THE HANGING OF BENJAMIN HARDIN
This was copied from The Welch Dailey Newspaper Archive Files on microfilm, at The McDowell County Library. The Paper was a special, dated Sept,1956.
Tazewell , Va... (Special)
The hanging of Benjamin Hardin on June 28, 1867 in a field on the southside of the Fincastle and Cumberland Gap Turnpike, now state route 19 U.S. 460, opposite the Jeffersonville Cemetery, was the first execution since the formation of Tazewell county in 1800, and is said to have been the occasion for the largest crowd to have congregated in the county up to that time.
The punishment in those days was made a public spectacle for the deterring effect on potential offenders.
On this occasion the large crowd included men, women, and children, and is said to have been a gala occasion, with Hardin playing a star role in the entertainment, aside from being the central figure in the drama enacted to climax his desparate life in payment for his willful and malicious murder of Dennis Burns.
TRADE SPURNED
On the 16th day of April 1867, Burns, a young man from the west of the county, rode into the county seat on a handsome horse, and Hardin, being a Kentuckian with a traditional weakness for fine horses, bantered Burns for a trade and when Burns spurned the proposal, became angered. Burns hitched his mount to a hitching rack near the blacksmith shop near the mill on the creek, just south of Main Street, and after a few hours, he mounted his horse for his return journey, and as he turned into the alley leading to Main Street, alongside the present Peery and St. Claire store, Hardin fired from concealment in a chimney corner, the full charge from a shotgun striking him in the back of the head and killing him instantley.
The incident brought a group of men to the scene, but Hardin had taken to the hills under pursuit by increasing numbers led by Col. Joe Harrison, a recent fearless Confederate Officer and who, without arms of any nature, personally took Hardin in custody at a spot about where the present water tank stands, and sent for Sheriff John Thompson to take charge of him.
HELD FOR TRIAL
He was brought before the County Court when it convened on May,1, with justices William G. Yost: Mark T. Lockhart: S.B. Chiddix: James Hankins and Alexander Mahood, forming the panel, and after hearing the evidence, ordered him held for the Circuit Court. His arraignment was before the Hon. John A. Campbell, Judge of the 16th, Judicial District on May 20th and he pleaded not guilty, and claimed inability to pay attorney fee. The court appointed W.P. Cecil and J.M. French to represent him. After hearing the evidence and arguments of councel, the jury composed of: Witten Maxwell: Daniel H. Harmon: William White: Carter Hankins: Augustus S. Waldron: Robert Hankins: Augustus McNeil: William Bandy: John Altizer: William V. Shannon: Hiram A. Dawson: and Jefferson Osborne., on May 22, returned a verdict of guilty in the first degree and on May,23, he was brought before the court and sentenced to "hang by the neck until dead". Friday, June,28,1867, the sentence was carried out, a few days more than two months after the crime.
SAT ATOP COFFIN
A more or less legendary account of the execution relates how Hardin rode to the place of execution in a wagon and sitting atop the coffin intended for his burial. He lighted a cigar and remarked to the driver that he need not be in a hurry since the show would not begin until he got there. His bragging manner prevailed and on the scaffold stated that he had killed a half dozen men, , four in his native Kentucky, and two in Tazewell, and that his list of intended victims contained the names of two other Tazewell men, and that his list of intended victims contained the names of two other Tazewell men, but didnt explain why he meant to have killed them. His final benediction was an appeal to youths not to follow the example he had set. The black cap was affixed, the hangman's knot tied, and the trap sprung, but the rope broke and no injury resulted. Th e sheriff dispatched a courier on horseback to hurry the one mile to the hardware store in town to procure a new and larger rope, which proved a substantial death instrument. The body was cut down, placed in the coffin, carried a short distance up the hillside and interred. His grave was marked with a field rock, and it is said later to have had a gallows chisled on it by a skilled stone cutter. The marker is no longer to be found and the exact place of Ben Hardin's grave is not known.
Hardin's other Tazewell murder was also an ambush. Hiding between two buildings on Main Street in the vicinity of the present post office, he waited a Georgia soldier and as he passed, fired into his back with a shot gun. No motive for the crime was learned, and the chaotic conditions and uncertain times, and no dependable law enforcement, he was never brought to trial.
Capital punishment has been used only four times within the bounds of Tazewell County since its formation, each time by hanging, with the last being said to have been Virginia's last hanging before the inauguration of electrocution.
Three of the executions were for murder, the other for rape. The rapist was Walter Rippey, a Pocahontas negro, who was convicted at the February term of Tazewell Circuit Court for an attack on a white woman and the hanging took place on March,27,1908.
