Union County Deputy Sheriff Thomas Walsh was killed in the line of duty by a tenant farmer in December 1899.
Gibson Memorial Library Director David Hargrove said the cemetery walk in September led him to Walsh, whom he heard was the first law enforcement officer killed in Union County.
Walsh wasn’t used as a character in the walk, but Hargrove continued to research him thinking it would be a good piece of local history to share with the public.
Hargrove scoured courthouse records and newspaper archives, digging up everthing he could find about Walsh and will present his findings to the public at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in the genealogy room at the library.
On the morning of the murder, the tenant farmer who killed Walsh had apparently come to town to pay the debt against him and was supposedly released from that debt, said Hargrove. However, he stopped into an Adams Street tavern and had a few drinks before heading home. He found Walsh and another man, who had been deputized for the purpose of serving the farmer, putting signs up on the property and he retrieved a shotgun from his house.
Walsh attempted to calm the farmer, but the farmer shot him at point blank range and killed him.
The farmer was transported to Osceola to await trial. He tried for a change of venue, fearing that the townspeople were too hostile toward him and would rather lynch him than give him a fair trial, but his request was denied. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
“Interestingly, on the sheriff’s website, there’s a PDF with a little history of the department that says the convict escaped Fort Madison penitentiary never to be recaptured,” said Hargrove. “I don’t know where that’s coming from because the 1910 through 1930 census show him in Fort Madison, and then he was granted a Gubernatorial pardon and released in 1935. Then he disappeared from the record.”
Hargrove said he is also planning to research a sheriff who was killed in 1926 near Thayer while serving an eminent domain judgement for the building of the highway coming through.
Hragrove added that the ultimate culmination of his work would be greater recognition and a proper memorial at the courthouse for these men who gave their lives in the line of duty.
“I’m not throwing myself at the feet of the county supervisors saying, ‘Hey. You need to get a memorial up for these guys right away,’ but this is far enough back that until somebody does bring it to their attention, and sort of fleshes out what happened in some detail, it will just fade away into obscurity.”
Hargrove said he has had some success presenting local history topics and feels that someone who made the ultimate sacrifice for service to the community would interest local residents.
His talk will focus on Walsh’s character and the moral inscribed on his tombstone, “Be quiet and let us reason.”
“That is wisdom that could have prevented the murder in the first place,” said Hargrove. “It’s wisdom that undoubtedly prevented a lynching after the murder. I think that’s good advice, and I think it shows that reasoning is a social process that involves other people. There are number of people that could have stepped in and prevented this murder.”