The Kaintuckeean

On the eve of the trial of Will Lockett, tensions in Lexington were strong. Lockett, accused in the death of Geneva Hardman was awaiting trial at the state reformatory in Frankfort. While many wanted Lockett hung, others called for calm.

A brother’s cry for peace

The most notable plea for a peaceful trial came from Tupper Hardman, the brother of the slain child. As reported in both of Lexington’s newspaper Sunday editions on February 8, 1920, Mr. Hardman offered this statement on Saturday, February 7:

As a brother of Geneva Hardman, who was murdered by Will Lockett, and as a representative of her family, I request all of our friends and those who sympathize with us not to indulge in any violence or create any disturbance when Lockett is brought here for trial. The authorities have acted promptly, the man is under arrest, he has been indicted promptly and his trial fixed for next Monday.

There is no doubt of his guilt and he has confessed to it, and I feel surethat a prompt and speedy trial will take place and that any jury empaneled will find him guilty and punish him adequately for the horrible crime he has committed. 

  The precipitation of a battle or conflict between the authorities protecting the man and citizens who are justly indignant over the crime would necessarily result in many deaths and probably the killing of innocent bystanders who are taking no part in the conflict. 

  I would hate to see the life of any other person endangered or lost as the result of violence by reason of a conflict over a brute like this and I, therefore, urge all citizens, for the good name of the county and in the interest of law and order, to do nothing to interfere with the orderly processes of the law, because I am confident that prompt and exact justice will be done, and that punishment commensurate with the crime will be meted out to this man. 

From the mouth of one so close to the victim, the statement by Tupper Hardman was lauded locally and nationally for its eloquence and “true Christian spirit.”

In a similar vein, the Lexington Leader wrote an op-ed under the headline “Let the Law Take Its Course.”

As would be discovered the following morning during the trial, not all had the same sentiment.

At the small Christian church where her family attended services, and where members of her family would continue to attend for decades more, a funeral service was held for little Geneva Hardman on the morning of Friday, February 6, 1920 – just two days after her brutal murder. The Lexington Leader reported that the church was “crowded” with friends of the young girl and her family.

A child’s funeral

The service was officiated by Reverend Elmer E. Snoddy, the senior minister of the church. Reverend Snoddy was also a theology professor at Transylvania College’s College of the Bible. Snoddy was “armed with homely wisdom of the common people, with wit and a quick, germinal mind” and was “undoubtedly one of the most stimulating teachers ever to come to Lexington,” according to Dwight Stevenson’s centennial history of the Lexington Theological Seminary. During the service, Snoddy offered a tribute to Geneva’s character and sweet disposition. Classmates served as pallbearers.

Following the service at South Elkhorn, a procession of about forty cars proceeded to a graveside service at the Winchester Cemetery which was conducted by Dr. G. W. Banks of Winchester’s First Baptist Church. There in the Winchester Cemetery, Geneva was laid to rest beside her father.

In Richard Pope’s history of the South Elkhorn Christian Church, The Journey, he describes Geneva’s murder and the related circumstances as “one of the saddest events in the long history of the old church.”

Swift action promised

On the law and order front, the Lexington Herald proclaimed in the morning paper on February 6, 1920: “Swift Action Is Promised for Trial of Confessed Slayer of Young Girl.”

Judge Charles Kerr, who would preside over the trial of Will Lockett, stated that “trial within a few days’ time of the crime and in the same county should have the effect of discouraging mob violence by allowing justice to take an unusually swift course.”

The featured image is the silhouette of the statue of a young girl in the Faith Hope and Love Garden at South Elkhorn Christian Church. The picture was taken by the author with the warm colors of sunset shining through the windows of the church’s historic sanctuary.

Will Lockett was indicted by the Fayette County grand jury on the morning of February 5, 1920 – 100 years ago today – for the crime he was alleged to have committed a day earlier: the murder of Geneva Hardman. It was a crime for which he confessed in the early evening of February 4, 1920.

Indictment

The grand jury indictment found that Will Lockett “with force and arms, did unlawfully, willingly maliciously, feloniously and of his malice aforethought, kill, slay and murder Geneva Hardman by striking, wounding and beating the said Geneva Hardman with a stone, a deadly weapon, from which striking, wounding and beating the said Geneva Hardman then and there died.”

Counsel Appointed

In addition to being indicted that morning, Judge Charles Kerr also appointed two members of the Fayette County bar to represent Will Lockett at trial: Samuel M. Wilson and George R. Hunt. That day, the two attorneys went to Frankfort.

Will Lockett was being held, awaiting trial, at the State Reformatory in the state capital. According to a Report of Counsel, filed in the official court record on February 9, 1920, the two attorneys “had a full conference with the defendant, and offered to have subpoenaed any witness that might help him in the trial of his case, and offered to take all necessary and proper steps in his defense.”

The report further identified a second trip to Frankfort by the two members of the bar to meet their client on February 7, 1920. During that second meeting, “the case was again carefully gone over by us with the accused.” During the course of these two meetings, the attorneys additionally prepared for trial by investigating the “sanity of the defendant, in order to determine his legal responsibility for the crime … and also for the purpose of determining whether he had sufficient mind to know and comprehend the effect of the plea which [Lockett] desired to make.”

Lockett’s attorneys “stood ready” to make motions for continuances and a change of venue, but determined that “nothing could be gained” by such motions.

(It is worth noting that the Report of Counsel, although “filed and recorded” by the clerk of the Fayette County Circuit Clerk, is not contained in the official trial record which is housed in the state archives in Frankfort. Instead, this document has recently been discovered in the private papers of attorney Samuel M. Wilson which are housed at the University of Kentucky. It is unclear how Mr. Wilson came into possession of this and other of the official court records.)

Let Law and Order Prevail

And although many in the community were determined to see Lockett lynched, a number (likely, a majority) wanted law and order to prevail. The Lexington Leader, the city’s afternoon newspaper, published an editorial on February 5, 1920 under the headline “Let Law and Order Prevail.” It read, in part, “let the self-confessed murderer be given the due process of public trial, without interruption by anyone, and then may the curtain fall over his deed which came to near precipitating a tragedy which all might later have deeply deplored.”

The editorial concluded, “Justice will be swift and certain. This is all that any reasonable man wants or will ask.”

February 4, 1920. The afternoon edition of the Lexington Leader that day ran under the headline “Girl Murdered by Man in County.” According to J. Winston Coleman, the weather in Lexington, Kentucky one hundred years ago today could be described this way: it was “a cold, wet Wednesday morning.” It was on the morning of February 4, 1920, that little Geneva Hardman woke up and began her walk to school around 7:30 a.m. On account of the rain, she carried an umbrella with her.

Within the next 15-30 minutes, young Geneva was murdered. Her satchel was discovered by the side of the road. When it was discovered she was neither as school nor at home, a search resulted in a quick discovery.

By 8:30 a.m., “the child’s body was removed to her home” the Lexington Herald later reported. Meanwhile, the Lexington Leader noted that “news immediately spread through the settlement and a crowd of between fifty to sixty men gathered within a very few minutes.”

Throughout the day, citizens and law enforcement began searching for their suspect: an African-American World War I veteran who had been lived in the general area and who was seen in the vicinity of the crime. The suspect, Will Lockett, had been caught by about 4:30 p.m. and was sped to downtown Lexington. There, he confessed.

Although his capture was not quickly reported, news spread. Those who had sought to capture Lockett descended upon Lexington’s downtown and, in particular, the county jail on East Short Street. Judge-Executive Frank A. Bullock smartly, however, had the inmate transferred to the state reformatory in Frankfort at about 5:40 p.m.

Around 8:00 p.m., a committee from the crowd gathered around the jail was permitted to go inside to determine if Lockett was inside. Of course, he was miles away in the state capital. And so the mob – reports suggest as many as 300 – made an attempt to go to Frankfort. Governor Morrow had ordered roadblocks and other efforts to prevent those traveling from Lexington to Frankfort that evening, but a small group made it through nonetheless. They received an audience with the governor at the reformatory.

The long and tragic day came to a close. And although the governor attempted to calm a few members of the mob that evening, their energy would not subside for several more days.

The Murder of Geneva Hardman and Lexington’s Mob Riot of 1920 recounts events that took place 100 years ago. In this series of blog posts, I will recount the events which took place on the centennial anniversaries. For more background about this interesting chapter in Lexington, Kentucky history, purchase and read my recently published book.

The trigger for this post actually occurred 110 years ago when Geneva Hardman was just an infant. In early 1910, Rezin Constant Hardman purchased 116 acres in Breckinridge County for $3,500. He paid in cash.

Rezin C. Hardman was Geneva’s father and her mother’s name was Emma Gillispie Hardman. The couple married in 1878 (January 3, to be exact) and resided in Clark County for many years. They had eight children. Rezin was born in Clark County and Emma was born in neighboring Bourbon County. Both counties are to the immediate east of Lexington.

The Murder of Geneva Hardman and Lexington’s Mob Riot of 1920 opens on this Breckinridge County farm to introduce the census of 1910 and the Hardman family. Census records are snapshots of our past and the 1910 census in Harned, Breckinridge County, Kentucky was certainly an interesting snapshot of a seemingly happy family. Of the eight children born to Rezin and Emma, six resided at home on the farm.

The youngest child was a baby girl: Geneva. She was born in Clark County on September 2, 1909 and was the subject of adoration by her family.

The Breckinridge County life for the Hardman family is quite curious. On October 22, 1910, the Hardman’s sold the farm they purchased nine months earlier. The family relocated to Lexington. The following year, Rezin died in a buggy accident on Tates Creek Road.

At the time her father died, Geneva was not yet two years old. And her mother was left a widow. Sadly, it would not be the last time tragedy would strike the family.

The Murder of Geneva Hardman and Lexington’s Mob Riot of 1920 recounts events that took place 100 years ago. In this series of blog posts, I will recount the events which took place on the centennial anniversaries. For more background about this interesting chapter in Lexington, Kentucky history, purchase and read my recently published book.

On January 24, 1920, little Geneva Hardman sent a letter to her big sister. Geneva lived in the South Elkhorn community in southern Fayette County, Kentucky. Her sister, Nettie, had married and moved to Louisville where she lived with her husband and their two young children, Earl and Hugh.

The letter itself contained nothing particularly groundbreaking. In it, young Geneva tells her sister about the weather and about the family’s recent trip to town. Her brother brought her some candy. Everything was innocent and childlike.

The letter read:

Lexington, Ky
Jan 24 1920.

Dear Net,
How are you all colds our colds is not much better. Mama has just come from town with Clayton and Bob and Pruitt. Bob gave me some candy they were Rabbits. I am going to school. tell Earl and the baby I would like to see them. What are you been doing. We had a storm Friday and get dark as night at school and we good not see much and the trees was braking down. The big tree down in the sinkhole went down and another tree down by the gate. tell Earl and the baby I will send them some book as soon as I can. it is all most bedtime. so i will close.

write soon,
from Geneva Hardman

It is altogether unlikely that Geneva ever had the opportunity to send her nephew the book she promised.

Prior accounts about Geneva’s murder and the ensuing trial of Will Lockett have always ignored the victim. My newly released book attempts to correct this by telling some of the backstory about Geneva and her family. This letter is part of that story.

This letter has been saved by her family for a century as a family treasure; it is the only known document to have been written by Geneva Hardman that exists today.

But the storm cloud that blotted out the sun before Geneva wrote the letter would not be the only storms to wreak havoc on the South Elkhorn community during the winter of 1920. Just eleven days after Geneva wrote to her sister, Nettie, Geneva’s life would come to a tragic end.

Today’s the day!

January 20, 2020. The Murder of Geneva Hardman and Lexington’s Mob Riot of 1920 hits shelves today!!

Interested in getting a copy? The best way is to order it directly from me using the button above. The second best way is to support a local bookstore and pick it up there (if they don’t carry it, ask them to do so!!) You can also order it online from amazon.com (or anywhere else you buy books…)

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