Page 28 - Mark Boardman News Today

True West Magazine In 1883, John “King” Fisher was the acting sheriff of Uvalde County, Texas. He went after Jim and Tom Hannehan, who had held up a stagecoach. The brothers resisted; Fisher killed Tom, arrested Jim and recovered the loot. Months later, Fisher was gunned down in San Antonio and buried in Uvalde. It’s reported the mother of the Hannehans came to his grave every year on the anniversary of her son’s death—then built a fire on top of it and did a dance. Post Views: ...

True West Magazine Search for: A Strange Escape King Fisher stole a horse, but got away with it—thanks to the animal’s owner. Texas gunman John “King” Fisher got into crime in an unusual way.  In 1869, when he was 15, Fisher borrowed a horse from a rancher near Florence, Texas.  But the problem was, he forgot to check with the owner before taking the animal. A posse caught up with the teenager and took him into custody—temporarily.  Fisher soon escaped, helped by the owner of ...

It took a long time to catch up with two Indian Territory killers.

True West Magazine About 800 pro-slavery men attacked the antislavery town of Lawrence, Kansas on May 21, 1856. The invaders aimed to destroy the buildings of Lawrence, not to get into a fight with the citizens. The people of Lawrence did not resist, and much of their town was blown up or torched. The main target was the Free State Hotel, a center of antislavery actions in the region. Ironically, it was the source of the only casualty of the day. One of the attackers was hit on the head by fall...

Attackers of Lawrence, KS ate well before sacking the town.

True West Magazine On September 19, 1876, Bill Cox and several men shot to death Dr. Phillip Brassell and his son George near Yorktown, Texas. The incident was tied to the Sutton-Taylor Feud. Cox and the others got away with the murders. A few years later, Cox moved to New Mexico.  He reinvented himself as W.W. Cox, a successful rancher, businessman and civic leader. But some things didn’t change. Cox was implicated in the 1896 murders of Albert Jennings Fountain and his son. He was also tie...

True West Magazine John Stiles Holliday Phillip Brassell was a doctor in Fayette County, Georgia in the years after the Civil War. And he was sick–tuberculosis, made worse by the climate. It’s likely that he consulted with the only other physician in the county about what to do. It’s not clear what Dr. John Stiles Holliday (photo) might have told him. But in 1870, Brassell took his family to Texas. Dr. Holliday’s nephew, a dentist, followed the same route when he was diagnosed with cons...

Lincoln County warrior Robert Widenmann wasn’t the typical westerner.

True West Magazine Taylor Ealy thought he had a simple assignment: go to Lincoln County, New Mexico to serve as a doctor, Protestant pastor and to run a school for local children. But he got there right in the middle of the Lincoln County War—and found himself siding with Alexander McSween and The Regulators of Billy the Kid. When the Battle of Lincoln ended on July 19, 1878, Ealy found himself without a friend in the area. He left to minister to Zuni Indians in western New Mexico and never r...

True West Magazine The 1832 battle set the stage for the Texas Revolution. The names are spoken with reverence in Texas: The Alamo. Goliad. San Jacinto. The great battles of the Texas Revolution, a conflict that lasted just under seven months. But the seeds of the war were planted years before that; the first real bloodshed came in June 1832. Mexico was in the middle of one of its myriad civil wars. That made military officials in the northern provinces, specifically Texas, very nervous. They f...