ONLY Man Ever Legally Hanged in Hood County - Hood County, TX - Superlatives on Waymarking.com

This is quite an achievement, as Hood County could be on the rough side back in the day. Either the local populace took care of business with their own private brand of justice, or bad guys just didn't seem to be around Hood County for long after they'd committed punishable crimes. The really bad cases were probably shipped up to Fort Worth.

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 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. Cooney's reads:

N (Cooney) Mitchell
Age in Early 60s
Hung in Granbury
Hood Co - 1876 - Texas

Note that he was hanged in 1875, not 1876, and accounts indicate that he was at least eighty, not in his sixties. Descendants placed newer headstones here in 1990, and Cooney's headstone lists his wife and children on the reverse.

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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.

Type of documentation of superlative status: Hood County Texas Genealogical Society Location of coordinates: Grave site Web Site: [Web Link]

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