1883

Sam McDonald Hanging

In 1883, Sam McDonald, a woodcutter, quarreled with Louis Laurent and McDonald struck Laurent over the head with an axe. When Laurent's body was discovered by authorities, McDonald was charged with murder and was jailed in Fort Wayne. McDonald was tried for the murder of Louis Laurent in the Allen County Courthouse in May of 1883 and convicted; the recommended sentence was death. The case was appealed to the Indiana Supreme Court and the conviction and sentence were upheld. More than 300 citizens signed a petition to overturn the ruling and sentence McDonald to life in prison, but Governor Porter did not intervene.

Macabre souvenirs from the execution were preserved through the years including cloth ties that bound his arms and this rope that was used during McDonald's hanging on 10 October 1883. A scaffold was built inside the walled-in jail yard where Allen County Sheriff William Schiefer tripped the lever that dropped McDonald into eternity. The yard was so small that only 250 ticket holders were admitted to witness the death scene, but after the body was taken away, the sheriff opened the gates to let an esti-mated 15,000 gawkers view the gallows. The hanging of Sam McDonald was the last public execution in Allen County.