Taking another look at a lynching

For The Madera Tribune

S.W. Westfall,served two terms as Madera County Sheriff. He spent the better part of his first term in an unsuccessful search for the vigilantes who hanged Victor Adams. Alas, he was unsuccessful due to the lack of cooperation from the tight-lipped folks in the hills.

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“Coate Tales” has visited the hanging of Victor Adams a couple of times, but recently we found confirmation of an old adage: No history is ever finished. No historian is ever done. There is always more to tell.

Through the miracle of digitized archives, we found an account of the Adams lynching in an 1895 issue of the Madera Tribune. So descriptive is this account, that we have to travel once more along what is now Road 200, about a mile above the little town of O’Neals. That is where they hanged Victor Adams.

Readers may remember that Adams had shot his father-in-law, Judge I.L. Baker in an argument over a horse. He was captured by the judge’s sons and a few of their friends. The murderer was tied to a horse, and the posse headed toward Madera on July 21.