Stone Gardens: Abusive husband and father was felled by a shotgun blast delivered by his son-n-law

On the night of Thursday, October 3, 1912, Arthur Webster shot his father-in-law, Benjamin Franklin Bryan--called Benny--with a shotgun and killed him at once.

Webster lived about three and a half miles southwest of Siloam Springs, on the Oklahoma side of a town that still pulled people across the Arkansas line for trade, news, and a printer.

Sometime between ten o’clock and one, after a week of drinking, Bryant had grown violent. He slapped Mrs. Bryant and threatened Webster and Webster’s wife. Webster left the house. Bryant followed him and threatened his life more than once.

The next morning the Siloam Springs Free Press found Webster in town. He said he had acted in self-defense and would say little else. A deputy sheriff in Adair County had been notified across the line. Webster said the deputy was at his place that morning when he left, and that he meant to go home and give himself up.

That is nearly all the public record of the last night.

Benny Bryant was born February 23, 1862, son of Rev. Samuel Lee Bryant and Sarah J. Martin Bryant. Sarah died the year he was born. Samuel later married California Virginia Welch. Benny’s older brother was John H. Bryant. The second household added half-brothers and half-sisters: Susan Emily, Martha Ann called Mattie, Samuel Lee Jr., Welch Allmon, and Joseph Allen.

Benny married twice: first Cora Stewart, then Mary Adeline Thomas Still. His children were Sophie Alice, Leona, Rhoda M., Florence Gertrude, John, Suannie Susan called Susie, and Martha Viola.

He was buried at Allen Cemetery--also called Mosely Prairie Graveyar--west of Siloam Springs on the Oklahoma side of the line that had already complicated the night’s law. Self-defense is what Webster claimed in the street the next morning. The surviving file does not print a verdict.

The week of drink, the slap, the threats, the shotgun in the dark, and the deputy called across the line: that is the part of Benny Bryant’s life the papers could not ignore. The rest stayed in the house and in the names the family kept.