Vigilance Committee

ROBERTS, SAUM

Posted By: Ken Wright (email)
Date: 1/31/2015 at 21:53:07

Dubuque Daily Times, December 19, 1857.

MORE LYNCHING-

Hiram Roberts, a noted horse thief, was hung on the road between Walnut and Red Oak Grove in Cedar County, on the 4th inst.

Anamosa Gazette, re-printed in the Dubuque Daily Times, December 12, 1857.

We learn that on Friday last, High Roberts, whose name is familiar to all the settlers of Jones and Cedar Counties, as a notorious burglar and horse thief, was caught near Little Oak Grove, Cedar County, by the Vigilance Committee of that County, and after being conveyed to the residence of Mr. Saum, who lives some five or six miles southwest of Rome, Jones County, was hung upon a beam in that gentleman’s barn. After the Committee had performed the act and when it was supposed that the tender cord of life was entirely severed and the spirit of the unfortunate man had taken its exit beyond the veil of mortality, this pious and respectable gang cut the body from its position and bore it to a thicket hard by and suspended it to the limb of a tree, there to rot and fall to the earth as piecemeal. After these proceedings, the members of the Committee, who were by this time in a frenzied state of drunkenness, dispersed to their homes, so to revel in their inebriation, others who were not entirely inhumanized by the effects of rum, to enjoy the pangs of an outraged conscience.