Killed by Concealed Weapon

Page  3 of The Weekly Western Sun, published in Vincennes, Indiana on Friday, March 28th, 1879

A Lawrenceville Tragedy

Upon arriving in the little village, the reporter from the Weekly Western Sun, a newspaper published in Vincennes, noted that it at once became evident that the citizens were laboring under terrible excitement. All business was suspended, and knots of idle men gathered on the street corners discussing the lamentable occurrence.  Toward evening the fever had somewhat subsided, but had the murderer, for such he was deemed, been captured immediately after the shooting, his body would now be dangling from one of the old hoists surrounding the Temple of Justice.

The facts as the reporter gleaned them by persistent inquiries from Dr. W. M. Garrard, Dr. C. M. Carter, Dick and Charlie Musgrave, among others, were as follows:

Ellis had been town about two weeks ostensibly for the purpose of attending to business in county court, which had been postponed from week to week, because of bereavement in the family of Judge Potts. (First his brother had committed suicide and then his little granddaughter had died.)

Ellis delivered a temperance lecture Friday night, and being rather egotistical, some of the young men around town took exception to his manner of delivery.  Hickman took occasion to twit him about the matter, and it was said, openly insulted Ellis at the supper table Monday night, at the Watts House, where both boarded.  Ellis, thereupon, removed to the Buchanan House saying that he would not remain to be treated in such a manner.

For a few days both young men have been saying some very hard things about each other to their supposed friends, and the latter, by carrying these tales back and forth and perhaps exaggerating them, served to make the feelings more bitter.  Hickman was never heard uttering any threats against his adversary beyond saying that he intended switching him and it was not believed that he would have done any serious harm to Ellis.

Ellis told some of Hickman’s friends that he had better not fool with him, intimating that he would shoot Hickman if molested.  Hickman, the good-natured railroad agent laughed at these warnings, and in reply, said that Ellis was not dangerous.

On the fatal Tuesday night, Hickman locked up his depot about 9 o’clock and walked up town.  Ellis had been in Schmalhausen’s Drug Store and met his victim as he was coming out of the later place.  Ellis then stepped into Dick Musgrave’s restaurant, which is a few doors west of the drug store, and began talking to the proprietor, the conversation on Ellis’ part being mostly in casting base insinuations against Hickman’s character.

At this juncture, Hickman, who had stepped into the drug store and picked up the stick he had placed there for the purpose of “warning” Ellis, walked into the restaurant and told Ellis that he must stop talking about him, that if he wanted to say anything, to talk to his face, and not go behind his back.  He then stepped up to Ellis and patting him on the cheek, told him that he could “put it over him any day.”

At this instant Ellis, whose only remark had been, “What do you mean, ‘hicksmith?’ and who had his right hand in his overcoat pocket, cocked his pistol, the click being heard by the two Musgrave boys, the only other persons in the room.  Supposedly, the unfortunate Hickman also heard the same ominous sound and became exasperated at such as exhibition of cowardice.  At any rate he seized Ellis with his left hand, and a scuffle ensued.

Ellis fell against the wall, partly on the floor, on his left side.  While in this recumbent position Hickman administered a few blows on Ellis’ legs with the stick, having a knee pressed against his fallen foe. 

Ellis then fired two shots in quick succession through his pocket, the first shot taking effect in the center of Hickman’s chest and ranging upwardly along the spinal column, lodged in the base of the brain.  The other ball entered the right nostril of his victim and leaving not the slightest abrasion on the outer skin; it also lodged in the brain. Either shot would have proven fatal.

Hickman straightened up crying out, “Oh” and ran out of the open door into the street, in the center of which he dropped.  He was raised up a minute later by Dr. C. M. Carter and drew his last breath.  The spirit of robust manly Frank Hickman had fled.

Ellis fired three shots into the outer darkness, and with the speed of the wind, took his flight out the west end of Main Street and disappeared.

Hickman was picked up by Dr. Carter and Charlie and Dick Musgrave and laid out on the pavement.  His remains were taken to the Watts house and his parents notified. On the P & D RR last night his father and one or two other relatives arrived and took the body to his home in Fairmount, Vermillion County, Illinois for burial.  Mr. Hickman was a rather fine-looking young fellow, about twenty-five years of age, and in robust health.  He had been the agent of the P & D RR at Lawrenceville for nearly, or quite, three years, and had the merited respect of every man, woman, or child in the place; no one is more sincerely mourned.

Coroner Graffman empaneled a jury at half past six o’clock in the evening and held an inquest in the courtroom.  The testimony was substantially as presented in this account to the readers, and the jury returned a verdict of ‘Death from two pistol shot wounds fired from a pistol in the hands of Frank Ellis.”

Whether or not such a thrashing as Hickman proposed to give Ellis would justify the latter in taking the life of a human being; self-preservation, the first law of nature, is an old but trite defense.  A great many absurd theories were advanced by excited and prejudiced persons, one of them being that Ellis had been shrewd enough to act in such a manner that the law would justify him in the killing, but that at the same time his thirst for the life of his enemy would be satiated.  The facts in the case point strongly to that theory as being possible if not probable according to the newspaper reporter.

The switch which Hickman struck Ellis with was an apple tree limb, about two feet long and, at the butt end, as large as a man’s finger.  At the small part, it branched out in two prongs as large as a lead pencil. 

Both young men were slightly under the influence of liquor at the time of the tragedy.

Ellis was seen in Vincennes at 1:30 am on Second Street crossing the O & M RR notwithstanding the entrance to the O & M bridge was guarded by one of the search parties from an early hour in the night.  Ellis was thought to be in concealment in Vincennes and that his friends would make an effort to have him surrender to the Sheriff there and go to jail.

The Illinois Governor offered a reward of $200 for arrest of Ellis. A telegram from Indianapolis about a week later announced that Ellis was arrested at Sullivan Indiana but Sherrif Scott of Lawrenceville said the man arrested had been misidentified. The Weekly Western Sun, published on Friday, May 23rd, 1879 stated W Frank Ellis had returned to St Francisville and given himself up to be tried at the August term of Lawrence circuit court. Ball was set at $2000.