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Ghost Cowboy is about real tales from the 19th-century American frontier, when the Old West was young. Most of the posts here are actual news items from the 1800s and early 1900s. We'll be adding "new" content every week. Travel with us and sign up for an account, and you'll be able to leave comments and post in our forums. Your trailmasters, Ken in Alabama and Dave in Virginia, don't get to saddle up and vacation out west as often as they'd like, so they started this site. Drop us a note.

frontiersman


LYNCH LAW IN INDIANA.


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Ohio Democrat / December 18, 1868

The Seymour Vigilance Committee Seize the New Albany Jail & Hang the Adams Express Robbers.

INDIANAPOLIS, December 12 — The Seymour Vigilance Committee visited the New Albany Jail this morning about three o’clock and hung the Reno brothers and Charles Anderson, inside the Jail, and left town before any alarm was given.

Cincinnati, December 12 — The following particulars of the hanging of the Reno brothers at New Albany have been received by the Cincinnati Times, dated New Albany, Indiana, December 12:

Between three and four o’clock this morning from sixty to seventy Seymour

FATAL DUEL IN DENVER.


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New-York Times / August 3, 1897

Two “Crooks” Fight With Pistols in a Small Room – Both Killed.

DENVER, Aug. 2. – A duel between two “crooks,” F. H. Edgar of Salt Lake City, and Harry Duff, supposed to be “Billy” O’Brien of San Francisco, in a small room in a hotel on the corner of Curtis and Fifteenth Streets this afternoon, at 3 o’clock, resulted in the death of both men.

The duelists and a fellow called George Sheldon, who is believed to be James Cullen, recently released from the Utah Penitentiary, came here a week ago from Salt Lake City, where they had been “working” the visitors to the Pioneers’ Jubilee.

Execution Day: July 7, 1865


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The four condemned Lincoln assassination conspirators (Mrs. Surratt, Payne, Herold, Atzerodt) with officers and others on the scaffold at Fort McNair. July 7, 1865. Photo by Alexander Gardner. View full size.

Adjusting the Ropes


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Lincoln assassination conspirators. Adjusting the ropes for hanging the condemned at Fort McNair. July 7, 1865. From left, Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold and George Atzerodt. Photo by Alexander Gardner. View full size.

 

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