Where was Peter Kline Hung?

Contemporary accounts say Kline (or Cline, or Klein, news accounts spell it differently) was hung near the farm of a man named Southgate, but at that point in time, Southgate's took up a considerable portion of what is now Fort Thomas.

Paul Knapp's excellent Fort Thomas, Kentucky It's History, It's Heritage (1967) says the crime was committed “near the present Robert D. Johnson school,” and the hanging took place “on a large sycamore tree at Mayo Avenue.”

There's a piece in the Kentucky Post of November 2, 1915, that has a picture of the tree, and says that it's in “Odd Fellows' Grove, Water Works, near Bonne Leslie.”  Odd Fellows Grove was an earlier name for the town now called Woodlawn, at the foot of Waterworks Road.

A year later, on July 15, 1916, the stump of the hanging tree is torn out for road building, and the Kentucky Post reports the stump on “Water Works Rd., back of Newport.”

Glad we could clear that up for you.