The Battle of Maddox Lane

The beginning of the end of KKK activities in Franklin Co (at least for a while) occurred at the “battle of Maddox lane,” There, it is said, “the Klan met their real Bull Run, Appomattox, and Waterloo.”

In the summer of 1875, the Klan was planning two Franklin Co “hits”—Capt. John Hogan and John B. Maddox. Hogan had earned Klan wrath because he had the audacity to prosecute Hiram Summers, a Klan member and liquor dealer in the village of Speakeasy, for selling Hogan’s son whiskey. Hogan had been ordered by the Klan to reimburse Hiram for his $100 fine and for costs. Maddox was on the Klan’s hit list because he had “been a little too free with women and with Rice’s wife.” We don’t know who Rice was, but he probably had Klan connections. A Klan member, William Washington Jacobs, turned informant and let Maddox and Hogan know of the Klan’s plans. They, in turn, asked authorities for help.

Very early the morning of 17 Aug 1875, a group of armed and masked men on horseback were caught approaching the farmhouse of John Maddox a few miles north of West Frankfort and just east of what is today Deering Road. A sheriff’s posse, waiting in ambush along the lane, opened fire with shotguns. One masked rider, John Duckworth, tumbled from his horse. The others, several also wounded, fled but were hunted down and eventually arrested.

Believing he was on his deathbed, the downed rider told all he knew about the Klan, continuing to spill the beans even after he survived. He had been initiated into the Klan by Hiram Summers, the Sneakout liquor dealer, at the farm lot of Elisha Summers. Some contemporary newspaper articles listed Elisha as Eli, but for a variety of reasons, we know it was probably not Eli. And who was the downed KKK rider, John Duckworth? It turns out he was John Wilson Duckworth, a son of Cassander Summers, Thomas Summers’s granddaughter! Hiram and Elisha Summers were brothers and Cassander’s cousins. It was all in the family. 

All in the Family

Were these members of the Summers family really KKK participants? Probably, though they may have just been ruffians, lawless individuals with a streak of cussedness. Let’s hope that was all it was because, as we will see, Summers participation was much, much more extensive than indicated here.