Stone, James "Colle"
(died: 1893)James Colman Stone, a jockey, was born a slave in Bloomfield, KY. Stone, his mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother had all belonged to the same family in Bloomfield. His uncle had been a slave of Judge Advocate Joseph Polt of Washington.
In June 1888, Stone killed bartender Henry Miller at Steinzig's Saloon on Coney Island in New York. The story was carried in many of the major newspapers in the U.S. After three trials, Stone was found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to hang in Brooklyn in June of 1889.
A month before the hanging was to take place, Judge Henry Moore received a letter from Kentucky wherein the writer asked that Stone's sentence be commuted and his life be spared. The letter, which came from the sister of Stone's former owner, was printed in the newspaper, but the name of the writer was withheld. It was reported on February 1, 1890 that Governor Hill of New York had commuted Stone's sentence to life in Sing Sing Prison.
For more see "A Kentucky Negro," Newark Daily Advocate, 5/15/1889; "James Stone a jockey..." in The National Leader (D.C.), 5/18/1889, p. 4; James Stone briefing in the News (Frederick, MD), 2/1/1890, p. 5; and the second paragraph of the article "Brooklyn Briefs," New York Age, 2/8/1890, p. 3. See also "January 11 - James Stone, the jockey, imprisoned for life for murder, died at Auburn, N.Y." on p.34 under the heading "1893" in The New York Clipper Annual for 1894, by the Frank Queen Publishing Company.