The Jackson Pillar (Carter-Jackson Monument)

SCOPE FLAG: this is the archive's first entry outside the UK - worth a deliberate decision on whether the site covers the wider English-speaking tradition of this monument type or stays UK-only, since the current homepage copy specifically says 'British countryside'. William Jackson, a traveling leather merchant from Virginia, helped a shipwrecked and penniless sea captain, Thomas Carter of Newport, get home by giving him money and the use of a horse - Carter repaid the kindness by robbing and murdering him with a dagger near midnight on 24 January 1751. Carter was later hanged and his body left in a gibbet (an iron cage) for years as a public warning, in what was reportedly Rhode Island's last such gibbeting. The strange twist: the murder would likely have been forgotten entirely if a wealthy, eccentric South Kingstown resident and devoted spiritualist, Joseph Peace Hazard, hadn't personally commissioned this granite pillar in 1889 - 138 years after the fact, at age 82, for reasons he never explained. It still stands on the southbound side of US Route 1 near Hampton Way. RICHLY SOURCED FURTHER, WITH A GENUINE SURVIVING COURT RECORD: the existing Small State, Big History article (now read in full) is itself a serious piece of historical scholarship with footnotes, and points to real primary material - the King's County Court Records (Rhode Island Judicial Records Center) apparently still hold part of the original 1751 trial record, including the jury members' names (a photograph of part of this record illustrates the article). It also quotes a contemporary newspaper in full - the New York Gazette, 20 May 1751 - describing the hanging and gibbeting before a crowd 'supposed...to exceed 10,000', with a sermon by Rev. Dr McSparran. Multiple 18th-20th century histories are named as further reading: Wilkins Updike's 'Memoirs of the Rhode Island Bar' (1840s), Thomas R. Hazard's 'Recollections of Olden Times' and 'Jonny-Cake Papers' (1915), James N. Arnold's 'Narragansett Historical Register' (which reproduces the full text of McSparran's sermon and the sheriff's expense receipt for the hanging), Carl Woodward's 'Plantation in Yankeeland' (1971), and Daniel Hearn's book on New England executions. The article also gives useful context for Joseph Peace Hazard's 'eccentric' 1889 commission noted above: he and his brother Thomas were devoted spiritualists, which may explain the otherwise-unexplained motive. It also gives precise coordinates for the pillar (41°26.912'N, 71°28.414'W, i.e. approx. 41.4485, -71.4736), which differ somewhat from the coordinates recorded above (41.4270, -71.5420) - worth double-checking which is more accurate.