Where was 'Gallows Field' located in Wilcox County, Alabama?

Grave of Henry Kaster.

Where exactly was “Gallows Field”?

This was the question that I couldn’t help but ask myself the other day as I read an interesting article in the Nov. 30, 1933 edition of The Wilcox Progressive Era. In that week’s paper, under the headline “Memories of Childhood,” the writer, who gave his name as “Sixty,” wrote about a woman in her thirties who worked in their home when he was a child.

The woman was described as being very kind to the children, and she was fondly remembered for making biscuits and teacakes in the shape of snakes and goats. When the children got old enough to “get mischievous and bad,” she would threaten to take them to “Gallows Field.”

“She gave us this line of talk so often that we begged her to show us the place,” the writer said. “So on an evening in the summer just after dinner she took us by the hand and escorted us out on Canton Bend Road about a mile and a half and as soon as we crossed Sweetgum Branch, we turned to the right into an old road and went about half a mile farther until we came to a small field of some three or four acres that was surrounded by a forest of good, large longleaf pines.”

At that time, there was a log house near the center of the field. Not far from this house, on the north side of the field, were the gallows. For readers unfamiliar with the word “gallows,” it was a structure, usually consisting of two uprights and a crosspiece, that was used for the hanging of criminals.

The writer went on to say that he believed that the county government of Wilcox County, in its early history, owned this field by deed or lease for the purpose of public executions.

The gallows were “substantially built of two big hewn timbers of fat longleaf pine, placed deep in the ground and extending upward some 18 to 20 feet in the air with a crossarm of the same fastened by mortice and tenon,” the writer said. “There was a flight of steps that went up to the trap, which was located a little more than halfway up. The upright pieces were a little wider at the ground than they were at the top so the trap would fall clear when it fell.”

The woman who took the children to the field told them that she had seen several public hangings there and that the executions “were well patronized by big crowds.” She also showed the children several graves of people who had been executed there.

The writer went on to say that the old gallows stood there for many years and were still there when he had grown to be an adult. The writer noted that a man named Coker eventually bought the land from the county, and it eventually became the property of Henry Kaster. As of November 1933, the writer believed that the land was then owned by Frank Dexter, who was the county treasurer.

“(Dexter) is now probably raising a crop over the graves and bones of some of our former evil doers who paid the extreme penalty of the law,” the writer said.

In the end, I’d like to hear from anyone who might now where “Gallows Field” was located. Perhaps some readers will know how to find the place based on clues like the Canton Bend Road and Sweetgum Branch. It would be interesting to know what is located there today and if the current owners are aware of the location’s place in local history.