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The Pinks:  The First Female Operatives, Detectives and Spies with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

In the spring of 1858 a friendly, two-horse match race attracted the attention of many residents in the town of Atkinson, Mississippi. Mrs. Franklin Robbins and Mrs. R. C. Potter, both guests at one of the community’s finest hotels had decided to see which one of their mounts was the fastest.  They had begun their afternoon ride in the company of several others enjoying the balmy air, blooming flowers, and waving foliage of the sunny southern landscape.  Exploring a path that led to a bubbling stream, Mrs. Robbins and Mrs. Potter had lagged far behind the party and decided to narrow the gap when talk about who could make that happen first arose.

For a few moments both of the horses the women were riding ran at an uneven but steady pace then suddenly Mrs. Robbins’ horse bolted ahead.  Her ride didn’t stop until they reached the business district of town.  Mrs. Robbins slowed the flyer to a trot before she glanced back to check on her competitor.  Mrs. Potter was nowhere to be seen.  Mrs. Robbins backtracked a bit; her eyes scanned the road she’d traveled.  Her horse reared and threatened to continue the run but she restrained the animal and pulled tightly on the reins.  “Mrs. Potter!” she called out frantically, “Mrs. Potter?!”  Mrs. Robbins urgent cries drew the attention of the people with whom the pair had started the ride. They had congregated in front of the hotel when they heard Mrs. Robbins call for help.  Not only did the fellow riders hurry to the scene, but men and women at various stores or saloons rushed to Mrs. Robbins’ aide.

Through broken tears she explained what had transpired and asked volunteers to accompany her in her search for Mrs. Potter.  Many quickly agreed and wasted no time in following after Mrs. Robbins.  She spurred her horse back along the roadway they had just traveled.

The riders spread out in hopes of finding a trail leading to where Mrs. Potter’s mount might have carried her.  One rider spotted a woman’s scarf caught in a low hanging branch of an oak tree and made his find public.  Tracks near the tree led searchers to believe Mrs. Potter’s horse might have been spooked and out of control.  After several tense moments trekking back and forth over field and stream, Mrs. Potter was located.  She had been thrown from her ride and was lying motionless in a meadow adjacent to the home of the county clerk, Alexander Drysdale.
Mrs. Robbins rode to Alexander’s house and informed him of what had happened.  In less than five minutes he had improvised a stretcher out of a wicker settee and a mattress, and had summoned four of his hired hands to help retrieve the injured Mrs. Potter.  She was groaning in pain.  She told those attending to her that her head hurt.  In a few moments the hired hands had lifted her off the ground and gently placed her in the settee.  While being carried to the Drysdale’s home Mrs. Potter complained that her ribs were sore and her back was aching.  Mr. Drysdale sent Mrs. Robbins and the other riders on their way and requested that Mrs. Robbins return with a physician.  He promised that he and his wife would keep Mrs. Potter comfortable while waiting for the doctor to arrive.

Mrs. Potter was grateful for the Drysdale’s consideration and thanked them over and over again.  The hired hands were instructed to put her in one of the guest bedrooms and see to her every need.

When the physician arrived he examined her but could not determine the extent of her injuries.  He recommended that she remain in bed and not be moved.  He thought she would not have to be confined to bed rest for more than two weeks.  Mrs. Potter asked if she could be moved to the hotel, as she did not want to trespass on the Drysdale’s hospitality.  Mrs. Drysdale, however, refused to hear of such a thing as the removal of a sick person from her house, and said that she would enjoy Mrs. Potter’s company.  Mrs. Potter agreed to stay with the Drysdales until she could move about without assistance.

No one suspected that Mrs. Potter was an operative for the Pinkerton Detective Agency.  They had no idea her real name was Kate Warne and that she had been tasked with infiltrating the Drysdale’s home to locate a murderer.  As Mrs. Potter, Kate had pretended her horse had been frightened and out of control and eventually threw her, that she’d been deposited purely by chance near the Drysdale’s house and that the injuries sustained in the fall were substantial enough to render her too fragile to move.

To learn more about Operative Potter and the other female agents with the Pinkerton Detective Agency read The Pinks.

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The Pinks:  The First Women Detectives, Operatives and Spies with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

The Tombstone Epitaph is a Tombstone, Arizona, based monthly publication that serves as a window in the history and culture of the Old West. Founded in January 1880 (with its first issue published on Saturday May 1, 1880), The Epitaph is the oldest continually published newspaper in Arizona.

It long has been noted for its coverage of the infamous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on Oct. 26, 1881, and its continuing research interest in Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and their cowboy adversaries. In 2005, for example, it presented for the first time a sketch of the O. K. Corral gunfight hand drawn by Wyatt Earp shortly before his death. 

Enter to win a copy of

The Pinks:

The First Women Detectives, Operatives, and Spies with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

The Pinks is the true story of Kate Warne and the other women who served as Pinkertons, fulfilling the adage, “Well-behaved Women Seldom Make History.”

Most students of the Old West and American law enforcement history know the story of the notorious and ruthless Pinkerton Detective Agency and the legends behind their role in establishing the Secret Service and tangling with Old West Outlaws. But the true story of Kate Warne, an operative of the Pinkerton Agency and the first woman detective in America—and the stories of the other women who served their country as part of the storied crew of crime fighters—are not well known. For the first time, the stories of these intrepid women are collected here and richly illustrated throughout with numerous historical photographs. From Kate Warne’s probable affair with Allan Pinkerton, and her part in saving the life of Abraham Lincoln in 1861 to the lives and careers of the other women who broke out of the Cult of True Womanhood in pursuit of justice, these true stories add another dimension to our understanding of American history.

To learn more about Kate Warne and the other

women Pinkerton agents read

The Pinks:

The First Women Detectives, Operatives, and Spies with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

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Bedside Book of Badgirls: Outlaw Women of the Midwest.

Nineteen-year-old Jennie Freeman stared pensively out the partially opened window of the tenement building where she lived in Chicago, Illinois. A cold, gentle breeze blew across the bed she was lying on and she pulled the dingy blankets that were draped across her legs around her waist. Jennie was a petite, be-speckled girl with mousey-brown hair and green eyes. She was a fierce reader, as proof by the many books stacked around the bed. A stern-faced doctor stood over her fiddling with a stethoscope. When he finally placed one end of the stethoscope on Jennie’s chest she turned her attention from the busyness on the street outside the window to him. After the doctor listened to his patient’s heartbeat he scratched his head, perplexed. He eyed the wheelchair next to the bed and sighed a heavy sigh. Jennie’s mother, Fannie entered the room from the kitchen carrying a tray of food. She was a large woman of dark complexion who wore diamond eardrops and a large marquise ring. She looked worried and carefully studied the doctor’s face, waiting for a verdict.

The doctor lifted the covers off Jennie’s legs and studied her feet. He removed a straight pin from his medical bag and touched the pin to Jennie’s foot and calves. No matter what he did he could not get her limbs to even twitch. After a few moments he stopped the examination, pulled the blanket back over Jennie’s legs, and began packing his medical instruments into his bag. Fannie sat the tray she was carrying on a nightstand next to the bed and took her daughter’s hand in hers. The doctor confirmed what the troubled mother had suspected – Jennie was paralyzed. As the doctor put his coat on and exited the cramp, poorly-lit home, Jennie was crying and Fannie was comforting her.

Jennie has incurred her injury when she got caught between two cable cars. The intricate system of street railways in downtown Chicago had malfunctioned on January 9, 1893, and the cars collided. Jennie was found on the ground writhing in pain, near the accident. After a short stay in the hospital to treat her cracked ribs, bruises, and cuts, she was released into the care of her mother. Two days later she claimed she couldn’t move her legs from the thighs down. A railway company physician verified the report. Believing it would be cheaper to settle than it would be to go to court the company paid Jennie five hundred dollars.

By October 5, 1893, Jennie Freeman’s paralysis had passed. According to the July 5, 1903, edition of the San Antonio, Texas, newspaper the San Antonio Sunday Light, Jennie was injured while riding the Manhattan Elevated Railroad in New York. The teenager told authorities she was an actress on her way to an audition when she fell against the door of a Second Avenue train. She told them the car swung too close to the corner she was standing on at Twenty-Third Street. “I lost my balance and hit it hard,” she reported. “The car was going too fast too,” she added. Her mother, Fannie Freeman, was on hand to back up the story. Jennie was awarded one hundred dollars from the rail line for the injuries she claimed to have sustained and Fannie was given fifty dollars for suffering. “Seeing my daughter go through that was horrible,” she told the police who responded to the scene of the accident.

On April 20, 1894, the Freemans were in Boston, Massachusetts, traveling aboard the West End Street Railway Company car. This time Jennie claimed to have slipped on a banana peel lying in the aisle of the car. She told law enforcement who responded to her emergency call that she couldn’t move from the waist down. A doctor for the railway examined her and found her in an apparent paralysis condition. As a result of the doctor’s report the West End Railway Company paid her three-hundred and twenty-five dollars.

To learn more about the Freemans and other grifters and nefarious women read the

Bedside Book of Badgirls: Outlaw Women of the Old West.

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Mochi’s War: The Tragedy of Sand Creek

“Mochi was so distinguished for fiend-like fierceness and atrocity that it was not deemed safe to leave her on the plains. She was a fine looking Indian woman but as mean as they come.”

Observation made by a military officer after Mochi’s arrest on March 5, 1875

Somewhere amid the high plains sage country, the Big Sandy Creek once ran red with the blood of dozens of Cheyenne and Arapaho men, women, and children. On November 29, 1864, hundreds of members of the Colorado Volunteers poured down upon a sleeping Indian camp, leaving in their wake the slaughtered remains of Native Americans who were scalped and mutilated.

The unprovoked attack on the Indian settlement was led by Colonel John Milton Chivington, who is said to have ordered every Indian at the scene killed. To those settlers and traders who had been terrorized by the Indians and because of exaggerated reports of Indian attacks on families and troops, the Sand Creek Massacre was regarded by some as proper retribution on the Indians, and Chivington was revered for his actions.

The event that forced frontiersmen and women to address the serious issues that had been building between them and the Indians occurred on June 11, 1864. Rancher Nathan Ward Hungate, his wife, Ellen, and their two little girls were slaughtered by Indians. Their mutilated bodies were brought to Denver and put on display in the center of town. The people there were thrown into a panic. In the following weeks, at the mere mention of Indians in the outlying areas, women and children were sent to homes that were fortified and guarded. Plains travel slowed to a trickle. The supply of kerosene was exhausted, and the settlers had to use candles.

A regiment of 100 day volunteers known as the Third Colorado Cavalry was organized and George L. Shoup, a scout during the Civil War, was named the outfit’s colonel. At the same time, John Evans, governor of the Colorado Territory, issued a proclamation stating: “Friendly Arapahoe and Cheyenne belonging to the Arkansas River will go to Major Colley, U.S. Indian Agent at Fort Lyon, who will give them a place of safety…. The war on hostile Indians will be continued until they are effectually subdued.”

On August 29, 1864, before the regiment saw active service, a letter from Cheyenne leader Black Kettle explaining the Indians had agreed to make peace was delivered to officers at Fort Lyon, 150 miles away from Denver. The letter noted that Cheyenne and Arapaho war parties had prisoners they would like to exchange for Indians being held by the volunteers.

Major E. W. Wynkoop of the 1^st Colorado at Fort Lyon marched his troops to Black Kettle’s camp to collect the captives. While there, Wynkoop persuaded the chief to send a delegation to Denver to talk about the conditions for peace.

From Fort Leavenworth, Major General Samuel Ryan Curtis, commander of the Department of Kansas, telegraphed Chivington prior to the conference with the chiefs: “I shall require the bad Indians delivered up; restoration of equal numbers of stock; also hostages to secure. I want no peace till the Indians suffer more.” Chivington took the order to heart.

To learn more about Mochi and the vendetta war she started read

Mochi’s War: The Tragedy of Sand Creek