Among all the stories in Southeast Missouri history that have sparked tales of ghosts and hauntings is one that should have but has not. The story was well-known to Cape Girardeau County residents in the late 1840s but was almost unknown by the early 1900s. That changed on April 6, 1912. Work crew members digging a trench to extend water mains to Mill “A” of the Cape County Milling Company in Jackson were shocked to uncover a human skull and arm. Today the Mill “A” building is Mill Warehouse Building Supply. Word soon got around town and reached 74-year-old Linus Sanford, son of former Cape Girardeau County Clerk Henry Sanford. Sanford and other elderly residents knew the identity of the remains from an event of their childhoods. The bones were those of Nathan Watson.
The Watson family in Jackson enslaved Nathan Watson. On late afternoons when he finished his work, he and another enslaved man, Tom Criddle, cut wood for sale to Jackson residents to earn a small amount of spending money. On November 15, 1846, the two had a dispute while cutting wood that escalated to violence. Watson swung his ax and split open Criddle’s head, killing him.
Sheriff James W. Bennett apprehended Watson quickly and charged him with first-degree murder. Watson’s enslaver hired two of the best local lawyers of that day to defend him: Greer W. Davis and Gen. Nathaniel W. Watkins.
Watson pled not guilty, and the court selected a jury to hear evidence. Seated on the jury were several prominent local men. The judge who presided was Honorable John B. Cook of the 10th Judicial Circuit. The jury found Watson guilty on December 20, and Judge Cook sentenced him to be hanged. Cook also denied a petition from Watson’s lawyers for a new trial.
The account of the execution also appeared in the Jackson, Missouri Cash-Book in 1910 in a reminiscence told to W. O. Penney by his father, R. O. Penney, so details from him are also second-hand. Linus Sanford was only eight years of age at the time, and his parents forbade him from attending. He later heard about the day from his older brother and one of their enslaved men.
The day of the execution, February 20, 1847, dawned overcast with steady downpours. Nonetheless, public executions were community events in those days and most adult males in the county attended.
The procession, headed by an ox wagon containing the sheriff, the condemned man and his coffin, proceeded down to the site of Mill “A.” Watson sat on his coffin during the drive to the execution place. It is unclear whether the county built a gallows for the execution or whether a tree at the site provided a convenient limb. According to Penney’s account, the wagon stopped under a horizontal limb on a large white oak tree. Watson stood on his coffin in the wagon as the sheriff placed the noose over his head, and the oxen were driven forward. Watson slowly strangled before dying. As was customary, burial of executed criminals occurred near the site where the hanging occurred. That was the site where the work crew uncovered Watson’s remains.
Sadly, rather than re-interring the remains in 1912, a local doctor, B. W. Hays, received the bones. No information documents what happened to them thereafter.
Despite the circumstances of Watson’s death and the disturbance of his grave afterward, no local legends suggest his ghost haunts the area. But this is the Halloween season. Who knows what might happen?
