“Murder at Rooks Row” Part One - by Shana Powell, contributing historian to The Weekly News of Cooke County
Gainesville once was a wild Cowtown, complete with saloons, gambling dens, and “soiled” doves. While the effort to turn the community into a proper respectable town was underway by 1910, remnants of those earlier times persisted. Outlaws and unsavory characters often moved back and forth over the Red River from Gainesville to Ardmore during that era. One of them was Haywood Clayton.
On Saturday, December 3, 1910, a tragedy occurred in Gainesville. On that date, thirty-year-old Haywood Clayton picked up a shotgun, took aim, and fired at his wife, twenty-two-year-old Mattie, killing her. After the shooting, Haywood ran, fleeing, possibly if a newspaper account is accurate, across the Red River and back to Ardmore, an area with which he was familiar.
People discovered the slain Mattie at a location identified on her death certificate as Rooks Row, a spot that does not appear by name on a Gainesville map from around that period. It might have been a boarding house, or a side street known to locals. According to the death certificate, it was in the 3rd Ward which at that time included the area north of California street from Dixon street to the west to Denton street to the east and north to Scott street. She was buried in the cemetery at the County Poor Farm.
So, what originally brought Haywood and Mattie to Gainesville? According to an account from the Daily Ardmoreite newspaper, it might have been an attempt on Haywood’s part to escape from trouble in Ardmore. But more on that later.
How did Haywood and Mattie’s story end with the murder of one of them and the flight by the other? With a fire that burned the Gainesville newspapers from that time and with trial transcripts no longer in existence, the full story may never be completely known but an outline of their lives can be reconstructed.
Haywood (also appeared as Houston Haywood and under the possible alias of “Friday” Williams) was born in Texas. The 1900 census lists him as having been born in 1880. But, as often happened in the past, both his and Mattie’s birth dates will vary from document to document. A subsequent marriage license showed his birth in 1884 and a prison record will also include 1889 as a possible birth date. Since two documents mentioned 1880, that may be the correct date. The documents all agree on Texas as his birthplace. In 1900 he was living in Arkansas with his parents Ed and Mary and his ten siblings.
At some point, Haywood moved to McAlester in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) and in 1906 in Muskogee he married Martha “Mattie” Beaver. Muskogee and McAlester are sixty-five miles apart. It is not known how the two first met. The marriage certificate listed Mattie as being eighteen, having been born in 1888. Her death certificate later stated that she was “about” twenty-five-years-old at the time of her death which would have put her birth in 1885. But the informant was George J. Carroll from the funeral home who would not have known her and since he said about twenty-five it is clear he was giving an estimate. Therefore, Mattie probably was only twenty-two at the time she was murdered.
Was Mattie charmed by Haywood? Did she dream of a good life with him? His prison record will later state that he had been a miner. Was she hopeful for a successful life with him? At what point did she begin to realize that that was not going to happen? That he was not the man she had thought he was. Did he lead her into a life of crime as well or was she an innocent victim caught in a scary situation? Did an argument over their circumstances and growing concerns that she might have had bring on the murder? Did the murder come out of left field with no warning? So many questions with unfortunately no answers.
In any case, two years after their marriage and two years before her death, Mattie gave birth in Oklahoma to their son Henry. It may, therefore, have been after 1908 before the Claytons made their way to Gainesville, indicating they were not here long before the crime took place.
How did Haywood make a living in Gainesville? A burglary charge was filed against Haywood at the time that he was charged with murder so he may not have been working consistently at all. He was listed as being a transient so they may not have had a permanent residence. If he did not have a steady job in 1910, then life for the Claytons would have been difficult.
Was Henry living with his parents when his father shot and killed his mother? That is not clear. So far, he has not been found in any records until later when he was an adult. As he retained the name Henry Clayton, he does not seem to have been adopted by another family. So, he may have been with his parents when
Mattie died, or if they already had been having problems, he could have been with family or friends in Oklahoma. As to who cared for him after his mother’s death and his father’s arrest, that remains unknown.
So, in early December 1910, the Claytons were a couple living on the edge with a young child to provide for whether he was with them or back in Oklahoma and after only four years of marriage something suddenly went terribly wrong leading Haywood to commit the horrible act of killing his wife and the mother of his son.
For more on the story of what happened next, read part two of “Murder at Rooks Row.”
“Murder at Rooks Row” Part Two - by Shana Powell, contributing historian to The Weekly News of Cooke County
The chase was on. On December 3, 1910, Mattie Clayton lay dead in Gainesville, the victim of a shotgun blast fired by her husband Haywood who now was running for his life pursued by the sheriff and a posse.
Two days after Mattie’s murder, an article appeared in the Bryan Eagle newspaper in Bryan, Texas, under the headline “After Negro Wife Murderer.” The article stated that it is “reported here today that Sheriff Bringman and a posse are having a running fight with Haywood Clayton, an African American, who escaped Saturday after killing his wife. Clayton is heavily armed.” Bringman was “fifty-five-year-old Louis Bringman who served twenty-five years as a peace officer in Cooke County, first as city policeman, then deputy sheriff, and then was elected and served three times as Sheriff.”
On the same date, a strange twist to the story appeared when an article ran in the Daily Ardmoreite about a man named “Friday” Williams. The article related that a “Friday” Williams, an “African American who has the reputation of getting money at the point of a knife or a gun, if necessary, had been arrested and then made his escape. He went to Wynnewood and forced a poker game troupe to come across with all the cash they had, amounting to something like $150 and then disappeared.”
The article continued that “last night it was learned that “Friday” was in the city at a resort on the east side and the officers got on his trail and placed him under arrest. Simultaneously with his arrest a telegram was received from the authorities at Gainesville to be on the lookout for an African American who answers the description of “Friday” to a dot, but who was known there as Haywood Clayton and who was wanted for the killing of his wife which occurred Saturday night. Officers from Gainesville were notified, and they were to arrive shortly to determine if Friday was Haywood.” No further article appeared stating whether Friday had, in fact, been identified as Haywood.
In time, Haywood was arrested by Gainesville authorities and brought back to stand trial in Cooke County. He was charged with committing murder in the first degree. Murder in the first degree “involves any intentional murder that is willful and premeditated with malice aforethought. Premeditation requires that the defendant planned the murder before it was committed or was ‘lying in wait’ for
the victim.” With that definition in mind, it provides a clue that Haywood may not have acted in a moment of anger but instead thought out the murder. Haywood first appeared in court in April 1911 and then continued to spend the next months in jail, appearing in court next in June 1911, then November and December 1911, April 1912 and then finally in June 1912 as they moved through the various steps from arraignment on toward his final trial. A grand jury indicted him for murder. Throughout the months, Haywood maintained his innocence and in court entered a plea of not guilty
On June 7, 1912, he was brought into court where he heard the verdict of the trial read out: “We the jury find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree and his punishment by confinement to the penitentiary for life.” He was lucky in one sense; they could have given him the death penalty.
Tantalizing, for researchers today, the existing court records mention the evidence that both sides presented in court, evidence that would have provided more details about that fateful day and a picture of exactly what happened. If only those trial transcripts could have survived.
Five days later, on June 12, 1912, Haywood was brought back into court, where the judge officially sentenced him to life imprisonment and ordered the sheriff to take him to Huntsville. Sheriff Bringman transported Haywood to the State Penitentiary in Huntsville, arriving on June 22, 1912. A Convict Register stated that Haywood had had 4 years of school and that he could read and write. He was a little over five feet three inches tall and weighed 120 pounds and did not smoke.
In the years after he was incarcerated Haywood was cited in the Conduct Register for such things as insubordination, laziness, destroying property, and impudence and often found himself in chains as a punishment for such behavior which are listed in that record. In the 1920 Census, he was temporarily housed at the Retrieve State Farm where he is shown as a farmer. Then the last remark that appears in his Conduct Register stated that he escaped as an Unapproved trustee from the Retrieve Farm on August 30, 1921. There is no mention of whether he was ever recaptured.
Haywood and Mattie’s son Henry grew up, moved to New York City, and married a woman named Anna. They had a daughter named Essie. Henry became a drill runner working for an oil company. Sadly, while he was in Ohio working on a job, he contracted pneumonia and died on May 1, 1938, at the age of thirty. His death certificate shows his burial location as being in McAlester, Oklahoma.
So, according to the prison remarks, Haywood escaped, and we do not know what happened to him. Mattie died young, betrayed by her husband and Henry, their child while also dying young, lived a law-abiding life and fathered his own child. Mattie became a grandmother though she never knew it.
But the story does not end there. In time, officials moved the Poor Farm to another location in Gainesville and with the passage of time, the cemetery where Mattie lay became forgotten. Then three years ago a young man named Matthew Spaeth set about to correct that. The Potter’s Field cemetery has been reclaimed and awarded a Texas Historical Marker. Mattie’s name is on a monument that lists all the people buried in that cemetery and a stone lies at her grave. Mattie now rests in a beautiful, lovingly cared for location and she will no longer be forgotten.
Special thanks to District Clerk Marci Gilbert for her assistance and Matthew Spaeth for the use of the photograph from the cemetery.