Legends of the Old West - THREE GUARDSMEN Ep. 5 | Bill Tilghman: “Dodge City Deputy”

Episode Date: August 17, 2022

Bill Tilghman grew up idolizing Wild Bill Hickok. When Tilghman was 24, he became a full-time lawman in Dodge City during the peak of its wild years as one of the wickedest towns in the West. He worked with the Earp brothers and the Masterson brothers, and occasionally, Doc Holliday. And he lured Wyatt into a political fiasco known as the Gray County War before moving to Oklahoma and accepting a Deputy U.S. Marshal’s badge. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join To advertise on this podcast, please email: [e-mail] For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This show is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please visit AirwaveMedia.com to check out other great podcasts like Ben Franklin’s World, Once Upon A Crime, and many more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the very early morning hours of October 4th, 1878, a man crept up to a cabin in Dodge City. He fired four shots into the bedroom and then fled into the darkness on horseback. The shooter was a 23-year-old Texas cowboy named James Spike Kennedy, and he didn't know it at the time, but he had just killed the woman he loved. Kennedy thought he was shooting at his rival, the mayor of Dodge City. Kennedy thought he was shooting at his rival, the mayor of Dodge City. The mayor was the unofficial sponsor and great admirer of 34-year-old singer Dora Hand. The mayor was out of town, and he let Dora and another female entertainer use his house while he left for a short trip.

Dora had been sleeping exactly where the mayor would have been if he had been home. One of Kennedy's bullets killed Dorahan instantly. Shortly thereafter, Deputy Bill Tillman formed a posse with his colleagues, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Charlie Bassett, and Bill Duffy. He assumed the killer was the young and entitled Kennedy. Kennedy had loudly argued with the mayor a couple weeks earlier, and he was the son of a wealthy Texas rancher who was used to getting what he wanted. Tillman figured that Kennedy was now hustling toward the safety of his father's ranch in Texas. Sure enough, the posse found Kennedy near the Cimarron River along the border between Kansas and the present-day state of Oklahoma. Kennedy didn't know his shots

had killed the wrong person until the posse informed him. They urged the young man to surrender, but instead, he fired on the lawman and then tried to run. In return, a member of the posse put a.50-caliber rifle round in Kennedy's left shoulder, and Wyatt Earp shot his horse out from under him. Kennedy was caught, but unfortunately, his father was able to secure him an acquittal at trial. Kennedy left town and later killed two more people before being killed himself. Deputy Bill Tillman always felt that he should have done more to avenge Dora Hand, and so he doubled down on his commitment to law and order.

He never achieved the household name status of his close friends Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, but he did earn a reputation for being one of the hardest working lawmen in the West. Together with other lawmen, notably his future fellow Deputy U.S. Marshals Heck Thomas and Chris Madsen, Bill Tillman took his hard-working ethic to Oklahoma territory and helped tame the last wild frontier. As a podcast network, our first priority has always been audio and the stories we're able to share with you. But we also sell merch, and organizing that was made both possible and easy with Shopify.

Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell and grow at every stage of your business. From the launch your online shop stage all the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage. Whether you're selling scented soap or offering outdoor outfits, Shopify helps you sell everywhere. They have an all-in-one e-commerce platform and in-person POS system, so wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With the internet's best converting checkout, 36% better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms, Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers. Shopify has allowed us to share something tangible with the podcast community we've built here,

selling our beanies, sweatshirts, and mugs to fans of our shows without taking up too much time from all the other work we do to bring you even more great content. And it's not just us. Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. Shopify is also the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across 175 countries. Because businesses that grow, grow with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash realm, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash r-e-a-l-m now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com.

From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. And this season, we're telling the stories of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling the stories of the Three Guardsmen, the trio of U.S. Marshals who neutralized some of the worst criminals in the Old West. This is Episode 5, Bill Tillman, Dodge City Deputy. This is a fun one. William Matthew Tillman Jr. was born on the 4th of July in 1854 in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and technically, he was the first child born in the new town of Fort Dodge. The town was previously a military outpost, but the army abandoned it.

A few months later, a town grew around the old fort, and the people just kept the name Fort Dodge. His father, William Tillman Sr., was also born on the 4th of July. The elder Tillman was a soldier turned farmer. He may have had a drinking problem, because Fort Dodge military records show he was in confinement at least once for excessive drinking. That may be why Bill Jr. never touched a drop of alcohol and never used tobacco or cursed. When he was a few years old, his family moved to Atchison County, Kansas. In his later years, Tillman's second wife recalled an event that made a deep impression on young Bill Tillman. It was the day he met the most famous gunfighter who ever lived.

At some point before Tillman reached adolescence, he was returning from a blackberry hunt when his hero, Wild Bill Hickok, rode up beside him. Hickok asked young Tillman if he had seen a man ride through with a team of mules and a wagon. Hickok said the wagon and mules had been stolen in Abilene, Kansas, and he had pursued the thief for 400 miles. Tillman excitedly told Hickok that he'd seen the thief pass him on the road that led to Atchison. Hickok caught the criminal before he left the area and took him back to Abilene. Bill Tillman was so taken by Hickok's passion for upholding the law that he was inspired to become a scout and a lawman.

When he was nine or ten years old, his older brother Richard lied about his age and joined the Union Army to fight in the Civil War alongside their father. For the duration of the war, it was up to Bill to run the farm and raise livestock with his younger siblings and his mother Amanda. Like many boys of Tillman's generation, and previous generations, and many more to come, he became an excellent shot by hunting rabbits and prairie chickens for food for the family. He also had a pair of cap-and-ball pistols, and he loved to practice shooting from the hip like his idol Wild Bill. By the time Tillman was 12, he could shoot the head off a

chicken or a snake, and he could hit a spot on a playing card from 30 to 50 feet. What little we know about Tillman's younger life comes from the recollections of his second wife, Zoe. The source is problematic, but some of it can be corroborated by others. She wrote that Tillman left home in 1870 and joined up with three young cousins. They made a hunting trip on their own, deep into the forbidden land of Indian territory. They filled two wagons with buffalo meat and sold it on their way home. The following year, when he was 17, Tillman and brother Richard supposedly received a contract to hunt buffalo and sell the meat to the men who were building the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad. There's a story that says Wyatt Earp claimed his friend Billy Tillman took 3,300 hides in just eight months

between September of 1871 and April of 1872. Tillman himself claimed he killed more than 11,000 buffalo in a five-year period. His favorite weapon was his sharps rifle, which he kept his entire life. And if he was as prolific as he claimed, it's no surprise that he eventually drew the attention of Native American warriors on the southern plains. They were understandably outraged by the wholesale slaughter of the buffalo by white hunters, and it seems like Tillman might have had a close encounter in the early 1870s. His widow wrote about a time when Tillman and his partner were surprised on foot by a pair of warriors on horseback.

The warriors ordered the hunters to mount up and follow them to their camp. Tillman and his friend knew they would be tortured and killed, so they watched for an opportunity to escape. While their horses were fording a deep stream, Tillman gave a signal. He and his friend pulled their hunting knives and dove on the warriors. The hunters stabbed the warriors in what was probably a thrashing fight in the stream. Tillman and his friend won the fight and the warriors' bodies floated away. After that near-death experience, and with the fact that buffalo were becoming scarce, Tillman decided

his days as a hunter were done. It was time to move on to something else, and that something proved to be a lawman in Dodge City, but not before he walked the fine line between lawman and outlaw. Tillman drifted through Kansas and Colorado. Some sources say that around this time, he narrowly escaped a lynching in Colorado after being falsely accused for murder. In the early 1870s, he definitely participated in some shady activities, which he later tried to sweep under the rug. activities, which he later tried to sweep under the rug. When nearly all of the buffalo on the southern plains had been slaughtered, Tillman and many like him had to find a quick source of income. They began stealing horses from the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, and Comanche and selling them back. After that, he drifted into Dodge City, a place that might have presented a kind of

crossroads. If he wanted to embrace the outlaw lifestyle, he could certainly do it in Dodge. But Tillman went the other way and began following in the footsteps of his hero, Wild Bill Hickok. According to his late widow, Tillman's first job for the law was in 1874, when he was 20 years old. His job was to go into Indian territory and recover stolen oxen. But the young man really didn't have enough work until he hung his hat in Dodge City. Two years later, Dodge City was the newest boomtown on the plains. Cattle drives began to pour into town in the spring and early summer of 1876.

With the influx of cowboys who drank and gambled to excess, the people of Dodge made a commitment to beef up their law enforcement. For the next four seasons, Dodge had a hell of a lineup of peacekeepers. The roster included Charlie Bassett, Wyatt Earp and occasionally his brother Morgan, the Masterson brothers, Ed, Bat and Jim, and Neil Brown at various times. When they needed more help for a posse, gunfighter and gambler Luke Short joined the team, and of course, Tillman soon joined their ranks. He was in Dodge by 1875 when he turned 21.

He built a ranch on Bluff Creek. He partnered with a new friend to open a saloon called the Crystal Palace, though Tillman still refused to touch alcohol. For reasons that are mostly lost to history, the partners gave up on the saloon after only a year. But Tillman wasn't entirely out of the bar business. He bought another saloon called The Oasis. He let his brother Frank run it and had few day-to-day interactions with the business. A Dodge City newspaper reportedly said the specialty of The Oasis would be Methodist cocktails and hard-shell Baptist lemonades. The year 1877 was marked by polar opposites for Bill Tillman. On the good side,

he married a woman named Flora Kendall. She was the teenage widow of his good friend, a man who was killed when his horse fell on him. Flora was a young woman, a young widow, and a young mother all at the same time. She had a baby with her deceased husband, mother all at the same time. She had a baby with her deceased husband, and Tillman probably represented some safety and security. On the bad side of Tillman's polar opposites in 1877, he became seriously ill with a sickness that was nicknamed St. Anthony's Fire. It was a bacterial infection that caused bright red blotches on his face and lower extremities. He eventually recovered, and after that, he made his biggest career move. In January of 1878, Ford County Sheriff Bat Masterson hired Bill Tillman to be his deputy. As we explained in our series about Dodge City, the group of lawmen in town shuffled constantly.

Regardless of whether the men were in the city marshal's office, or the county sheriff's office, or the U.S. Marshal Service, they were all based out of Dodge City, and they all worked together to keep the peace in town and the surrounding area. That was certainly the case in 1878, Tillman's first full year as a lawman in Dodge, though his time with a badge was marred by troubles of his own. For Tillman, some publicity troubles started immediately. Bandits robbed a train in the next county over from Dodge City. According to an official complaint, Dodge City. According to an official complaint, Tillman was suspected as an accomplice.

But in February of 1878, the Dodge City and Atchison newspapers printed an acquittal notice. Tillman was cleared due to lack of evidence. Then in April, he was arrested for horse stealing. A man discovered his horses were missing, and they were found in a livery stable on land that Tillman and another man claimed they owned. There's no record of what ultimately happened with the case, but Tillman never faced any kind of punishment. And then, his ranch house burned to the ground. According to legend and Tillman's widow, it was a band of marauding Cheyenne who did it. They acted under orders from Chief Dullknife as they headed north from their reservations. After that, Tillman sold the ranch land and moved his growing family into Dodge proper.

But there was plenty of trouble in town as well. It was a tough place to raise a family, something that bothered lots of spouses of lawmen in those days. In 1878, Dodge was still the premier destination for cattle drives from Texas. It was a major trading and shipping center, and despite the collection of lawmen in town, Dodge was still prone to serious violence. On April 9, 1878, Texas cowboys killed Bat Masterson's brother Ed, who was the town marshal. In July, a deputy U.S. marshal was shot and killed in the Long Branch Saloon. City Marshal Wyatt Earp deputized Doc Holliday, a recent arrival in Dodge, to help the lawmen fend off

a lynch mob that wanted to storm the jail and hang the man who killed the marshal. Later that month, Wyatt and Jim Masterson ended up in a gunfight on a city street with some drunken cowboys. One of the cowboys died, and Wyatt was pretty sure that his bullet killed the man. If so, the Cowboy was the only person Wyatt killed during his four years as a peace officer in Dodge. And then, three months later, came the tragedy of Dora Hand. Texas Cowboy Spike Kennedy tried to murder the mayor of Dodge, but ended up killing the popular young entertainer. Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Bill Tillman and others lit out after Kennedy and caught him, though Kennedy slipped the noose thanks to his wealthy father. After that episode, Dodge finally calmed down as winter arrived. The following spring,

in March of 1879, Tillman experienced more setbacks. He lost his house to foreclosure. He took a temporary job in New Mexico, running a tent restaurant for construction workers. His wife, Flora, and their children, her child from her first marriage and their new son, James, stayed with Tillman's parents in Atchison, Kansas, while he set up a temporary home for them in New Mexico. But shortly after he got there, he heard the terrible news that their son James had passed away, probably from pneumonia. Flora eventually made it to New Mexico in time to have their daughter Dorothy in 1881, but two years later in 1883, the family moved back to Dodge City.

Tillman became the undersheriff of Ford County, and the next year, in 1884, he rose to county sheriff. But that job was temporary. By April, he was the new city marshal of Dodge, and the citizens presented him with a solid gold badge. In a classic move in the confusing changes in Dodge City, the former mayor, who brought Tillman back in as undersheriff, became the county sheriff. The newspapers were filled with stories about the new city marshal and the new county sheriff using diplomacy to bring in cattle thieves and horse thieves from outside the city limits. A small but vocal reform movement in Dodge was adamant that its days of letting drunken cowboys shoot up the town were over. Of course, that was wishful thinking, but it helped to have lawmen

who could be the poster children for even tempers and good character. Though ironically, Tillman still appeared in court every so often to answer for a charge or two. It was just a strange facet of his life. He didn't drink, he didn't smoke, he didn't curse. He was a family man and a steady lawman who wasn't a loose cannon with a gun, but he kept getting charged with little crimes throughout his life. The next one, though, wasn't so little. He found himself in a situation that was as serious as they came. In the summer of 1888, he came as close as he ever would to the type of quick-draw gunfight that made Wild Bill Hickok famous.

The confrontation came at the end of a rough four-year stretch for Bill Tillman and many others in Kansas. In January 1886, a terrible blizzard laid waste to large parts of the Midwest, including several counties in Kansas. At least 15 people froze to death on the outskirts of Dodge, requiring lawmen to help carry their corpses into the city for a proper burial. Almost everyone who owned livestock lost a good deal of their herds, including Bill Tillman. In March of 1886, two years after he became city marshal, he resigned his office so he could fix his ranch and try to build up his supply of animals. But like many lawmen in Dodge, he held multiple badges at the same time, and he was able to keep his commission as a Ford County deputy sheriff. And the following year was when the trouble began with a man named Ed Prather. Prather was a former assistant to the mayor of Dodge City,

the same mayor who became county sheriff after he left office. Prather himself was a deputy sheriff in the next county over from Ford, and he had a serious drinking problem and a short temper. It seems that on August 7, 1887, Prather shot and seriously wounded the man who took over as city marshal in Dodge when Tillman was forced to resign to save his ranch. Three weeks later, Prather shot another man and killed him. Two weeks after that, Prather turned himself in to Deputy Sheriff Bill Tillman. Tillman posted bail for Prather so that Prather could get out of jail. It seems like there was some sort of friendship between the two men, no matter how unusual it might look on the surface.

Tillman's second wife wrote a biography of her husband, and she claimed Prather had a romantic interest in Tillman's sister, but the sister wasn't interested in Prather. Maybe that denial ruined whatever loose friendship existed between Tillman and Prather. It's hard to tell. But on July 4, 1888, Bill Tillman turned 34 years old. Law enforcement duties took him to Farmer City, Kansas, where he soon encountered none other than Ed Prather.

According to a local newspaper, Prather was yelling at the staff of a restaurant and kicking in doors at local shops. Then Prather heard Tillman was nearby and faced off with him. Prather spewed verbal threats, but Tillman said nothing. He just let Prather waste his energy up to a point. Tillman could tolerate the abuse, especially if it was just drunken ranting. But when Prather's hand moved toward the pistol in his holster, that was a different story. Tillman pulled his gun and leveled it at Prather's face. Tillman ordered Prather three times to take his hand off his gun and leveled it at Prather's face. Tillman ordered Prather three times to take

his hand off his gun. If Tillman had been close enough, he would have reached over and disarmed Prather. He wasn't close enough to reach Prather's gun, but he was close enough that he wouldn't miss if it came to that. Prather made some sort of move toward his revolver and that was all it took. Prather made some sort of move toward his revolver, and that was all it took. Tillman shot him and killed him instantly. A coroner's jury reviewed the circumstances and found Tillman not guilty of homicide, calling it a case of justifiable defense. It was an unfortunate incident, but one that was all too common in the Old West.

Six months later, Tillman found himself embroiled in an issue that was also fairly common in the Old West, but rarely gets mentioned. These were the days of rapid expansion, both on a national level and a local level. As the populations of states grew, lawmakers created new counties. Each time a new county was created, it needed what we call in America a county seat. It's like a local capital in each county. Choosing the town that would be the county seat was a huge deal, and with it came loads of trouble.

That's how Bill Tillman and Wyatt Earp found themselves caught up in the political absurdity of the Gray County War. Dodge City is the county seat of Ford County. The next county to the west of Ford is Gray County. Gray County was established in early 1887, and the town of Cimarron was designated the temporary county seat. The town that had the honor of becoming the county seat received an instant boost to its economy. New people came to town. New businesses came to town. A railroad might even come to town one day. So the competition to become the county seat was fierce. Choosing a permanent county seat often meant election

disputes that resulted in lawsuits and even violence. And that's what happened in the fight between the town of Cimarron and the town of Ingalls. And remember, this is Ingalls, Kansas, not Ingalls, Oklahoma, the site of the gunfight between outlaws and U.S. marshals. In Gray County, millionaire Asa Sewell badly wanted Ingalls to be the county seat, and he was willing to do almost anything to make it happen. Sewell had a financial interest in Ingalls. In the beginning of the fight for the county seat, it was a three-way race. Then Sewell convinced the citizens of the third town to drop their petition and vote for Ingalls. In return, he paid them

hundreds of dollars, and he promised to build them a railroad. At election time, he wanted a lawman on hand to, ironically, make sure no one tried to bribe the voters who he had already bribed in secret. That lawman was Deputy Sheriff Bill Tillman. Despite all of Sewell's efforts, Ingalls lost the vote, and Cimarron became the county seat. Sewell was furious, and he convinced officials in Ingalls to protest the results. Officials in Cimarron found out about Sewell's bribes and charged Ingalls with fraud. The whole matter went to the state Supreme Court, where it languished for 18 months. Now, I know this is probably confusing with all the names and places that most of you have never heard of, but stick with it a little longer. I promise the

fun part is coming. So, while the case sat at the state Supreme Court, the battle was building in Gray County. A man from Ingalls was elected the new Gray County Clerk. As County Clerk, he supervised the official records of Gray County. He demanded that the county records be transferred from Cimarron to his home in Ingalls. The officials in Cimarron basically said hell no, and that's when Bill Tillman and Wyatt Earp joined the fray. The millionaire Asa Sewell offered Tillman $1,000 to get the records from Cimarron and bring them to Ingalls. Cimarron and bring them to Ingalls. That was a huge payday for Tillman, so he said sure he'd do it, and he picked five men, including Wyatt, to help him with the task. The Marshal of Ingalls swore all six men in as deputies. On a frosty Sunday morning in January

1889, the six men rode to the Cimarron Courthouse. Tillman picked Sunday because he figured most of the men in town would be sleeping off a Saturday night drunk. He was right, and the new deputies began loading the records into a wagon. But after a few trips from the courthouse to the wagon, a bystander thought their actions looked suspicious. It looked an awfully lot like six men were stealing the records from the courthouse, which of course they were. The man sounded the alarm. Before long, citizens of Cimarron grabbed their guns and began firing at the deputies. As Tillman and Earp threw the last of the books into the wagon, bullets found their marks.

Tillman was wounded in the thigh, the wagon, bullets found their marks. Tillman was wounded in the thigh, and two more deputies were hit. They slapped the reins of the horses and galloped out of town before they all got shot to hell. Probably without telling Tillman, Asa Sewell had also paid the people of Ingalls to sneak into Cimarron and start shooting if the deputies ran into trouble. sneak into Cimarron and start shooting if the deputies ran into trouble. So, while Tillman and Wyatt and others raced away, Cimarron continued to explode with gunfire behind them. And even then, all that effort amounted to nothing. It took seven more years to resolve the matter, but in 1896, Cimarron was declared the county seat of Gray County once and for all. By then, Bill Tillman and his family were long gone from Dodge City.

He had moved on to the next phase of his life, the phase that really made him famous. A few weeks after the Gray County craziness in the winter of 1889, he heard about the first land rush that was going to happen in Oklahoma. He packed up his family and moved south and put himself on a path to becoming a U.S. Deputy Marshal and one of the legendary Three Guardsmen. Next time on Legends of the Old West, the hanging judge, Isaac Parker, makes Bill Tillman a deputy U.S. marshal for the Western District. And over the next five years, Tillman plays a key role in bringing down scores of outlaws, including the infamous Doolin Dalton gang. That's next week on the season finale here on Legends of the Old West. finale here on Legends of the Old West. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week for new episodes. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no

commercials and exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships begin at just $5 per month. This series was researched and written by Julia Bricklin. Original music by Rob Vallier. Copy editing by me, Chris Wimmer, and I'm your host and producer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Check out our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, for more details, and join us on social media.

We're at Old West Podcast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And you can stream all our episodes on YouTube. Just search for Legends of the Old West Podcast. This show is part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. Please visit airwavemedia.com to check out other great podcasts like History of the Great War, the Pirate History Podcast, and many more.

Thanks for listening. Si vous faites vos achats tout en travaillant, en mangeant ou même en écoutant ce balado, alors vous connaissez et aimez l'excitation du magasinage. Mais avez-vous ce frisson d'obtenir le meilleur deal? Les membres de Rakuten, eux, oui. Ils magasinent les marques qu'ils aiment et font d'importantes économies,

en plus des remises en argent. Et vous pouvez aussi commencer à gagner des remises en argent dans vos magasins préférés, comme Old Navy, Best Buy et Expedia, et même cumuler les ventes et les remises en argent. C'est facile à utiliser et vous obtenez vos remises par PayPal ou par chèque. L'idée est simple. Les magasins paient Rakuten pour leur envoyer des gens magasinés. Et Rakuten partage l'argent avec vous sous forme de remise.

Téléchargez l'application gratuite Rakuten et ne manquez jamais un bon deal. Ou allez sur rakuten.ca pour en avoir plus pour votre argent. C'est R-A-K-U-T-E-N.