1898 America: The Burning of Baker, McGeisey & Sampson

Season 40: America's 250th Anniversary -- 50 states, 25 double-feature episodes. Two fires burned in 1898

America. One in South Carolina, where a mob murdered a Black postmaster and his two-year-old daughter. One

in Indian Territory, where a mob burned two Seminole teenagers alive. Both cases reached federal court. Neither

delivered justice.

Frazier Baker held a federal appointment. Lincoln McGeisey and Palmer Sampson were teenagers with no

connection to the crime they died for. The federal government proved it could indict in both cases. What it could

not do -- or chose not to do -- was convict. This is the story of 1898, when America showed exactly what it was

willing to tolerate.

The Victims

Frazier Baker was born around 1857 in Effingham, Florence County, South Carolina. He became a schoolteacher,

then a postmaster. On July 30, 1897, the McKinley administration appointed him the first Black postmaster of

Lake City, Williamsburg County. He and his wife Lavinia had six children: Rosa, Cora, Lincoln, Sarah, Millie, and the

youngest, Julia, who was two years old in the winter of 1898. Baker refused to abandon his federal post despite

threats, a shooting, an arson, and a boycott. He stayed.

Lincoln McGeisey was fifteen or sixteen years old. His father, Thomas McGeisey, was the superintendent of the

Seminole Nation's public schools and was in Washington, D.C., negotiating on behalf of his people when the mob

took his son. Lincoln had four siblings -- Martha, Nora, William, and James -- and had never been in trouble. Palmer

Sampson was also a teenager, the son of Sukey Natuksie and Sampson Walker. Congress formally exonerated

both young men within six months of their deaths, declaring them innocent before a single defendant stood trial.

The Crimes

On February 22, 1898, at approximately 1:00 in the morning, a mob surrounded Frazier Baker's home in Lake City,

South Carolina -- which also served as the post office. They set fire to the building and fired approximately one

hundred bullets into the structure while the Baker family was inside. Frazier Baker was killed. Two-year-old Julia

Baker died from a bullet that passed through her mother Lavinia's forearm. Three more Baker children survived

with gunshot wounds.

On January 8, 1898, shortly after 2:00 in the morning, Lincoln McGeisey and Palmer Sampson were chained to

trees at the Maud tabernacle in Indian Territory. A minister named Andrew J. Mathis prayed over them, then set

fire to the dry brush heaped around them. A crowd numbering in the hundreds watched. Three white Protestant

ministers were documented as present. Neither teenager had been formally charged, brought before any legal

authority, or connected by evidence to the murder of Mary Leard, the crime the mob claimed to be avenging.

The Investigation

In March 1898, journalist and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett organized a delegation to the White

House, meeting President McKinley. She was the sole woman in a group that included eight Illinois congressmen.

She demanded federal action and a federal anti-lynching law.

In the Baker case, thirteen men were indicted on twenty-four criminal counts in April 1899. Joseph P. Newham

testified under immunity, admitting in open court that he personally started the fire. An all-white jury in

Charleston, South Carolina, acquitted three defendants outright and deadlocked on the remaining eight. The

judge declared a mistrial. No one was ever convicted for the murder of Frazier Baker or Julia Baker.

In the Seminole burning case, more than fifty people were indicted. Fifty-four were tried. The prosecution

succeeded in convicting six individuals, including Nelson M. Jones, a former Deputy U.S. Marshal whose federal

status made the prosecution legally viable, and Andrew J. Mathis, the minister who set the fire. It was the first

successful prosecution of lynchers in the American Southwest. When convicted mob member Mont Ballard

returned to Maud after serving seven years, the town threw him a celebration.

Historical Context

1898 was a year of organized racial terror across America. The Wilmington Massacre rewrote the political map

of North Carolina. The Curtis Act dissolved Seminole tribal government. Federal prosecutors proved the system

could work -- and then the system refused to deliver results. The United States did not pass a federal anti-lynching

law until March 29, 2022, when the Emmett Till Antilynching Act was signed into law -- one hundred and

twenty-four years after Frazier Baker and Julia Baker were killed. Ida B. Wells-Barnett demanded that law in 1898.

She died in 1931 without seeing it. Lavinia Baker moved her family to Boston, later returned to South Carolina,

and died in 1947. The Lake City post office was renamed in honor of Frazier B. Baker on February 22, 2019. There

is no major public memorial to Lincoln McGeisey or Palmer Sampson.

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