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On February 15, 1867, Hanson Bumgardner was hung in Marietta, Washington County, Ohio, for the murder of John T. Eubank. Supposedly, Bumgardner had hired Eubank, a teamster, to move his household from Meigs County, Ohio, to Burning Bush, West Virginia. In September of 1866, after Eubank's headless body was found in the Ohio River near Little Hocking (Washington County), Bumgardner was apprehended driving Eubank's four-horse team. Bumgardner was put on trial in Marietta and found guilty of first degree murder. On December 22, 1866, Judge E. A. Guthrie sentenced him to be hanged in the yard of the Washington County jail.
Bumgardner told Sheriff Jackson A. Hicks that he was a member of a band of thirty counterfeiters, horse thieves, and robbers, headed by a man named John Woods. He said that Eubanks was a rebel who deserved to die, but that Woods' gang was responsible for the murder. About ten days after being sentenced, Bumgardner pried the door off his jail cell. When deputy Thomas Hicks came in, Bumgardner hit him on the head with a lump of coal. Fred Baker, the jail waiter, pulled Bumgardner into the entry and shot him, and Bumgardner returned to his cell.
The town marshal, Darius Towsley, began erecting a 16-foot gallows in early February of 1867. Bumgardner's lawyer applied to Governor J. D. Cox for mercy, but was refused. On the day of the hanging, Bumgardner was calm and composed. He bade farewell to Hicks, a deputy, and the Reverend Mullinex at 1:30, and died maintaining that he was not guilty of murder, only of stealing. This was Washington County's only recorded hanging.
Four or five years ago, the hanging of Hanson Bumgardner was re-enacted for a haunted house fund raiser sponsored by the Washington County Historical Society. This is all I can find in my notes from that program, but there is more to the story. If I remember correctly, there was some additional information about Bumgardner's family and something about the sheriff being so upset by the hanging that he later suffered a nervous breakdown. The Washington County Public Library's Local History and Genealogy Department has a file on murders, as well as microfilm copies of Marietta newspapers from that time period: www.wcplib.lib.oh.us/LH&G.htm
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