The rolling Appalachian foothills of northeast Tennessee, where George Maledon lies peacefully buried, is a long ways away from the 16-foot-long trapdoor at the gallows in Fort Smith, Arkansas. There, between 1875 and 1891, Maledon, a hangman for Judge Isaac C. Parker at the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Arkansas, reportedly sent a record number of men to their own eternal place. But has history gotten that wrong?
The Grim Reaper
A German immigrant born June 10, 1830, Maledon ventured west from Detroit, Michigan, as a young man, working at a lumber mill for the Choctaw Nation in Indian Territory. Shortly after his move, he secured a position on the police force in Fort Smith, Arkansas. During the Civil War, he served for the Union in the 1st Battery Arkansas Light Artillery. By the 1870s, he was back in Fort Smith, working for the Western District’s federal court, first as a guard, then as a deputy sheriff, then as court executioner. He also served periodically as a juror.
Small in stature, about five feet five inches (some reports state he was three inches taller) with a scruffy white beard, stooped shoulders, dark, piercing eyes and a fair complexion, Maledon faintly resembled portrayals of the Grim Reaper in the few photos that survived.
