continue it for a century without death taking its toll through accident, suicide or even murder, as well as through disease and old age. Unfortunately, El Paso has had its share of cases involving unnatural death.
The first case in the local area involved a manslaughter charge against George W. Kingston, Jr., son of one of the very earliest of Woodford County pioneers. On May 9, 1868 his neighbor, David J. Hedges was building a fence across a public highway, where others living nearby had previously torn it down. This time Hedges had brought along a revolver to back up his apparently illegal fence job. Nevertheless, Kingston remonstrated with him, and when the argument waxed hot, Kingston took away Hedges’ revolver and started home with it across his own field, somewhere on the southeast eighty acres of Section 9 in Panola Township. Hedges caught up with him and started the argument all over again, coming at Kingston with a hatchet he had been using in the fence building. Kingston struck Hedges with a spade he carried and the latter soon died. Strangely, the Hedges widow also met a similar violent death in 1873 in Eureka, presumably at the hands of another woman.
After many delays, Kingston's trial occurred August 13, 1869, and he was acquitted on the grounds of self-defense. That Kingston considered his predicament to be serious is shown in the fact that he retained at great expense the law firm of Robert G. Ingersoll, Joseph J. Cassell, John Burns and John T. Harper to defend him. The case as above outlined is in the records in Ingersoll's own handwriting. The high costs of the case and the resulting publicity caused young Kingston's removal from Panola. Like his pioneer father, who was alive and apparently the only witness to the fight, young Kingston had an excellent reputation.
On May 2, 1881, P. C. Ransom, a former mayor of El Paso, shot and killed Walter Bullock, an El Paso attorney, as the result of a political quarrel of long standing. The shooting occurred in front of the present El Paso Produce Company, 133 West Front Street. Feeling against Ransom ran high; he took a change of venue from Woodford County and was tried in Lacon. In January, 1882 he was finally acquitted on a plea of self-defense; according to newspaper accounts of the time, the acquittal was practically ordered by the presiding judge.
One of the most famous El Paso trials was of a lighter vein. On Halloween in 1915 some boys made off with Adam Foltz's nicely painted barber pole and hid it. Adam was furious and refused to see any humor in such prank, and took the case into Squire Al Kuhn's justice court. With spectators jamming the court rooms, boy after boy was examined and of course, none knew a thing about the disappearance of the most famous barber pole El Paso ever had. But the matter assumed such dangerous proportions, that some forty years later there were men in El Paso who for the first time were willing to talk about
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