Download or read book 100 Oklahoma Outlaws Gangsters Lawmen written by Laurence Yadon and published by Pelican Publishing. This book was released on 2010-09-23 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The only thing wilder than Oklahoma in the late nineteenth century are the tales that continue to surround it. In the days of the Wild West, Oklahoma was teeming with assassins, guerillas, hijackers, kidnappers, gangs, and misfits of every size and shape imaginable. Featuring such legendary characters as Billy the Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, Machine Gun Kelly, Belle Starr, and Pretty Boy Floyd, this book combines recorded fact with romanticized legend, allowing the reader to decide how much to believe. Violent and out of control, the figures covered in 100 Oklahoma Outlaws, Gangsters, and Lawmen often left behind numerous victims, grisly accounts, and unforgettable stories. Included are criminals like James Deacon Miller, the devout Methodist and hired assassin. Righteous and devious, he often avoided the gallows by convincing others to admit to his murders. Rufus Buck, a man of Native American descent, targeted white settlers. His crimes against them became so heinous as to cause the Creek nation to take up arms against him. The answer to criminals such as these came in the form of Hanging Judge Parker and other officers of the law. Although they were greatly outnumbered, they provided some balance to the chaos. This historical compilation covers every memorable outlaw and lawman who passed through Oklahoma.
Download or read book One Hundred Oklahoma Outlaws Gangsters and Lawmen 1839 1939 written by Dan Anderson and published by Pelican Publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book includes difficult-to-find information about significant Oklahoma outlaws who lived and worked during the 100-year period �from horseback to Cadillac.� While criminal history within Oklahoma is the focus, famous crimes committed elsewhere by Oklahomans, such as the Barker Gang, Wilbur Underhill, and Machine Gun Kelly, as well as Oklahoma connections to legendary outlaws like Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, John Dillinger, and Baby Face Nelson are also mentioned.
Download or read book 200 Texas Outlaws and Lawmen 1835 1935 written by Laurence Yadon and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2008-02-29 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively reference covering a century’s worth of shooters, sheriffs, and more in the Lone Star State. The Lone Star State is known for producing both vicious outlaws and valorous lawmen. While Machine Gun Kelly terrorized urban civilians, lawmen such as Ranger John Barclay Armstrong tried to keep things under control. This is the story of Texas’s most famous criminals, intrepid lawmen—and in the case of James Edwin Reed, both—as well as such figures as the legendary Judge Roy Bean. This reference brings to life a time before the West was tamed, and also includes a chronology of well-known crimes and a locale list of notorious events.
Download or read book 200 Texas Outlaws and Lawmen 1835 1935 written by Laurence J. Yadon and published by Pelican Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with Texas's declaration of independence in 1835 and stretching into the turbulent Depression era a century later, many ruthless criminals and daring deputies and rangers kicked up dust within the state's borders. Billy the Kid, Machine Gun Kelly, Bat Masterson, and Belle Star were familiar faces. Other characters included Texas Jack, Rowdy Joe, Mysterious Dave, Long Haired Jim, Buckskin Frank, and Curly Bill. In this book, accounts of gunfights, robberies, and kidnappings follow selected profiles. In a borrowed costume, Marshal Ratliff, the Santa Claus Robber, held up cashiers while several of his "elves" pulled weapons to help St. Nick fill his sack. Mishaps, accidents, and misunderstandings lighten the mood between truly heinous crimes such as that of the Bender family. Owners of a small hotel, the four family members would kill lone travelers for their possessions. While pursuing his undergraduate degree at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma, Laurence Yadon considered himself fortunate to have studied under William Settle, a Jesse James scholar. This experience served as his inspiration to become a lifelong student of American history, especially that of the Southwest. Dan Anderson is a former newswriter, photographer, features writer, and columnist. He has been honored with multiple awards from the Associated Press for spot news reporting, investigative reporting, and newswriting. Anderson and Yadon are also the authors of 100 Oklahoma Outlaws, Gangsters, and Lawmen: 1839-1939, published by Pelican.
Download or read book Wrecked Lives and Lost Souls written by Jerry Thompson and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2019-10-24 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Growing up, Jerry Thompson knew only that his grandfather was a gritty, “mixed-blood” Cherokee cowboy named Joe Lynch Davis. That was all anyone cared to say about the man. But after Thompson’s mother died, the award-winning historian discovered a shoebox full of letters that held the key to a long-lost family history of passion, violence, and despair. Wrecked Lives and Lost Souls, the result of Thompson’s sleuthing into his family’s past, uncovers the lawless life and times of a man at the center of systematic cattle rustling, feuding, gun battles, a bloody range war, bank robberies, and train heists in early 1900s Indian Territory and Oklahoma. Through painstaking detective work into archival sources, newspaper accounts, and court proceedings, and via numerous interviews, Thompson pieces together not only the story of his grandfather—and a long-forgotten gang of outlaws to rival the infamous Younger brothers—but also the dark path of a Cherokee diaspora from Georgia to Indian Territory. Davis, born in 1891, grew up on a family ranch on the Canadian River, outside the small community of Porum in the Cherokee Nation. The range was being fenced, and for the Davis family and others, cattle rustling was part of a way of life—a habit that ultimately spilled over into violence and murder. The story “goes way back to the wild & wooly cattle days of the west,” an aunt wrote to Thompson’s mother, “when there was cattle rustling, bank robberies & feuding.” One of these feuds—that Joe Davis was “raised right into”—was the decade-long Porum Range War, which culminated in the murder of Davis’s uncle in 1907. In fleshing out the details of the range war and his grandfather’s life, Thompson brings to light the brutality and far-reaching consequences of an obscure chapter in the history of the American West.
Download or read book Outlaws with Badges written by Laurence J. Yadon and published by Pelican Publishing Company. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most notorious lawmen of the Old West. In the Old West, lawmen could not always be depended on to keep the peace-in many cases, the lawmen themselves were corrupt. Ranging from disgusting men such as Dirty Dave Rudabaugh to respected US Marshalls such as Wyatt Earp, these fascinating lawmen ruled the Old West. Murders, feuds, and robberies come to life as these men fight to the death for absolute power.
Download or read book Oklahoma Scoundrels written by Robert Barr Smith and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2016-11-07 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early Oklahoma was a haven for violent outlaws and a death trap for deputy U.S. marshals. The infamous Doolin gang's OK Hotel gunfight left five dead. Killers like Bible-quoting choir leader Deacon Jim Miller wreaked havoc. Gunslinger femme fatale Belle Starr specialized in horse theft. Wannabe outlaws like Al Jennings traded train robbing for politics and Hollywood films. And Elmer McCurdy's determination and inept skill earned him a carnival slot and the nickname "the Bandit Who Wouldn't Give Up." Historians Robert Barr Smith and Laurence J. Yadon dispel myths surrounding some of the most significant lawbreakers in Sooner history.
Download or read book Ned Christie written by Devon A. Mihesuah and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2018-03-08 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who was Nede Wade Christie? Was he a violent criminal guilty of murdering a federal officer? Or a Cherokee statesman who suffered a martyr’s death for a crime he did not commit? For more than a century, journalists, pulp fiction authors, and even serious historians have produced largely fictitious accounts of “Ned” Christie’s life. Now, in a tour de force of investigative scholarship, Devon A. Mihesuah offers a far more accurate depiction of Christie and the times in which he lived. In 1887 Deputy U.S. Marshal Dan Maples was shot and killed in Tahlequah, Indian Territory. As Mihesuah recounts in unsurpassed detail, any of the criminals in the vicinity at the time could have committed the crime. Yet the federal court at Fort Smith, Arkansas, focused on Christie, a Cherokee Nation councilman and adviser to the tribal chief. Christie evaded capture for five years. His life ended when a posse dynamited his home—knowing he was inside—and shot him as he emerged from the burning building. The posse took Christie’s body to Fort Smith, where it lay for three days on display for photographers and gawkers. Nede’s family suffered as well. His teenage cousin Arch Wolfe was sentenced to prison and ultimately perished in the Canton Asylum for “insane” Indians—a travesty that, Mihesuah shows, may even surpass the injustice of Nede’s fate. Placing Christie’s story within the rich context of Cherokee governance and nineteenth-century American political and social conditions, Mihesuah draws on hundreds of newspaper accounts, oral histories, court documents, and family testimonies to assemble the most accurate portrayal of Christie’s life possible. Yet the author admits that for all this information, we may never know the full story, because Christie’s own voice is largely missing from the written record. In addition, she spotlights our fascination with villains and martyrs, murder and mayhem, and our dangerous tendency to glorify the “Old West.” More than a biography, Ned Christie traces the making of an American myth.
Download or read book Arizona Gunfighters written by Laurence J Yadon and published by Pelican Publishing. This book was released on with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Old West Swindlers written by Laurence J. Yadon and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2011-06-23 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: True stories of nineteenth-century crooks, con artists, and quacks—including the man who “sold” the Brooklyn Bridge. Gunslingers and outlaws weren’t the only ones who made the West wild. The nineteenth century was the golden era of riverboat gamblers, crooked railroad contractors, and filthy-rich medical quacks. These crooks made a living deceiving people who took a stranger at face value and left their doors unlocked. Throw in some get-rich-quick schemes and a generous mixture of whiskey and there was never a shortage of suckers. Conman George Parker was able to stay in business for forty years by “selling” public structures such as Madison Square Garden and the Statue of Liberty. He even “sold” the Brooklyn Bridge as often as twice a week. For most, the Salted Gold Mine or the Magic Wallet cons were enough to satisfy their greed. However, the more ambitious grifters tried the Big Store, an illegal underground betting parlor like the one seen in the movie The Sting. With an honest-looking face and a lack of morals, these scammers played a big role in giving the frontier its lawless reputation—and this book tells their stories.
Download or read book Lost Oklahoma Treasure written by W. Craig Gaines and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2021-03-22 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oklahoma keeps its secrets. Adventurers combing the Wichita Mountains for the legendary Lost Cave with an Iron Door can slake their thirst at Cache Creek or Treasure Lake. Following the tradition of French and Spanish explorers, miners and pioneers stashed their valuable discoveries along the Santa Fe Trail and the California Road. Chief Opothleyahola reportedly buried gold coins that could be worth more than $14 million today, while businessman Dr. John J. Hayes never returned from a Confederate refugee camp to reclaim his hidden fortune. From the unrecovered loot of the James Gang to the fabled funds of the Knights of the Golden Circle, W. Craig Gaines tracks tales of treasure across sixty Oklahoma counties.
Download or read book One Murder Too Many written by Laurence J. Yadon and published by Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.. This book was released on 2013-12-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mysterious murder exposes a dangerous crime lord. In this fascinating work, both sides of a decades-long case are explored and uncovered. Tulsa computer tycoon Roger Wheeler discovered that he was being defrauded by a group of organized criminals in Boston led by Whitey Bulger. When Wheeler acted against the criminals, Bulger's gang took matters into their own hands. Wheeler's murder sparked events that led prosecutors across the country in search of the truth. This riveting true story lays out how the unrelenting efforts of the family of the murdered Oklahoma businessman led to this crime boss's downfall.
Download or read book Here Today written by Jeffrey B. Schmidt and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2024-05-21 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of Oklahoma runs through the thousands of towns that sprang up in the wake of statehood and even before then—readable in the traces of bygone days, if you know what to look for. In Here Today, Jeffrey B. Schmidt conducts readers, armchair travelers and adventurers alike, through places that tell Oklahoma’s story: towns all but disappeared, waning, or persisting despite the odds. Part travelogue, part field guide, part history, the book—replete with photos, maps, and GPS coordinates—documents the rise and fall of one hundred of these towns, from the arrival of pioneers and settlers to the rise of buildings and businesses to the decline that came with natural disasters, manmade crises, and cultural change. Schmidt provides an enlightening look at what has made these towns work—the role of roads and railways, public schools and churches, community building and commerce, and, perhaps most significant, the official recognition that a post office conferred. He notes the oil strikes, coal mines, intriguing crimes, violent weather, and twists of fortune that played into the fate of each; points out the landmarks that still stand and the shadows of those that have succumbed to indifference, destruction, or the passage of time; and puts the story these towns tell into the larger context of westward expansion, Native American history, and, in the case of the many all-Black towns, discrimination and segregation. Whether visiting ghost towns or small towns that still draw on the power of rural resilience to survive and even thrive, Here Today offers a rare chance to travel through the state’s history before its remnants may be gone tomorrow. Representing the extraordinary extent of Schmidt’s research, legwork, and mining of archives and data sources, the book preserves for all time a vanishing vision of Oklahoma.
Download or read book American Book Publishing Record written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 838 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Did They Rest in Peace written by Joseph William Lewis Jr. M.D. and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. By what miracle can an assortment of seemingly unrelated particles come together and correctly assemble to form a human being? Amazingly, once aggregated, these atoms, molecules, and compounds manage to interact reasonably coherently during our lives but seek to return to their dusty state when death occurs. Of the billions of our species who have existed on earth over the millennia, most have quietly and inexorably returned to ashes and dust when their term of life expired. This book tracks some of the misadventures of selected corpses, including burials that went awry to body snatching, exhumations, human-relic collection, and assorted desecrations. Over the years, it seems that a remarkable number of bodies have failed to enjoy the admonition to “Rest in Peace.” Whether these aberrations in the burial process have disturbed the afterlife of the departed, everyone is dying to discover the answer.
Download or read book Ten Deadly Texans written by Dan Anderson and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2012-11-05 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lighthearted history of ten of Texas’s most notorious outlaws, including Clyde Barrow and a bank robber dressed as Santa Claus. The Wild Westerners were a tough breed. They started young and tended to die young, grow wilder, or fizzle into oblivion. Those outlaws that had the most feuds, gunfights, and robberies within the state lines are profiled here along with their associates, enemies, and accomplices. A rough chronological order of events spanning from pre-Civil War to 1935 tracks significant people and events. With so few lawmen available to police the state, troublesome youths quickly developed into heinous individuals. John Wesley Hardin killed a fellow classmate in a one-room schoolhouse, and eight-year-old James Miller was arrested for murdering his own grandparents. Beginnings and endings for each individual varied. While Sam Bass and Bonnie Parker were cut down in their twenties, Dock Newton didn’t rob his last train until age seventy-seven. Other members of the Barrow Gang lived into their fifties and sixties after transforming themselves from dangerous criminals to ordinary citizens. Texans are often described as being larger than life. Their lives were legendary, their demeanor solid, their illegal activities dramatic and varied from beginning to end. The same lighthearted take on Western history that permeated Dan Anderson and Laurence J. Yadon’s previous works resonates in their latest popular history. True stories, tall tales, and numerous anecdotes comprise this book of ten of the deadliest outlaws to cross the Texas line. Praise for Ten Deadly Texans “Picking the top ten of virtually anything is difficult if not impossible, but [Yadon and Anderson] have presented a strong argument that this grouping belongs at the top of any list of deadly fighters. In their own way, each one chose a deadly path filled with violence, bloodshed, high drama, and excitement.” —Chuck Parsons, author of John B. Armstrong: Texas Ranger and Pioneer Ranchman “A well-researched and highly readable account of the Lone Star State's meanest men and women.” —Mike Cox, author of The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821–1900 “Yadon and Anderson have done their homework to separate the truth from the legend, because not only are they good historians, they know that the real story is quite often better than the legend. Ten Deadly Texans takes you from the Civil War to the Great Depression, from cow ponies and six-guns to Ford V-8s and automatic weapons, through the real lives of some of Texas’s most notorious sons.” —James R. Knight, author of Bonnie and Clyde: A Twenty-First-Century Update
Download or read book Killers of the Flower Moon written by David Grann and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history, from the author of The Wager and The Lost City of Z, “one of the preeminent adventure and true-crime writers working today."—New York Magazine • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • NOW A MARTIN SCORSESE PICTURE “A shocking whodunit…What more could fans of true-crime thrillers ask?”—USA Today “A masterful work of literary journalism crafted with the urgency of a mystery.” —The Boston Globe In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was shot. Another was poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more Osage were dying under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case, and the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including a Native American agent who infiltrated the region, and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history. Look for David Grann’s latest bestselling book, The Wager!
