Hanging of William Barger Jackson County Iowa

William Barger was hung in June 1857 by a group known as the Iron Hill Vigilance Committee. Barger had killed his wife in 1854 at Bellevue in Jackson County, Iowa. He had accused her of infidelity. She sued for divorce. At the time of her murder, Mrs. Barger lived with a relative in Bellevue. Barger bored a hole in a fence near the house. Then he waited for her to open the door. When she did, he shot her dead.  

He pleaded insanity and was tried for murder twice. The first jury was hung, and the second found him guilty. After that, Barger’s lawyer didn’t think his client could get a fair trial in Bellevue, so he got a change of venue to De Witt in Clinton County for his third trial.  

The Tipton Advertiser justified the hanging, saying, “That the law was sluggish is evidenced in the time Barger has been suffered to lay in the jail at the expense of the county, even when it was judged and positively known that he was guilty.” In effect, they said, if the law doesn’t do it, the people will.

“At about noon, the Iron Hill Vigilance Committee rode into town heavily armed and unmasked and, in open daylight, made an attack upon the jail.” Sheriff Buchanan put up a good fight but couldn’t hold out against the vigilantes.

Once the sheriff was overpowered, the men used sledges to break the locks off Barger’s cell door. Then, they loaded him in a wagon and drove him to Andrew, the county seat of Jackson County. Barger was hung on a tree known as “hangman’s tree.”

Hanging wasn’t good enough for an angry old cuss like Barger. They let him hang for three hours before they cut him down. Then they nailed him into an old pine box and buried him in a hole in a vacant lot. Several mob members dug him up the following day, “placed [him] upright in a buggy, with clothes and hat on,” and drove him to Cobb’s Hotel. They placed a note in his hand asking for “dinner and horse feed.”