Few men in the annals of the American Old West represent the phrase “frontier justice” as well as Judge Isaac C. Parker, the infamous “Hanging Judge” of Fort Smith, who ruled over the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas with an iron hand from 1874-1895.
During his 21-year tenure on the bench, Parker presided over 160 cases that resulted in the sentence of death and 79 of those men met their final fate at the end of a hemp rope attached to the wooden and mortar gallows that defined and justified the nickname “Hell on the Border” on the Arkansas-Indian Territory border.
In later life, Parker was quoted as saying, “I never hanged a man, the law did,” and it was the keen sense of adherence to the law that allowed the court to operate and clean up what had become a lawless civilization in the years after the Civil War.
These are the tales of the men that met their final justice under the auspices of Parker's court.
Patrick McCarty- April 8, 1887
Patrick McCarty was hanged on April 8, 1887 for murdering Thomas Mahoney and his brother in the Cherokee Nation.
The Mahoney brothers were Kansas farmers who worked with a grading crew on the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad during the winter. On February 17, 1886, McCarty was a traveling companion with the Mahoney's who were returning to Fort Scott, Kansas.
When the brothers were asleep, McCarty killed them both, one with a gunshot to the head and the other with an axe.
He robbed them of two teams and wagons and $200.
McCarty's execution was originally scheduled for January 14, 1887, but he was given a respite while President Grover Cleveland reviewed his case. He went to the grave at the end of George Maledon's rope three months later.
