This Day…

1882-In a bloody shootout at Chandler’s milk farm near Gleeson, Arizona a posse led by Billy Breakenridge killed Billy Grounds, and Zwing Hunt was shot up and captured.  One of the possemen was killed, two others were wounded.

1862 – Rebels suffer defeat at the First Battle of Kernstown.

1889-After providing for final Indian claims, Congress authorizes transfer of the Unassigned Lands in Indian Territory to the public domain.

1884-King Fisher and Ben Thompson were drunk and full of fun at the Variety Theatre in San Antonio, Texas when they were both playfully gunned down by friends of a man that Thompson had killed there two years previously.

Roosevelt plans possible military action to handle the Alaska boundary dispute with Canada.  The president orders the secretary of war to have ‘additional troops sent as quietly an unostentiously as possible to Southern Alaska.’

1881-Helen Hunt Jackson publishes A Century of Dishonor, an account of the atrocities committed against Indian tribes in the West and an indictment of the nation’s reservation policy.  Jackson sends copies of the book to ever member of Congress and to most federal officials.

1903-Seven masked men tie up a sheepherder, kill his horses, and slaughter some 500 sheep 40 miles north of Lusk, Wyoming.

1795-The French settlers at Gallipolis, Ohio, receive deed to the land despite the counterclaims of the Scioto Company.

1871-Surrounded by a posse in an outhouse in Wichita, Kansas suspected horse thief J.E. Ledford came out with guns blazing and sadly wounded Marshal Jack Bridges.  Bridges survived buy Ledford was killed.

1805-Meriwether Lewis acts as the midwife at the birth of a child to Sacajawea, a Shoshone squaw who will act as a guide for the expedition.