Clarendon, Arkansas, August 10,
1898 ― The years following the end of Reconstruction were terrible for African
Americans across the south. Justice was about nonexistent for them and often
for women
Few events highlight this as much
as the 10 days between July 30 and Aug 10, 1898, when a woman named Mabel Orr
had her husband killed after years of alleged abuse. John Orr was a prosperous
businessman who owned a hardware store in town that was thriving and had some
other investments.
The Orr’s had been married for
eight years and had one daughter Geneva who was 4 years old. The Orrs had moved
to Clarendon from Wisconsin, where they had been part of a touring theater
company. They moved to Arkansas after John had decided for them it was time to
become respectable. Which they did, both Orrs were welcomed in the most
prominent homes and Mabel was the pianist for the Clarendon Methodist Church
where her husband sang in the choir. He was a member of two fraternal organizations,
and she did charity work. They appeared to be a happy, young couple on the way
up.
Except of course they weren’t. Mabel
Orr longed to return to the theater, she enjoyed being a performer. John
refused, he wanted a traditional marriage and for their daughter to be raised
in that conservative manner. The house cook, a Negro named Lorilla Weaver at
the inquest that, “Mr. Orr was mean. he tried to force Miss May to accept his
orders and start behaving as a wife should, he often slapped her full palm to
the face.” Also, there were letters Mabel Orr had sent to her parents regarding
how John Orr had blocked his wife from traveling and going home to Wisconsin.
Mabel Orr had developed a close
friendship with a young woman, Rachel Morris, who loved hearing about the
theater life. Sometime earlier in the year Rachel had moved into the Orr home.
The friendship grew and they tried to find someone else for Mabel using Lorilla
Weaver’s name with some matrimonial services, but this led nowhere. Finally,
the two women decided John Orr would have to die for them to have any chance of
going to New York and chasing their now shared dream.
Mabel Orr convinced her husband
to take out $5,000 in life insurance through his fraternal clubs. This was
going to be the traveling money. Mrs. Orr than convinced Lorilla Weaver to
reach out to Dennis Ricord a local “hoodoo doctor and conjurer.” Ricord put
together a concoction of boiled scorpion tails and snake’s heads to be added to
John Orr’s food. Weaver added it to his coffee; it made him vomit but he
recovered. Ricord said the silver in the man’s skin prevented his magic.
Frustrated Mrs. Orr and Rachel
Morris got together and offered $200 to any servant of the household who would
kill John Orr. Allegedly the first person was a porter and gardener Manse
Castle but once given a shotgun he decided he had been to filled with bravado
and tried to get Ricord to do the act. Ricord also refused but appeared at the
Orr house with Will Sanders the son of Lorilla Weaver. Records say that Sanders
agreed to shoot Mr. Orr for the $200.
On the night of July 30 John Orr
returned home from choir practice at the Methodist Church. Normally he and
Mabel would have been together but she had suffered illness all day and so she
stayed home. That night when he came home John Orr said hello to his wife and
went to the kitchen to make a glass of lemonade as was his habit. As he stood
in the kitchen he was hit by a shotgun blast from the outside.
A deputy of the sheriff named Milwee
sent word to the town of Binkley requesting Sheriff T.H. Jackson to end his
vacation and rush home. Then Milwee started the investigation. Over the next
few days Sheriff Jackson and his men tried to collect evidence but because
there had been heavy rains the night of the shooting there was little evidence.
For the sheriff things did not
look good as he had no suspects and no evidence to chase. However, there was
still to be a coroner’s inquest as was the law in a suspected murder. On the
second day of the inquest a prominent local man came forward requesting anonymity.
He told the coroner and jurors that Mrs. Mabel Orr had been seated with him at
a function several months earlier and had sent him a note asking if he could
kill her husband. He said he was stunned by this and could not imagine why she felt
this was acceptable.
The testimony apparently opened
the vault. Next Weaver gave testimony that Mr. Orr’s had cut Mrs. Orr off from
funds and she was wearing out her clothes. Weaver added that she had heard Rachel
Morris and Orr talk about Mabel leaving Mr. Orr and going back to traveling
theater. Rachel Morris took the stand and admitted Weaver’s testimony was
correct, but to protect herself she said that she didn’t know who Orr might
have made offers too. The house staff and Denis Ricord were all made to testify,
as one might expect for the time the only ones arrested were the African
Americans.
Word had started spreading about
how the Negros had been arrested and how they must have forced Mrs. Orr to pay them.
Many rumors spread around Clarendon and Monroe County. Finally, Mabel was arrested,
and she confessed to wanting to be done with her husband but that her $200
offer was out of frustration and had spun out of her control. Knowing that she
only had been arrested because each of her co-conspirators had been arrested
and talked about her. That is except for Rachel Morris who had disappeared.
Mabel Orr then released a public
statement, not a confession and not to clear her Black employees, most of whom
had not been even tangentially involved in her husband’s murder. She released a
statement regarding the dispensation of her home and the things she owned and
to the welfare of her little girl Geneva. Then she took poison and lost consciousness.
The night of August 9th
a mob of 300 White men broke into the jail and confronted Deputy Sheriff
Milwee. Sheriff Jackson was in bad health and was on his way back to Binkley. Milwee
at first was able to hold off the mob by yelling into the jail that the men
down there should hold off shooting the mob. He told them the sheriff had 25
deputies in the jail. This only worked for a few minutes until the mob realized
the size of the jail and threatened to kill him, and he stepped aside. The mob grabbed
Lorilla Weaver, Manse Castle, Will Sanders, Orr’s maid Susie Jacobs and Denis
Ricord and marched them out of the jail and put nooses over them. Their last
words were reported in some of the papers, it isn’t mentioned how, It is reported
that Manse Castle said he was glad because he and the others deserved death. It
is also reported that other Black residents joined the mob, but it was never
reported that John Orr was especially friendly or respectful towards the Black
community, so this is a bit suspect as a report.
The next morning the bodies were
cut down from the front of Halpern Sawmill and taken to the coroner’s office.
Where, as always anywhere a lynching occurred the final report said killed at
the hands of persons unknown. The lynching made national news quickly and
Arkansas Governor Daniel Webster Jones offered a $200 reward for each member of
the lynch mob who was brought to justice. James Mitchell, editor of the
Arkansas Democrat had taken a staunch anti-lynching position years prior and
called the offer a mockery of those murdered. No one was ever arrested for
participating in the mob violence.
Mabel Orr died on August 11t,
she never regained consciousness. Further proof of her plotting came on August
13th when a love letter arrived at the Orr house addressed to Lorilla
Weaver. It had been sent by the 23-year-old mayor of Caldwell, Ohio, Arthur
Ogden Archer. Sheriff Jackson interviewed Archer but found nothing indicating
he knew very much about Mrs. Orr, including the fact he didn’t know her real
name. Archer went on to serve President Theodore Roosevelt in dealing with native
affairs in Oklahoma.
After some legal arguments Geneva
Orr did not go to live with her grandparents in Wisconsin but with her uncle
and aunt. John’s sister and brother-in-law who lived in Kansas and had a son
Geneva’s age. The family decided that this was the best placement for Geneva to
have a happy life.
While the story of the Clarendon
Lynching seems closer to a storyline from today’s true crime podcast or a
primetime drama like Dynasty or Dallas it is just another story of a White mob murdering
Blacks without evidence or trial. Another in the long inventory of tragedy by
hands unknown.
Sources:
https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/clarendon-lynching-of-1898-7373/
https://www.argenweb.net/monroe/history/hisclare.htm
https://accessgenealogy.com/missouri/biography-of-arthur-ogden-archer.htm
- The
Clarendon Lynching of 1898:: The Intersection of Race, Class, and Gender
by Richard
Buckelew
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