McDowell, Earlington Bee, June 4, 1908

Taken From Dixon Jail Sunday Morning and Shot to Death.

NEGRO WHO HAD SHOOTING SCRAPE WITH SMITH CHILDERS.

Dixon, Ky., May 31. – A dozen or so men took Jake McDowell, a negro, from the Webster county jail here this morning and shot him to death. The mob quickly dispersed and the officers say have been unable to learn their names.

About 2 o’clock Thomas S. Page, the jailer, who sleeps in the guard house at the jail, was awakened and found several masked men standing over him and two of them had revolvers pointed at his breast. The men said they had come to get Jake McDowell and the jailer at first resisted and when he saw the men were determined he gave up the keys.

Two of the men went into McDowell’s cell and dragged the sleeping negro out. The negro begged that his life be spared but no mercy was shown him. The prisoner was taken a short distance down the Providence road and in a few minutes several shots were heard to ring out and the jailer at once realized what had happened. He quickly got in communication with the sheriff and several of the other county officers but they were unable to overtake the mob as the men had scattered and gone to their homes. The young son of the jailer went down the road to where the shooting had been heard and he found the body of McDowell lying in the road. Life was extinct and three bullet holes were found in the negroe’s body. The body was just outside the corporate limits and within a half mile of the jail.

On March 14, last, McDowell shot and wounded Smith Childers, who was deputy marshal at Providence at the time, in a fight that arose over personal matters. It was at first thought that Childers had been fatally wounded but he has about recovered and able to be up and around.

McDowell surrendered to the town marshal of Providence immediately after his trouble with Childers. 

For fear that he might be lynched the officers too McDowell to Henderson, Ky., where he has been kept in jail until a short time ago when he was brought back here and his case had been set down for trial at the present term of court.

On the day of the shooting, J. B. Berry, of Louisville, and Paul Carter, of Chattanooga, both traveling men, heard of the affair and thinking there might be a lynching at Dixon where the negro had been taken, decided to go to Dixon to “see the fun” as they expressed it to some friends. As they were entering the outskirts of the town of Dixon several negroes in ambush mistaking them for a mob fired into them. Both Berry and Carter were wounded and removed to Walker’s Sanitarium at Evansville where Berry lingered a short time and died. Carter recovered after having been in the hospital for several weeks.

A number of negroes were indicted on the charge of ambushing and shooting the two drummers and most of them are now in jail here. None of these were mosested by the mob which killed McDowell. The officers say they have been unable to learn any of the men in the mob.