Willis Russell

Willis Russell (1844 – July 1, 1875) was a Deputy United States Marshal who fought against William Smoot and his Ku Klux Klan chapter in Owen County, Kentucky. Smoot and his followers conducted a bloody reign of terror in Franklin (Frankfort), Owen County, and Henry Counties. Russell finally stopped them, though it cost him his life.

Biography Willis Russell was born in 1844, and raised in Monterey, Kentucky. During the American Civil War, he served as a horse soldier in John Hunt Morgan's famous Confederate cavalry.

On the night of July 1, 1875, Deputy U.S. Marshal Willis Russell was murdered by an assassin who fired a load of buckshot through the window as Russell was sitting in his home.

Opposition to the Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan was supported by local lawmen, newspapers and the courts. Perry, the County Attorney, W. Monfort, the Commonwealth's Attorney, Judge Roberts, and the Police Judge of Owenton were either Klansmen themselves, or sympathetic to their cause. Secret Service documents prove that the Sheriff of Owen County was also a Klansman. Some claim that even Democratic Governors John White Stevenson and Governor Preston Hopkins Leslie were Klan supporters. After many Klan-led conflicts in Monterey and Guestville (Henry County) in 1870, Russell was assigned by the US Marshal service to investigate undercover. Russell posed as the clerk of a country store in northern Owen County. He was approached by four White men who asked him to join the "Kuklux" to drive "the negroes" and "all Radicals who were in favor of negroes" from Kentucky. John Smoot said that he "saw the two Walkers, Willis Russell and a man named Wilson all fire upon me. I do not know who hit me, but they all fired. I saw them clearly; they were not further off than from this bed to that wall."

Perry was able to get the Grand Jury to indict all of those accused. The Police Judge of Owenton who issued the writs was himself a Klansman. GC Wharton signed a $2,000 check for Alexander and Dickinson, the lawyers who were prosecuting the case of "Commonwealth versus Willis Russell, et al". More checks were signed for witnesses against Russell, traveling expenses for JH Dorman, who provided "services" for the Commonwealth, and newspaper men (for the Louisville Commercial, and Graham and Hardacre) were also paid by the State of Kentucky. Klan raids continued in Kentucky through December 1875.