[1] Lake Jones was an elderly black man who had faithfully served a white family named Howard, both before and after his emancipation from slavery.
[3][4][5][6] The Ku Klux Klan lynched the Frenches because, they said, Lake Jones was "the best nigger in the country.
"[1][7][8] The KKK broke into the jail, took the Frenches about a mile upstream of Warsaw, and hanged them both from a tree on J.H.
[2][7] Lake Jones lived with his cousin Mollie and her husband Benjamin French in a run-down building called "the Malt-house" in Warsaw.
A half-hour later, Jones began to feel very ill, vomiting up blood and complaining of a burning pain in his stomach and intestines.
It was discovered that Benjamin French had procured one ounce of arsenic at Vance's drug store a few days before, saying he wanted it to kill rats.
Later that evening, Mollie French tried to escape "with Place Reston, a Negro roustabout, with whom she had had improper intercourse for some time.
"[2] Benjamin and Mollie French were arrested on April 24, 1876, by Judge Brown's order, and charged with murder.
The three young men peeked out the window and saw a disguised man on horseback in the middle of the square in front of the courthouse.
"[7] At 1:10 am, Jailer Joseph Wilshire, "whose grim and grave looks are more threatening then his small and feeble frame", was awakened by knocks on his front and back doors.
[2][7] After Jailer Joe Wilshire got his keys and came out the back door, he was met by two masked men who pulled pistols on him and told him to keep quiet.
[7] Wilshire shut the door in their faces and tried to escape out the front, but he was seized by six to eight armed masked men, who ordered him, under penalty of death, to go with them to the jail.
[citation needed] Two minutes later, the lynching party, except two men who were guarding the jailer, rode away quickly.
The horse trails led to the farm of Jim McDonnell, about three-quarters of a mile above Warsaw where, on an isolated tree, they found the bodies of Benjamin and Mollie hanged from two different branches.
[7] Some grass was found on the knees of Benjamin French's pants, which suggests that he had prayed or called for mercy.
[7] Some of the citizens of Warsaw suggested that those responsible for the lynching were Lake Jones' farmer neighbors, who had come over from the district of Glencoe to avenge the murder of their former friend, while others declared that the mob consisted entirely of Negroes.
"[8] "The colored population of Warsaw is in sympathy with Lake Jones' friends, and nobody cares for the Frenches.