Owenton Lynching

At Owenton, in Owen County, Friday night, a band of about forty masked men took Henry Smith and Squire Hammond, the murderers of Robert Martin, from the jail and hung them.  The killing of Martin occurred on election day.  He was attempting to keep two relatives of the murderers from fighting when the two, who are cousins, sprang upon him, one stabbing him twice in the breast, and the other once in the back, from the effects of which wounds he did in minutes.  The murder took place at Lusby’s Mills, but Smith and Hammond were conveyed to the jail in Owenton.  Both are quite young men, neither being over twenty-one and both single.  Martin was about thirty-five, and leaves a wife and two children.  

From a Covington newspaper, The Ticket, August 22, 1876