Found records detail a lynching

Associated Press

ASOTIN — When Asotin County commissioner Don Scheibe looked through a dusty box from the courthouse basement, he didn’t expect to find details of a century-old lynching.

But coroner’s reports related to the 1903 hanging of Will Hamilton brought new attention to a legendary incident here, one of the last in Washington’s sordid legacy of lynchings.

Hamilton, a 26-year-old white man, was taken by a mob from jail and hanged for the murder and attempted rape of a 12-year-old girl from nearby Anatone.

"I’d heard all my life of him being lynched in Asotin," Scheibe said. The documents contained "virtually the same story, except it pinpointed the places where he was hanged and she was found.

"There had been arguments on where it was over the years," Scheibe said.

Lynching was a sad fate most associated with blacks in the South, but it was not uncommon in Washington. There were 18 lynchings in the state between the 1860s and 1919, according to research by Michael Pfeifer, a history professor at The Evergreen State College in Olympia.

"I probably missed a few," Pfeifer said.

The Washington lynchings were about evenly split among spontaneous mob violence, like Hamilton suffered, and private hangings carried out by relatives or friends of someone allegedly harmed by the victim of the lynching.

There were more lynchings in Washington than in the neighboring states of Idaho and Oregon, a fact which Pfeifer cannot explain.

"The tradition of lynching took a deeper root here," he said.

Of course, Washington does not approach the lynching levels of Georgia, where there were about 500 recorded lynchings from 1880 to 1930, Pfeifer said.

Unlike those in the South, victims of Washington lynchings tended to be white, with a few American Indians.

Pfeifer’s list begins with an unnamed American Indian lynched near Steilacoom in the early 1860s for the murder of a Chinese immigrant, and concludes with the killing of Wesley Everest, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, in Centralia for murder on Nov. 11, 1919.

Hamilton’s hanging on Aug. 5, 1903, was the second-to-last lynching in Washington.

According to documents found in the courthouse, Mabel Richards was last seen walking to Sunday school west of the town of Anatone on Aug. 3, 1903.

Her battered body was found in the woods the next day.

Hamilton, a rancher, confessed to killing the girl and was jailed. On the night of Aug. 5, about 100 masked men rode down the hill from Anatone to the county seat of Asotin.

The identities of the lynch mob were never known. But Anatone was a very small town and Scheibe has long suspected that his great-grandfather was involved, although he has no proof of that. His family has lived in Asotin County since the late 1870s, Scheibe said.

"It really was a reach back in history for me," Scheibe said of reading the documents.

The lynch mob broke into the jail and took Hamilton behind the courthouse. He was hanged from a power line, with the crowd erupting in cheers.

Documents from the inquests conducted by former Coroner H.R. Merchant had disappeared into storage boxes, which were found earlier this year as the courthouse was cleaned for renovation.

The reports, handwritten in a cursive script in pencil, are contained in two orange envelopes that sit on Scheibe’s desk.

The coroner’s report for Richards quotes witnesses who saw the girl alive.

"She was walking along the road and I was going at a good fast gallop and she got out of the road to let me pass," testified Clifford Applington, 14.

"I next saw her today," the boy told the coroner, "quite a piece from where I saw her yesterday, and her body was lying along the same road, a short distance in the woods."

There is also an account of Hamilton’s interview with the coroner.

"I met the little girl on the road and I said ‘hello,’ and she said, ‘How do you do?’ And I asked her where she was going and she said she was going to Sunday school," Hamilton told the coroner.

"I jumped down off my horse and hugged and kissed her," Hamilton said.

But the transcription ended there as Hamilton objected to having his words written down.

The Aug. 8, 1903, edition of the Asotin County Sentinel provided details.

The article said Richards departed for Sunday school ahead of her mother and two siblings. When the girl never reached church, a search began. Her body was found outside of town. Hamilton at first denied involvement, then confessed a few hours later and was jailed in Asotin.

Meanwhile, the girl’s body was taken to Asotin.

"A glance at the little lifeless body gave immediate impetus to the mob fever that steadily spread throughout the day," the Lewiston Tribune reported at the time. A long wooden club, allegedly used to kill the girl, was also on display.

Hamilton was interviewed in the jail by a Lewiston Tribune reporter, who in the vivid prose of the day wrote that "a glance suggested his moral degeneracy."

"A slanting forehead, rounded shoulders that gave a decided stoop to his bearing, hair prematurely gray, all told the same story," the reporter wrote.

"I told her to go into the thickets with me," Hamilton was quoted as saying. "She didn’t want to go and I kind of put both arms around her and, leading the horse, left the road for a considerable distance."

"I didn’t succeed in my purpose and then I made her promise not to tell," Hamilton told the reporter. "She gave this promise."

But Hamilton said he did not believe the girl. He choked her and then used a club to strike her in the head.

The reporter asked if he didn’t feel horror at the attack.

"No, I didn’t," Hamilton replied. "The feeling just came to me to kill her and I thought no more about it than killing a cat."

News of Hamilton’s confession brought throngs of people from nearby communities to the streets of Asotin. The crowd was estimated at up to 600, far larger than the population of the town.

It may have been the most excitement ever seen in Asotin, a Snake River farming community five miles south of Clarkston that now has about 1,100 residents.

Around midnight, the masked riders from Anatone rode into town. Jail guards were overpowered and Hamilton was marched down Fillmore Street, according to testimony that Sheriff’s Deputy Ed Grounds gave the coroner.

Hamilton confessed to the lynch mob, a rope was placed around his neck and he was hoisted into the air.

His body was buried in the Asotin cemetery.

The coroner’s inquest concluded that Hamilton was killed by "persons unknown."

Associated Press