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'''The Lynching of the Frenches of Warsaw''' happened in [[Warsaw, Kentucky|Warsaw]], [[Gallatin County, Kentucky]] on May 3, 1876 in between 1am-2am on a Wednesday morning. The lynching of the Frenches of Warsaw (Benjamin and Mollie French, husband and wife) was a situation where blacks were lynched by whites for the murder of a black man (Lake Jones).<ref name=Wright>Wright, George C. 1990. Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865-1940: Lynchings, Mob Rule, and “Legal Lynchings”. Louisiana State University Press. Baton Rouge and London. Pgs. 98-99.</ref> The Frenches had attempted to rob the elderly Lake Jones, a man of property, who had served faithfully, before and after the [[Emancipation Proclamation]], a prominent white man named Mr. Howard.<ref name=lynch2>Cincinnati Commercial. May 5, 1876. http://www.nkyviews.com/gallatin/text/lake_jones_lynched_2.htm</ref> The Frenches then killed Lake Jones by [[arsenic poisoning]]. Lake Jones was, according to many Warsaw whites, “the best nigger in the country.”<ref name=lynch>Cincinnati Enquirer. May 5, 1876. “A Bloody Night's Work at Warsaw, Ky.” http://www.nkyviews.com/gallatin/text/lake_jones_lynched.htm</ref><ref name=Wright/><ref name=lynch3>''Frankfort Tri-Weekly Yeoman''. May 11, 1876. http://www.nkyviews.com/gallatin/text/lake_jones_lynched_3.htm</ref> The Frenches were broken out of jail, taken 1 mile (or 3/4 of a mile) north of Warsaw, and both of them were hung on the same tree on J.H. McDaniels (or Jim McDonnell's) farm. <ref name=lynch/> <ref name=lynch2/>
==The Murder and Attempted Robbery of Lake Jones==
Lake Jones lived with his cousin Mollie French and her husband Benjamin in an old run down building called “the Malt-house” in Warsaw.<ref name=lynch/> Lake Jones spent much of his money when he joined the French family in providing for them and paying for their rent. Eventually, Lake Jones moved out.
On April 19, 1876—a Wednesday—Lake Jones went to work on a farm as usual and “returned in the evening as healthy and fresh as ever.”<ref name=lynch/> Mollie French invited Lake Jones to have dinner with the Frenches, and Lake agreed. A half hour later, Lake Jones began to feel sick, vomiting up blood, and complaining of a burning pain in his stomach and intestines. Jones got so sick that he threw himself on the floor and rolled about in great agony crying for help, calling for a physician. The Frenches did nothing to help Lake Jones.
An hour later, some neighbors helped Lake Jones into his bed, and called Dr. Robinson. Dr. Robinson suspected that Lake had been poisoned with arsenic.
After 3 days of agony, Lake Jones died on April 22, 1876—a Saturday.
[[Judge-Executive]] Brown of the County Court ordered an investigation on April 24—a Monday. It was discovered that Benjamin French had procured one ounce of arsenic at Vance's drug store a few days before, saying he wanted it to kill rats. Upon questioning, both Benjamin and Mollie French admitted that Benjamin bought the poison, but denied they bought it to murder Lake Jones. Later that evening, Mollie French tried to escape "with Place Reston, a Negro roustabout, with whom she had had improper intercourse for some time.”<ref name=lynch/>
The after death examination by Dr. Robinson further substantiated Lake had died of arsenic poisoning. “[The] stomach of Jones was sent to Louisville for chemical examination.”<ref name=lynch2/>
Benjamin and Mollie French were arrested on April 24th, 1876 by Judge Brown's order, and charged with murder. It was suggested that Place Reston also be arrested, but Judge Brown refused to do so, believing Mr. Reston didn't have anything to do with the murder of Lake Jones.
==The Lynch Mob Break the Frenches of Warsaw Out of Jail==
After being in the Warsaw jail for 10 days, on the morning of May 3, 1876—John Brown, A. Kirby and Charles Woods—three young men working at the Brown Hotel “heard the noise of horses trotting about the streets”. The 3 young men peeped out of the window, and perceived a disguised man on horseback in the middle of the square in front of the Courthouse. Near the next corner, a party of five or six men were halting.<ref name=lynch/> It was easy to see everything that was going on because that Wednesday was “a brilliant night,” as “the moon shone brightly,” and “it was nearly as light as day”.<ref name=lynch/>
The “man on the Court-house (sic) square called out, “All ready”, and the whole party moved up toward the jail building, which is a small one-story brick building in the back of the Courthouse.”<ref name=lynch/> At 1:10am, Jailer Joseph Wilshire, “whose grim and grave looks are more threatening then his small and feeble frame”, lived about 150 yards away from the brick jailhouse. Wilshire was awakened by knocks on his front and back doors. The men cried out, “Get up, Uncle Joe. Take your keys. We bring a prisoner from the country.”<ref name=lynch/>
A small discrepancy, but the [[Cincinnati Commercial]] reported that the crowd of masked men “got the keys from [Jailer Joseph Wilshire's] wife”, whereas the [[Cincinnati Enquirer]] reported that Joseph Wilshire got the keys himself.<ref name=lynch2/><ref name=lynch/>
After Jailer Joe Wilshire got his keys, and came out the back door, he was met by two masked men, who pulled pistols out on him, and told him to keep quiet.<ref name=lynch/>
Joseph Wilshire shut the door in their faces, and tried to escape out the front door, but he was immediately seized by six to eight armed masked men, who ordered him, under penalty of death, to go with them to the jail door. At the jail, six or eight more of the lynching party were waiting. Wilshire obeyed the men, and opened the jail door; then he opened the inside door to the cell room, and; finally, Wilshire opened last the door of the cell where Benjamin and Mollie French lay.<ref name=lynch/>
Benjamin and Mollie French were both sound asleep.
The leader of the gang woke them up and told them: “We will take you from this prison to another one.” Ben French answered: “I thought we were going to be tried by a civil Court.” Those were the only words exchanged at the jail.<ref name=lynch/>
The woman did not say a word, nor did she offer the slightest resistance, and both of the Frenches of Warsaw followed their hangmen “like sheep to the slaughter”. Two minutes later, the lynching party, except two men, who remained to guard the Jailer, rode away quickly, after putting their prisoners on horses which they brought along for this special purpose. 20 minutes later, the Jailer was told by his guards to go home, and so he did.<ref name=lynch/>
The three young men mentioned before (John Brown, A. Kirby and Charles Woods) heard the two guards ride away, and they made an inspection of the premises, and found the jail door open and the prisoners gone.
==The Lynching of Benjamin and Mollie French==
The entire operation of the masked Warsaw lynch mob took 35 minutes to complete their mission. Wilshire said that the lynch mob were white men, but he wouldn't give the names of those he recognized that May morning.<ref name=lynch/>
The ''Cincinnati Commercial'' and the ''Cincinnati Enquirer'' disagree on the name of the man's farm Benjamin and Mollie French were found on. The ''Cincinnati Commercial'' reported that it was J.H McDaniel's farm, and the Cincinnati Enquirer reported that it was Jim McDonnell's farm.<ref name=lynch2/><ref name=lynch/>
The 3 young men working at the Brown Motel notified [[Sheriff]] R.H. Morrow, and at daybreak, these four men followed the trails of the horses used by the lynchers. The horse trails led to the farm of Jim McDonnell, about three-quarters of a mile above Warsaw where, on an isolated tree, they found the corpses of Benjamin and Mollie French hung close together on two different branches of the same tree. Benjamin French's body was nearly touching the ground, while Mollie French's body hung about eighteen inches above the ground. The corpses were already cold and stiff, so it was known that they had died hours ago. It was “a ghastly spectacle”.<ref name=lynch/>
The morning wind was blowing long clothes of Mollie French about, while the body of Benjamin French swung softly on the branches. Both of their eyes “stared wildly from their sockets”. “The mouth of the woman was opened to its full capacity, while the man’s tongue, covered with blood, hung out of the mouth, like that of a dead dog”.<ref name=lynch/>
Some grass was found on Benjamin French's knees of his pants, which suggests that Benjamin French had prayed, or called for mercy. Only a nickel was found on the body of the man.<ref name=lynch/>
Some of the citizens of Warsaw suggested that those responsible for the lynching were Lake Jones’ farmer neighbors, who had come over from the district of [[Glencoe, Gallatin County, Kentucky|Glencoe]] to revenge the murder of their former friend, while others declared that the mob consisted entirely of Negroes.<ref name=lynch/>
==The French's “Bad Reputation”==
Benjamin French had been, for several years, a “roustabout” on the Benjamin Franklin and General Buell, early river steamboats operating on the Ohio River.<ref>http://www.nkyviews.com/carroll/carroll_steamers.htm</ref><ref name=lynch3/> “The Frenches were thoroughly disliked in the community, the paper noted, and Ben was a well-known chicken thief.”<ref name=Wright/>
Mollie French was known as “a sort of black [[House of Borgia|Borgia]]”, and was believed, without any evidence, to have murdered a former husband by the name of Boaz with arsenic poison too.<ref name=lynch3/><ref name=lynch/> The ''Frankfort Tri-Weekly Yeoman'' reported that “a majority, if not all, of the lynchers, are believed to have been Negroes.”<ref name=lynch3/>
“The colored population of Warsaw is in sympathy with Lake Jones’ friends, and nobody cares for the Frenches. Even the father of the executed man has nothing to say to defend his son, and he hardly deplores his horrible fate. Undertaker Taeffee could not get a single colored man to help him dig the graves for the Frenches.”<ref name=lynch/>
Lake Jones was praised by everybody in Warsaw. The [[Varshavians]] speak of him as being “the best nigger” in the country. He was formerly owned by a Mr. Howard, whom he served so faithfully that the sons of Mr. Howard offered to bury Lake Jones on their own family burial ground, near the old homestead of the Howards. Mr. Howard also paid all the expenses of the interment of Lake’s body.<ref name=lynch/>
The Howard cemetery is on a hill outside of Glencoe. The Howard cemetery is north of Glencoe on Sugar Creek road (US 127). “Turn left onto Johnson Road. There's a new road, with some new homes, that turns off to the left. All of those houses are on what used to be Jacob Howard's farm, later acquired through marriage/inherited by the Crouch's. The family cemetery is in good shape, off to the right of this new road. Lake Jones' final resting place doesn't have a marker.”<ref>A Personal Note. http://www.nkyviews.com/gallatin/text/howard_cem.htm </ref>
Nobody was prosecuted or held responsible for the lynchings of the Frenches of Warsaw.<ref name=lynch/>
== References ==
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Lynching deaths in Kentucky]]
[[Category:Racially motivated violence against African Americans]]
[[Category:1876 in Kentucky]]
[[Category:Gallatin County, Kentucky]]
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'''The Lynching of the Frenches of Warsaw''' happened in [[Warsaw, Kentucky|Warsaw]], [[Gallatin County, Kentucky]] on May 3, 1876 in between 1am-2am on a Wednesday morning. The lynching of the Frenches of Warsaw (Benjamin and Mollie French, husband and wife) was a situation where blacks were lynched by whites for the murder of a black man (Lake Jones).<ref name=Wright>Wright, George C. 1990. Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865-1940: Lynchings, Mob Rule, and “Legal Lynchings”. Louisiana State University Press. Baton Rouge and London. Pgs. 98-99.</ref> The Frenches had attempted to rob the elderly Lake Jones, a man of property, who had served faithfully, before and after the [[Emancipation Proclamation]], a prominent white man named Mr. Howard.<ref name=lynch2>Cincinnati Commercial. May 5, 1876. http://www.nkyviews.com/gallatin/text/lake_jones_lynched_2.htm</ref> The Frenches then killed Lake Jones by [[arsenic poisoning]]. Lake Jones was, according to many Warsaw whites, “the best nigger in the country.”<ref name=lynch>Cincinnati Enquirer. May 5, 1876. “A Bloody Night's Work at Warsaw, Ky.” http://www.nkyviews.com/gallatin/text/lake_jones_lynched.htm</ref><ref name=Wright/><ref name=lynch3>''Frankfort Tri-Weekly Yeoman''. May 11, 1876. http://www.nkyviews.com/gallatin/text/lake_jones_lynched_3.htm</ref> The Frenches were broken out of jail, taken 1 mile (or 3/4 of a mile) north of Warsaw, and both of them were hung on the same tree on J.H. McDaniels (or Jim McDonnell's) farm. <ref name=lynch/> <ref name=lynch2/>
==The Murder and Attempted Robbery of Lake Jones==
Lake Jones lived with his cousin Mollie French and her husband Benjamin in an old run down building called “the Malt-house” in Warsaw.<ref name=lynch/> Lake Jones spent much of his money when he joined the French family in providing for them and paying for their rent. Eventually, Lake Jones moved out.
On April 19, 1876—a Wednesday—Lake Jones went to work on a farm as usual and “returned in the evening as healthy and fresh as ever.”<ref name=lynch/> Mollie French invited Lake Jones to have dinner with the Frenches, and Lake agreed. A half hour later, Lake Jones began to feel sick, vomiting up blood, and complaining of a burning pain in his stomach and intestines. Jones got so sick that he threw himself on the floor and rolled about in great agony crying for help, calling for a physician. The Frenches did nothing to help Lake Jones.
An hour later, some neighbors helped Lake Jones into his bed, and called Dr. Robinson. Dr. Robinson suspected that Lake had been poisoned with arsenic.
After 3 days of agony, Lake Jones died on April 22, 1876—a Saturday.
[[Judge-Executive]] Brown of the County Court ordered an investigation on April 24—a Monday. It was discovered that Benjamin French had procured one ounce of arsenic at Vance's drug store a few days before, saying he wanted it to kill rats. Upon questioning, both Benjamin and Mollie French admitted that Benjamin bought the poison, but denied they bought it to murder Lake Jones. Later that evening, Mollie French tried to escape "with Place Reston, a Negro roustabout, with whom she had had improper intercourse for some time.”<ref name=lynch/>
The after death examination by Dr. Robinson further substantiated Lake had died of arsenic poisoning. “[The] stomach of Jones was sent to Louisville for chemical examination.”<ref name=lynch2/>
Benjamin and Mollie French were arrested on April 24th, 1876 by Judge Brown's order, and charged with murder. It was suggested that Place Reston also be arrested, but Judge Brown refused to do so, believing Mr. Reston didn't have anything to do with the murder of Lake Jones.
==The Lynch Mob Break the Frenches of Warsaw Out of Jail==
After being in the Warsaw jail for 10 days, on the morning of May 3, 1876—John Brown, A. Kirby and Charles Woods—three young men working at the Brown Hotel “heard the noise of horses trotting about the streets”. The 3 young men peeped out of the window, and perceived a disguised man on horseback in the middle of the square in front of the Courthouse. Near the next corner, a party of five or six men were halting.<ref name=lynch/> It was easy to see everything that was going on because that Wednesday was “a brilliant night,” as “the moon shone brightly,” and “it was nearly as light as day”.<ref name=lynch/>
The “man on the Court-house (sic) square called out, “All ready”, and the whole party moved up toward the jail building, which is a small one-story brick building in the back of the Courthouse.”<ref name=lynch/> At 1:10am, Jailer Joseph Wilshire, “whose grim and grave looks are more threatening then his small and feeble frame”, lived about 150 yards away from the brick jailhouse. Wilshire was awakened by knocks on his front and back doors. The men cried out, “Get up, Uncle Joe. Take your keys. We bring a prisoner from the country.”<ref name=lynch/>
A small discrepancy, but the [[Cincinnati Commercial]] reported that the crowd of masked men “got the keys from [Jailer Joseph Wilshire's] wife”, whereas the [[Cincinnati Enquirer]] reported that Joseph Wilshire got the keys himself.<ref name=lynch2/><ref name=lynch/>
After Jailer Joe Wilshire got his keys, and came out the back door, he was met by two masked men, who pulled pistols out on him, and told him to keep quiet.<ref name=lynch/>
Joseph Wilshire shut the door in their faces, and tried to escape out the front door, but he was immediately seized by six to eight armed masked men, who ordered him, under penalty of death, to go with them to the jail door. At the jail, six or eight more of the lynching party were waiting. Wilshire obeyed the men, and opened the jail door; then he opened the inside door to the cell room, and; finally, Wilshire opened last the door of the cell where Benjamin and Mollie French lay.<ref name=lynch/>
Benjamin and Mollie French were both sound asleep.
The leader of the gang woke them up and told them: “We will take you from this prison to another one.” Ben French answered: “I thought we were going to be tried by a civil Court.” Those were the only words exchanged at the jail.<ref name=lynch/>
The woman did not say a word, nor did she offer the slightest resistance, and both of the Frenches of Warsaw followed their hangmen “like sheep to the slaughter”. Two minutes later, the lynching party, except two men, who remained to guard the Jailer, rode away quickly, after putting their prisoners on horses which they brought along for this special purpose. 20 minutes later, the Jailer was told by his guards to go home, and so he did.<ref name=lynch/>
The three young men mentioned before (John Brown, A. Kirby and Charles Woods) heard the two guards ride away, and they made an inspection of the premises, and found the jail door open and the prisoners gone.
==The Lynching of Benjamin and Mollie French==
The entire operation of the masked Warsaw lynch mob took 35 minutes to complete their mission. Wilshire said that the lynch mob were white men, but he wouldn't give the names of those he recognized that May morning.<ref name=lynch/>
The ''Cincinnati Commercial'' and the ''Cincinnati Enquirer'' disagree on the name of the man's farm Benjamin and Mollie French were found on. The ''Cincinnati Commercial'' reported that it was J.H McDaniel's farm, and the Cincinnati Enquirer reported that it was Jim McDonnell's farm.<ref name=lynch2/><ref name=lynch/>
The 3 young men working at the Brown Motel notified [[Sheriff]] R.H. Morrow, and at daybreak, these four men followed the trails of the horses used by the lynchers. The horse trails led to the farm of Jim McDonnell, about three-quarters of a mile above Warsaw where, on an isolated tree, they found the corpses of Benjamin and Mollie French hung close together on two different branches of the same tree. Benjamin French's body was nearly touching the ground, while Mollie French's body hung about eighteen inches above the ground. The corpses were already cold and stiff, so it was known that they had died hours ago. It was “a ghastly spectacle”.<ref name=lynch/>
The morning wind was blowing long clothes of Mollie French about, while the body of Benjamin French swung softly on the branches. Both of their eyes “stared wildly from their sockets”. “The mouth of the woman was opened to its full capacity, while the man’s tongue, covered with blood, hung out of the mouth, like that of a dead dog”.<ref name=lynch/>
Some grass was found on Benjamin French's knees of his pants, which suggests that Benjamin French had prayed, or called for mercy. Only a nickel was found on the body of the man.<ref name=lynch/>
Some of the citizens of Warsaw suggested that those responsible for the lynching were Lake Jones’ farmer neighbors, who had come over from the district of [[Glencoe, Gallatin County, Kentucky|Glencoe]] to revenge the murder of their former friend, while others declared that the mob consisted entirely of Negroes.<ref name=lynch/>
==The French's “Bad Reputation”==
Benjamin French had been, for several years, a “roustabout” on the Benjamin Franklin and General Buell, early river steamboats operating on the Ohio River.<ref>http://www.nkyviews.com/carroll/carroll_steamers.htm</ref><ref name=lynch3/> “The Frenches were thoroughly disliked in the community, the paper noted, and Ben was a well-known chicken thief.”<ref name=Wright/>
Mollie French was known as “a sort of black [[House of Borgia|Borgia]]”, and was believed, without any evidence, to have murdered a former husband by the name of Boaz with arsenic poison too.<ref name=lynch3/><ref name=lynch/> The ''Frankfort Tri-Weekly Yeoman'' reported that “a majority, if not all, of the lynchers, are believed to have been Negroes.”<ref name=lynch3/>
“The colored population of Warsaw is in sympathy with Lake Jones’ friends, and nobody cares for the Frenches. Even the father of the executed man has nothing to say to defend his son, and he hardly deplores his horrible fate. Undertaker Taeffee could not get a single colored man to help him dig the graves for the Frenches.”<ref name=lynch/>
Lake Jones was praised by everybody in Warsaw. The [[Varshavians]] speak of him as being “the best nigger” in the country. He was formerly owned by a Mr. Howard, whom he served so faithfully that the sons of Mr. Howard offered to bury Lake Jones on their own family burial ground, near the old homestead of the Howards. Mr. Howard also paid all the expenses of the interment of Lake’s body.<ref name=lynch/>
The Howard cemetery is on a hill outside of Glencoe. The Howard cemetery is north of Glencoe on Sugar Creek road (US 127). “Turn left onto Johnson Road. There's a new road, with some new homes, that turns off to the left. All of those houses are on what used to be Jacob Howard's farm, later acquired through marriage/inherited by the Crouch's. The family cemetery is in good shape, off to the right of this new road. Lake Jones' final resting place doesn't have a marker.”<ref>A Personal Note. http://www.nkyviews.com/gallatin/text/howard_cem.htm </ref>
Nobody was prosecuted or held responsible for the lynchings of the Frenches of Warsaw.<ref name=lynch/>
== References ==
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Lynching deaths in Kentucky]]
[[Category:Racially motivated violence against African Americans]]
[[Category:1876 in Kentucky]]
[[Category:Gallatin County, Kentucky]]
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