1915 – Ticket to the execution of an African-American man in Grayson County, Texas

Item Details

Texas, Grayson County, Texas, 1915, Unbound

Very Good

This postcard-size ticket to an execution in Sherman, Texas was issued on April 15, 1915, by Sheriff Lee Simmons to Mr. Marion Shaw. In nice shape.

The invitation reads:

“As Sheriff of Grayson County, Texas, I hereby order and direct that you be present at the county jail of said county between the hours of 11 A. M., and sunset on the 16th day of April 1915, at the execution of Carl Oliver, then and there to assist me in preventing persons not authorized to be present from intruding themselves within the place of execution.”

When Carl Oliver came home to the servant’s house on Mrs. Amelia Majors property in Mount Vernon, Texas, on the evening of 18 June 1910, he immediately began whipping his wife, Lizzie. Mrs. Majors heard Lizzie’s screams and telephoned Sheriff P. H. Holley, who had already intervened several times before when Oliver beat his wife. The sheriff, who had just returned following a long and tiresome ride, asked Mrs. Majors to have Lizzie escorted to his home where he would provide her with protective custody for the night. Robert D. Stanley, who boarded at Majors’ home along with his family, volunteered to escort Lizzie. As they walked to the sheriff’s home in the dark, Oliver, who had hidden in a thicket, jumped out of the bushes and killed Stanley with a double-barreled shotgun. Oliver fled immediately but was soon caught and taken to the county jail. Holley, fearful of a possible lynching, had Oliver transferred and his venue changed to Grayson County before anyone else in town realized he’d been captured. 

As Oliver could not afford an attorney, Judge John T. Cunningham of Sherman and Abner L. Lewis of Denison were appointed to defend him in court. They did an admirable job and secured two hung juries  (11 in favor of execution to 1 for life imprisonment) before Oliver was sentenced to death. His attorneys, claiming Oliver’s civil rights had been violated, appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the death sentence. The entire process took nearly five years, and during that time, Oliver never ceased to believe his life would be spared, hoping until the day before his scheduled hanging that the Texas Governor Miriam A. Ferguson would commute his sentence to life imprisonment.  He did not.

Sheriff Simmons, who was concerned that the hanging would be disrupted by groups of blacks or whites, limited the number of people who could enter the execution ground to the minimum number of required witnesses as well as neighboring sheriffs. As it turned out, the execution attracted few people who were not invited, and Oliver approached his death calmly, smoking a cigar provided by one of the attending law officers. He was hanged without incident, the fall instantaneously breaking his neck when the sheriff sprung the trap door in the gallows.

(For more information, see “Oliver – Carl” at the Grayson County TXGenWeb.”)

Although at the time of listing, none are for sale in the trade, execution invitations occasionally turn up at auctions. The Rare Book Hub reports 20 have appeared over the past 110 years. OCLC reports that 13 institutions have at least one execution invitation within their holdings.

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