Fallen Hammond officer Fred Karlton remembered
For decades, historians considered Marshal James Gordon Anderson, killed in 1933, the first Hammond police officer to die serving the city. However, in 2020, Bayou Justice discovered the 1922 murder of Marshal John Madison Day. And this week, we recount the career of Officer Fred Karlton, including his shotgun death as he served his final warrant in 1917.
In 1913, the City of Hammond adopted the commission system of government, meaning, among other things, that a town council replaced the board of aldermen, and a commission now appointed law enforcement instead of the city holding elections to fill those positions. As a result, city commissioners replaced elected town marshal F. H. Meyers with Alfred E. Karlton, then a Tangipahoa Parish Deputy Sheriff, a volunteer firefighter, and the Ward 7 constable.
Karlton also owned a dairy farm called The Crescent Home.
Although the council described F. H. Meyers as a “faithful, fearless, and efficient officer and a terror to evil-doers, who made Hammond uncongenial for the drunkard, the blind tiger, and the loafer,” they found Deputy Sheriff Fred Karlton’s record more impressive.
Karlton’s adventures as a lawman first made the newspapers on Friday, April 29, 1910, when The New Orleans Times-Democrat recounted his capture of Sylvester Robinson, a Mississippi murder suspect hiding in Amite City. The following June, the same publication described Karlton’s capture of Bob Morris, a convict serving time for murder before escaping a chain gang north of Hammond.
On Wednesday, September 14, 1910, the paper told of Karlton’s capture of Georgia Wren, a notorious female “highwayman” captured near Robert.
Friday, September 16, 1910, The Baton Rouge State Times reported, “Offering a horse and buggy worth one-hundred dollars for thirty dollars caused Louis Germany to be arrested and placed in jail. He was taken out by Deputy Fred Karlton of Tangipahoa Parish and brought to Hammond. The man stole the horse from R. O. Hollister of Ponchatoula and drove the buggy to Baton Rouge. The men to whom he offered to sell the horse informed the Chief of Police, who contacted the sheriff in Tangipahoa Parish.”
On Friday, November 18, 1910, The New Orleans Item reported, “A running revolver battle was fought yesterday noon on the outskirts of the city between Deputy Sheriff Fred Karlton and three desperados. Karlton discovered three white men, robbery suspects wanted in Mississippi, held up near Penniman’s barn, a notorious hangout for hoodlums. In the end, two escaped, while another got hung up in a barbed wire fence and landed in jail. Deputy Karlton was unscathed.”
Two days before Christmas that year, Deputy Karlton arrested Janette Frazier, a woman who shot her husband, a member of a traveling theatrical troupe. Karlton charged Mrs. Frazier with “shooting her cheating husband” and “intent to kill.”
The Sunday edition of The Times-Picayune reported February 12, 1911:
“A week ago, it was discovered that a freight car passing through here had been robbed of three barrels and several cases of whisky. Detectives Craft and Lutz, officers of the Illinois Central Railroad, were put on the case and soon discovered the goods hidden in a hobo camp two miles south of Hammond.”
“The officers, assisted by Deputy Sheriff Fred Karlton of Hammond, watched the tramp tents for three or four days, and last night were rewarded when three men drove up with a mule team, unearthed the three barrels and loaded them into the wagon.”
“Under attack by Karlton and the railroad detectives, one of the three cut the mules loose from the wagon, mounted one of them, and made his escape. Karlton captured the men while the detectives grabbed the whisky barrels, but the team was unable to locate the case goods. A confederate in the car instigated the robbery by breaking open the door and rolling the whisky out as the train passed the campsite.”
On June 4, 1911, Deputy Sheriff Fred Karlton arrested Henry Hughes, alias A. J. Smith, alias George Washington “on suspicion of being a dangerous character, probably guilty of horse stealing.”
Karlton said Washington stole a horse and offered to sell it to a rancher in Montpelier. Washington asked the buyer to write his employer at the Graziano plantation in Walker to confirm his employer sent him there to sell the horse. When the letter arrived, Washington called for his employer’s mail and replied with the confirmation.
On Wednesday, March 27, 1912, The Times reported, “Fred Karlton served as a Deputy Sheriff under Sheriff Saal. Following the election, Deputy Karlton circulated a petition asking Sheriff-elect John Ballard to keep him on. The Hammond Hall Club has endorsed Karlton, and every businessman in the city of Hammond has signed his petition.”
Sheriff Ballard accepted the petition and reinstated Karlton, who continued to serve the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office even after accepting his post with the Hammond Police Department in 1913.
From The Hammond Vindicator, Thursday, March 1, 1917:
“Emma Hooper, a negro woman, aged 45, was charged with shooting and seriously wounding Marshall Fred Karlton with a shotgun yesterday as he attempted to arrest her for wounding a negro boy in Hammond.”
The article went on to say:
“The woman was taken from the authorities by a small mob last night while traveling to Amite City jail. Several unidentified men and boys seized the negress from her guard in an automobile and spirited her away when Deputy Sheriff Wainwright left the machine to get a pair of handcuffs for her. She was hanged in a tree six miles west of Hammond. Deputy Sheriff Wainwright found her body after midnight.”
Born one day after Christmas 1859 near Little Rock, Arkansas, Alfred Ernest Kelly grew up in Calhoun, Alabama.
In 1898, then living in Virginia and traveling the south as a sales representative for R. J. Reynolds Tobacco, he fell in love with a Louisiana native. By April 1900, the couple had saved five-hundred dollars, enough to buy a dairy farm east of Hammond. However, the Italian owner said he would not sell his farm to an Irishmen.
Fred told him Kelly was his middle name. His surname, he said, was Karlton.
After retrieving the five-hundred dollars from a bank in New Orleans, Fred fell asleep in the Poydras Market, awaiting a train back to Hammond. He awoke to a thief robbing him of his shoes and pulled a gun on the man. When Karlton reported the incident to the New Orleans Police Department, they charged him with not having a gun permit for their city. In his defense, he explained, he was traveling with five hundred dollars hidden in his underwear.
Fred Kelly-Karlton succumbed to his injuries from the shotgun blast and died on March 23, 1917.
According to his obituary, in his twenty years as a Hammond resident, he “held the office of deputy sheriff, chief of police, and constable.” The report said, “He was the first marshal appointed for Hammond under the commission form of government and is survived by his wife and two grown children.”