Mob Justice: The Lynching of John H. Bailes in Limestone County, Alabama

Headstone of May Alice BaylessPhoto byfindagrave.com

The story of John H. Bailes’ lynching by an angry mob is infamous in the history of Limestone County, Alabama, but it is one that few people these days have heard of. His life took a dark turn that would end in one of the most notorious acts of mob justice the area had ever seen.

Mary Alice Loveless married John H. Bailes in the winter of 1877 when she was barely seventeen. Bailes was around five years older than his bride. Alice’s mother, her sole parent, deemed Bailes a poor choice for a husband and was dead set against their marriage. Bailes was already known throughout the community to be unneighborly and ill-tempered.

As it would turn out, Alice’s mother was right to be concerned. Within a few weeks of being wed, Bailes would become domineering and violent toward his new wife. Still, Alice tried to make the best of things and remained in the marital home, determined to make the best of her plight. It would be more than a year into the marriage before things escalated to the point that she became fearful for her life. At this point, she fled. Alice sought safety at her mother’s farm, but Bailes was not content to let her go.

An article in the Huntsville Independent dated June 5, 1879, says that on the 20^th of May, Bailes visited the Loveless farm where Alice and her mother were busy working in the fields. Bailes approached his estranged wife and insisted that she return home with him. The report describes the events that followed:

“She refused, telling him that she was satisfied that she could not do so in peace and had determined not to try again. She asked him to go away and leave her in peace. He then told her that if she would not live with him, he would give her some trouble and drew a pistol and commenced firing, shooting her three times; from which she died on the following day after great suffering.”

This same article says that after shooting Alice, Bailes fled into the nearby woods and had not yet been apprehended, though “the citizens of the neighborhood of Pettusville were in hot pursuit.” Bailes was described as a white man, six feet and 160 pounds, with light brown hair and a thin brown mustache and whiskers.

The following excerpt regarding Bailes' presence at Alice's funeral was taken from “The Legacy" by Bob Dunnavant.

"Less than a mile from the chalybeate spring at Pettusville, where resort guests relaxed at the Pettusville Hotel and drank the health-restoring waters of the spring, a serious drama took place when on a May day in 1879, Alice Loveless Bailes and her unborn child were lowered into the grave, victims of a brutal murder at the hands of her husband, John. The cemetery is in the original Bailes Hollow situated about 100 yards north of the old Bailes home-place. Only an old chimney, almost covered by weeds, marks the spot of the house. The site can be reached either by an old road leading from the spring at Pettusville or by turning off Ragsdale Creek Road. Bob did not find John's grave. According to the story told to Bob by his guide, Walter Sims, Bailes stood up in the woods and watched as Alice was buried. It is interesting to note that the name "Bailes" is missing from the stone. It is also interesting to speculate as to why, with feelings running so high against her murder, Alice was buried in the Bailes Cemetery."

Around mid-June, Bailes was captured and taken to the jail in Athens, Alabama, which served Limestone County. It is interesting to note, that a report in the Athens Post on June 19, 1879, claims that Bailes wrote a letter to his jailor, Sheriff Mingea, not long after his arrest attempting to bribe his way out of jail, but the Sheriff refused as he was “not that sort.”

As the news of the murder spread, so did the outrage among the townspeople. The small communities of North Limestone County were close-knit towns where everyone knew each other, and the murder of Alice Bailes was seen as an unforgivable sin, made even more heinous by the fact that she had been pregnant with her first child at the time of her murder.

The legal system, however, was not moving fast enough for the locals. A Mongomery Advertiser article printed on the day of Bailes' intended execution revealed that Bailes had been quickly found guilty of murder in the first degree in late July 1879 and slated for execution on September 12 by Judge W. B. Woods.

An article in the Florence Gazette on July 16, 1879, recapped the events of the court hearing, noting that Bailes “maintained a stern indifference throughout the trial, and when the verdict was read by the clerk, not a single muscle moved, or a pallor came to his cheeks.” The article further noted that the defendant seemed to be “in a great dread of mob violence, but his fears are groundless. The mob and the people are disposed, now that he is convicted, to let the sentence be carried out” despite there having been threats of vengeance from multiple people due to the horrible nature of his crime. This would change later after Bailes was successful in getting his execution delayed pending appeals.

On September 12, 1879, throngs of people gathered outside the jail. They were angered that multiple appeals had pushed the execution out to an undetermined date. They were determined to take matters into their own hands and carry it out as it had been scheduled during his first trial. Mayor J.T. Tanner had requested that the bars and saloons in the area be closed for the day to prevent trouble because there had already been four attempts by members of the community to break Bailes free from jail to hang him themselves.

According to the September 18, 1879, edition of The Athens Post, crowds gathered in smaller congregations around Athens and then made their way to the courthouse square, growing to number around 3000 by about 10 am. When Bailes requested that they give him peace to write one final letter to his mother, they even retreated for a while to allow him to do so. However, an hour later, they surged forth once again.

The leaders of the group demanded the keys to Bailes’ cell from the sheriff, but he refused. The crowd produced a variety of tools that included crowbars, hatchets, picks, saws, and sledgehammers. They used them to pry away a portion of the roof and knock out a barred window to gain entrance. Once inside, the angry mob set to work breaking through the bars of Bailes’ cell. On the advice of other officials, the sheriff relented and gave them the keys to the cell.

Bailes was hoisted from the jail and placed on a wagon by the crowd. They drove him to a spot they had designated about a mile north of town and pulled the wagon beneath a tree. A cotton rope was secured around this neck and fashioned to the tree for his hanging. Bailes made a final request that a local dentist named W.R. McWilliams might pray for him before his death.

Dr. McWilliams agreed to do so, but only after saying a few words of his own. He told the crowd that though he had no sympathy for the prisoner, they should consider moderation and let the laws take their course rather than taking matters into their own hands. Once he was finished, he said a short prayer for Bailes and stepped down from the wagon.

Though Bailes then spoke a few words himself, they were not recorded. Instead, they were drowned out by chants of “Hang him. Hang him!” However, now that the moment had arrived, it seemed that no one was willing to step forward and lynch Bailes. They were convinced to let him return to jail instead. It was at this point that the crowd abated and allowed the Sheriff to retake custody of Bailes. He was returned to jail to await the outcome of his Supreme Court appeal.

Nearly a year would pass while Bailes continued to seek new trials and file appeals, delaying his execution indefinitely. After he had been successful at getting his case moved on to the Supreme Court on technicalities twice, people were growing angrier that Bailes had not been executed for his crime. Many feared that he might even get away with the horrible murder he had committed.

According to an August 14, 1880, article in the Alabama Beacon, on the night of August 7, 1880, the collective anger reached its boiling point. It had been only a few days since Bailes' last guilty verdict had been reversed.

At around 10:30 that evening, an angry mob of over 40 men “supposed to be from Tennessee” gathered outside the jail. Fueled by rage and a desire for immediate justice, they had devised a plot to retrieve Bailes from custody and execute him themselves.

An article in The Tennessean dated August 10, 1880, describes the events of that night.

“The crowd came in very quietly and approached the jail without noise. Some three or four then knocked at the door, and after awakening the jailer, told him they had a prisoner and showed a man with his hands tied behind him, who, they stated, was a notorious horse thief and bad man. The jailer, being satisfied that all was regular and fair and not suspecting anything wrong, went upstairs with them to the jail proper, they holding the pretended prisoner with apparent great care.”

The article goes on to say that once the jailer had unlocked the outer doors and the cell corridor doors, the men brought the prisoner inside. He instructed them to wait, as he needed to search the prisoner. It was then that a larger crowd of men rushed in, pulled out their pistols, and demanded that Bailes be turned over to them. The jailer protested, telling them they had no right and that he would not have let them in had he known their intentions, but they overpowered him and unlocked Bailes’ jail cell to retrieve the prisoner.

According to the article, Bailes attempted to fight the men off, “fighting manfully” and getting in some substantial licks while trying to flee, despite having six of the men hanging on to him. “With almost superhuman strength” Bailes advance eight or ten feet before being rushed by other members of the mob. The men brought him down from the jail to “an old, crooked locust tree” standing just inside the southwest corner of the courthouse yard. The men strung Bailes up using an old plow line fashioned into a noose, looped it over a branch, and then tied the other end to the trunk of the tree so that Bailes hung about a foot above the ground.

Afterward, the men jumped onto their horses, rode to the northeast corner of the square, and then doubled back to pass by Bailes’ hanging body. They fired off about eight pistol shots, shouted in victory, and rode north away from the scene. John H. Bailes was dead, his corpse left hanging from a tree on the courthouse square.

Surviving family members have noted that these men were not local citizens, but members of the Ku Klux Klan that had formed in nearby Pulaski, Tennessee on a late spring day in 1866. It is unknown how they came to be involved, but it is possible that members of the community enlisted their help with a task they had not been able to complete themselves.

After the men were gone, Bailes was cut down and brought into the courthouse where he was delivered to the care of the local coroner. A messenger was sent to notify Bailes’ mother the following morning but he returned to inform the coroner that she was very ill. The coroner placed her son’s body in a wagon and took him to her house for burial. He was laid to rest in Bailes Cemetery among other family members, including the wife he murdered.

A Coroner’s Jury finding reported in the Athens Post on August 12, 1880, says that an inquisition conducted in the Limestone County Courthouse on August 8, 1880, concluded that at around 11 pm on the previous night, Bailes met his death by strangulation from a rope that was tied around his neck and then attached to a tree, suspending his body in the air.

The death inquiry also notes that the jury was unable to identify the individuals responsible for tying the rope and hanging Bailes, despite diligent efforts to do so. However, the jury determined that the unknown individuals intentionally and unlawfully killed Bailes, which they describe as a felonious and willful act of murder, violating the peace and dignity of the State of Alabama.

The hanging of John H. Bailes was not just a punishment for a crime; it was a manifestation of the community's collective outrage and their ultimate rejection of the legal process. This act of vigilante justice reflected the turbulent social dynamics of the time, where law enforcement was often seen as inadequate in dealing with severe crimes, especially those that deeply offended the community's moral sensibilities.

This episode remains a significant part of Limestone County’s history, a sobering reminder of how easily justice can be overtaken by anger and a thirst for retribution. The story of John H. Bailes and the mob that ended his life is preserved in local historical accounts of Limestone County as a tragic piece of the county's past.