According to Jefferson County, Mo. court records Samuel Parker Eoff shot and killed his son, William C. Eoff, in 1862. On the same day of the shooting, the court refused to do anything. The citizens did not want a dangerous character loose, so about 100 people formed a sort of court. Rev. William McKay, happening to pass that way at the time, was induced by the crowd to pray for Samuel Parker Eoff, which that good man of God did in a most reverent and fervid style. He also talked to him and gave him such spiritual consolation as he could under the circumstances. This ended and the prisoner, who had that day been found guilty by Esq. James McCullock, of the murder of William C. Eoff, his own son. When the people wanted to hang him, another son went to get a rope. The storekeeper, Mr. H. P. Bates, tried to persuade the boy not to get the rope. The boy said that his father deserved to hang and he would help with the hanging. Samuel Parker Eoff was placed on a box set on a wash box, a rope was tied around his neck and then to the limb of a walnut tree in front of his own house, and then on of the people pulled the wash block from under him by a rope tied to one of it's four legs. This was done while the corpse of his murdered son was scarcely cold in the house. There was no liquor there. The crowd was orderly and acted in broad daylight without any disguises. When Judge McCullock found the prisoner guilty the people present informed him and the sheriff who was also present that they dispensed with their further services and they would take charge of the prisoner themselves. The chairman of this committee afterwards saw two other men suffer the death penalty under the direction of the sheriff and he must say the execution of Samuel Parker Eoff was more orderly and skillfully done than the other two. Nothing of the walnut tree remains but the stump.