Sheriff shot, killer lynched, happy end for the horse

Had Bill not called from the newspaper office earlier this week, I'd have overlooked the fact that Monday, July 6, was the 150th anniversary of Lucas County Sheriff Gaylord Lyman's murder and the unceremonious lynching that night of his killer, Hiram Wilson.

Two first-hand accounts are available if you'd like the full story. The first, published originally in The Chariton Democrat of July 12, is here in a post entitled "The murder of Sheriff Gaylord Lyman"; the second, from The Patriot, is here in a post headlined "Hiram Wilson's lynching: the lost Patriot report."

To make a long story shorter, a young man named Hiram Wilson rode into Chariton from Missouri aboard a stolen horse on Wednesday morning, July 6, 1870, and sold the same at a livery stable. The unarmed Sheriff Lyman, who had been on the lookout for the horse thief, confronted him outside a saloon at the southeast corner of the square and sustained a revolver shot to the chest for his trouble.

Wilson stole another horse and fled the square, running off into woodland just east of town where he eventually was captured by two young men. Brought back into town, he was taken to the room where Sheriff  Lyman lay dying and was duly forgiven, then locked up in the 1858 courthouse. 

That night, when word of Sheriff Lyman's death reached the square at about 10:30 p.m., a band of vigilantes broke into the courthouse and suspended Mr. Wilson by the neck from a south window of the building. The next morning, following an inquest, his remains were buried in an unmarked grave in what we now call Douglass Pioneer Cemetery, just southeast of town.

So two of the major players in this real-life drama now were accounted for --- but what about the horse?

Democrat editor John V. Faith published the following notice in his edition of July 19 under the headline, "A Stolen Horse" ---

"Hiram Wilson, who was arrested in Chariton on the 6th of July upon suspicion of being a horse thief, had in his possession a horse which, it is believed, was a stolen one and which is now in possession of W. L. Robinson, Chariton, Iowa. The horse is described as follows: cream color, four white feet, supposed to be eight or nine years old, and is about 15 and 3/4 hands high. The owner is requested to prove property, pay charges and take him away."

Two weeks later, in his edition of August 2, Mr. Faith reported, "We omitted to mention, last week, that the owner of the horse upon which Wilson, Lyman's murderer, came to town, came here and reclaimed his property."

So there you have it. For the horse, at least, there was a happy ending. Sheriff Lyman was buried just inside the front gates of the Chariton Cemetery. The site of his killer's grave at Douglass Pioneer was never marked.