ABSTRACT
On 21 September 1891, scores of people poured into Darlington, Wisconsin from the surrounding countryside. Shortly before noon, the crowd of hundreds met a train bearing a 26-year-old prisoner, Anton Sieboldt, from Monroe, where he had been taken for safekeeping. Sieboldt, born to Prussian immigrant parents, was a hired hand who labored on a nearby farm. He had murdered a young farmer of Irish descent, James Meighan, as the two traveled together by wagon into Darlington for lumber. The previous Wednesday afternoon, the two had quarreled under the influence of whiskey. After severely wounding Meighan, Seiboldt reportedly obtained a wagon wrench from a woman at a nearby house and used it to kill Meighan with a blow to the skull. Authorities soon apprehended Sieboldt and lodged him in the county jail at Darlington, as talk of lynching began. The next night a large crowd assembled at the town's stockyards, apparently planning to seize Sieboldt. Authorities outwitted potential mobbers by secreting Sieboldt in the county poorhouse, and then taking him the next morning to Dumbarton from where he was removed by morning train to Monroe. 1
