Ball Taylor
Ball Taylor, a Black man, was being transported by sheriff's officers from Waxahachie to Dallas for safekeeping in September 1884. A posse of nine men stopped the officers near Waxahachie and took him from their custody. Later that night, about four miles from Dallas, a group of about forty masked men hanged him from a tree, and the sheriff and a constable were held prisoner and then released. The accounts come from newspaper dispatches, which report that Taylor protested his innocence until his death, and no official record of the events has been cited.
Cause of death, as reported: Taken from custody and lynched. A Dallas special dispatch reprinted in a Galveston paper says a mob of about forty masked men took him from officers transporting him from Waxahachie to Dallas and hanged him from a tree.
Reported by: Galveston dispatch citing a special report from Dallas (reporters).