A no longer extant grove in southwest Houston where at least three men were executed by county authorities on gallows: John Hyde in 1856, Sam Johnson in 1868, and Jake Johnson in 1870.

Location

One article about the location of Jake Johnson’s hanging noted it “is the same spot where Sam Johnson was hung some two years ago.”¹ Another clearly located it “west of the city.”² The Telegraph located it “in the southwestern suburbs of the city … under the funereal pines near the graveyard.”³

Vicinity of Hangman’s Grove (unmarked) shown on 1869 map by W. E. Wood.

An 1876 article places the grove in “freedman’s town” and “near State Fair Park.”⁴

Eleven years later, in 1887, an article identifies the grove with land owned by Peter Gabel, and fenced off by him to the consternation of “colored citizens” who owned homesteads around the site.⁵ In 1890, an article confirms that the grove was 18 acres in the Fourth Ward owned by a Mr. Goebel, and sold by him for $25,000 in 1890. This is likely also a reference to Peter Gabel, and refers to the same part of the 20 acres shown on the W. E. Wood map from 1869 and later known as the West End Addition.⁶

An article from 1905 says it was only two blocks from the Houston ball park, likely the West End Park, which was also in this vicinity, on the Ennis Tract depicted in 1869.⁷

And still another claims that William Marsh Rice intended to “leave a monument to his memory upon the tract of land in Houston once known as ‘Hangman’s Grove,’” which also would mean locating it on the Ennis Tract.⁸

According to a Houston Chronicle article from August 1906, “To this day the name of ‘Hangman’s grove’ is used by some to designate that portion of the city beyond Louisiana street and Leeland avenue as far as Pierce avenue and Baldwin street. Trees are still standing in that section that have borne the weight of a corpse that dangled from a rope.”⁹ Although the three formal executions at the site were from gallows, this article confirms the general location at the sites above. Contemporary bird’s eye maps from the time, like Koch’s 1873 map, depict a mostly undeveloped piece of ground here backing up against a grove of trees.

Scattered other references from around this time likewise place the grove in the Fourth Ward, possibly “near the old Episcopal grave yard at the foot of San Felipe street in the Fourth Ward south,” and at a parade ground used for light guard competition. AHN also has some references to a “hangman’s grove” dating from 1838 and 1839, but it is unclear whether it is the same place.

A circa-2009 essay by Louis F. Aulbach and Linda Gorski agrees with my location of the Reconstruction-era Hangman’s Grove on Gabel’s land but seems to also argue that the earlier, republic-era hanging also took place on this spot.

This leads me to believe that both executions took place in or near the Fourth Ward grove that, according to yates1985, had been used for emancipation day celebrations until an incident there that gave it the name of “Hanged Man’s Grove.” A Juneteenth freedom celebration had taken place near the site of the Gregory Institute that same year, with a martial parade preceding it.¹⁰ In further support of this location is an article by J. C. Bering in the Houston Chronicle from 1929 that locates the “Hangman’s Grove” in a woods in the rear of the Taylor School, “regarded as a comfortable spot to summarily hang negro criminals.”¹¹ This could also help explain the timing of the purchase of land for Emancipation Park in 1872.¹²

Misidentifications

Newspaper articles beginning around the 1910s put the grove closer to San Felipe and Valentine (near the southeast corner of the Founders’ cemetery there) or near Gray Avenue and Kattman Place.¹³

S. O. Young in particular wrote several times about the grove and claimed to have been present at both of the Johnson hangings.¹⁴ In 1915, Young said that there were only three men hung on a scaffold built at the original grove, which he placed near the San Felipe graveyard: “Hyde had and still has the distinction of being the only white man hanged there, the other two being negroes, both named Johnson, though not related to each other. The grove is now far inside the city limits and has long ago been cut up into streets and building sites.”¹⁵

A later journalist noted the wide variation in answers to the questions about its location.¹⁶