Left: Shoals, Indiana Courthouse, right: A newspaper story from the Cleveland, Ohio Leader, January 3 1886.
There were an estimated 16 members of Indiana’s Archer Gang—almost all blood kin. And they made their mark in the 1880s in the southwest part of the state and parts of Illinois and Kentucky. Among their crimes: robbery, arson, extortion, counterfeiting, burglary, and murder.
Three of the brothers were caught and jailed at the town of Shoals, but vigilantes took them from the courthouse and lynched them from trees outside (photo). A fourth brother was tried and legally hanged just blocks away, four months after the lynchings. That finished the gang.
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Mark Boardman is the features editor for True West Magazine as well as the editor of The Tombstone Epitaph. He also serves as pastor for Poplar Grove United Methodist Church in Indiana.