Abithal Colson and Maud “Mollie” Smith were white lynching victims in Trigg County, Kentucky on June 28, 1895. As a white male lynching victim in the 1890s, Colson’s life has more documentary information than Smith, who was a working-class white woman. There are detailed records of Colson’s birth information, education, and employment, but there is little extent data about Smith. Newspaper accounts referred to Smith as Colson’s mistress.
Abithal Colson was born circa 1855 in Golden Pond, Trigg County, Kentucky to farmer Sanders Colson and his wife Mary Ann “Polly” Calhoun. Common variants of his first name are Bithael, A.B., and Bethel. Polly Calhoun died in 1862, and Sanders Colson subsequently remarried. Abithal had at least fifteen siblings and half-siblings. In 1860, 1870, and 1880 (as noted in US Census Records), Abithal Colson resided with his parents and various siblings on a farm in Trigg County, where he and his brothers were farm laborers. Colson and his family members could neither read nor write.
According to his family tree on Ancestry.com, Abithal Colson was married twice and he had three children. Colson married Mary Drucilla Pinegar on March 4, 1883. On December 26, 1884 the couple had a son, Claude Sanders Colson, and on September 6, 1885, they had a daughter, Mary Drucinda Colson. Colson’s wife died on the same day that their second child was born. In 1887, Colson had a child with Ida Hammond and they subsequently married on April 3, 1888. It should be noted that all the newspapers cited here mis-name Colson as Colston.
In August 1888, Colson was accused of fatally shooting a prominent citizen named W. W. Wadlington. The Tennessean reports that Wadlington had been deputized to arrest Colson, “on warrants charging him with having cruelly mistreated Mrs. John Hammond, his step-mother-in-law, and having also whipped Bob Morgan, a youth he accused of being too intimate with his wife.” The report continues, “The warrants for [Colson’s] arrest were placed in Wadlington’s hands, and the same day [Colson] went to Wadlington’s residence and accused him of having slandered his wife. Words passed and when Wadlington produced his warrants, [Colson] fired upon him…inflicting a painful if not fatal wound.” Following this incident, Colson escaped and was at large for several months. He was found in Marshall County, Kentucky in December 1888. The contemporary newspapers reported that Colson was arrested and convicted of either horse theft (St. Louis Globe Democrat) or murder (Wilmington (DE) Morning News).
Colson spent nearly seven years in the Frankfort penitentiary, and was released around May 1895. The Hopkinsville Kentuckian reports that on May 25, 1895, soon after his release, “Abithal Colson shot Moses Crump…wounding him three times, but not dangerously.” At the time, Colson was living in Trigg County.
On the afternoon of Friday, June 28, 1895 Colson allegedly shot two men in Trigg County. The Wilmington Morning News later reported that “[Colson] appeared at Higgins Landing armed with a double-barreled shotgun. John Rhodes, who had before incurred the ill will of [Colson], came up in time to be used as a mark for the ex-convict’s abuse. They quarreled and then began fighting. Rhodes was getting the better of the rough-and-tumble match, and [Colson] finally broke away, snatched up the gun, and shot his antagonist down. The wound was fatal, and Rhodes fell to the ground. [Colson] went to a saloon nearby, but returned in a few minutes, and was greatly enraged to find Chat Hammond bringing a drink to his victim, who was still alive and begging for water. Hammond was a friend of Rhodes, and angrily threatened the ex-convict with arrest and hanging. [Colson] did not reply, but finally raised his gun and fired at short range. Hammond was killed instantly.” Rhodes reportedly died from his wounds several days later. Newspapers later speculated that Colson targeted Rhodes, since Rhodes had been a witness against Colson seven years earlier, leading to Colson’s jail sentence. Additionally, although newspapers did not note this fact at the time, Chat Hammond was the brother of Colson’s second wife, Ida Hammond.
Following the alleged shootings, Colson escaped to the nearby house of his mistress, Mollie Smith. The Wilmington Morning News states that Smith lived in “a log cabin on the bank of a creek.” As the evening progressed, a lynching party was formed in search of Colson. The next morning, Colson and Smith’s bodies were found in the road, riddled with shot. Colson was buried in an unmarked grave in the Colson Cemetery in Trigg County.
On Thursday, July 4, 1895, the parties responsible for lynching Colson and Smith surrendered themselves to the authorities at Cadiz. The Maysville Public Ledger appears to have taken the side of Colson and Smith’s killers, stating, “So intense is the feeling of the public towards the [Colson] faction, that the slayers of their leader and the woman will be acquitted without even the formalities of an examining trial.” No known actions were taken against this lynching group.
