A thunderstorm brought a downpour of rain and lightning streaking across the skies over a flooded Sabine River on an April evening in 1874. A stranger pounded on the door of the Ochiltree house, the most prominent house on the river, which also rented rooms.
The next night, the stranger would be dead; so would Mrs. John Jett and two of her children. The stranger was shot by a mob after he was arrested for what became known as “The Jett Massacre.”
The Jett Massacre was reported in the Galveston Daily News April 8, 1874, edition. Other accounts can also be found through the years.
90-year-old Dorothy Meadows, a native of Orange, sent information about the massacre. She had heard stories about it as a child.
In 1981, Laura Dingle Ewing wrote and printed a booklet entitled “Our Peveto Family.” The Orange Public Library has a reference copy. She reported the Jett Massacre as remembered by Mrs. Eugenia Peveto. For Mrs. Peveto, the memories were always close. It was her aunt and two cousins who were murdered.
The Peveto story recalls the stranger coming to the Ochiltree House, which was faced the river and was along Front Street at Fourth Street. Ochiltree-Inman Park was named in honor of the family.
Sisters Lillie and Ollie Ochiltree “welcomed the dripping, muddy stranger to the cheery hospitality of their fireplace and the comfort of the Ochiltree hotel.”
The sisters remembered the young man was nicely dressed, yet “the Ochiltree sisters were struck by a foreboding of danger.” He talked about John Jett and wanted to know where he lived.
John Jett and his family lived on Adams Bayou, about three miles west of town, which was centered around the river. The sisters told the stranger.
The next morning, the stranger got up early and again asked the way to the Jett house. Lillie told him the bayou was flooding, but he still wanted to go, even if he had to swim.
Eugenia Peveto’s story says white climbing roses were over the Ochiltree house’s stoop. “The stranger plucked a perfumed white bloom from its thorny stem and twined it into Miss Lillie’s hair.”
“‘Miss Lillie knew something was wrong, she said later she could feel it.’ Mrs. Peveto shuddered at the thinking,” the story reads.
The Galveston News April 8, 1874, reported from Orange about a “horrible tragedy.” “About 11 o’clock today, during the absence of Mr. Jett, a straggling Italian sailor, calling himself Turner Ardasal, captain of the sloop New Louisiana, entered the residence of Mr. Jett and foully and brutally murdered Mrs. Jett and two children.”
Eugenia Peveto recalled the her cousin, 14-year-old Mary Jane, was the oldest Jett child and took the 10-month-old baby with her when the stranger arrived. The stranger was muttering about killing and went to the woodpile. He grabbed wood, went inside and stoked the fire until flames roared up.
John Jett was off in the woods getting logs. Mary Jane went off to the closed neighbor to get help, but her mother made her leave the baby behind. Eugenia Peveto said Mary Jane “ran fearfully along across the rain-drenched prairie to John Lyons home with her story about a ‘crazy man who said he was going to kill everyone.'” The Galveston News described the neighbor as living about a mile away.
Lyons got neighbors and they armed themselves “with shotguns, pistols and pitchforks” and went to the Jett house, according to the Peveto account.
“As Lyons burst through the door, the strange man was dragging the bodies of the mother and two children toward the fire place,” Peveto’s story continued.
The Galveston News said Lyons “and two other gentlemen” arrived at the house to “discover the fiend trying to burn the bodies. They immediately arrested and bound him hand and foot, brought him to town and lodged him in jail. The grand jury came in session that day and was considering the case.
The paper said “the body of the murdered woman clearly exhibits evidence of the cause that instigated the foul deed.”
Though no cause was specifically mentioned, the late historian W.T. Block wrote in 1978 that Mrs. Jett had been raped and murdered.
Eugenia Peveto said she had heard the murdered “was a rejected lover.” Mrs. Jett, before she married, had lived at the old Hannah house on the river, next to the Thompson house (which was where the Riverfront Pavilion is today). “I heard the stranger was a riverboat man who had been jilted. He came back for revenge and got it.”
But the community took its own revenge. The night of the arrest, the stranger met what Block called “Judge Lynch.”
The April 9, 1874, Galveston News reported, “Last night, soon after the sheriff entered the jail to give the prisoner his supper, a crowd of armed unknown men rushed in, overpowere the officer, blew out the lights, took the murderer of the Jett family just outside of the prison and literally riddled him with bullets. This ends the horrible tragedy.”
Eugenia Peveto had vivid memories of that night. She lived a block away from the jail, which was on the river near the Ochiltree house. “I woke during the night to hear a man hollering at the top of his voice,” she said. “The community’s menfolks had broken into the jail and dragged the murderer away. That night they shot him to pieces.”
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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