“I am a Poor Man and Need the Money!”
TRAIN ROBBERIES IN THE BIG BEND
by C. W. (Bill) Smith
S
uch were the words of Tom “Black
Jack” Ketchum as he held up the
train near Lozier, Texas, on May
10, 1897, some 50 miles east of
Sanderson.
When one thinks of train robbers in
Terrell County, the mind quickly goes to
the much-celebrated Ben Kirkpatrick
and Ole Hobek and their infamous rob-
bery gone wrong at Baxter Curve, eight
miles east of Sanderson. It ended in
gruesome death for the perpetrators and
a public display of the carnage at the
Sanderson GH&SA Depot, propped
against a baggage cart.
That iconic photo can be found in
western anthologies and old west web-
sites throughout the world.
It is sad that one of Sanderson’s
claims to fame is a botched robbery
attempt and two bodies in one grave at
Cedar Grove. And despite claims to the
contrary, it was not the last train robbery
in Texas, nor was it the only one in and
around Terrell County. (The last train
robbery in Texas occurred at Zilcher
Park in Austin, Texas, in 1980, when
two inebriated felons held up the minia-
ture train ride and relieved patrons of
their wallets and jewelry. They were
caught almost immediately.)
Actually, there were numerous train
robberies near Sanderson. Some were
successful, and some ended tragically,
both for the robbers and for hapless
train crews and passengers.
The first train robbery in Texas was at
Allen, Texas, February 22, 1878, by Sam
Bass. He had held up stage coaches and
thought a train might be more lucrative.
22
He made such a good haul that he
robbed three more, but his crime spree
was cut short when a turncoat in his
own gang sold him out. He was
ambushed and killed in a shootout at a
bank in Round Rock, Texas, in July,
1878.
For the next 35 years robbing trains
became very popular throughout the
United States. Innovations in security
by Wells Fargo and others made it
increasingly hard for robbers to make a
good living. Except for some very high
profile cases in England in the 1970s
and ‘80s, the practice of armed robberies
on the railroad had practically disap-
peared by the mid-1910s. Today, the
trend is toward hijacking boxcar-loads of
merchandise.
One of the earliest train robberies in
the Terrell County area occurred in
August of 1889. A westbound passenger
train was held up near Pumpville by
three robbers, named Wellington,
Three-fingered Jack, and Lang Staff. All
had lived in the Big Bend country south
of Marfa. After several days the Texas
Rangers caught up with the three rob-
bers. While trying to take the miscreants
into custody, one robber was accidental-
ly killed by one of his co-conspirators
and the remaining two were tried and
convicted. One received a life sentence
in state penitentiary, but the other,
gravely ill with “consumption” (tubercu-
losis) and dubbed a “weakling” by the
Cenizo
Second Quarter 2019
local press, was released and died very
soon afterwards.
A westbound Southern Pacific pas-
senger train was robbed on December
20, 1896, near Cow Creek, just a mile
west of Comstock, Texas.
Bud Newman, Frank Gobble, Alex
Purviance and Rollie Shackelford board-
ed the train and after furious
gunfire, captured the train
crew and tied them up.
They took money from
the strong box but were
unable to open a larger safe
that was equipped with a
timer lock.
The robbers rode off with
next to nothing, and the train
continued on.
When word reached Sheriff
W.H. Jones a posse was
formed that included Thalis
Cook and several other Texas
Rangers. Ranger Cook, who
was an expert tracker, picked
up the trail quickly, and by
December 27, the four men
were in custody. On a humor-
ous note, the only thing taken
besides the little money avail-
able was a package from the
Express car, which turned out
to be Rollie Shackelford’s own
pocket watch, which was
being returned from a repair
shop in San Antonio.
Shackelford was a well-known
cowhand in the area, and as one local
comic quipped, all he got was his own
pocket watch and five years in the pen.
Ranger Cook and men of Captain
Hughes’ Ranger Company D stopped a
robbery before it could happen, in the
fall of 1896.
Word had reached the railroad of an
impending train robbery at Altuda, west
of Sanderson in Brewster County, by
brothers Art and Jubel Friar and Ease
Bixler.
Very soon the rangers picked up their
trail, leading from the Glass Mountains
north of Marathon, Texas, to a cow
camp at Nogalitos Pass. In the ensuing
battle, the Friar brothers were killed and
Bixler took off. He was caught a few
days later, and chose wisely not to
engage the crack-shot rangers in gunfire.
Black Jack Ketchum’s robbery in
1897 took place west of Lozier, Texas,
on a now-abandoned section of railroad
just east of Sanderson. Ketchum and
one man boarded the train at Lozier sta-
tion, while another waited with horses
and dynamite at the first road-cut west
of the station. Crawling over the coal
pile in the tender, Ketchum and his man
forced the engineer and fireman to stop
the train, and then sent them back to the
baggage car.
The Railway Express Messenger
wouldn’t let them in, so Ketchum fired a
shot through the door, awakening and
angering the Messenger’s bulldog. The
bulldog growled and barked and paced
up and down the baggage car.