Biography
Joe Trumble was a Rains County, Texas farmer, brother of E. A. Trumble and uncle of John William Trumble, convicted with them at Tyler in September 1918 of federal seditious conspiracy connected to resistance to the Selective Service Act. The case grew out of anti-draft meetings held in the county in the summer of 1917 after local farmers complained their draft quota was unfairly high; rumours of a planned uprising proved baseless, but about fifty people were seized in raids beginning on the night of August 8, 1917. He received the lightest of the family sentences, one year and one day, remained at liberty through the appeal, and entered USP Atlanta on January 31, 1920 as prisoner 10613. His sentence was commuted on October 13, 1920 and he was released a week later, on October 20. He was granted a full presidential pardon on June 19, 1923. The National Archives prisoner index appears to misspell his surname as Trunble.
The presidential-clemency table in the 1921 Senate amnesty hearings records a sentence imposed September 20, 1918: One year and one day for seditious conspiracy. Commuted October 13, 1920 to expire at once; the recommendation says the defendants attended a meeting and voted against the draft. A pardon, commutation, nominal expiration or parole eligibility is not itself evidence of the day of physical release; the imposed or reduced term is not a measured time served.
Amnesty and Pardon for Political Prisoners, 1921 Senate hearings, printed page 192.
