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 men who met justice under the gavel of Issac C. Parker.
March 17, 1896 - Crawford "Cherokee Bill" Goldsby
One of the hangings in Fort Smith that captures the imaginations of Old West enthusiast is the one on March 17, 1896 when a man who had been sentenced to death by Parker not once, but twice.
Crawford Goldsby, also known as “Cherokee Bill,” was already in custody in the basement jail at the courthouse for the murder of Ernest Melton during the robbery of a store in the Cherokee nation.
Goldsby, a full-blooded Cherokee, used a gun smuggled to him by a confederate to kill a jail guard, Lawrence Keating when being transferred on Jul 26, 1895.
The escape attempt failed and Goldsby was immediately recaptured, convicted of murder for a second time and sentenced to death again.
On his death walk to the gallows on March 17, 1896 Goldsby told the assembled crowd that “this is about as good a day as any to die.”