The October, 1872 hanging referred to in the last post happened on the night of the 25th. As the captured men were being taken to the hanging tree ( I think this was at McDow Hole) James M. Latham tried to escape and was shot to death. James Coats escaped, with his hands tied, by jumping from his horse and running off in the night. The others were “hung to the limb of a tree.” Fayette Latham was lowered twice and allowed to recover his breath, taunted and questioned, before being drawn up for the last time. In the darkness, no one saw that he caught the rope in his teeth, “thus preventing strangulation until the mob left. He then took out his knife and cut himself down,” [other accounts said it was his son, who had been hiding nearby that cut him down] when his brother-in-law, McDow, was cut down, he was found to have a broken neck, but with a strong pulse. He died because nobody knew what do to with him.

This account was in my Town & Country 1987 Calendar of Erath County History, documented as “Britton,” but the complete reference was left out of the bibliography, and I have lost the book title.