Leon Reporter, Leon, Iowa
Thursday, September l6, l897

The notorious SAM HAMILTON, of Davis City, who was confined for a number of months in the Leon jail for stabbing ROBERT HARVEY two years ago, and who has been involved in several other scrapes is again an inmate of the Leon jail, having been arrested yesterday morning at Pleasanton by Constable Gibson, and Sheriff Walker from Bethany. He is charged with stabbing a man at Cainsville, and is held here on an information filed before Justice Brooks, charging him with being a fugitive from justice until the Bethany Sheriff can obtain requisition papers. The Cainsville News of Tuesday gives the following account of the stabbing:

On last Saturday Geo. R. Smith and wife, of Des Moines, Iowa, who are traveling overland to Kansas City, were camping for the day and resting their team in uncle JIM MOSS' pasture just west of town. A picnic was being held in a grove just across the road from them.

About l:30 SAM HAMILTON and Jake Oxford went over to them and made some insulting remarks. Mr. Smith explained the situation and asked the boys to go away and let them alone, but they refused. Smith told them repeatedly they were mistaken in them and asked them to go away as they did not want any trouble.

Smith's attention was called to his horses a short distance away, when HAMILTON started towards Mrs. Smith with an insulting remark. She screamed and started toward her husband who quickly came back, when HAMILTON drew a dirk knife and stabbed Smith in the right breast, inflicting a dangerous if not fatal, wound. Mrs. Smith started screaming toward the crowd when HAMILTON put his hand to his hip pocket and with a vile remark ordered her to come back or he would kill her too. HAMILTON and Oxford then left and the wounded man and wife were brought to town by S.P. Davisson, and Dr. Stoner dressed the wound, since which time they have been occupying rooms in the Commercial Hotel.

Leon Reporter, Leon, Iowa
Thursday, February 3, l898

'Sam Hamilton Gets Three Years in the Missouri Penitentiary.'

The notorious SAM HAMILTON, of Davis City, who has several times been an inmate of the Leon jail, once for stabbing ROBERT HARVEY at Davis City a few years ago, and for which crime he escaped going to prison through a technicality, has at last received his desserts and was sentenced to three years in the Missouri Penitentiary by the Court at Bethany last week. The Bethany Republican says:

The jury in the case of State vs. SAMUEL HAMILTON, who was tried last Saturday on the charge of felonious assault on a mover near Cainsville, on the l3th of Sept. last, and sentenced to three years in the penitentiary, did a mighty good act for the county. The only improvement they could have made would have been in giving him the extent of the law -- 5 years -- and this the jury no doubt would have done had they been familiar with his antecedents. For several years, HAMILTON has been known as a "holy terror" in Decatur County, Iowa. He was always in trouble but in some way seemed to escape and evade punishment. The officers in Iowa were wanting him at the time he committed the assault at Cainsville, and although after the assault he fled to and was arrested in Iowa, yet it was deemed best that he be brought to Bethany and get a taste of Missouri Justice. When the case came up for trial last week, for some reason the main prosecuting witness failed to put in an appearance, and HAMILTON was congratulating himself that his absence would insure his acquittal. But prosecuting Attorney Frisby, even without the main witness, presented a very strong case, and although HAMILTON's Attorneys (Walton & Reeves) made a good defense as possible in the case, yet the jury on the first ballot were unanimous as to his guilt. The verdict seemed somewhat of a surprise to HAMILTON, and although he later declared that he was a b-a-d man and that it would need sixteen of the best men in Bethany to take him to the pen, yet shortly after giving him a good meal, Sunday noon, Sheriff Walker adorned his arms and legs with appropriate jewelry, and got him over to the depot and on the train with no trouble whatever, and about midnight landed him safely in the pen.

Sometime after HAMILTON was sentenced he remarked that if he "had had a good revolver with him, he would have killed ever ----- ------- ------ ------ of a juryman who convicted him." Before reaching Jefferson City, however, he told Sheriff Walker to tell the jurymen who might hear, he made the remark, that he asked their pardon for speaking so, and that he had come to the determination to thoroughly reform himself while in the pen, and come out a changed man. It is to be hoped that he was sincere in this statement.

Copied by Cordelia Suzann
"With permission from the Leon Journal Reporter"
November 24, 2002