A Lynching in Boonville:1900, Boonville, Indiana
Boonville, Indiana was the bigger small town in our area when I was growing up. We went to Boonville for groceries on payday. We went to Boonville to go to the dentist. (My Dad worked at Peabody Coal Mine and so we were some of the lucky ones in our community and had dental insurance. Since we had well water with no fluoride in it we were always getting cavities as kids. We used toothpaste with fluoride but we weren’t the best about brushing and flossing as kids.)
Boonville was the county seat. The courthouse is still a lovely architectural landmark in the town square. (But in 1900 the courthouse was not yet built. There was a square and the courthouse was planned though. A wrought iron fence surrounded the spot where the courthouse would be built and mature trees were thriving in the corners. The streets were just dirt still in 1900.)
When we were older and started going to sporting events we often went to games in Boonville. Teens would drive around and around cruising in Boonville then. (Maybe you have seen the movie, American Graffiti, where teens just drove around town to have something to do on weekend nights. It was a bit like that.)
The 4-H Fair was held there every Summer. We would take our projects there and hope for a blue ribbon or a grand champion ribbon.
I have a lot of good memories of Boonville. One thing I never imagined happening in Boonville was something as horrific as a lynching.
When I was growing up I learned about the Civil War. I learned about the North and the South. I knew the war was terrible. I learned about slavery and how terrible it was. I was so relieved that I was from the North. In my very naive kid mind; I thought that everyone in the North was like me. We were all opposed to slavery and to mistreating black people. That’s what I thought as a kid. As I grew up I realized that a great many people around me in the North were actually very prejudiced. That was always shocking to me.
No black people lived in our area that I knew of. I always thought that this was because it was a poor area and most people were farmers. There wasn’t a lot of industry to attract workers from other areas. The coal mine was usually well supplied with male workers by the local population. (In the late 1980’s at least one white woman was hired but no one made it easy for her.)
I just mostly thought that black people did not move there because we did not have much to offer in the way of jobs and housing. I was very naive.
Our little school was made up of all white kids. Most of us were very poor. When I was in high school a black family moved into the community for a while but did not stay. I imagine now that they were harassed into leaving but I don’t know for sure. I’ve always felt bad about that.
I was, as I said, very naive. I learned more as I grew up and took other classes at college. I was also trying to survive an abusive dysfunctional household and a very misogynist society. I have since learned more about how racist Indiana is. But I was 56 before I found out that a lynching had taken place in Boonville.
In 1900, Boonville was the site of a lynching. These terrible crimes did not just happen in Mississippi and Alabama and places like that. The town of Rockport, just 26 miles east of Boonville, is where the story actually begins.
A white man, H. L. Simons, was robbed and murdered after closing up shop for the day. He and his brother-in-law operated a barber shop in Rockport, Indiana. Rockport was a busy river town with several mills and a thriving population. Saturday, December 15th had been particularly busy. He worked late into the evening cutting hair, trimming beards and shaving the many customers. Since it was the 15th,was probably payday for most workers. Hollie Simons left for home with the day’s earnings after midnight. Sometime around 1 a.m. he was attacked.
Several local black men in Rockport were blamed. Now, here are the reasons why I doubt the accusations against these three black men. The black men were probably not allowed to be customers of the barber shop. Also, it was not safe for them to be out on a Saturday night when white men had payday money and liquor in them. So, I completely doubt that black men robbed H.L. Simons. I imagine that a couple of white male customers had waited awhile for a haircut. They saw just how many men had gone in and paid for a haircut and did a little mental math. They got greedy, jealous and probably had a few drinks in them. I think someone like that killed Mr. Simons and robbed him. Some guys who stood around and watched all those haircuts and shaves.
In Rockport, where some of those men were being held until their trial, a mob formed. They stormed the jail and took the men being held there on Sunday the 16th of December, 1900. The mob hanged two black men: Fred Rowland and Jim Henderson. People in the crowd also shot at these men’s bodies as they hung there. “Half a hundred bullets” struck the men according to the local papers.
That scene was repeated in Boonville a day later. A black man known as “Hustling Joe” had been sheltered and hidden in Rockport by the Sheriff and Deputies. He was also nicknamed “Crowfoot” and “Rolly”. His real name was John Rolla or Joe Holly or Joe Rowley or John Rowley depending on which newspaper article you read. He said he was from Edmonson, Arkansas and asked that his body be sent back there to his parents. I found a John Rowley who was four in the 1880 Census in Arkansas. His mother was Ellie and his father was Lewis Rowley. He had an older brother named William and a little sister named Elizie. His father was a farmer in Choctaw Township, in Lincoln County, Arkansas. It is hilly there but there are areas that are cleared still near the spot that Edmonson used to occupy. Perhaps that is the land that was cleared by Lewis Rowley and his family.
Since the lynching of Fred Rowland and Jim Henderson, the Sheriff had kept John Rowley in The Veranda Hotel in Rockport and then left town in the dark of night. He undoubtedly knew that John Rowley was not safe in town. They had probably telegraphed ahead as the National Guard was deployed out of Evansville to try to quell the vigilante violence that did not seem likely to calm down on its own. They felt that John Rowley would be safe in the jail at Boonville. But, word had leaked.
I believe that John Rowley worked at the Veranda Hotel because his alibi was that he was at the hotel “making up a fire”. He was probably tasked with chopping wood and keeping the fireplaces going. It was December and it would have been cold out. He was only 24 years old. Maybe he had moved to Indiana thinking it was safer than Arkansas. Maybe he felt there would be more work. John Rowley was just a 24 year old young man trying to survive in the world.
The National Guard was deployed from Evansville to try to quell the violence and protect Joe. Before they could board their train to Boonville word came that it was too late.
Men, who were reportedly not from Boonville, made their way to the jail there. They stormed in using a streetlight pole as a battering ram. They used it and other things as levers to pry the bars off the wall as Sheriff Raymond Cherry refused to give them the keys. (Sheriff Cherry also fired no shots to prevent the mob from taking John Rowley.) Then they took John Rowley out to the square and hanged him as well on Monday, December 17th, 1900.
It was reported that they hanged him from a Sycamore tree on the Northwest corner of the square. That fact stung me. Sycamores have such striking white and grey bark. They are beautiful trees. To know what type of tree seems even sadder. I feel so bad for John Rowley. I feel so bad for the other two men as well. I feel so bad for the lives they never got to live.
One thousand people watched this happen and did nothing to prevent it. That’s the thing about terroristic violence. Terrorism paralyzes most people. Other younger people see the violence and learn racist lessons like “he must have been guilty if they did that to him.” Victim blaming strikes again. The newspaper articles vary. Some are incredibly racist and disgusting in their characterizations of the black populations of both Rockport and Boonville. Some seem more sympathetic and try to gently point out the injustice. They tiptoed around it so as not to raise the ire of the racists.
There’s also the fact that if people are out there cheering then the vigilantes will see those cheering folks as allies. People think that this makes them safer. It actually makes everyone less safe. The vigilantes now know who they can push around and exactly what they can get away with.
If you let a mob get away with one killing you are telling them it’s okay to kill anyone, including you.
Violence breeds more violence. Traumatized people often go on to do very traumatic things. People who witness violence like this can sometimes mistakenly think. that it’s best to be the bully. So, they bully their way through life. And then the next generation does that too.
The fact remains that someone killed Mr. Hollie L. Simons by hitting him over the head with a heavy stick of wood. It was reported that it had a nail driven through it as well. Simons died of head trauma. Three boys were reported to have run to try to help Mr. Simons: James Statler, John Johns and Walter Evans. Walter Evans was reported to be out of his mind after the first two men were hanged in Rockport. Was he just empathetic and sensitive or did he feel guilty? It’s hard to say. A thick board with a nail in it is the weapon of a teen or a young man with no money for a knife or a gun yet. But, that’s all just conjecture on my part.
H.L. Simons and his wife Orpha had an infant son at the time. Romel grew up and went off to Pennsylvania. In 1917, Romel Simons was only 17 when he passed away. He was the victim of a workplace accident at the American Radiator Company in Pennsylvania. He slipped and fell into a tank of boiling oil and died almost instantly. Orpha Simons never remarried and lived in Winslow, Indiana with relatives until her death in 1950. All three are buried in Winslow, Indiana at Oak Hill Cemetery. May they Rest In Peace.
Back in 1900, in Rockport, Indiana, Fred Rowland and Jim Henderson were buried likely in unmarked pauper’s graves.
But in Boonville, John Rowley was embalmed and placed in a coffin. At first I thought that this was just the decent thing to do and maybe some people of my old home county were being nice. I was wrong. Rowley’s body was displayed in the undertaker’s window and people came to town to gawk. The drawing in the paper says “From Photo” in the lower right corner. I take that to mean that someone took photographs and no doubt sold copies of those photos as souvenirs. Maybe there is one in an old box in your Great Grandpa's things. Who knows?
More than likely John Rowley was not buried in that coffin. The display clothes were probably also not on his body when it was buried. They did not send his body back to his family as he had asked. It was reported that he was buried in a pauper's grave somewhere in Boonville.
The newspapers all around would have done quite a bit more business than usual as well. People love to read all about such terrible things. I’m just as guilty there. I don’t read about these things because it brings me joy. I don’t like violence. I do try to learn from it though. I contemplate if I would have been braver and tried to stop the mob. Would I have been brave enough to shoot had I been the Sheriff in the jail?
Are these lynchings and others in the years to come the reason why black people did not continue to settle and thrive in Southern Indiana? Provably so.
It’s a tragedy.
There are lessons here if we are brave enough to learn them.
John Rowley, I believe that was his name, is buried in a pauper's grave somewhere in the Boonville area. I wonder if that location could be found and a marker could be placed?
May he Rest In Peace.
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