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A gathering near Horse Creek, Ramah, CO, ca. 1909. And a tangent into darkness.

Ramah, a town in El Paso County, is located 44 miles northeast of Colorado Springs on Highway 24.   It was established next to the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad line in the late 1800’s and incorporated in 1927.  At its peak, several hundred residents lived there, but after the rail line was discontinued in the mid 1900’s, its fortunes declined.  It continues to exist, but with a much smaller population, with ranching as the mainstay of its economy. Ramah was reportedly named by the wife of a Rock Island Railroad worker who found the place name of Ramah in a book she was reading about India.  Others say the town was named for the city of Ramah in ancient Israel, as cited in the Bible.

It’s possible the people pictured in this photo postcard are family members, because “George,” the author of this card, dated July 22, 1909, writes to his cousin “Edwin:”  “This is the way we have big times on Horse Creek sometimes.” 

In researching Ramah, I happened upon a story of horrible violence in Colorado that I’d never heard before.  The Colorado Springs Weekly Gazette dated February 13, 1901, told of a Ramah blacksmith named Newton L. Jones, who was brought into the El Paso county jail “insane on the subject of religion” and raving in such a tormented state it was feared the “constant and severe drain upon his vitality” would lead to his demise.   I felt shock and disbelief when I went on to read that it was thought that Jones’ condition may have been triggered by the burning at the stake of a 16-year old boy the previous November just outside of Limon, Colorado.

That story begins and ends in horror.  The beginning horror was the brutal rape and murder of 12-year-old Mary Louise Frost on November 8, 1900, and the ending horror was the burning of 16-year-old John Preston Porter, Jr., at the stake on November 16th.

Mary Louise Frost, daughter of ranchers Robert W. and Mary Catherine (Mallams) Frost, was returning home from the Limon school in her horse-drawn carriage on the afternoon of November 8, 1900.   For reasons unknown, she stopped 3 miles outside of Limon.  At that spot, she left or was taken out of the wagon, then taken approximately thirty yards from the road and there raped and viciously assaulted.  She was stabbed multiple times in the chest, neck and legs, and suffered trauma to the head.  Found unconscious later that afternoon, she died around midnight without regaining consciousness.  (Her remains were interred at Fairmount Cemetery in Denver, with those of her 3-year-old sister, Fay, who had died two years earlier, and those of her dearest childhood friend, Mary Bass, six years old, who had died seven years earlier.)

Mary Louise’s brutal murder shocked the town of Limon and nearby Hugo, the seat of Lincoln County.   The Lincoln County Sheriff and his deputies considered a range of possible suspects, from family acquaintances known to Mary Louise to people of color employed by the railroad and “tramps.”  Deputy Sheriff Bristeine travelled to Denver on November 9th and asked the authorities there to be on lookout for people arriving by rail in Denver from the Limon region.    

On Sunday, Nov 11th, African-Americans John Preston Porter, Sr, and his sons John Preston Porter, Jr., and Arthur, who had just quit their jobs on the railroad near Limon, were arrested in Denver while in transit to their home in Lawrence, Kansas.  They had already shipped their personal effects back to Lawrence.  Lincoln County Sheriff Freeman and his deputies by this time had looked at many suspects, and I don’t know what led specifically to the arrest of the Porters.    Though the Denver police originally suspected the senior Porter, it was John Preston Porter, Jr., who was selected for extensive questioning by the Denver police. 

If reported accurately, there was a fair amount of circumstantial evidence against the younger Porter, including his departure from Limon shortly after the murder, a bloody handkerchief resembling the one he had purchased at the Russell Gates Mercantile store in Limon the afternoon of the murder, and a pair of shoes he had allegedly left in a railroad car, which were found to match tracks leading from the scene of the crime. 

Porter, who was said to be mentally impaired, underwent four days of interrogation before confessing to the murder.  It was reported that “The fact that the clothes he had shipped to Lawrence, Kansas and which had been brought back to Denver showed bloodstains, seemed to unnerve him and he broke down.”  It was also reported by newspapers that, on the day of his confession, he had been subjected to the “sweat box” twice (I’m not sure what that was) and was threatened with the lynching of his family.   

Once Porter, Jr., confessed, it appears his lynching was a foregone conclusion, with little interference by law enforcement officials (although credit must be given to the Denver police for preventing a mob in Denver from lynching him).  I base this assertion on the following:  1) The Denver police department sent two of its men to Limon to verify some of Porter’s statements, wanting to be absolutely sure of his guilt before giving him up, because of the strong belief he would be lynched when he reached Limon.  2) On the day prior to Porter’s lynching, authorities in Denver received a telegram from the Limon lynching party vowing to conduct an orderly lynching, “with no unnecessary mutilation of the negro.”    3) Telluride’s Daily Journal confidently predicted in its evening edition of November 16, 1900, the day that Porter would be murdered, that “Two hundred determined cowboys and ranchmen will lynch Preston Porter, the confessed murder (sic) of little Louise Frost at Limon this afternoon.”  4) On that day, shortly after noon, Denver police transported Porter to Magnolia, a station on the Union Pacific line 9 miles outside of Denver, where they turned him over to Sheriff Freeman.  5) Freeman and Porter boarded the train, which already held 16 members of the lynching party, as well as Mary Louise’s father, Robert Frost.  They refused to let Freeman take Porter to the jail at Hugo.  

When the train arrived at Lake Station, 3 miles beyond Limon, Frost demanded that Porter be burned at the stake.  The lynch party at first protested, but then consented to do as Frost desired.  It was here that Porter was taken off the train.

The stake on which Porter would be burned to death was a piece of railroad rail plunged into the ground at the spot where Mary Louise Frost had been murdered.  Two-by-fours were stacked cross-wise around the stake and topped by dirt to provide a standing surface for Porter.   After Porter was chained to the stake, split wood was piled up to his knees.  The wood was then doused with kerosene, and, at 6:23 p.m., in front of a crowd of 200 to 300 people, Robert Frost struck a match and set Porter on fire. 

Porter’s name and those of two other African-Americans lynched in Coloradan are part of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which opened in April of 2018 in Montgomery, Alabama (see https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/ ).  To quote the Equal Justice Initiative, this memorial honors the “more than 4400 African American men, women, and children…hanged, burned alive, shot, drowned, and beaten to death by white mobs between 1877 and 1950.” 

REFERENCES:

  • The Summit County Journal (Breckenridge), November 17, 1900 (www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org)

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