Matthew Kerns's Blog: The Dime Library, page 28

Minnie McKay

Texas Jack Omohundro and Donald McKay first met in Philadelphia in the leadup to the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in that city's Fairmount Park. Jack was preparing to launch his own entertainment venture near the Centennial grounds just as McKay's then nine-year-old daughter was competing in a series of races against the best female riders in the world. Jack was on hand, watching a racer known as Maud Oswald who had raced at P.T. Barnum’s Hippodrome and would soon join Jack on stage. But Jack was equally impressed with the young Minnie’s riding abilities, and quickly befriended her scout father. McKay would soon star alongside Omohundro in plays like The Scouts of the Plains, The Trapper's Daughter, and Texas Jack in the Black Hills.

A frequent guest star in these shows was Minnie McKay. From the time she was ten until she was nearly fourteen, Minnie frequently joined her father and his cowboy friend on stage, much to the delight of audiences across America.

After Texas Jack's death in 1880, Donald McKay returned to selling Katonka, a patent medicine cure-all that claimed to be made on the Umatilla reservation and brewed in the ancestral tradition of his mother's Cayuse tribe. Minnie became the face of a Catarrh (congestion) remedy that claimed to derive from an ancient Nez Perce medicine.

When Minnie wasn't selling snake oil with her father, she continued to perform, taking on all challengers and exhibiting her exceptional prowess as an equestrienne. One of her most impressive feats was of riding fifteen miles on horseback in just forty-five minutes. Minnie would switch horses each mile at full gallop, jumping from the back of her current horse to a fresh one without ever touching the ground.

Minnie was selling the Katonka medicine at New York City's Aquarium in 1883 when she caught what seemed to be a mild cold. She set off with her mother to return to Oregon for the first time since she left with her father in 1874 at the age of seven. Sadly, she never made it home. An article from Taps newspaper reported the details:

"How is Miss Minnie getting along?" asked a gentleman, meeting Donald McKay in the street a short time ago. The great scout's head drooped upon his breast for a moment, then, looking at his questioner, he answered in faltering tones, while the tears rolled down his cheeks, that Minnie was dead.

She had caught cold last spring while tending the medicine in the Aquarium, Thirty-fifth Street, New York, and after rallying from the first attack, had a relapse and died while en route for Warm Springs, Oregon, with her mother.

Indians are noted for their stolid demeanor, seldom showing any outward manifestation of sorrow or pleasure; yet this brave warrior, noted for his cool composure and courage, gave way to his feelings, as, in trembling tones, he answered the questions put to him. To anyone knowing McKay well, it would have seemed strange to witness such deep grief in a man so self-contained, even stoical. But it showed the more plainly how severe the affliction was, and what a crushing blow to the father's loving heart.

To the many friends of the McKays, the news of Minnie's death will come with startling suddenness. She was universally known and loved, a favorite with all, and a great attraction wherever she went. A brief history of her short life will no doubt prove interesting to many. Minnie McKay, the only child of Donald McKay, the famous Indian scout, was born April 13, 1867, and came east with her parents shortly after the close of the Modoc War, in which contest between the Indians and whites McKay rendered such great service to the United States Government. Although constantly traveling in this country and Europe with her father, he gave her every opportunity to secure a good education and took great pride in her proficiency in various accomplishments. She was a fine performer upon several musical .instruments, particularly the guitar and piano, was exceedingly modest and well-bred, quiet and unassuming, yet possessing abundant self-possession and dignity. Everyone who met her admired and respected her, and her pretty face and pleasing manners made her a favorite with young and old.

Her health was poor at times, during the past winter, but no alarm was felt by her parents until March, when her exposure to the strong draughts in the Aquarium building, where the Indian Medicine was being sold, resulted in a severe attack of pneumonia. Upon her recovery, her father sent her on the way home to Oregon, accompanied by her mother. The young girl had formed many pleasant anticipations of what she would do, when she reached the home she had not seen for nine years, planning improvements, continuing her studies, and waiting for her father's return. But her anticipations were never to be realized. On the way home she had a relapse, pleuro-pneumonia set in, and she died July 12, at San Francisco, before reaching the friends she was expecting to see after so long an absence.

The news of her death unnerved and disheartened the father as no danger nor hardship could ever have done. He fairly idolized his daughter, and her death, coming so suddenly upon their first separation, made the affliction even harder to bear. Torture could never have made Donald McKay wince, but his child's death bowed his proud head and cast a gloom upon his life nothing can ever efface. His hopes, his pride, and his happiness are buried in the small grave in the cemetery at San Francisco, Cal., where his child lies. Time may make him more submissive to the infliction, but it will not lighten his grief, nor make him forget it. The light of his home has been extinguished, the warmth of his heart has been chilled. The loss of fame, fortune, and friends he would have counted as nothing; but the loss of his daughter has humbled his proud spirit, and dimmed the fierce flash of his eyes.

Texas Jack: America's First Cowboy Star by Matthew Kerns, is available at:

Amazon - https://amzn.to/33ep4KI

Barnes & Noble - https://bit.ly/3h1s9ps

Bookshop - https://bit.ly/3gZg701

Signed and inscribed first edition copies are available at no additional charge at:

https://www.dimelibrary.com/shop

July 4, 1878

On the Fourth of July, 1878, Texas Jack joined Doctor Carver for a shooting exhibition in Deerfoot Park, Brooklyn, New York.

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From the New York Sun, July 5, 1878.

At three P.M. yesterday, Dr. Carver stepped to the front of the little shed, near the centre of Deerfoot Park. Four Winchester rifles lay on a table to the right. The famed Texas Jack and Col. Fletcher, of San Francisco, briskly shoved bullets into the rifles, supplying themselves from a strong rug carpet-bag on the table. A barrel of glass balls, stood thirty-five feet away. The Doctor picked up a rifle and took a position near the table. The spectators spread out in two long wings on each side.

Carver's long auburn hair was thrown behind his ears. He wore dark pantaloons, lapped over his boots, a soft, white flannel shirt, his light-colored sombrero, and a glazed belt, with a gold buckle, nearly as large as a railroad frog. His right hand was covered with a grimy buckskin glove, and the corner of a blue silk handkerchief peered from the pocket of his shirt. A white silk scarf encircled his neck, and was fastened to his bosom by the diamond-eyed and ruby-nostriled gold horse's head presented to him after breaking fifty successive glass balls while riding a horse at full speed in California. The magnificent badge given by his friends in San Francisco, on Washington's birthday, after the breaking of eight hundred and eighty-five balls out of a possible one thousand, swung from his left breast.

At the Doctor's request Col. Fletcher tossed several glass balls in the air, for the purpose of putting him in trim. The most of them were shattered as though struck by lightning. There were four or five misses, but from twenty to thirty were broken before the Doctor stopped shooting. “Throw them up as high as you can — higher, higher”’ said the Doctor; and up they went, eighty or ninety feet, and were broken on the turn. Each ball was filled with feathers, and as the glass was shattered the feathers floated off on the wind.

The Doctor then tried to shoot thrice, reloading his gun twice while a ball was in the air, and break it at the third shot. He did it on the third trial. Half of the ball fell among the spectators behind him. Texas Jack said, “Dead bird, but fell out of bounds.” This drew a laugh from the usually saturnine Doctor.

The work of the day was begun. What had been done was mere by-play. One hundred balls were thrown into the air alternately, and they melted away like magic. The Doctor shattered ninety-one out of the hundred. As fast as each rifle was emptied of its score of balls he laid it upon the table and seized a fresh gun. He shot faster than Texas Jack could load. The balls were hurled in the air from fifteen to eighteen yards in front of the Doctor. The hot rifles were handed to an attendant, who set them in a tub of water, and sponged them off like horses. They were then wiped out and handed to Texas Jack, who reloaded them.

After again successfully trying his triple shot, a ball was tossed skyward and broken by the Doctor, who aimed and discharged the rifle with one hand. He then began to call for trade dollars. Several were thrown into the air, and promptly chopped by the Doctor's bullets. Some were sent spinning a hundred yards, and it was amusing to see the crowd start, after them before they fell. A Peruvian Sol was chipped. Texas Jack matched the Peruvian with a Mexican dollar. Pointing to the cap of liberty in the centre, he shouted, “Knock out that cap, Doctor.” The dollar was sent above the heads of the spectators, the rifle cracked, and Jack flew after the metal. It had a hole through the centre, and the liberty cap was taken out as neatly as though cut out by a chisel. Nothing but the rays of the sun remained. A quarter was flipped up and shot out of sight. Jack said he saw it going a long way off. “It turned sideways,” said he, “and dropped in the edge of the grass,” pointing to a patch of timothy over one hundred yards away. Its owner was chagrined, for he wanted it as a memento. A five-cent nickel glistened in the sunlight, and was snuffed out like a candle. A cent followed it with a ‘pi-i-ing’ that vibrated on the drum of the ear like the twang of a guitar string.

Mr. Haynes then announced that the Doctor would break a hundred balls on time. The four rifles were loaded, and a man detailed to assist Texas Jack in keeping them loaded. A boy stepped to the barrel and handed the balls to Col. Fletcher, who kept them in the air as fast as he could throw them. The Doctor stood as though carved in stone. The rifle was raised and fired. A quick jerk downward with the right hand popped the empty shell in his face, and a second shot was heard. Eighteen glass balls were broken as quick as a lazy man could clap his hands eighteen times. Then a ball was missed: There was another long run of dead shots, followed by two misses. One hundred and eight balls were broken in three minutes and fifty-three seconds. The time would have been even better, were it not for an awkward balk with one of the rifles. This is the best time ever made by the Doctor, beating his Boston time over forty seconds. He discharged the rifles faster than two men could load them.

Col. Fletcher then stood a hundred paces away, and began to hurl glass balls at the Doctor's head. The Doctor missed the first two, and then shattered four in succession. They were thrown with such force that the broken pieces were showered upon Carver's broad-brimmed sombrero. During this scene two martins darted across his vision, and quick as thought he blazed away, but missed them.

Col. Fletcher then hurled a bail in the sky with all his force. It went up like a rocket, and began a beautiful curve a hundred feet above Carver's head. He kept his feet, bent himself backward in the shape of a bow, drew the rifle to his eye, and shivered the glass into a million of fragments. A handful of feathers appeared and sailed away upon the air like the fiery drippings of an exploded rocket.

After this feat the Doctor discarded the rifle for a Parker shotgun. Col. Fletcher stood thirty yards distant, and threw the balls away beyond him. They were broken repeatedly at from seventy to eighty yards. After several trials the Doctor broke at that distance two balls thrown in the air at the same time. He repeated this feat three times.

A heavy ball made of bell metal, Col. Fletcher's invention, so constructed that it would ring whenever a shot touched it, was rolled in the air. The Doctor rang it fifteen times twice before it reached the ground. These shots were made at a distance of from fifty to sixty yards. The Doctor then retired.

The most of the spectators rushed for the cars, more than satisfied. The Doctor drew on his coat, and quietly drank two glasses of sarsaparilla. He takes nothing stronger.

After a half hour’s rest he raised a rifle without removing his coat, and asked his friend Texas Jack to pitch up something while he emptied the gun. Jack tossed up a peanut at fifteen feet, and the Doctor shot off the end. A ginger snap was split in twain. The cover of a paper box was propped on the ground fifty feet away. The Doctor discharged his rifle from the hip, and promptly put two bullets through it. He afterward broke three soda-bottles at the same distance, shooting in the same manner; but he made many misses while blazing at the bottles. All the bullets, however, struck the ground within three inches of them. Many persons think that the Doctor takes no aim while shooting from the hip. This is a mistake, for the manner in which he runs his eye along the barrel, gazes at the sight, and takes in the object in view, shows that he seeks a correct angle before pulling the trigger. In shooting on the wing he takes sight without shutting either eye. This attracted the attention of a stranger yesterday. “Why do you aim with both eyes open, Doctor?” he inquired.

“Oh, it's a habit I acquired on the Plains,” responded the Doctor. “When shooting deer, I kept one eye open for the deer and the other one open for Indians!”

After the hip-shooting, the Doctor seemed attacked with a rifle fever. He blazed away at anything. Two pocket match-boxes were spun into the air and knocked into smithereens. A gentleman threw up a blue lead-pencil, and it fell to the ground in two pieces. A black pencil met the same fate. A lusty bumble-bee hummed over the sward, and the Doctor greeted it with a bullet that out-hummed the insect, for the bee flew off at a tangent, and took the ground in a bee line. The Doctor had shot away its wing. One of the most surprising shots was at a rifle cartridge. It was struck the first time at twenty-five feet, and the shell knocked off. Carver drove the bullet through the air with the second shot. A silver three-cent piece was wiped out on the second trial. An enthusiastic genius wobbled his pocket-book sky-ward, and it came down with a hole in it. There was a general laugh when it was discovered that the man had forgotten to take the money out of it.

A folded copy of The Sun went up, and came down pierced. On unfolding it twenty-five holes were found in the paper. Texas Jack threw up two bricks. There were two reports, and the spectators were covered with brick-dust. The Doctor broke a brick, reloaded his gun, and shot one of the detached pieces to atoms while in the air. He also shot off the neck of a soda-bottle while in the air, recharged his rifle, and shattered the bottle before it fell.

This last feat was so surprising that a gentlemanly Spaniard, wearing a diamond on his shirt-front blazing like a star, expressed his unbounded admiration. “I know how to shoot very nice,” said he. “I see these things. I hardly don't believe it.”

Col. Fletcher then threw up a fence picket endwise. A bullet pierced its centre. Again it was launched into the atmosphere. A second bullet went through the hole made by the first. The picket was kept in the air, and in seven shots the Doctor cut it in two pieces. A negro with a buck saw could not have done better.

Mr. J. T. Hill, one of Col. Berdan’s sharpshooters, picked up a piece of lath six inches long, stood forty feet away, and asked the Doctor to shoot it out of his hand. Carver did so. Then Texas Jack held up a shingle, and seven bullets were sent through it so close together that they made a hole large enough for a rat to jump through. Hill then held up an exploded cartridge, and the Doctor shot it from between his thumb and forefinger. Hill had never seen the Doctor until yesterday, but after witnessing his shooting said that he would not hesitate to “hold up a fly by the hind legs, and let him rip away at it.”

When the writer left Deerfoot Park, twilight was approaching; but the fever was still on the Doctor. Texas Jack and he were shooting at silver quarters with a revolver that looked as though it might be owned by a German shoemaker. In this match Texas Jack was holding his own. Quarters were struck every minute, and sent bounding into the air, to the delight of a dozen little urchins who were hopeful of picking up the stray ones.

Father's Day

The following is the entry for John Burwell Omohundro, the father of Texas Jack, in the Omohundro Genealogical Record. This was written by Texas Jack's youngest brother, Malvern Hill Omohundro, the son of John Burwell Omohundro and his second wife, Margaret Shores Omohundro.

JOHN BURWELL OMOHUNDRO

Born Nov. 23, 1816, in Albemarle Co., Va., near Scottsville; d. July 6, 1901, in Radford, Virginia; buried at Gale Hill; married 1st Nov. 18, 1840, to Catherine Salome Baker of Louisa County, Virginia.

Catherine was born July 1, 1824 and died Nov. 16, 1864, and was buried at Pleasure Hill. She was the daughter of Martin Baker and wife Catherine Salvan Woodger. Her grandmother, Catherine Salvan Woodger, was a great heiress from England. She went to Missouri with her daughter, Catherine Salvan Baker (who lived to be 90 years old and died there), together with her son-in-law, Martin Baker, his wife, Catherine Salvan Baker, and their sons, Jim, Tom, and George, where they lived and made a great fortune. His sister “Betsy” married John Carter and lived in Lexington, Mo.

John Burwell Omohundro married Margaret Alice Shores on 2nd Nov. 15, 1865. She was born Sept. 3, 1835, and died Dec. 26, 1924. Margaret was buried in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia, and was the daughter of Wilson Shores and wife Martha Cary Bransford of Seven Islands, Fluvanna Co., Virginia.

When about four years old John Burwell Omohundro moved with his father to live at Gale Hill, near Columbia, Fluvanna Co., Va., until he entered into the mercantile business at Wilmington about 1838. In the fall of 1843, he went to Missouri to settle up the estate of Martin Baker, his father-in-law. For company, he took with him Thomas Anderson Hughes. They went out by public conveyance but returned by horseback to see the country. They left Missouri on the second day of the Christmas holidays and landed at Wilmington in Fluvanna Co., Va., several weeks later, thus making the trip in mid-winter and experiencing many hardships en route. When I was a little boy he told me many stories about his travels through the prairies of southern Illinois and Indiana, then a very sparsely settled country. They encountered many robbers that infested the country in those days and several times came near being killed. All this was of great interest to me.

After seven years of success in the mercantile business at Wilmington he moved in the fall of 1845 to “Pleasure Hill,” a large plantation 1½ miles west of Palmyra, the county-seat, and farmed on a large scale until the Civil War. All of his children, except the first three, were born at “Pleasure Hill,” Adelaide, Bettie, and Orville having been born at Wilmington.

John Burwell Omohundro, “Captain John” (the “Roaring Screamer,” as he was known far and near), was loved and honored by all, and feared by many. He kept an open house, and entertained the best people in his county, and many from a distance. Generous to a fault, he had to live to see his fortune, the accumulation of his young life, fade before his eyes in his old age from the ravages of war and security debts.

In the Richmond Times-Dispatch of Thursday, December 7, 1905, was printed a communication from Fluvanna County telling of a destructive fire two days before, the burning of the Omohundro mansion, an old landmark of Fluvanna, the homestead of that “fine old Virginia gentleman, John B. Omo- hundro.” Following are additional quotations from the Times- Dispatch article:

“Before the War it was a fine old estate, situated on Cunningham Creek, which empties into the Rivanna just below Palmyra, its fertile lowlands and rolling hills were always in fine condition, and it was known far and wide for its old-time Virginia hospitality. Opened handed, generous to a fault, fond of high living, Mr. Omohundro found himself after the War utterly unable to adapt himself to the new condition of things, and as the old place had to be abandoned his large family of boys and girls scattered, to seek what fortune had in store. All of them have succeeded in life and are remembered in their native county as a family of sterling worth and exceeding beauty of person.

Mr. and Mrs. Omohundro's two girls and six boys were all remarkably handsome people and possessed of strikingly affable and lovable manners. “One of the sons, John Jr., was the famous ‘Texas Jack' who won reputation with “Buffalo Bill’, and was for many years identified with the ‘Wild West Shows.’”

It is believed that the above was written by Capt. Wm. H. Talley, a neighbor of the Omohundros near Palmyra. In this house the author of this book was born and raised. Up and down this Cunningham Creek he spent many of his young days hunting and fishing (as did his big brother “Texas Jack”). In this old mansion he sat by the bright fireside many a night and listened to his father and his many guests talk about many different things, but especially about the Omohundro family, their connections and doings, and so on; and this is at least one of the reasons I learned to love my family so well, and this love sowed the seed for the aspiration to write this book which I hope will be equal to all, and surpassed by none, for this is a work of love on my part.

When reading the account of the destruction of my old home, which I have always loved so dearly, I can but drop a tear, yes tears; and it certainly touches me deeply to think how well and sympathetically my many relations and friends have responded to my call, in this work.

Some of them may by now be getting impatient and may think this is more of a fad on my part (as I am sure is often the case with some such writers) than a real determination, but it may be in order to say right here that I have had many obstacles and other things in my path on this work for the last 45 years; but now, May 12, 1950, I hope to bring it to a close just as soon as possible, certainly this year; and if I should pass over the Great Divide before I do, I have provided in my will that this work shall be completed.

This can be easily understood when we consider the fact that the name Omohundro is hard to pronounce correctly by most any person who has never heard of the name before. This being a wild and woolly country where schools were almost unknown at that time, and educated people of that day were few and far between, it can be easily seen that the great majority of people would do well to call the word Mohundro and leave off the tongue-twisting “O.” Even here in this claimed educated Old Virginia, when I was a boy, half the people I knew called me “Mohundro.”

Juneteenth

We don't know exactly when John Omohundro arrived in the state that gave him his cowboy education and the nickname Texas Jack. He set out for Texas from his home in Palmyra, Virginia, not long after Robert E. Lee's final defeat at Appomattox Courthouse, but was delayed by a shipwreck. He made his way up the Florida coast, taught school for a brief period on the Florida panhandle, and then rode west, eventually starting his life as a cowboy at Sam Allen's Ranch near Galveston. If Jack made it to Galveston before June 19th, 1866, then he was working as a cook for Allen's cowboys as they celebrated Juneteenth, the anniversary of the announcement of emancipation by Union Major General Gordon Grainger when he sailed into Galveston Bay a year earlier.

President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation has theoretically freed all of the enslaved people in Texas over two years earlier on January 1, 1863, but Texas slaveholders allied with the Confederacy hadn't felt any obligation to heed Lincoln's executive order. Even after Lee's surrender of his Army of the Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9th of 1865, the Army of the Trans-Mississippi continued to oppose the Union for a month after Confederate General Joseph Eggleston Johnston's surrender of the Army of Tennessee on April 26, 1865. The Army of the Trans-Mississippi's surrender on June 2 signified the final death knell of the Confederacy. General Grainger's arrival at Galveston two weeks later, and his reading of General Order No. 3 on June 19th, 1865, meant that slavery as an institution was abolished everywhere in the United States.

Many of the cowboys Texas Jack was cooking for, and would soon work closely with, were former slaves. 30% of the population of Texas had been enslaved people in 1860, and many of these were the best herders, ranchers, and cowboys in the state. The years immediately following the Civil War saw an explosion in the cattle business, with beef prices soaring in the hungry post-war East and the ravaged South alike. Texas attle herds had grown as well, and it was smart business to run the cattle north, across Indian Territory, and to waiting railroad stations at Hays City, Abilene, and Dodge City. In many cases, the freedmen were better equipped for the trail than newcomers like Texas Jack. Bose Ikard, a former slave, rode with Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving as they blazed their cattle trail from Texas to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, and eventually on to Denver and Wyoming. A memorial to Ikard in Weatherford, Texas, was paid for by Goodnight, and bears his words about Ikard. "Served with me four years on the Goodnight-Loving Trail, never shirked duty or disobeyed an order, rode with me in many stampedes, participated in three engagements with Comanches, splendid behavior." Goodnight later said of Ikard, "I have trusted him farther than any living man. He was my detective, banker, and everything else in Colorado, New Mexico, and the other wild country I was in." Larry McMurtry based the character of Joshua Deets in his genre-defining novel Lonesome Dove on Bose Ikard.

Another black cowboy of the era was Nat Love, who arrived in the Lone Star State to become a cattleman at the same time as Texas Jack was driving his last herd from Texas to Nebraska. Nat had been born on the plantation of Robert Love near Nashville, Tennessee in 1854. Despite laws prohibiting the teaching of reading and writing to enslaved people before and during the Civil War, Nat's father, Sampson, secretly ensured his son was literate.

When Nat was 16, he sold two horses he had won at raffles to buy a ticket on a train bound for Dodge City. There, he found employment with an outfit from the Texas panhandle, the Duval Ranch, where he mastered the necessary skills of the cowboy before moving on to ranches in New Mexico and Arizona. In Arizona, he met western legends including Pat Garrett, Bat Masterson, and Billy the Kid. As the frontier closed and barbed wire fences and expanding rail lines ended the cowboy life he had become accustomed to, Nat found work in Denver, Colorado, and later in Los Angeles. In 1907 he released his autobiography Life and Adventures of Nat Love, Better Known in the Cattle Country as 'Deadwood Dick,' by Himself, one of the great tomes of cowboy life, right up there with Teddy Blue Abbott's We Pointed Them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher.

After Texas Jack's death, his friend Buffalo Bill wrote a story titled Texas Jack, the Prairie Rattler; Or, The Queen of the Wild Riders. In this story, Texas Jack has a friend and trusted companion named Ebony Star, a freed slave now entrusted with the management of Texas Jack's ranch. At the end of the story, Jack and Ebony set off together on their own adventures. The pair are featured again in Prentiss Ingraham’s Arizona Joe, the Boy Pard of Texas Jack. Lillian Schlissel, professor emerita and director of American studies at Brooklyn College-CUNY, wrote in her book Black Frontiers: A History of African American Heroes in The Old West that “Not many other books before 1900 showed friendships between a white man and a black man...The story is unusual because in it a black man, Star, rescues the hero and saves his life. As with the Lone Ranger and Tonto, the Ebony Star is Texas Jack’s powerful friend and ally...Star has a place in the legends of the Old West.”While books, movies, and tv shows often make it look like every cowboy in the American West looked like Texas Jack—tall, dark, and handsome...but always white—the truth is that the cowboy life that Texas Jack lived, loved, and wrote about was shared with black cowboys, men whose lives were forever changed by the events of Juneteenth—June 19th, 1865.

A Texas Jack of Thirteen

In the 90s, violent youths were blamed on rap music and Marilyn Manson. In the mid-1960s, the FBI investigated the song Louie Louie by The Kingsmen, blamed for the actions of a generation. In the 1870s, violent acts by young men were blamed on Texas Jack, Buffalo Bill, and other legendary western plainsmen. We've talked before about Jesse Pomeroy, the young Boston murderer, whose spree of killings was blamed on Texas Jack dime novels. Here is another story of a violent and wayward young man whose actions were attributed to the influence of Texas Jack.

From the New York World, June 5, 1878.

The True and Veracious Chronicle of a Boy Highwayman and Would-Be Murderer.

Adolph Baldmeider, a dime novel expert, thirteen years old, was arraigned in general sessions yesterday to answer for his latest crime. He was born in Mott Haven and went to school there, doing well at school. When his mother married a second time he went to live with an aunt in Harlem. He saved $73.

Six months ago he engaged for passage for Texas in the City of Houston, paying $60 for a first-class berth. From Galveston, he went to Houston. There he met two other lads of the same variety. They called themselves "Yankee Bill" and "Shorty," and he became "Texas Jack." They armed themselves with pistols and bowie-knives and followed a precarious life as highwaymen.

Baldsmeider says he made $500. He came home three months ago with $300 in cash, but was coldly received by his mother and engaged a room in a hotel at the corner of the Bowery and Delancey street. He visited gambling dens in the Bowery but does not believe a highwayman ought to get drunk. In due time, however, he ran through his $300 and was compelled to go to work.

He obtained employment in Leitz's restaurant, at the corner of Broad and Beaver streets, but the wages were only $8 a month, and he determined to quit work and return again to Texas. He had only $16. He gave up his room in the Bowery and established himself in a cave near Macomb's Dam in Harlem. Next, he sought two of his school companions, John Ferdinand Fry and John Fritz Wagner, and took them into his confidence till they also yearned to deserve hanging.

They took a dime novel oath, with daggers in their hands, to be true to each other, and decided to get money to go to Texas with a robbery. After some pistol practice on the morning of Sunday, the 18th of May, they went to Stebens lane, near One hundred and seventy-first street, which is well sheltered by trees, and there determined to rob the first likely man who passed.

They robbed—or rather Adolph did while the others sat on a fence—Thomas Lynn. Adolph shot him, but a thick pocket-book in his breast pocket stopped the ball. He fired twice more and shot Mr. Lynn in the thigh. He was about to search his victim, when he heard footsteps and ran away.

On Decoration Day he again met Fry and Wagner, and they went on another expedition, armed with clubs and pistols. There were met at Central Bridge by Officer H.B. Steers, who arrested Fry and Adolph. On the way to the station house, Adolph admitted having been the would-be assassin of Lynn, and it was on that charge that he was arraigned in general sessions. He said he had intended to kill Lynn, who had made him mad by picking up a stone to throw at him.

Cartoon Scouts

Another AI is making the rounds, so we thought we'd apply it to Texas Jack and friends and see what happened. This one is an app called Voila AI Artist, and it turns photographs into cartoons.

I want to preface this post with a short warning. Some of these apps are collecting more of your information than you might think, including your social media contacts. Always be careful and do your research before sharing your photographs and social media information with unknown app developers that may have less than ideal purposes for your pictures and info.

Without further ado, here is what a Scouts of the Prairies or Scouts of the Plains cartoon might looks like starring:

Texas Jack in True West

https://truewestmagazine.com/article/...

TwoDot Press continues its impressive run of frontier biographies with Texas Jack: America’s First Cowboy Star ($26.95). Author Matthew Kerns, a Tennessee-based historian and digital archivist, carefully explores the life of John “Texas Jack” Omohundro who rose to national prominence as a member of Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West shows after befriending Cody and Wild Bill Hickok. Later, Texas Jack was the subject of a series of Ned Buntline dime novels. Before his stardom, however, Texas Jack was a Confederate scout and spy and later a trail boss who led cattle drives on the Chisolm and Goodnight-Loving trails throughout the West. Texas Jack is a complete and thoughtful biography of a recognizable, but little-understood figure of the American West.

—Erik J. Wright, assistant editor of the Tombstone Epitaph

The Battle of Trevilian Station

In the American West, Texas Jack was legendary for his horsemanship. He rode his horse Tall Bull, captured from the Cheyenne warrior of the same name, to lasso buffalo and to hunt with the Pawnee. On stage, he raced his pony Modoc towards the audience, drawing up just short of jumping off the stage and leaving an impression with theater-goers for generations.

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Jack's comfort and skill on horseback came from long practice. He had been a cowboy, of course, using horses as a tool to herd and drive longhorns from Texas to Kansas, Nebraska, Montana, Tennessee, and California. At one of the ranches he worked, Jack was placed in charge of the horses used for all the operation's cowboys, his skills proving up to the task. Later, he broke a mustang purchased by the Earl of Dunraven in Sterling, Montana, much to that aristocrat's amusement. And as a scout he raced horses across the prairie at the head of Army troops or in pursuit of hostile bands of Minniconjou, Lakota, and Cheyenne warriors.

Jack's primary education on horseback was not gained on the cow trails of Texas, the prairies of Kansas, or the wilds of Wyoming. Texas Jack had been a cavalry scout in Virginia under the legendary cavalry general Jeb Stuart. Stuart was the best and most important cavalry commander in Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, and John Omohundro was Stuart's most trusted and capable cavalry scout. But it wasn't until a month after Stuart's death in May of 1864 at the Battle of Yellow Tavern that Jack Omohundro would fight in the largest and deadliest cavalry battle of the Civil War.

Jack's commanding officer, following Stuart's Death, was General Wade Hampton. On June 11th, 1864, Hampton and General Fitzhugh Lee's forces fought against the Union cavalry under Major General Philip Sheridan. Sheridan had been tasked by Ulysses S. Grant with destroying long stretches of the Virginia Central Railroad and occupying Confederate troops while Grant's command crossed the James River. Wade Hampton and the Confederate cavalry managed to get to the railroad at Trevilian Station first, and the battle between the two sides raged to a standstill.

The following day, the Union cavalry under Sheridan repeatedly assaulted Hampton's troops, including Jack Omohundro at Trevilian Station. Seven attempts to drive the Confederates from their position failed before the Union forces retreated, unable to destroy the Virginia Central Railroad. But while the Confederates were engaged in the battle, General Grant was able to successfully cross the James River, setting up the successful siege at Petersberg, Virginia, a few days later.

The West would let Texas Jack put to use the skills he gained during the war. The command of his animal that guided him through cavalry battles in Virginia kept him alive on the prairies. The accuracy with his weapon that he honed in battle amazed children when he later shot coins from the outstretched hand of his partner, Buffalo Bill. The West erased many of the old North/South divisions, and Texas Jack would rise to favor with former Union soldiers like Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok, but also with former Union Generals like George Armstrong Custer and even Philip Sheridan. On the back of his horse Tall Bull on America's western frontier, he wasn't John Omohundro the Confederate Cavalry scout. He was Texas Jack.

Texas Jack in the Fluvanna Review

Talking about my book with Texas Jack's hometown newspaper, the Fluvanna Review.

http://fluvannareview.com/2021/06/author-writes-new-book-on-an-american-icon/

Decoration Day

Before it was made a federal holiday, the day we celebrate as "Memorial Day" was called "Decoration Day," and was a chance for towns across the United States to remember those who had fallen in the Civil War, as well as those veterans who had passed in the years since. The tradition began on June 3, 1861, with the decoration of the grave of Captain John Quincy Marr, the first Confederate officer killed during the war, but traditions soon became established across both the North and South. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln and his subsequent burial, combined with the deaths of more than 600,000 soldiers during the war, left a lasting impact on the country and the way it viewed those who had sacrificed fighting for it.

Texas Jack was one of the most famous men buried in Leadville, and his grave was often visited in the pioneer days of that city. Jack had fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, but had scouted for the United States Army both in Nebraska from 1869 to 1872, and in Montana and Wyoming for General Alfred Terry following the defeat of George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. This article from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat talks about Leadville and the grave of Texas Jack.

LEADVILLE'S DEAD

LEADVILLE, COL - The Rio Grande train climbs a long hill and steams into Leadville upon a ridge. To the east of the track is spread out the city of the living. On the slope to the west is the city of the dead. Leadville started a graveyard early, and patronized it well. For a time the headboards were planted almost as rapidly on one side of the hill as the claim stakes were driven on the other. There are 33,000 restless money-seekers up here among the clouds and the snow-drifts of mid-July. There are 3.300 graves in the gravel, among the bright green pines.

The mortality of the early history of this ten-years old city was frightful. Men lay down at night to sleep off a drunk and never awoke. Nature plays queer freaks with vital organs at an altitude of 10,055 feet. Health was neglected in the wild mad rush for carbonates. Men ate when they could get time, slept anywhere, and never refused an invitation to drink. Under such conditions Leadville acquired the name of "The Pneumonia City," and graves were in great demand.

More people between the ages of 20 and 35 are buried here than in any other cemetery in the world, that is in proportion to the whole number, and such a strange assortment of histories the sod nowhere else covers. In what other burial place can the visitor stand and moralize beside the grave of a man who was given twenty hours by the Vigilance Committee to leave town, and who died of pneumonia before the time was up?

To the credit of Leadville, let it be said, her dead are not forgotten. Decoration Day means more here than the remembrance of those who fell in battle. This city did not come into existence until twelve years after the war was over, but there are few places where Decoration Day is so generally observed in a literal sense.

TEXAS JACK

The most striking monument of all is that which marks the resting place of Texas Jack, as he was better known than by his name of J. B. omohundro. Texas Jack entered the show business about the same time that Buffalo Bill did, and he was only second to Cody in promise. He had married a famous ballet dancer, and was filling an engagement here when peumonia carried him off. His grave is in a well-cared-for lot, and is marked by a slab bearing the inscription:

Sacred to the Memory of

TEXAS JACK

(J.B. Omohundro)

Died June 29, 1880.

33. Pneumonia.

The inscription occupies but a small place on the slab, which is fairly covered with artistic work. First there is a good representation of a cartridge belt, with pistols crossed and bowie-knife sheathed. Below is sketched the trusty Winchester, and then the head of Texas Jack's favorite horse, Yellow Chief.

On the reverse of the slab are fingers pointing heavenward, and the inscription, "Rest in peace. Remembered by his young friends, J.J. Levy and M.C. Levy" If Texas Jack had designed his own head-board he could not have done better. His wife, in respect for his memory, retired from the stage.

Unfortunately, this grave marker, like the one that his wife inscribed by hand in Italian that preceded it, was eventually taken by some passing collector. Eventually, only a plain white board with Jack's name and dates of his birth and death marked the spot. In 1908. Buffalo Bill and John M. Burke brought the Wild West to Leadville. Seeing Jack's grave in a sad state of disrepair, they immediately offered to fun a new permanent marker that still marks their friend's final resting place.