COOK BURIED AS A SOLDIER Oldest Of A. E. F. Veterans Gets Warrior’s Rites Corning,, Iowa, Dec. 27 – They buried Kokomo Jones Sunday, not as a cook, but a soldier. Former Gov. Dan Turner, Col. Claude Stanley of the Iowa national guard, and “buddies” of three wars paid their respects to Kokomo, 77-year-old army cook, the oldest man in the A. E. F. The bugler, born years after Kokomo joined company K of the national guard, blew taps. “And that is all we could do even though Kokomo had been a general,” one of the veterans whom he fed in France, said. Kokomo’s war record started in 1893 when he joined company K as a cook, and extended through the Spanish-American, the Mexican border clashes and the World war. The only citation for “Private Frank Jones” was the army report that he was the oldest enlisted man in the American expeditionary force in France.The Oklahoman 12/28/1936
Transcribed by Dale Donlon
McKensie Lynched J. H. McKensie, the man who murdered J. J. Riggs, formerly of Riggs Station, mention of which has been previously made in these columns, was taken from the jail at Corning, Iowa, by a mob and lynched on the night of April 3rd. He was firm to the last. Even after the rope was thrown about his neck, his intense nerve and grit did not forsake him. He talked with the mob as they took him down stairs and across the street to a maple tree, asked them to give his watch to his wife, protested he had killed no other man than Riggs and did not intend to kill him. Before disbanding the leader addressed the mob in a low voice, saying: Gentleman: The work of this night must remain forever a secret. Let every participant and every observer take warning from the man hanging to this tree. The fate of any man who divulges the name of any participant will be his fate. [Bellevue Herald, Bellevue, Iowa, Published April 12, 1887, submitted by Ken Wright]
A YOUNG MURDERER HANGED The First Execution within the Iowa Penitentiary Fort Madison, Iowa. – Oct. 19, The first execution in the history of the penitentiary here occurred this morning the victim being James O. Dooley, the youthful murderer of his aunt and cousin near Prescott, May 10, 1892. The execution was in charge of Sheriff Eldridge of Adams county in which the crime was committed in accordance with an enactment of the last Legislature. Dooley went to the gallows without faltering and the remarkable nerve displayed during all the time since his arrest did not desert him at the supreme moment. The drop was sprung at 12:14, his neck not being broken by the fall and life was not pronounced extinct until 12:33, death being caused by strangulation. (State, October 20, 1894, page 1, transcribed by Peggy Thompson)
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