Bloody Williamson (13 page)

All the way from Cairo to Marion, Music drank steadily. When he reached his destination he was ready to talk. On the basis of his revelations the sheriff arrested John Bulliner, Samuel R. Crain, and three other members of the Crain family who went by the names of “Big Jep,” “Black Bill,” and “Yaller Bill.” Lowe found Allen Baker, another Bulliner ally, at Du Quoin, arrested him, and brought him back to Marion. Marshall Crain, more directly implicated by Music than were any of the others, could not be located. Lowe heard that he was in Missouri. Soon afterward he ran him down in northeastern Arkansas. In a short time Crain was behind the bars of the Jackson County jail at Murphysboro, charged with the murder of George W. Sisney.

While Lowe was tracking his man, John Bulliner, Samuel R. Crain, and Allen Baker were arraigned before a justice of the peace. Music, the principal witness for the prosecution, testified that Marshall Crain had killed Sisney, and that the three men in court were his accomplices. Samuel R. Crain was released for want of evidence, but Bulliner and Baker were committed to jail. Soon afterward, they were indicted for murder.

Their trial opened at Murphysboro on October 8, 1875. Music, the star witness, told a lurid story. Early in July, he related, he had been present when John Bulliner offered Marshall Crain three hundred dollars if he would kill Sisney. Crain agreed. On the 28th of the month, Music continued, he had been in Carbondale where, by chance, he met Crain, who admitted readily enough that he was there for the purpose of killing Sisney. Music, unconcerned, went about his business.

The next day he met Crain and Allen Baker in Carterville. Crain related that about nine o’clock on the previous evening he had started for Sisney’s home. Aided by rain, he reached there without being seen. The house was dark; evidently its occupants had gone to bed. He was about to give up hope when Sisney’s visitor arrived, thus giving the killer his opportunity.

After firing one fatal shot, Crain ran. The rain, now a violent thunderstorm, aided him to escape. He made his way out of town, and then stumbled through swamps and mudholes until his reached his mother-in-law’s home, nine miles from the scene of the killing, just before dawn.

From Carterville, Crain and Music went to Crainville, where they met John Bulliner. Again Crain described what he had done on the preceding evening. Bulliner gave him fifteen dollars and promised to pay the balance of the blood money when he sold his wheat. He had wanted Sisney killed, he added, because he believed that the ex-sheriff had been connected with the deaths of his own people.

The next day Music, Marshall Crain, and Big Jep Crain were passing the time in a card game. After several drinks Big Jep
announced: “The next man to kill is Spence.” The others agreed. Twenty-four hours later the three, with Black Bill, met in a field near Crainville. After the little town was dark and quiet Marshall Crain knocked on the door of Spence’s store and called out the owner’s name. From an upstairs window Spence asked who was there. “John Sisney,” Crain answered. “I want to get shrouding for a child.” When Spence appeared Crain fired both barrels of his shotgun into the storekeeper’s abdomen, then put pistol shots into his victim’s heart and brain.

From this story Music could not be shaken; no amount of cross-questioning could confuse him.

After Music had testified, Marshall Crain took the stand in his own defense. He knew nothing, he swore, about the murder for which he and the other two defendants were on trial. At this development, counsel for Bulliner and Baker produced a letter that Crain had written to their clients before the trial. In that communication he had asked his codefendants to have several people swear that he was at a surprise party on the night Sisney was killed, and at the home of a friend when Spence was murdered. In return he would testify that Music had admitted killing Spence. All three—Bulliner, Baker, and Crain himself—would then go free.

When Crain heard this letter read he knew that he was trapped. He also realized that Bulliner and Baker intended to help themselves as much as they could by establishing his own guilt. Enraged, he told the truth, corroborating Music’s testimony on every material point. Thus he made his own fate certain, but he also assured the conviction of his accomplices. The jury brought in a verdict of guilty, and Bulliner and Baker were sentenced to twenty-five years in the state penitentiary.

A few days later Marshall Crain was brought before the Williamson Circuit Court at Marion to stand trial for the murder of William Spence. When arraigned he pleaded not guilty, but on the following day he changed his plea to guilty and threw himself on the mercy of the court. The case was continued until
witnesses could be called and examined. Their testimony established the guilt of the defendant beyond question.

After the last witness stepped from the stand Crain was called before the bar and asked why sentence of death should not be pronounced. The prisoner replied that he had been dominated by wills stronger than his own. “I was dragged into this work by other parties,” he said. “I had a higher power and influence over me. I could not resist. I don’t think I have done enough to be hung for. Spence was harboring parties that were trying to kill me.… I was influenced by John Bulliner, a man of good mind and education, but I am not a man of good mind, and no education.”

Uninfluenced, the judge pronounced sentence: that Marshall Crain “be hanged by the neck until he is dead” on the 21st day of January, 1876. “And,” he concluded, “may God have mercy upon you.”

When the condemned man left the courtroom he was taciturn and apparently emotionless. Within two days, however, he lost his assurance and asked for permission to tell all that he knew about the Vendetta. Before the grand jury he confessed to killing both Sisney and Spence. Then he broke into loud lamentations, and continued his wailing for several days. At the same time, he sought peace in religion. A month after sentence was passed upon him, a heavy guard escorted him to a near-by millpond, and there, dressed in a long white robe, he was baptized and taken into the church.

At dawn on January 21, 1876, the town of Marion began to fill with people. In the jail Crain, who had slept well, ate a hearty breakfast. Throughout the morning he talked with his wife, relatives, and friends. Just before noon he dressed in a white suit, over which he put his baptismal robe. After saying farewell to his wife he walked to the window of his cell and called out to the crowd that now filled the jail yard:

“I must make a statement in regard to this matter. I feel it my duty to God and man to do so. I am guilty of killing the two
men. My soul is stained with blood, and my punishment is just. I hope all will forgive me. I pray God to guide and prosper this country.”

He then read a crude poem he had composed for the occasion. At its conclusion he walked to the trapdoor with a steady step. There he stood while a minister spoke of the solemnity of the occasion, read several passages from the Book of John, and led the crowd in the hymn, “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood.” When prayer was offered, Crain dropped to his knees.

The ceremony over, the hangman pulled the cap over the murderer’s head and slipped the noose around his neck. When asked whether he had anything to say he answered: “I am the murderer of William Spence,” paused, and concluded: “and George W. Sisney.” At 12.56 the rope that held the trapdoor was severed. Twenty-six minutes later Crain was pronounced dead.

Attendants cut down the body and put it in an open coffin, which was placed in the street before the jail. For an hour and a half the crowd filed past. Then the coffin was closed and turned over to a brother. Burial took place on the following day.

“The wild winds of heaven,” Milo Erwin wrote, “will sing their hoarse lullaby over his grave until the mighty Angel Gabriel writes the solemn legend, ‘Finis,’ on the hoary page of time.”

The hanging of Marshall Crain, and the conviction of Bulliner and Baker for complicity in the murder of Sisney, signified the end of the Vendetta. Others, however, were still to be punished. During the early months of 1876 two other Crains were tried, found guilty, and sent to prison; a third member of the family, indicted as an accessory in the Spence murder, died of tuberculosis before he could be brought to trial. James Norris, implicated in the murder of James Henderson, drew a prison term. The last of the feudists to come into court was Samuel Music who, because of his testimony in behalf of the state, was let off with a fourteen-year prison sentence. After this the county authorities concluded that the requirements of justice had been
satisfied, and made no serious effort to bring any members of the Sisney-Henderson faction to trial.

In bringing his narrative of the Vendetta to an end Milo Erwin wrote:

1890–1906

F
OR MORE
than twenty years Williamson County enjoyed peace and prosperity–greater prosperity, in fact, than Milo Erwin could have expected. Coal was the basis of the new wealth.

The existence of coal in Illinois had been known ever since 1673, when Marquette and Jolliet made the voyage of discovery with which the state’s history begins. Many a later traveler noted its presence in outcrops and creek banks, but the nineteenth century was half gone before the commercial exploitation of this great natural resource began in earnest. “The State has but recently commenced to make use of the coal with which nature has so bountifully provided her,” the statistician of the industry wrote in 1855. “Except in the vicinity of the larger towns and rivers, the business of mining coal here had made but small progress.”

What little progress had been made in the first years of settlement—Illinois came into the Union in 1818—is shown by the
U.S. Census of 1840. There the state is credited with having produced 17,000 tons of coal in that year, with only 152 workmen engaged in coal mining. But annual production jumped to 300,000 tons in 1850, and to 728,400 tons ten years later. The reason for the increase is to be found in three facts: between 1850 and 1860 the state’s railroad mileage grew from slightly more than 100 miles to approximately 3,000; railroads haul coal cheaply; and they burn it. (Or did, until the advent of the diesel engine.) When, in 1854, the Galena and Chicago Union, parent line of the North-Western, purchased five locomotives that were guaranteed to burn Illinois coal instead of wood, the future of the state’s mining industry was assured.

Railroad building, interrupted by the Civil War, was resumed after Appomattox. With almost miraculous rapidity Illinois transformed herself from an agricultural to an industrial state. The standard of living rose, and coal fed home furnaces as well as the boilers of great factories. Production shot upward—to 2,625,000 tons in 1870; 6,115,000 tons in 1880; 15,275,000 tons in 1890. (In 1918, its peak year, Illinois produced 90,000,000 tons of coal.)

In exploiting the wealth that lay beneath her thin and failing soil, Williamson County lagged behind other sections of the state. Her first mine was opened in 1869—by Laban Carter, who gave his name to the town of Carterville, which grew up around his workings—but for several years the output was insignificant. By 1880, however, with two mines in addition to Carter’s in operation, 73,500 tons were brought to the surface, giving Williamson nineteenth place among the forty-eight coal-mining counties of the state. In 1890 production exceeded 200,000 tons, although the county stood one place lower in relative rank.

In that year Samuel T. Brush of Carbondale organized the company that was to put Williamson County in the front rank as a coal producer. His St. Louis and Big Muddy Coal Company, financed largely by St. Louis and Cincinnati capital, sank its shaft a mile north of Carterville. In 1893, after only two years
of operation, it brought up more than 200,000 tons, and took rank as the sixth largest mine in Illinois. In that same year the district mine-inspector referred to its coal-washing plant, which represented an investment of thirty thousand dollars, as “the most extensive improvement of this kind in the State.” The Panic of 1893 and the subsequent depression threw the company into receivership, but Brush stayed on as general manager, and the mine’s output continued to rise. In the year 1897 it produced 319,697 tons, more than any other mine in the state.