Journal Notes

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When pioneer and businessman Asa Mercer died on August 10, 1917, in Buffalo, Wyoming, few in the ranching community recalled the plan he devised to remedy the lack of single women in the Northwest in the 1860s.

It began with an ad placed in February 24, 1860, that testified to the serious shortage of a desired commodity in Washington Territory. “Attention Bachelors: Believing that our only chance for the realization of the benefits and early attainments of matrimonial alliances depends on the arrival in our midst of a number of the fair sex from the Atlantic States, and that, to bring about such and arrival a united effort and action are called for on our part, we respectfully request a full attendance of all eligible and sincerely desirous bachelors of this community assemble on Tuesday evening next February 28, in Delim and Shorey’s building, to devise ways and means to secure this much-needed and desirable emigration to our shores.”

Signed by nine leading citizens, the advertisement was picked up by other newspapers and reprinted across the country. They had hopes of attracting industrious, young women to the rich and rugged Northwest where a few thousand men were working on making fortunes in timber, fishing, farming, and other endeavors. There were a few favorable responses to the announcement but no solid plan was in place to import the desired commodity to the area.

By 1860, the pioneers in Washington Territory had established thriving communities along Puget Sound and were busy carving out farms and ranches along the coast and toward the foothills of the Cascades. The temperature climate, rich fisheries, and timber resourced proved the raw material upon which to build a comfortable life. The prosperous and clean-living young men populating the region in 1858 were “eager to put their necks in the matrimonial noose.”

In 1860, Asa Shinn Mercer hit upon a scheme to take the next step in the recruitment effort. He would import bachelorettes by traveling to the East Coast, where women were in abundance, and actively promote the unequaled advantages of Washington Territory. That idea and its sequel were part of the fascinating career of A. S. Mercer, who found his own bride among those he recruited for Washington Territory.

To learn more about Asa Mercer and others like him who left their mark on the American West read Tales Behind the Tombstones: The Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen and More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.

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Wild Bill Hickok had many female admirers in his lifetime, but Agnes Lake Thatcher was the only woman who completely captured his heart. The man known as the “deadliest pistolero in the Old West” often declared to his friends that he preferred being a bachelor. It was a surprise to many when he married a widow several years older than himself. The circumstances that resulted in so great a change were romantically singular and worthy of record.

Mrs. Hickok was born Agnes Louise Messman on August 23, 1826, in Doehm, Alsace, France. Her mother died when she was four years old, and, shortly thereafter, her father took Agnes to America. The Messmans settled in Cincinnati, Ohio, when she was sixteen years old. As a child Agnes was an avid horseback rider. Her father helped mold her remarkable skill into a circus routine. In 1841, Agnes met a circus clown named William Lake Thatcher. He was a native New Yorker and used his connections to secure a job for Agnes with the circus he worked for, the Spaulding and Rogers Circus.

In addition to her impressive equestrian abilities, she also performed daring feats of skill on a tight wire. The August 23, 1907, edition of the New York Times reported that she “made a higher ascent on a wire than any performer of her day in 1858.” By 1859, she was billed the “queen of the high wire” and the most famous equestrienne the American circus had ever known.

To learn more about Agnes Hickok and others like her who left their mark on the American West read Tales Behind the Tombstones: The Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen and More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.

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A frigid wind blew hard past the weather-beaten exterior of the Palace Garden Theatre in Dawson City, Alaska. It was the spring of 1900, and gleeful patrons were tucked warmly inside, waiting for the “Flame of the Yukon” to take the stage.

A fiery, red-headed beauty named Kate Rockwell glided out before the crowd, her violent eyes smiling. The men went wild with applause. The music began, and the entertainer swayed with the beat, placing a gloved hand to her breast and a fingertip to her lips and then, stretching her arm out, beckoning her admirers. The elaborate red-sequin dress she was wearing was form-fitting, and the long black cape that draped over her shoulders clung to her alabaster skin.

The piano player accelerated his playing, and Kate gyrated gracefully in and out of the shadow of the colored lights that flickered across the stage. After a moment, with a slight movement of her hand, she dropped the cape off her shoulders and it fell to the floor. The glittering diamonds and rhinestones around her neck sparkled and shined. Ever so seductively, she picked up a nearby cane adorned with more than 200 yards of red chiffon and began leaping, while twirling the fabric-covered walking stick. Around and around she fluttered, the chiffon trailing wildly about her like flames from a fire, the material finally settling over her outstretched body. The audience erupted in a thunderous ovation. She was showered with nuggets and pouches filled with gold dust. This dance would make her famous.

To learn more about Kate Rockwell and others like her who left their mark on the American West read Tales Behind the Tombstones: The Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen and More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.

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On the afternoon of August 18, 1895, United States Marshal Bill Tilghman and Deputy Marshal Steve Burke led their horses toward a small farm outside Pawnee, Oklahoma. The lawmen had tracked a pair of outlaws to the location and were proceeding cautiously when several gunshots were fired.

Marshall Tilghman caught sight of a Winchester rifle sticking out a broken window of a dilapidated cabin. He spurred his horse out of the line of fire just as the weapon went off. He steered his mount around the building and arrived at the backdoor the same time sixteen year old Jennie Stevens, alias Little Britches, burst out the house. She shot at him with a pistol while racing to a horse waiting nearby.

By the time Marshal Tilghman settled his ride and drew his weapon Jennie was on her horse. She turned the horse away from the cabin, kicked it hard in the ribs, and the animal took off. Tilghman leveled his firearm at the woman and shot. Jennie’s horse stumbled and fell, and she was tossed from the animal’s back, losing her gun in the process.

The marshal hopped off his own ride and hurried over to the stunned and annoyed runaway. Jennie picked herself up quickly and cursed her misfortune. She charged the lawman, dug her fingernails into his neck, and slapped him several times before he could subdue her. He was a battered man when he finally pinned her arms behind her back.

Back at the cabin, Deputy Marshal Steve Burke wrestled a gun away from thirteen year old Annie McDoulet, alias Cattle Annie, a rail-thin, young woman wearing a gingham dress and a black, wide-brimmed straw hat. The pistol she tried to shoot him with was lying in the dirt several feet in front of her.

Two years prior to their apprehension and arrest, Cattle Annie and Little Britches were riding with the Doolin gang, a notorious band of outlaws who robbed trains and banks. Enamored by the fame of the well-known criminals, the teenage girls had decided to leave home and follow the bandits. They helped the criminals steal cattle, horses, guns, and ammunition and warned them whenever law enforcement were on their trail.

To learn more about Cattle Annie and Little Britches and others like them who left their mark on the American West read Tales Behind the Tombstones: The Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen and More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.

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No, it’s not John Wayne, but he portrayed John Chisum in a film.

Cattle barons of the vast frontier such as John Chisum once held undisputed sway over the great public domain. He ruled like a lord of old over the Pecos country in New Mexico where desperate battles were fought against rival cattle barons for more grazing land.

Rancher John Simpson Chisum was born into an affluent family in Tennessee on a plantation on August 16, 1824. His parents relocated their five children to Red River County, Texas, in 1837. John was thirteen when his family settled in Paris, Texas. He worked a series of odd jobs before becoming the county clerk in 1852.

At the age of thirty, John ventured into cattle ranching with Stephen K. Fowler, a businessman from New York. The Half Circle P brand, owned by Chisum and Fowler, was seen on livestock across a great expanse of the land John purchased in Denton County, Texas. Stephen’s original investment of $6,000 resulted in a $100,000 profit in ten years.

Chisum used his portion of profitable shares to buy more land and cattle. In addition to running his own spread, which included five thousand head of cattle, John also managed livestock for other ranchers and ambitious investors. By 1861, John Chisum was recognized as one of the most important cattle dealers in North Texas.

When the Civil War started John contracted with the military to supply beef to soldiers in the Trans-Mississippi Confederate Army Department. After the war he drove his cattle into eastern New Mexico to sell to the government for the cavalry and the Indian reservations. In 1867, John moved his base of operation to Rosewell, New Mexico, where he already had more than 1,000 head of cows. He established a series of ranches along a one-hundred-fifty mile stretch of the Pecos River. John’s empire grew to 80,000 head of cattle and he hired more than one hundred cowboys to work the livestock.

John Chisum was involved tangentially with the Lincoln County Range War in 1878. The dispute initially began as a fight between cattlemen and two store owners over who rightfully controlled the trade of dry goods in the county. Cattlemen John Tunstall and his business partner, Alexander McSween, owned one of the stores, and they were being threatened by the owners of the competing establishment who had an economic stronghold on the area. Each store owner organized his own men to protect his enterprises and homes from being overrun. Tunstall and McSween had in their employ Billy the Kid and his associates. John Chisum supported Tunstall’s efforts. His exact role in the dispute is unknown.

After Tunstall was murdered, Billy the Kid took John to task over money he insisted John owed him for protection. John disagreed, and Billy resented him for it. In 1880, John helped get Pat Garrett, the sheriff who shot Billy the Kid, elected to office.

John’s cattle operations continued to thrive, and he shared his good fortune with his brother, James. John gave James his own herd of cattle to manage.

John contracted throat cancer in late 1883 and had surgery to remove the growth in 1884. He died on December 22, 1884, in Eureka, Arkansas, where he had been recuperating from the operation. His giant cattle empire was worth $500,000. John never married, but it is believed he fathered two children with one of the slave women he owned named Jensie.

John Chisum’s body was laid to rest in Paris, Texas. He was sixty years old when he passed away.

To learn more about John Chisum and others like him who left their mark on the American West read Tales Behind the Tombstones: The Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen and More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.

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The memory of Ellen Clark Sargent’s arrival in Nevada City, California, stayed with her all her life. Long after she had left the Gold Country, she recalled: “It was on the evening of October 23, 1852 that I arrived in Nevada [City], accompanied by my husband. We had traveled by stage since the morning from Sacramento. Our road for the last eight or ten miles was through a forest of trees, mostly pines. The glory of the full moon was shining upon the beautiful hills and trees and everything seemed so quiet and restful that it made a deep impression on me, sentimental if not poetical, never to be forgotten.”

In the newly formed state of California, shaped by men and women who had endured unbelievable hardships to cross the plains, Ellen saw an opportunity to gain something she passionately wanted – the right to vote. Despite defeat after defeat, she never gave up.

Ellen Clark fell in love with Aaron Augustus Sargent, a journalist and aspiring politician, in Newburyport, Massachusetts, when they were in their teens. Both taught Sunday school in the Methodist Church. Upon their engagement, Aaron promised to devote his life to being a good husband and making their life a happy one. But several years passed before he had a chance to make good on that promise.

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On December 27, 1902, the woman many historians referred to as the “Guardian of Yosemite National Park” passed away. According to the December 29, 1902, edition of the Fort Wayne Evening Sentinel, “Mrs. Fremont was a remarkable woman, to whom the territory west of the Mississippi River owes more than to any other person perhaps in the country. She helped bring about the preservation of more than twelve-hundred square miles of land in Northern California known as Yosemite. She wielded an influence second to but few statesmen of her generation.”

Jessie Anne Benton Fremont was born on May 31, 1824, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Her father, Thomas Hart Benton was an ambitious man who went from farming into politics and eventually became a United States senator from Missouri (and great-uncle of 20^th century muralist Thomas Hart Benton). Jessie visited Washington, D.C., often as a child and met with such luminaries as President Andrew Jackson and Congressman Davy Crockett.

Jessie and her sister, Elizabeth, attended the capital’s leading girl’s boarding school, alongside the daughters of other political leaders and wealthy business owners. It was for that very reason Jessie disliked school. “There was no end to the conceit, the assumption, the class distinction there,” she wrote in her memoirs. In addition to the lines drawn between the children of various social standings, Jessie felt the studies were not challenging to her. “I was miserable in the narrow, elitist atmosphere. I learned nothing there,” she recalled in her journal. The best thing about attending school was the opportunity it afforded her to meet John Fremont, the man who would become her husband.

To learn more about Jessie Fremont and others like her who left their mark on the American West read Tales Behind the Tombstones: The Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen and More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.

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On a summer day in the early 1880s an article called “What Girls Are Good For” appeared in the Pittsburg Dispatch. It took a firm stand against the new fad of hiring women to work in offices and shops. “A respectable woman,” the article noted with authority, “remained at home until she married.” If a husband eluded her, she had two choices left. She might go into teaching or into nursing, provided money for her training could be wangled from a reluctant father. Otherwise, she stayed under his roof or that of a relative and for the remainder of her life accepted the status of house worker or child’s nurse, without pay.

The article expressed the customary male sentiments of the day, more emphatically than usual because the editors were stirred up over the inroads being made by suffragettes. Radical females like Susan B. Anthony, openly militant in regard to votes for females, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, champion of women’s rights, went striding up and down the country with a following of “bloomer girls.” Nobody knew better than the Dispatch’s managing editor, George A. Madden, that since the Civil War the manpower shortage had increasingly drawn women into mills and factories, but he felt a barricade must be erected against such an alarming trend. Women in politics were unthinkable, as obviously out of place there as they would be in such a masculine stronghold as his own, a newspaper office.

The article received the expected male commendation from Mr. Madden’s business associates. He was happily married and his wife, busy with children, made no comment. Other matters had taken its place in his active editorial mind when a few days later his memory was refreshed. Going through the morning mail, he read a letter and winced. Then he read it again, and a third time, even though it bore no signature, and for a reason. It was a reply to the “What Girls Are Good For” story, and it sizzled. It was a rebuke to the newspaper’s old fashioned attitude, a declaration of independence for women, a war cry to them to take their proper place in a man’s world to lead interesting, useful, and profitable lives.

The anonymous communication was well written, blazing with conviction. But there was more than that to challenge Mr. Madden’s interest. It made sense.

The busy editor finally tossed it into the pile, finished the remainder of the mail, and went back to reading the tissue-paper slips bearing the telegraphic news. But when he had them impaled neatly on the nearby spindle, he took up the letter again. It intrigued him. He studied the handwriting. It appeared feminine, as feminine as the attitude it expressed. But surely no woman could write so logically and so eloquently.

He could not publish the thing, even with a signature. It was against his principles, against popular opinion. But he did want to know who had sent it. An idea came to him. He would advertise in the columns of the Dispatch for the writer’s name and address, and, if he obtained them, he might assign a story to be written on the other side of the question. The author would turn out to be a man, of course, perhaps taking this way to attract attention and get a job. Madden would certainly give him one if he wrote like this consistently.

The advertisement appeared the next day. A reply came almost at once.

The letter was written by a woman. Her name was Elizabeth Cochrane, and she lived in Pittsburgh.

George Madden was a newspaperman by both training and instinct; he always followed a hunch. He wrote to Miss Cochrane and asked for an article on “Girls and Their Spheres in Life.”

Again she was prompt; the article arrived within a few days. The editor read it and found it good. He paid for it. Then he abandoned caution. Fortifying himself, for he was positive he was opening the door to a battle-ax suffragette, he suggested that Elizabeth Cochrane might like to discuss further work for his paper. The two men and Elizabeth accepted a position as reporter for the paper.

Elizabeth Cochran, or Nellie Bly as she was also known, was born on May 5, 1867, in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania. According to friends and family, Nellie aspired to be more than what the stereotypical young girl was supposed to be. She liked traveling, adventure, and writing in depth stories. She moved to Pittsburgh at the age of seventeen to pursue her dream of being an investigative reporter. Her first assignment for the Dispatch was to tackle the subject of divorce. She penned numerous articles for the paper ranging from conditions for workers in factories to the treatment of the mentally ill in asylums.

To learn more about Nellie Bly and others like her who left their mark on the American West read Tales Behind the Tombstones: The Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen and More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.

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Legendary lawman and sportswriter Bat Masterson once referred to his well-known colleague Bill Tilghman as “the finest among us all.” Marshall Tilghman and Sheriff Bat Masterson were two members of the “most intrepid posse” of the Old West, a group of policemen who in 1878, tracked down the killer of a popular songstress named Dora Hand.

William Matthew Tilghman, Jr.’s drive to legitimately right a wrong began at an early. He was born on the 4^th of July 1854 in Fort Dodge, Iowa. His father was a soldier turned farmer and his mother was a homemaker. Bill spent his early childhood in the heart of the Sioux Indian territory in Minnesota. Grazed by and arrow when he was a baby, he was raised to respect Native American and protect his family from tribes that felt they had been unfairly treated by the government. Bill was one of six children. He mother insisted he had been “born to a life of danger.”

In 1859 his family moved to a homestead near Atkinson, Kansas. While Bill’s father and oldest brother were fighting in the Civil War, he worked the farm and hunted game. One of the most significant events occurred when he was twelve years old while returning home from a blackberry hunt. His hero Bill Hickok rode up beside him and asked if he had seen a man ride through with a team of mules and a wagon.

To learn more about Bill Tilghman and others like him who left their mark on the American West read Tales Behind the Tombstones: The Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen and More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.

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With the passing of Judge Roy Bean, who referred to himself as the “Law West of the Pecos,” the rowdy frontier lost one of its most unique and picturesque characters. It was Judge Bean that was said to have held an inquest on the body of an unknown man found in his precinct, and, finding on the corpse a pistol and $40 in cash, proclaimed the dead man guilty of carrying a concealed weapon and fined him $40, which was forthwith collected from the pocket of the offender.

There were no customers from Judge Roy Bean’s opera house and saloon by his side when he died on March 16, 1903; no friends from the Langtry, Texas, community where he had resided; no lawbreakers to be tried and sentenced. Judge Bean’s son, Sam, was the only one with him when he passed.

The stout, seventy-eight year old man with a gray beard spent his last hours on earth in a near comatose state unaware of where he was or whom he was. He died of heart and lung complications exasperated by alcohol.

To learn more about Judge Roy Bean and others like him who left their mark on the American West read Tales Behind the Tombstones: The Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen and More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.