Old Hanging Tree
Hallettsville, Lavaca County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Gallows used Sept. 12, 1879, at public hanging of "Pocket", an Indian, killer of Englishman Leonard Hyde. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1967
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This marker recalls the gallows used on September 12, 1879, for the public hanging of a Native man known as "Pocket," convicted of killing an Englishman named Leonard Hyde. Public executions of this kind were grim community spectacles in frontier Texas, where formal justice was still raw and often meted out in the open. The record survives as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.
Why it matters
The site is a stark reminder of frontier justice and of the frequently unequal treatment of Native people in the courts of the late-nineteenth-century West.
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