19 July, 2005

 Hello…

            This may be the strangest email you’ve gotten in while…

            I have been looking for information on a James Halstead who was married to a Nancy Holder and lived in Lawrence County, Ark., in the 1880s. I found a link about Nancy Holder’s family, which led me to your web page:

            James Halstead apparently was a constable who apprehended my great-grandfather, James Blansett, in 1889 and transported him to the jail at Powhatan. Apparently, he protected my great-grandfather from an angry crowd in Opposition, Ark., but to little avail. A group took him from the Powhatan jail a few weeks later and lynched him.

            As you can imagine, these events were kept pretty quiet in my family and I have been trying to find out more about it and was hoping that someone in the Halstead/Holder line might have a family history that would have some information on it.

            So, I was going to email you about that noticed that another link that took me the page about Gus Bobbit. I nearly fell over.

My grandfather’s mother remarried and moved to Pontotoc County, Okla., then Indian Territory, around 1900. My grandfather was 19 when Gus Bobbitt was killed and remembered the events of his death and the lynching of his killers quite clearly. In fact, the lynch mob came by to recruit his step-dad, who declined the invitation.

I grew up about four miles from the place where Jim Miller shot Gus Bobbitt. It was just north of Lawrence, where the road dipped into a hollow. There’s a limestone quarry across the road from it now.

Many of my relatives – including my grandfather whose father was arrested by James Halstead and later lynched – are buried in the same cemetery with Gus Bobbitt.

What are the odds?

Brian Blansett