(This history column first appeared in the August print edition of the Hendersonian.)
Thousands of people gathered Feb. 5, 1892, in the courthouse square to witness the last legal hanging in Henderson County.
There’s a distinction, of course, between legal executions and lynching. Rainey Bethea was hanged Aug. 14, 1936, in Owensboro. That was the country’s last public execution. In his trial, Bethea was convicted of raping a 70-year-old white woman. His lawyers presented no defense and the jury returned a verdict in less than five minutes.
Sonya Lea of Seattle (who was born in Owensboro) characterized that as a legal lynching in her 2025 book, “American Bloodlines: Reckoning with Lynch Culture.” Her grandparents attended the execution as newlyweds, and she also is related to the prosecutor most responsible for the public hanging.
“By 1892, almost three decades after the (Civil) war, throughout the South, there was a lynching every thirty-six hours,” she asserts. The most lynchings in a single year—about 230—occurred in 1892, according to the NAACP.
I’d hesitate to call the hanging that year of Robert Charlton a legal lynching, but I’ll lay out the story as it appeared in the paper and allow you to draw your own conclusions.
Charlton, 20, was a Black man who lived with Minnie Martin, 24, in Chance Alley, which runs between First and Second streets and is an extension of Holloway Street.
“MURDER MOST FOUL,” read the headline of The Gleaner in the Sept. 29, 1891, issue. The killing had taken place about 6 p.m. Sept. 27. Charlton had been shooting craps at Minor Mason’s house and had lost all his money. He sent his half-brother to ask for more and she gave him a dollar. He lost that and asked again, but she refused to provide more.
He had been drinking and became enraged. So, he borrowed a pistol from his half-brother, swearing he’d “make that damned woman give me some money.” He began beating her and slashed her across the face before he took out the borrowed gun and fired three shots. One hit her in the head, another in the neck, and the third “struck her corset steel and failed to penetrate.”
Charlton fled and hopped a freight train; the sheriff offered a $50 reward. His half-brother, William Charlton, was arrested that night.
“If caught (Robert Charlton) will be tried for murder and hanged, as his guilt is evident.”
The Gleaner ran almost two dozen stories, some no more than a paragraph, about the murder and its aftermath. The Oct. 1 edition noted a constable had caught him at Smyrna, Tennessee, Charlton’s former home. The Oct. 2 paper reported Charlton had been brought back to Henderson.
Again, The Gleaner said, “It is not hard to foresee the result of the trial.”
The Oct. 2 edition also carried a story about the possibility of lynching. Jailer Elliott M. Johnson presented an affidavit to the circuit judge saying unless Charlton were moved to another jail he would be “taken by force and violence and murdered, and that there are other prisoners that will be taken therefrom and dealt with in the same manner.”
Circuit Judge J.F. Lockett turned down the request because he was “no longer desiring that the authority of law and order should flee in the face of an apprehended mob.” He did, however, authorize hiring nine additional deputies to guard the jail between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. for the next several nights.
The Oct. 7 Gleaner said Charlton and his half-brother were indicted the first time for murder. They entered not guilty pleas and H. Turner Lockett and C.F. Sugg were appointed to represent them. It appears they made a vigorous defense.
Exactly a week later they were indicted again because of a legal mix-up. The 1891 Kentucky Constitution had gone into effect the morning after Minnie Martin was murdered. The 1850 Constitution called for a grand jury of 16 men and the 1891 document reduced that to a dozen. Charlton had been indicted under the old constitution—which the defense attorneys were quick to point out.
The judge winnowed the grand jury down but kept 12 of those who had been members of the original grand jury. New indictments were returned. The defense attorneys objected in vain to using members of the original grand jury.
Seven jury members were picked Oct. 13 before it was time to quit: Henry F. Dade Sr., who became foreman, O. Curry, J.M. Stone Jr., A.S. Crafton, Wynn G. Dixon, R.S. Hicks and W.W. Cheatham. The five selected the next day, all bystanders, were William Moseley, George Gibson, Scott Littlepage, Dick Gervin and Silas Williams.
The trial ended Oct. 15 and there were “quite a number” of witnesses, according to The Gleaner, which said Charlton practically convicted himself by his testimony. Defense attorney Sugg, in his closing statement, spoke for 50 minutes. “He stated that Charlton was not able to distinguish right from wrong on account of his transient insanity caused by drinking several pints of mean whisky….”
The jury was out for an hour before returning a guilty verdict with the death penalty.
The charges against William Charlton, the half-brother, were dismissed, according to the Oct. 17 Gleaner. A reporter attempted to talk with Robert Charlton but he was reluctant, according to the Oct. 27 edition. “He sticks to his statement that he was drunk when the shooting occurred (and) that it was done accidentally while she was trying to take the revolver from him.”
On several occasions Charlton thanked Jailer Johnson for the kindness he and his family had shown. The Jan. 19, 1892, Gleaner noted that “a close intimacy has sprung up between Charlton and (the jailer) who is profoundly moved at the fate that must soon overtake the man.”
The story also noted, with the help of Rev. H.W. Smith of the Episcopal Church and Rev. Dudley Powers of the Methodist Episcopal Church, “Charlton has become much more penitent and … he has been heard to both sing and pray in the dead hours of the night.”
The Jan. 27 Gleaner reported, “Robert Charlton was handcuffed yesterday and brought out on the west side of the jail to have his picture taken by Photographer A.G. Roberts.” (I’ve often wondered what happened to Roberts’ files.)
A purported letter from Charlton appeared in The Gleaner of Jan. 30 but the next day’s edition denounced it as “a palpable falsehood.”
Charlton received two pieces of bad news in the Feb. 2 edition. The crucial one was that Governor John Brown had refused to commute his death sentence. But the painful one was a letter from his mother. She would not come to see him before he hanged because her husband was sick.
The Feb. 4 Gleaner reported a scaffold was being erected on the west side of the jail. The Feb. 5 edition noted there was much talk about out-of-town visitors coming to see the execution. It also advertised that the Feb. 6 edition would contain a thorough account of Charlton’s death, and that extra copies would be printed so people could send them to friends and relatives.
But existing copies of The Gleaner—as well as the Henderson Journal—don’t appear in the microfilmed files. So, I’ve had to rely on the Evansville Courier’s account and the brief mention in Jack Hudgion’s manuscript history of the county.
Hudgions reported 8,000 people witnessed Charlton’s death. The Courier of Feb. 6 estimated the crowd at “fully 3,000 people, including men, women and children, both white and colored.
“The courthouse hill, the roof of the courthouse, outbuildings and every tree was filled with people anxious to watch the doomed man drop into eternity.”
Charlton calmly walked to the gallows at 11:30 a.m. dressed in a new suit of black. He made a short speech, confessing to Minnie Martin’s death but again saying it was an accident.
“I am ready and willing to die for her.” He then thanked the jailer and the ministers who had counseled him. “If I had received such attention before, I probably would not be here today.”
His head was covered, the rope was adjusted, and the trap was sprung, dropping him 6 feet, 4 inches and breaking his neck. “There was a slight contraction of his limbs and shoulders, a slight tremor, and then he became quiet.” The county doctor pronounced him dead about 10 minutes later and he was buried in an unmarked grave.
As soon as he was cut down, there was a general rush and in a few moments, the fatal rope was cut into macabre souvenirs. The black cap he had worn was given to the police department in Mount Vernon, Illinois. Police officers from Evansville, Owensboro and surrounding cities also attended the hanging.
At the end of the Evansville Courier’s story was the facsimile of a letter Charlton supposedly had written to his mother in Tennessee. (I can’t vouch for it, considering the fake letter The Gleaner had printed Jan. 30.)
Rev. Dudley Powers had offered to pay her expenses to come see him one last time, he complained, “but you refused my last request of you.
“You told me to prepare for heaven and meet you there. I will just say that I have got to die and am prepared, but I am prepared for the Devil and Hell.”
Despite The Gleaner’s somewhat bloodthirsty tone throughout its coverage, it denounced public executions in a Feb. 7 editorial.
“Hereafter, for morality’s sake … let hanging be private. Such brazen publicity as that on Friday is calculated to do great harm.”
