True Crime Chronicles The wanr of a good razor and 1887 ill intentions came to a head in a Johnson County farm field
In the summer of 1887, a petty dispute over a 50-cent razor ended in the murder of farmer B.F. Truelove in Johnson County and set the stage for a rare public execution.
Truelove, described by neighbors as a quiet but quarrelsome man, had hired John Evans, a 26 or 27-year-old transplant from Wilson and Cannon counties in Tennessee, as a cropper on his farm about four miles west of Clarksville. The two men got along well enough at first.
That changed in mid-June when Evans sold his crop to another man named Monk Harris.
During the settlement, a disagreement arose over a shared razor worth about 50 cents.
According to Evans own detailed confession, Truelove demanded the razor and threatened violence if he did not get it. Witnesses reported Truelove telling others he 'would have the razor or Evans' blood" and that he planned to kill the younger man.
On the morning of June 21, Evans went to Truelove's house to prepare a mule for plowing. Truelove confronted him again about the razor, abused him verbally, and threatened him with a stick. Evans left, borrowed a shotgun from a neighbor, loaded it with No. 1 buckshot, and returned to the field where Truelove was plowing corn. He shot
Truelove once through the heart. Truelove died almost instantly.
Evans then rode into Clarksville on a sweat lathered horse and reported the shooting himself. Sheriff Jett and a posse quickly arrested him. Evans confessed freely, telling a Gazette reporter he acted after repeated threats and that he intended to kill Truelove.
The case caused considerable excitement in a county that had seen few murders in recent years. A coroners jury ruled Truelove died from a gunshot wound at the hands of Evans. Prosecutors rejected any self-defense claim, viewing the ambush as premeditated murder.
Evans was convicted of first-degree murder at trial. He was sentenced to death by hanging.
On June 22, 1888, Evans was one of four men executed together on the gallows in Clarksville.
The public hanging drew large crowds from across the county, reflecting the era's use of capital punishment as both justice and deterrent in the wake of the violent Reconstruction and
outlaw years that had given Clarksville the nickname "Bloody Clarksville."
Word of mouth family history passed down through the decades seems to indicate Truelove was unceremoniously buried on a long-forgotten and deserted family plot on his farm in the vicinity of the Low Gap Community. Contemporary newspaper reports at the time indicate that Evans was buried in a pauper's grave in the same area.
The Truelove Evans case remains a stark reminder of how petty grievances, amplified by threats and pride, could prove fatal in the rural Arkansas River Valley of that era.
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