LAST HANGING IN MAGOFFIN COUNTY,KENTUCKY

      I have had the fortune of communicating recently with W. Cooper & 
Linda Potter Whitt, decendants of Callahan Whitt. I have been sent the 
following version of the events surrounding the murder of Callahan Whitt 
and the subsequent hanging of Big John Stapleton. The following is from a 
116 page handwritten manuscript by C. R. Cooper. I wish to give credit the
Cooper and the Whitt families respectively for permission to reprint the 
following excerpts of Mr. Cooper's manuscript. 

The following account of  the Stapleton and Whitt incident was written in 
1935. Often it seems that in our research we pursue names and dates rarely 
tripping over information that will help us get to know our ancestors as 
people. It is my hope that this wonderful account will not make us think 
ill of the people involved, but help us to better understand the world in 
which they lived and died, and to comprehend the circumstances that made 
them the people they were.

7/1/1935
All of the enclosed information is authentic...I stayed with my Grandpa,
Archibald Prater Cooper, one year on his farm and he related to me most of
the little incidents herein narrated. From Pg.1

The following is taken from Pgs. 42-49:

"In trying to remember the things that happen in your youth there 
are things that happen and things that are told you that stand out 
promanently.

I have always got a big kick out of the fact that my Grandfather Cooper
had the first cooking stove in Magoffin County. It was a wood burning 
Stop Stove(I'm not sure of the spelling of Stop), but it was a curiosity 
that neighboring men and women came miles to see. In fact Granddad said 
that it was one of the Seven Wonders of the World to his friends and 
neighbors. I suspect that it was also a wonder to him at the time". 

"Another thing that I have always been proud of is that my father did
not take part in the hanging of John Stapleton, the only lynching in
the history of Magoffin County. It came about in this manner. My Aunt
Elizabeth Cooper married Samuel Madison Whitt*(See note 1). Sam had a
brother named Calahan Whitt. Calahan and Will Greene Cooper were brothers-
in-law. Will Greene Cooper was a first cousin to my father W.W. Cooper. 
Tommy Cooper was also a first cousin. Randall Adams married another 
cousin."

Will Greene cooper was a dangerous man. He lived on Lick Creek. Calahan
kived on Little Paint on the Magoffin side. Calahan had as neighbors John 
Stapleton and his son John Stapleton Jr.. or Big John and Little John
Stapleton. There had been some racketing among the three. Calahan claimed
the Stapleton's were steal corn out of his crib and meat out of his smole
house. Will Greene Cooper was visiting Calahan when Calahan Whitt started 
to tell of the bad treatment he had recieved from the Stapletons. Will
Greene Cooper says, "Go up and give them a good whipping". So off they 
set an it so happened that they met Big and Little John, father and son.

Calahan or some one started the argument and Calahan stooped down to get
a rock. Old John yelled, "Shoot him Little John". Little John dropped
Calahan in his tracks with one shot and Will Greene left in a hurry and
carryed the news to Little Creek and Brushy Fork, the home of the Whitts
and the Coopers and their adherents. The Stapleton's were arrested. Old
John was lodged in Salyersville Jail but Little John was taken to
Prestonsburg for safe keeping which was a good thing for he was a dead
man if he had stayed in Jail at Salyersville. Will Greene Cooper was not
only sore at losing his brother in-law but the way the fight went off, it
injured his pride."

" For some time there had been a bunch of men who banded together and
called themselves Regulators. They would leave a bundle of switches at
the doors of someone they did not like or claimed were not living right.

Will Greene Cooper was the leader of this bunch of men. They were all
comparatively young men, not caring for anything. On the night of the
hanging, Will Greene gathered together some of his Brushy Fork Partisans
and arrived at the home of Calahan Whitt's parents/ Mrs. Whitt fed them
and they produced the rope and it is said she tied the noose knot( Known
as the hangman's knot)." 

Pg. 45
"They then with Will Greene Cooper, Uncle Sam Whitt, C. Whitt, Lee Yates, 
Jake Salyer, Randall Adams and Dave Borders, set out to get W.W. Cooper
and Boone Cooper to join them. It happened that on this night a baby was
being born at the house of Boone Cooper. The Regulators started up the
creek called Wolf Pen. My mother had left my father with the kids and 
they were smal, to go help with the birthing. Coming down the creek to
the Frolic, she met the Regulators in the road. The were masked with 
sheets, holes for eyes. They yelled for mother to get out of the road
and let them pass. She got out of the road but she gave them a piece of
her mind and also called out a few names that made the riders chuckle. The
Regulators were all mounted."

"After a long argument with my father in which they said they would get 
someone to stay with the children, my father told them he would not 
go. They came back down the branch and one Henry Clark who lived between
W.W.'s and Boones house, crawled under the bed to keep from being seen
and made to go with them."

They went over the hill at the Head of Lick Creek and down the State Road
Fork gathering adherents til it is said the mob numbered 35 or 40. Arriving
at Salyersville at 1:00 a.m., they knocked on the jail door. The jailhouse
was the residence of the jailor, Mr. Wild Adams. They put guns in his face
and he gave up the keys or his boy Newton did. Adams not only had friends
in the mob but relatives. They went in and dragged out Big John Stapleton;
drug and kicked him to about one quarter of a mile up the state Road Fork
Road, to a bank or hill known as Ben Caudil Bank. A large Beech tree stood
on the top of this bank on the upper side of the road. The rope was thrown
over a limb, Big John was lifted off his feet, the rope was tied on the
other end to a small tree and Big John was left to starngle. The crowd 
moved off and some time later about two hours later, a party was formed
at town and found Big John. Little John got a change of venue and was
sentenced to 20 years in the pen but was pardoned and lives at this 
writing in Greenup County,KY."

Tommy Cooper, some 27 to 30 years after Big John Stapleton died, hanged
himself as atonement for the hanging of Big John. Will Greene Cooper was
kicked and killed by a stud horse. Judge John C. Cooper was Circuit Judge
at the time and after he heard that the boys said they would not be 
arrested, he sent Grandpa Archibald P. Cooper with a message for the boys
in the trouble to come in and give up which they did and Uncle John C.
threw the indictments for hanging Big John Stapleton out of court. With
it all, the men who participated in the hanging seemed to always have a
dark cloud hanging over them and from what I have heard the Ghost of John
Stapleton haunted some to their dying day. Semmingly, the revenge so direly 
taken was a boomerang returned with the years and visited on each on each 
participant some accident or trouble that always brought out the fact
that one unfortunate had been in the hanging party". 

*Note 1. Samuel Madison Whitt was the great grandfather to W. Cooper Whitt,
husband of Linda Potter Whitt.