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Dale M. Brumfield The hanging of John F. Morgan is well known across Jackson County. But what is perhaps less known is the prominent role “spectacle executions” like Morgan’s played not just in West Virginia but throughout the entire American South. On a freezing Dec. 16, 1897, a New York Sun reporter gathered with anywhere from 6,000-10,000 others in a 10-acre lot in Ripley, W.Va. They had arrived on foot, on horseback and in wagons from Calhoun, Mason, Kanawha and Wood counties on rutted roads made worse by heavy rains solely to watch the heavily-publicized hanging of Morgan, who had been convicted of the murder of three members of the Pfost-Greene family. ....