The Courier-Journal, October 6, 1882
A TERRIBLE TRAGEDY.
MARY SULLIVAN, ANOTHER OF THE CAMPBELL GANG OF OUTLAWS, BELIEVED TO HAVE BEEN LYNCHED IN CALDWELL COUNTY.
[Madisonville Times.]
A record of the evil deeds of the Campbell gang, of Caldwell county, would fill a volume. The gang was pretty well broken up by the hanging of two of the Campbells and another member of the gang several weeks ago, and the hanging, week before last, of Crockett Jenkins, another notorious member of the same party of cut-throats. Two Sullivan women, who were supposed to have had close and confidential relations with the gang, if, indeed, they were not part of it, were arrested and taken to Princeton on the suspicion of having had something to do with Jenkins' taking off. They were released through lack of any evidence. Last Friday night about 10 o'clock fifty men rode up to the house of Norman Hubbard, near Dulton [Dalton], this county, and near the Caldwell line, and calling out Mary Sullivan, who was staying over night there, took her off with them to a school house in Caldwell county, and there, it is supposed, hung her to the limb of a tree, at least that was the general impression or opinion of all the people of the Dalton district with whom we talked Monday. It is not known whether the men belonged to the Regulators or Vigilants who had hung the Campbells and the other members of the gang, or whether they were the friends of the Campbell gang, and hung the woman because of the supposed complicity in the hanging of Crockett Jenkins, who, it will be remembered, whipped and maltreted [maltreated] the two Sullivan women the day before he was hung, and it is thought they had a hand in his death. We could not learn whether the men who took the Sullivan woman away were masked or not. She bore a bad, unenviable reputation.
A deplorable state of affairs exists in that section of Caldwell county bordering on this county, and the lawless deeds committed by the Campbell gang and their enemies have not been confined to Caldwell alone. That section of our county, near Dalton has been the theater of several scenes of bloodshed and lawlessness. The work of Friday night was begun in this county and ended in Caldwell county. Mary Sullivan, may or may not have deserved her fate; yet it is horrible to think of a woman being dragged from her bed at night, carried miles away and hung like a dog, without shift or ceremony, and her lifeless body left swinging to and fro until somebody should have humanity enough to cut it down and give it sepulture.
Source: Newspapers.com. The Courier-Journal. Louisville, Kentucky. October 6, 1882. Page 6.
