The Wilson–Anthony Killing

On 4 December 1837, during an extraordinary session called by Governor James Conway, the Arkansas House of Representatives was debating a bill to pay a bounty on wolf scalps. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, Major Joseph J. Anthony of Randolph County, an outspoken critic of the corrupt Arkansas Real Estate Bank, offered a joking amendment that the bank’s president should sign the wolf-scalp certificates. The president of the bank was the Speaker, Colonel John Wilson of Clark County, who was presiding. He took offence, left the chair and attacked Anthony with a large knife. Anthony died of the wound. Representative Grandison D. Royston tried to stop the fight by throwing a chair between the men. The Arkansas Gazette called it another example of the barbarity of life in the state, and the Encyclopedia notes it is the only recorded violent death on the floor of the legislature.

Anthony, born about 1780 in Virginia, had grown up in Tennessee, commanded a company in the War of 1812 and later served under Andrew Jackson against the Creek, earning the title “Major.” He moved to Arkansas Territory in 1835, never married, and was elected to the House in 1836. He was buried in Little Rock’s old public graveyard; his remains were not among those moved to Mount Holly Cemetery in 1860, and the Encyclopedia says they may still lie under the site.

The House expelled Wilson. After a delay, a relative of Anthony’s filed a complaint, Wilson was released on bail, and the trial was moved to Saline County, where in May 1838 the jury found him guilty only of “excusable homicide,” in effect an acquittal. Wilson went on to serve in the House again in 1840 and later moved to Texas, where he died in 1865.

The ghost tradition is much later than the history and is told about the building, the Greek Revival Old State House, now a museum. In a local-news segment, paranormal investigators who visited reported sensing anger and, from a recording, a voice that seemed to say “I don’t know”; they wondered whether it was Anthony, though one thought the presence was younger. State historian David Ware, quoted in the same report, told the story of the killing but attributed the building’s creaks to cheap construction. Other retellings name Wilson, not Anthony, as the restless spirit; the sources do not agree.

Investigators’ audio recordings and impressions of an angry presence, with creaking floors. All reports come from paranormal groups visiting the museum, not from staff accounts.

The old House of Representatives chamber and exhibit wing of the Old State House.

The fight is a staple of Arkansas political history, and the Old State House Museum has been part of local ghost coverage by Little Rock television.