Hanged Three Times- A True Story

In 1868, James Calvin Logsdon, aged 16, was the product of a broken home; his mother resided in Tennessee while the father lived in Hustonville, Kentucky.
Cal was a resident hired hand of a widower ,Mr. Brown, who had two daughters, Jane and Eliza. The Brown sisters were attractive and their father was a well-to-do farmer.
Not far from the Brown’s was where Lucinda Evans Galloway Camp, 46, resided along with her daughter, Catherine Galloway, 27, and Lucinda’s two small sons. Catherine was referred to as a prostitute. A frequent visitor in the Galloway house was Mr. Brown, who was in love with Catherine and had announced his intentions to marry her. The thoughts of their father being married to a woman of such low character incensed Jane and Eliza.
The sisters persuaded Cal Logsdon to accompany them to the Galloway’s one night in November,1868. It is said the sisters killed Catherine first, then they proceeded to attack her mother. They killed her with a shovel. James Galloway, 8, survived the slaughter. He was hit in the head with a Hatchet but not killed.
Cal Logsdon left the scene of the crime and headed for Kentucky. A vigilante committee went four miles above Hustonville, Kentucky and arrested Logsdon at his father's house. The girls were arrested in Tennessee, but, at the time, it was not thought a woman could be capable of such a gruesome crime. They were permitted to testify against Cal for immunity.
Logsdon was tried three times in the circuit courts . Each time the guilty verdict was appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court where the decisions of the lower courts were twice overturned but finally upheld. Then the pronouncement that the accused should be hanged.
Logsdon rode to his hanging on an ox drawn two-wheel cart which hauled his coffin as well. Logsdon's funeral was preached while the doomed man sat listening on his coffin awaiting his execution when the service was over. Logsdon was taken to the gallows and the noose was placed around his neck. The weight of the prisoner at once snapped the rope and he fell to the ground with a dull, heavy thud. He was immediately seized by the Sheriff and his guard, who put a new rope on him, throwing it over the gallows, and three or four men taking the end, they hoisted him up again very much after the fashion of hanging a dog. This time he hung some two minutes, swinging round five or six times, when, his feet getting near the ground, in an attempt to raise him a little higher, he again broke the rope, coming to the ground the second time. Once more he was seized and hoisted, the blood running from his mouth and nose, and his shroud nearly off of him. Logsdon proclaimed,” If I am hanged for a third time on this day, you will all know you have hanged and innocent man, as there will be three days and three nights of rain as never seen before in this county. Tomorrow will be the biggest flood that was ever on the Obey River. Also, 100 years after my hanging, on the place of my burial will emerge poison snakes of a multitude that will be unheard of. If I am guilty, these things will not be.” They strung him up with the third rope and that time it did the job.
Immediately on this beautiful sunny day, it started raining. The crowd panicked and ran to their buggies as the rains came from out of nowhere. The rains came in unheard of quantities. It rained for three days and three nights straight and the Obey River were permanently transformed by this flood.
One hundred years later, 1972, behind the Elementary school in Jamestown, Tennessee, where Cal was buried, the poison snakes came in multitudes. Professionals from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, were called in to help in ridding the area of the snakes. In the area behind the school, where the snakes were emerging, rests the body of Cal Logsdon. His tombstone remains there today with the simple inscription...Cal Logstoon (last name misspelled) hanged 1872.