http://www.rootsweb.com/~okgenweb/pioneer/index.htm

At the above link my great uncle ( go to hte index and search Oscar Richey) wrote:

My parents were Natives of Arkansas and grew up near Fort Smith which is just across the line from Indian Territory . . . After they were married in the year 1872, they moved into Indian Territory and settled in either the present Sequoyah or Leflore Counties. I do not know on which side of the Arkansas River they lived . . . Mother never ceased to tell us children of an experience which she had while living at that place. Two White men and Two Negroes committed some kind of a crime in the Indian Territory, were taken to Fort Smith tried and convicted and were sentenced to be hanged.

When the day of the hanging came, she and Father like everybody else in the country started early for the hanging was to be a public affair, and they traveled all day through the woods and across the streams and when they reached Fort Smith there were literally a thousand people which was a great number at that time, gathered as if at a picnic to witness the hanging. Mother watched the hanging and it was so horrible to her that she regretted attending such a thing all the remainder of her life.

I was wondering how a person could find a record of the hangings at Fort Smith from about 1872 to 1875 or 6 or 7 or so. I'd like to verify that story, and find a time when 2 whites and 2 blacks were hanged at Fort Smith on the same day, but I don't know how to research it.

Thank you,

Vance Hawkins