On a chilly Friday morning in the fall of 1892, Bath County gathered to watch a man die.
On November 4, 1892, a Black man named Oscar Jones was publicly hanged in Owingsville, Kentucky, for the murder of Sharpsburg town marshal Taylor Vice. The scaffold stood behind the county jail, near where West Paul Lewis Drive meets Thompson Road today — and it would be the last legal hanging ever carried out in Bath County.¹
Christmas Eve Trouble in Sharpsburg
The story began the previous winter, on Christmas Eve 1891, in Sharpsburg.
That night, Oscar’s son, George Jones, had been drinking heavily and causing a disturbance at the family home. Town marshal Taylor Vice stepped in to calm things down, performing the ordinary but often dangerous duties of a small-town lawman.² Witnesses later testified that George grabbed a club or stick, and Vice wrestled it away from him. In the confusion of the fight, Oscar Jones rushed in and stabbed Marshal Vice.³
Vice’s wounds proved fatal. Oscar and George fled Sharpsburg, but Oscar was captured the next day in Mount Sterling and brought back to Bath County to face murder charges.³
A Prisoner in Danger
From the moment Oscar arrived at the Bath County jail, tension hung over Owingsville.
Jones was a Black man accused of killing a white marshal during an era when mobs often carried out “justice” without the courts. Rumors of a lynching spread quickly.⁴ Jailer Sam Nixon armed himself and his son Will, determined to protect the prisoner.
On the night of February 21, 1892, a masked mob forced its way into the jailer’s living quarters, intending to drag Oscar out and hang him. Instead, they met Nixon and his son standing firm with shotguns, announcing they would protect their prisoner “to the death.” The mob backed down.⁴
In a time when racial violence often replaced due process, this moment is unusual and historically significant.
Trial, Sentence, and Bascom’s Field
Oscar Jones was tried in March 1892 and convicted of murdering Marshal Vice.⁵ The judge sentenced him to death by hanging, and officials selected a spot behind the jail — Bascom’s Field — for the execution.¹
The hanging was first scheduled for May 20, 1892, but an appeal delayed it. When the appeal failed, the governor reset the execution for November 4.¹
Public executions were still legal in Kentucky, and they often drew large crowds. It would not be until the 20th century — especially after the infamous 1936 hanging of Rainey Bethea in Owensboro — that the state abolished public executions entirely.⁹
November 4, 1892: Bath County’s Last Legal Hanging
When the day finally arrived, people poured into Owingsville.
A large crowd gathered at Bascom’s Field that morning. Around 9:30 a.m., Sheriff C.C. Hazelrigg led the guarded procession from the jail to the gallows.⁷ Jones was dressed entirely in black and wore white gloves — a detail that stuck in local memory.¹
He took time for prayer and a final chew of tobacco.¹ A black hood was placed over his head, and the rope adjusted around his neck. At approximately 10:00 a.m., the trap was sprung.¹
Local physicians Dr. F.P. Gudgell and Dr. Robertson examined the body and declared death at 10:11 a.m.¹ This would be Bath County’s last legal hanging.¹
A Last-Minute Confession?
Local tradition — passed down through families and recounted in later interviews — claims that Oscar Jones may have confessed the night before his execution, saying that his son George delivered the fatal blow and that he took the blame to save him.¹¹
No surviving newspaper account verifies this claim. Contemporary reporting simply notes that “Oscar Jones (colored) was hanged at Owingsville Friday for the murder of Marshal Taylor Vice…”⁶
It remains one of those Appalachian stories that sits somewhere between memory and myth.
Race, Justice, and the Line Between Law and Mob
Looking back, the Jones case exposes several uncomfortable truths about 19th-century justice in Kentucky.
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Race: Black defendants in this era faced harsh sentencing, limited legal protection, and frequent threats of lynching.¹⁰
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Law vs. Vigilantism: Jailer Nixon’s refusal to surrender Jones to the mob stands out as a rare act of defiance against racialized mob violence.⁴
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Public Spectacle: Executions were community events — moral theater as much as punishment. It took decades for Kentucky to move executions behind prison walls.⁹ ⁶ ¹²
Oscar Jones’s execution sits on the dividing line between frontier-style public justice and the more restrained but still controversial capital punishment of the modern era.
Walking the Ground Today
If you walk behind Family Drug in Owingsville today, down West Paul Lewis Drive toward Cemetery Street, you pass close to where the gallows once stood.¹ Some locals say the area still feels heavy — a sudden chill or the sense of someone walking beside you.
Whether viewed as a straightforward case of crime and punishment, a tragedy shaped by race, or a haunting memory of public death, the execution of Oscar Jones remains one of Bath County’s most enduring and somber historical moments.
Endnotes
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Narrative History of Bath County, Kentucky, Vol. 1.
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“Execution in Bath County.” Bath County News-Outlook.
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Montgomery County Sentinel (Mt. Sterling), Dec. 26–30, 1891.
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Lexington Morning Herald, Feb. 22, 1892.
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Bath County Court Records, Commonwealth vs. Oscar Jones, March Term 1892.
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Semi-Weekly Interior Journal (Stanford), Nov. 8, 1892.
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Mt. Sterling Advocate, Nov. 9, 1892.
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Bath County Historical Society Archives.
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Kentucky Historical Society, “The Last Public Execution in Kentucky: Rainey Bethea, 1936.”
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Equal Justice Initiative, Lynching in America: Kentucky Supplement.
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Bath County Oral History Project, Paul Lewis Interview (1974).
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Smithsonian Magazine, “Public Executions in the United States,” 2016.
