The Berry Gang of Tazewell County

In the years immediately following the end of the Civil War, several of the sons of the widowed Rachel (Larimore) Berry engaged in increasingly violent acts of criminal mischief, culminating in 1869 with the killing of a deputy sheriff, the lynching of Bill Berry at the Pekin jail, a life imprisonment sentence for Ike Berry and fifteen years imprisonment for Emmanual Berry. The background and story of the people, the community, and the events are wonderfully portrayed in the book Lynch Law by Jim Conover and James Brecher.

Emmanuel, Isaac "Ike", and Simeon Berry of Tazewell County, Illinois, sons of Rachel Larimore (1809 - 1879) and James Berry. The Berry Gang was infamous for criminal violence in and around Tazewell County after the Civil War, which resulted in their older brother Bill being lynched at the Pekin Jail in 1869. Emmanuel died in the state penitentiary at Joliet in 1872 and Ike was released from a life sentence in prison in 1887 and relocated to Nevada, Iowa.

1869 New York Times article about the violence preceding the lynching of William Berry.