Thomas Jefferson "Jeff" Mitchell - Hood County, TX
N 32° 19.065 W 097° 41.668
14S E 622891 N 3576405
Jeff Mitchell was shot and killed by a Hood County Jail prison guard when he attempted to help his father, Cooney Mitchell, avoid the hangman's noose. While weathered, his headstone notes his fate.
Waymark Code: WMYA44
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 05/18/2018
Views: 2
There is a less-weathered photo of his plaster-covered headstone at his
Findgrave memorial. It reads:
Son Age 17 of
N (Coony) Mitchel
Killed 1875 at Hood Co Jail
By A Guard
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The story begins with Mr. Mitchell's father...
Nelson Mitchell's nickname was "Cooney", for reasons unknown, and while he wasn't necessarily a choir boy, he was innocent of the crime for which he was ultimately hanged. Of course, money was at the center of the problem, in which Mr. Mitchell helped out his neighbors, the Truetts, by carrying the note for their property. Things turned ugly when Mitchell sued Mr. Truett over the money, and after one day in court in Granbury, one of the Mitchell boys shot three of Truett's sons, killing two of them, as they all returned to Mitchell Bend. Mr. Mitchell and his son-in-law had lagged behind, so they weren't present. Bill Mitchell, the trigger man, fled, leaving his father to be convicted and sentenced to hang, while his brother-in-law was sentenced to life in prison (but was pardoned after five years).
While in the Hood County jail, Jeff Mitchell tried to sneak a gun and some poison to his father: The gun to be used in an escape attempt, and the poison to be used to escape the hangman if the escape failed. A jail guard spotted young Mitchell and shot and killed him. At the gallows, Cooney Mitchell said his peace and exhorted his children to avenge him, which Bill Mitchell did some years later, murdering Mr. Truett in front of his family in East Texas.
Cooney Mitchell and his son, Jeff, are buried side-by-side here at Mitchell Bend Cemetery, and while their original grave markers are worn, they still indicate the respective fate of both men. Descendants placed newer headstones here in 1990.
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Should the web pages covering the hanging (see Web Site) be taken offline, I have them saved as PDFs, and they are available upon request.
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