This Day…

July 16, 1855 The Kansas Legislature moves from Pawnee to Shawnee Mission and authorizes a test oath for future elected officials.

1878-Deputy Long John Long had a warrant to serve on Billy the Kid but when Long John found the kid in San Patricio he was with nine other of McSween’s Regulators. The Regulators killed Long John’s horse, but Long John scampered safely away. Long John Long is the guy who set fire to the McSween house at the end of the siege on July 19th.

1900-After his supper the well known cow thief, Matt Rash, stepped out on the porch of his ranch house on Cold Springs Mountain, CO. Stock detective, Tom Horn, was in hiding nearby and shot Rash three times with a rifle. Rash went back inside and died on his bed while trying to write a note in his own blood.

1863-Port Hudson, Mississippi, the only remaining Confederate fortress on the Mississippi River, falls to Union forces. The Union has split the Confederacy in half, thereby realizing one of it main objectives.

1891-Winfield Scott Stratton, a carpenter who has been prospecting gold in his spare time for 20 years, stakes a claim where he has discovered gold in the Cripple Creek field of the Rockies, south of Denver, Colorado. The claim, which Stratton named Independence, turns out to be a rich vein of gold; soon Stratton is staking out other claims that prove equally valuable. Stratton himself will eventually make millions and become one of the legendary Bonanza Kings of Cripple Creek, where since January 1891-when Bob Wamack struck the El Paso lode, many have taken fortunes from the field.

1899-Black Jack Ketchum got into an argument over a card game with two miners in a saloon near Camp Verdee, Arizona and killed them both.

1854-Pennsylvania lawyer Andrew Reeder is appointed the first territorial governor of Kansas (the first of seven territorial governors in the next seven years).

1888-A posse led by Heck Thomas trailed a gang of train robbers to an illegal still on Snake Creek in the Indian Territory. Moonshiner, Aaron Purdy, opened fire and hit Thomas twice before being gunned down by the other deputies. The train robbers surrendered.

1894-Eugene Debs, who had established his American Railway Union on 20 June 1893, calls for a general strike by all railway workers to show sympathy with the striking Pullman workers.

1892-New Mexico, still a territory, openes its university; Congerss will later grant over 300,000 acres to support the school.