Lyons eventually died of his injuries. Sheldon was tried, eventually convicted, and served prison time for this crime. This otherwise unmemorable crime is remembered in a song.

The song was well known in African American communities along the lower Mississippi River by the 1910s. Before World War II, it was almost always known as "Stack O'Lee". W.C. Handy wrote that this probably was a nickname for a tall person, comparing him to the tall smoke-stack of the large steamboat Robert E. Lee. By the time that W.C. Handy wrote the explanation in the 1920s, "Stack O' Lee" was already familiar in United States popular culture, with recordings of the song made by such pop singers of the day as Cliff Edwards.

oops
i should hae read thie entire thread, wiki' beat me to the article printed in The St. Louis Globe-Democrat in 1895