Excerpt from:  Martin, William T., History of Franklin County . . .,
(Columbus 1858), pages 421-422.

On the 9th of February, 1844, William Clark and Esther Foster were executed.
Clark was a white man, and Esther a black woman.  They were both convicts in
the penitentiary at the time they committed the murders for which they were
executed.  Clark's offense was that of killing Cyrus Sells, one of the prison
guards, at a single blow, with a cooper's axe.  Esther's offense was that of
beating a white female prisoner to death, with a fire shovel.  The two murders
were in no way connected, but happened within a few months of each other, and
the prisoners were both tried and convicted at the same term of the court. The
defense in Clark's case, was insanity.  In the woman's case, that the killing
was not premeditated, and consequently not murder in the first degree.  Doubts
were entertained by some whether either should have been convicted and executed
--but they both were.  The gallows upon which they were executed, was erected on
the low ground, at the southwest corner of Mound and Scioto streets, in Columbus.
The occasion alled together an immense crowd of people, both male and female, and
it was a day of much noise, confusion, drunkeness and disorder.  A well known
citizen of the town, Mr. Sullivan Sweet, was pushed over in the crowd, and trampled
on by a horse, which occasioned his death in a few hours.  Many, however, of the
citizens of the town prudently refused to witness the scene.