The Lynching of the Frenches of Warsaw happened in 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 an unusual situation where African Americans were lynched by a white mob for the murder of another African American. Lake Jones was an elderly black man who had faithfully served a white family named Howard, both before and after his emancipation from slavery. The Frenches killed Lake Jones by arsenic poisoning, intending to steal his property. The Ku Klux Klan became involved because, according to them, the inoffensive Lake Jones was "the best nigger in the country." The Klansmen broke into the jail, took the Frenches about a mile north of Warsaw, and hung them both on a tree on J.H. McDaniels' (McDonnell's) farm.
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Murder and attempted robbery of Lake Jones
Lake Jones lived with his cousin Mollie and her husband Benjamin French in a run-down building called "the Malt-house" in Warsaw. Jones generously spent much of his money when he moved in with the Frenches, buying them food and paying their rent. However, Jones finally moved out and the Frenches determined to get the rest of his money.
On April 19, 1876, Lake Jones went to work on a farm as usual and "returned in the evening as healthy and fresh as ever." Mollie French invited him to have dinner, and Lake accepted. A half-hour later, Jones began to feel very ill, vomiting up blood and complaining of a burning pain in his stomach and intestines. He threw himself on the floor and rolled about in agony, calling for a physician. The Frenches simply watch him slowly die.
About an hour later, some neighbors arrived and put Jones into his bed. They called Dr. Robinson, the local physician. Robinson immediately suspected arsenic poisoning.
After three days of agony, Lake Jones died on April 22, 1876.
Judge-Executive Brown of the County Court ordered an investigation on April 24. 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."
The after-death examination by Dr. Robinson further substantiated the suspicion that Lake had died of arsenic poisoning. "[The] stomach of Jones was sent to Louisville for chemical examination."
Benjamin and Mollie French were arrested on April 24, 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 that Reston didn't have anything to do with the murder of Lake Jones.
The lynch mob break the Frenches 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 three 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. 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".
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." 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."
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.
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. 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 the door of the cell where Benjamin and Mollie French lay.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The three 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".
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". Some grass was found on the knees of Benjamin French's pants, which suggests that he had prayed or called for mercy. Only a nickel was found on the body of the man.
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 to revenge the murder of their former friend, while others declared that the mob consisted entirely of Negroes.
The Frenches' "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. "The Frenches were thoroughly disliked in the community, the paper noted, and Ben was a well-known chicken thief."
Mollie French was known as "a sort of black Borgia", and was believed, without any evidence, to have murdered a former husband by the name of Boaz with arsenic poison too. The Frankfort Tri-Weekly Yeoman reported that "a majority, if not all, of the lynchers, are believed to have been Negroes."
"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."
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.
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."
Nobody was prosecuted or held responsible for the lynchings of the Frenches of Warsaw.