Was Avenged at the Stake

A white mob burns at the stake an African American man guilty of assaulting “a well-known and respectable white woman.”

Bartow, Fla., May 29th.—Fred Rochelle, colored, thirty five years of age, who at noon yesterday assaulted and murdered Mrs. Rena Taggart, a well-known and respectable white woman of this city, was burned at the stake here this evening in the presence of a throng of people. The burning was on the scene of the colored man’s crime within one hundred years of the principal thoroughfare. The man’s crime was one of the boldest ever committed in Florida. At 10 o’clock yesterday morning Mrs. Taggart went fishing alone in a small rowboat that she kept at the city bridge over Piaco Creek. A few minutes before noon Mrs. Taggart desiring to return home, rowed her boat to the bridge and made it fast. A colored man was fishing from the bridge at the time. Mrs. Taggart started home, and had proceeded only a few steps toward the poem prairie and thence to the street when she was approached by Rochelle who had been hiding in the swamp. He seized her and she broke loose and, screaming, ran from the swamp into the prairie where he overtook her and overpowered her. After the assault he cut her throat, causing instance death. Rochelle walked up to the colored man who had been fishing on the bridge and who was thoroughly frightened and asked him what he should do with the body. He was told to leave it where it was, but, unheedful of this request, he carried it back to the swamp, threw it down and fled. In a few minutes the crime had been reported and in less than hour practically the entire city was in arms and a well-armed posse was moving in every direction in search of the criminal. Bloodhounds were secured and all night the search was continued. This morning no trace of the man had been secured, and the people were becoming more desperate in their determination to apprehend him, as the changes for his final escape seemed to grow. About noon a courier arrived announcing that the man had been captured by two other colored men three miles south of the city. Possess were immediately on the trail, but the captors evaded detection and succeeded in getting the prisoner quickly into the city and in turning him over to the sheriff of Polk county. Ten minutes after the transfer had been made the streets became congested with people and the crowd augmented as it moved on the jail. In spite of the sheriff and a strong guard of extra deputies, who made every effort to protect him from mob violence. The crowd secure the prisoner and took him up the march to the scene of the crime. He was half-dragged, half- carried to the bridge, enveloped by a great throng of people of all ages, who were resolute and determined but quiet and orderly. BY common consent, burning was to the penalty. The stake was the only suggestion as the proper expiation of the crime, and without organized effort, and yet with apparently unanimous understanding, a barrel was in readiness, and was placed by the stake on the very spot where Mrs. Taggart was murdered. On this the colored man was placed and chained to the stake. Louder and more desperate grew his pleadings for mercy but in the crowd around him silence was the only response. There were no jeers, no swearing, no disorder. Before the chains around his body became fast, cans of kerosene oil from many sources were passed to the center and one of the leader stepped up to the body and slowly but deliberately poured it upon him and his clothes until the clothes and barrel were saturated. It was near 6 o’clock. The crowd was growing. Business in the city had practically been suspended and all eyes turned toward the scene. In an instant the match was applied. As if by explosion the blaze quickly leaded skyward. The burning body could be seen only as a dark object in a circle of rearing flame. Then the fire lessened in volume and the writhing body came back in full view, but the groans had ceased and the only evidence of life was in the contortions of the muscles of the limbs. For fifteen minutes more the body burned and in a half hour from the time of the application of the match only the charred bones were left as a reminder of the man’s crime and fate. The crowd dispersed as orderly as it had gathered and at 8:30 tonight the city is quiet.

“Was Avenged at the Stake,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed February 19, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/800.