William "Bill" Sketoe, Sr. (June 8, 1818 – December 3, 1864) was a Methodist minister from the south Alabama town of Newton. Born in Madrid, Spain, he came to Dade County, Alabama with his father as a young boy.
When the Civil War began in 1861, Sketoe supposedly joined the Confederate Army. He fought for three years, escaping serious injury and fighting in many battles. Then he got news that his wife was very ill. He hired a substitute and returned home to care for his wife. As she slowly improved, Sketoe's neighbors began to resent the foreigner who was able to return home and stay when so many of their boys had not. He was called a malingerer and a traitor. Rumors abounded that he might be aiding local guerillas who were fighting against the Southern cause. Whatever the reason, Sketoe ran afoul of the Newton Home Guard, led by Joseph Breare.
During the Civil War, Dale County had become a lawless place: the circuit court held no sessions during the last two years of the war, while nearby pine forests harbored numerous deserters and Unionists, who frequently emerged to terrorize the locals. Enraged citizens formed Home Guard units to defend against their depredations; one such outfit was led by Captain Joseph Breare. Breare was a lawyer in Newton, and was described by his partner's son as "an Englishman" who had moved to Dale County in the 1850s. He was an Alabama delegate to the Democratic National Convention of 1860, and served as a Lieutenant in Company E, 15th Alabama Infantry, which was recruited in Dale County. Captured at Gettysburg, he was later exchanged and returned home to serve as commander of the local Home Guard unit.
Breare and his outfit, locally referred to as "Buttermilk Rangers" because they were also in the service of the Confederate conscript department, had resolved to hunt down and punish all deserters; he had already hanged two men for alleged acts of treason.
Two different versions exist as to the cause of Sketoe's death. The legend (as related by Windham) says that although Sketoe offered papers indicating that he had hired a substitute to serve in his place (according to the story), the Home Guard refused to believe him, and Breare decided to hang him as a deserter. However, historians have pointed out that the Confederacy had repealed its substitution laws in early 1864, making the legend's assertion that Sketoe had hired a substitute questionable, at best. Furthermore, no records exist of Bill Sketoe having ever served in any Confederate or state military unit to begin with.
Other sources indicate that Sketoe was suspected of helping John Ward, the leader of a local band of deserters and pro-Union guerrillas. Ward had ambushed a Confederate ammunition transport in Dale County two months earlier, killing an officer; one of Breare's men had subsequently been shot during a skirmish with Ward near the current county seat of Ozark. Breare had tried to hang three local men for alleged collaboration in the attack on the ammunition train, but was prevented from doing so by another Confederate officer due to lack of evidence against them. Although Sketoe was never formally charged or tried for his own alleged acts of collusion with Ward, and although not one piece of hard evidence was ever publicly produced to corroborate Breare's allegations of treason, the Home Guard commander apparently decided to make Sketoe his third victim, anyway.
According to the legend, Sketoe was waylaid on the afternoon of December 3, 1864, as he crossed the wooden bridge over the Choctawhatchee River north of Newton. Breare and his men dragged the preacher into the nearby woods, beating him and forcing him to crawl through the sand while they prepared to kill him. Sketoe was next hauled to a waiting buggy, and a rope was thrown over a Post Oak limb and put around his neck. A friend of Sketoe's happened by the scene at this time; unable to dissuade the Home Guard from their intended course, he ran to Newton for help. Anxious to get on with the hanging, Breare asked Sketoe if he had any last words; he asked if he might pray. However instead of praying for himself, as his killers expected, he began to pray for them instead; this so infuriated the militiamen that Breare lashed at the horse hitched to the buggy, leaving Sketoe dangling from the tree limb.
In their haste to carry out Sketoe's summary execution, Breare and his men failed to take their victim's size into account. Sketoe was tall, and his weight bent the limb to the point that his feet touched the ground. One of Breare's men dug a hole beneath the minister's feet, which allowed Sketoe to strangle to death before his friends could return. Sketoe was buried in nearby Mt. Carmel cemetery; his epitaph reads: "gone, but not forgotten".
Sketoe's lynching created quite a stir in Newton, especially as locals began to notice that the hole dug to facilitate his hanging never seemed to disappear. It retained its original dimensions as years passed: about thirty inches wide by eight inches deep; even when filled with trash, dirt or debris, locals always returned—sometimes within hours—to find it empty. Campers claimed to have pitched their tents right over the hole after filling it with dirt, only to awaken the next morning to find it seemingly swept clean. For more than a century, this hole never disappeared, until the new Highway 134 bridge over the Choctawhatchee River was built over the site in 1979.
According to local histories, every member of Sketoe's lynching party died unnatural deaths—including Breare, who was struck by a limb from a Post Oak tree, the same kind from which Sketoe had been hanged.