John Carter - Father of Five

Murdered in: Lawrence | June 10, 1882

Peter Vinegar, Isaac King, and George Robertson were the victims of a mob lynching after they were believed to be involved in the drowning death of a white resident, David Bausman. A mob of more than 100 white residents, none of whom received punishment, hanged the three men over the Kansas River Bridge.

Articles claimed that some of the city's best men participated in the mob, and the Western Home Journal printed multiple favorable responses to the lynching. One writer hoped that would-be murderers would think twice before committing violence after the lynching. A second letter writer specifically described Vinegar's family as a terror in the city that has thus far avoided serious punishment.

However, not everyone agreed with the lynching. On June 21, an article (below) ran in The Evening News, admonishing the lynching and the increasing frequency of others like it. Specifically, the article accused those who participated in lynch mobs as returning to the "ways of the lowest form of barbarism."

These lynching deaths were later investigated by Kerry Altenbern, a member of the History Committee of the Lawrence NAACP branch. The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) joined forces with Altenbern, but the final burial places of the men remained uncertain. In 2021, Lawrence workers uncovered a plot map of the city's first cemetery, Potter's Field, that detailed the location of the men's graves.

On the 140th anniversary of this group lynching, a historical marker was placed to designate the site and describe the terror of lynchings in the area. The event was attended by Kansas Rep. Barbara Ballard and members of the local NAACP branch, including Altenbern and three generations of the Burch-Hill family.