the county treasurer, had retained Judge Darling to prepare the case for the state, and was using every effort to secure the punishment of one whom she believed to be the slayer of her only brother. So that public zeal and private vengeance were both enlisted in the prosecution of the accused. None of the counsel for the defense had ever participated in the trial of a capital case before, and to all of them, except Mr. Wynkoop, who was just beginning the career in which he had won so many victories, the practice of criminal law was exceedingly distasteful. Their client had no means to aid his defense, and but few friends, and no relatives within a thousand miles. But the case was stubbornly contested inch by inch in spite of the adverse sentiment of outsiders.
To show the difficulties under which the counsel for the accused labored, it may be said that none of them, except Mr. Thomas, had ever exchanged a word with their client until after he requested the court to assign them to defend him. Knowing something of the prejudice against him, their first step was to prepare an application for a change of venue to another county. When the sheriff heard of this, he went to the counsel, and told them that an organization had been per- fected to lynch the prisoner if he should apply for a continuance of the case, or for a change of venue. That a guard had been set over the jail, and every road into the town was picketed day and night so that it would not be possible to get him out of town if the change should be granted; that he had no force to defend him; and that filing the application would mean certain death to the accused within an hour. The other county officers, who had risked their own lives pre- viously in defending him against the mob, confirmed the sheriff's statement, and as the defendant's counsel were not desirous of hastening their client's departure from this world, they did not file their application, preferring to risk the adverse verdict of a jury rather than death by a mob violence, and entered upon the trial with the feeling that a rope was already around the neck of the accused.
The prisoner was the last person seen in company with the deceased before his death. This fact, together with a statement made by him before his arrest as to the time he left Nelson's house, was the strongest evidence against him. The state attempted to show that shortly before the murder, Watkins was without
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money, and that shortly after he paid various bills, amounting to thirty dollars ; but the testimony was quite inconclusive on this point, and the attempt to identify some of the money he paid out as part of that in Cronk's possession the day be- fore his death, failed. The neighbors of the accused, while he lived at Cotton- ville, testified to his excellent character. His captain in the army, and Captain Bockius, who commanded another company in the same regiment, bore witness to his merits as a soldier, and his good behavior, and his intimacy with the de- ceased, and Colonel Theodore Stimming, who led the regiment through Georgia on Sherman's famous "March to the Sea," came down from Dubuque to add his testimony in the defendant's favor, speaking of him in high terms as one who had served under him three years with credit to himself, and who had never been guilty of any act of cruelty, and was never known to quarrel with any of his comrades. The law at that time did not allow the accused to testify in his own behalf.
The case was argued to the jury on the second Monday of the trial, District Attorney Ellis making the opening argument for the state, calmly and dispas- sionately reviewing the case. At I o'clock p. m. Mr. Graham made the opening argument for the defendant, occupying two hours, and Mr. Wynkoop followed, speaking until after 6 o'clock. In the evening Judge Darling closed the case with a powerful address in which he severely arrainged the prisoner. About II o'clock of Christmas eve, Judge Richman gave a charge to the jury, unexcep- tionable throughout, and they immediately retired.
The next morning the writer was obliged to return home on account of sick- ness in his family, but before leaving Andrew was informed that the jury was "hung," and heard reputable and leading citizens openly discussing on the streets whether they should not take the prisoner out of jail and hang him without wait- ing for the verdict of the jury. So marked was this manifestation of hostility to the accused, that he believed that the prisoner would be lynched before night. The judge called the jury in twice and urged them to agree, the second time in terms which the counsel for the accused deemed prejudicial to him. But after seventeen hours, Peter German, the juror who stood out longest, gave in, and the jury returned a verdict of "guilty of murder in the first degree" (a grewsome Christmas gift for the defendant), and six hours afterward the judge overruled a motion for a new trial, and sentenced the prisoner to be executed on February 21, 1868.
A story has gone the rounds of the newspapers that Watkins saw without a tremor from the jail window the building of the scaffold on which he was to be executed. This is not correct. No scaffold was ever built for him. The sheriff did erect a building for a stable, in which it was intended that the execution should take place, if at all, and with the material for the building was also deliv- ered the material for the scaffold, but it was never used. The sheriff and the prisoner both knew that an appeal would be taken to the supreme court, and that the appeal would be taken if necessary before the day set for executing the sen- tence. But the appeal could be taken at any time within a year, and his counsel deemed it best to put it off as long as possible so as to give the popular prejudice against their client time to abate.
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