Joe Elliott hied himself to the country…

From the Sundance Gazette, September 12, 1885 — Thursday night last, Joe Elliott took Russell & Barton’s best team and buggy, and hied himself to the country, we presume, to see his girl. He tells the story: that as he had just passed through a gate and had gone back to close it, and thus left the team standing alone, they became scared and ‘vamoosed’ in the darkness, and he was left afoot on the prairie. Himself and others, hunted till noon for the outfit but could find no trace of them, and it was feared they might have gone over an embankment and killed themselves. About three o’clock however, Ike Meeks found the outfit in a gulch, the buggy upside down and the team standing quietly. Strange as it may appear, not a single thing was injured in any way. There were some happy boys when the rig was brought home, but that girl of Joe’s will have to talk mighty nice to him if she ever gets him out another night.

Sundance Gazette, 11/20/1886 — The familiar face of Joe Elliott is again seen on our streets. Joe has been on the range all summer.

Sundance Gazette, 3/28/1885 –Joe Elliott dropped the white apron the first of the week and will hie himself to the range again. It is as natural for a range man to go there in spring, as it is for a duck to take its northward flight.

Sundance Gazette, 01/25/1889 –Joe Elliott came in from the 6 half-circle this week to meet I. J. Morgan, the manager, who has been spending the winter in his old Delaware home. Mr. Morgan has not arrived yet, but is due here Feb. 1.

Sundance Gazette, 10/17/1890 –Deputy Sheriff Elliott, of Merino, was here several days this week. He says the cattle shipments for the season have nearly closed.

Sundance Gazette, 11/14/1890 –Last Friday Deputy-Sheriff Elliott arrested L. Tettley, a butcher at Merino, and two young men in his employ on the charge of stealing cattle. They were brought to Newcastle for a preliminary hearing. The boys, named Jake Trier and John Timm, had an examination before Henry Leppla, and were bound over to the district court on $900 and $1,000 bonds, in default of which they langush in the brand new county bastile. Tettley got a change of venue and James Shively heard the tale of woe, and bound him over to the tune of $1,500.

Two stories from the Sundance Gazette, 11/21/1890 — L. Tettley, the Merino butcher who was bound over to the district court on the charge of killing range cattle, was released yesterday he having furnished the required bond. T. Waggoner deposited 1,500 in the bank as a bond.
….
Deputy Sheriff Elliott brought word to town Tuesday that Tim Madden had died that day at Merino of pneumonia. He recently came from Buffalo, where he had been employed as a stage driver and cowboy. He was about 30 years old, and single.

Two Stories from Newcastle Journal 04/10/1891 –The case of the State vs. L. Tettley for rustling cattle was called. Tettley plead not guilty.
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Information having been filed against Thomas Waggoner for attempting to influence a witness, the defense objected to the wording of the information and the objection was sustained. The grand jury will report at 2 o’clock this afternoon.

Wyoming Weekly Republican, 06/24/1891 — James Moore, better known as Jimmy, the Butcher, was found lying dead in his underclothes beside a building in Merino Wednesday morning. He has been a hard drinker for years, and for a month sobered up and worked in a meat market at Merino. Losing his job, he went on a spree lasting ten days, winding up in the above condition. He had evidently got up out of bed and gone out doors to vomit when he died from the effects of his debauch.

Newcastle Journal 06/26/1891 –Newcastle, Wyo., June 22 — The great topic of conversation the past week has been the lynching of Tom Wagoner, who is quite freely charged with not only being a horse rustler — this term meaning one who steals horses on the open range and by changing the brands or branding colts makes the property his own — but being the head of a gang operating between Nebraska through the Big Horn basin to Montana….

Cheyanne Weekly Sun, 07/02/1891 –NEWCASTLE, June 27. — Reports reached here to-night that three rustlers held up Deputy Sheriff Elliott at Wagoner’s ranch and orderd him to leave the county. It is feared thy have regained possession of the ranch and are running off horses.

Wyoming Weekly Republican, 07/08/1891 — A premature report of the probable taking off of Fred W. Coates, administrator of the estate of Tom Waggoner, and Deputy Sheriff Joe Elliott, by the rustlers about Waggoner’s ranch, was exploded by the return of Coates, Elliott, Sheriff Stack and Joe Duling, Sunday night at 10pm. The report started from a herder at the ranch, who became frightened at the stampede of the 60 head of horses in the pasture which broke through the wire fence, killing two horses in the melee. The herder came into Merino for assistance and said he had not seen Coates and Elliott for 3 days. Joe Elliott says he was fired on by two men who were supposed to be running off a bunch of horses. A number of shots were exchanged but no one was hurt. The men left the horses and Elliott run them into the ranch. This took place on the divide between Much and Fiddlers creek. Elliott left town on Tuesday with a load of grub and a cowboy to return to the ranch. He thinks rustlers are after some of the stock. Fred Coates will also return to the ranch. — Newcastle News.

All articles made available by the Wyoming Newspaper Project –

http://www.wyonewspapers.org/

Lead-up to a War

The late 1880s in Wyoming saw an increase in tensions between small ranchers and the large cattle corporations, like the ones Joe Elliott worked for as a cowpuncher and cattle drive foreman in the 1880s. There were nearly a million head of cattle on the Wyoming rangelands in the mid-1880s. A successful homesteader might have had a couple thousand cattle on his land (usually much less), but a single cattle corporation might have owned anywhere from a few tens of thousands to 200,000 head of cattle. The large 101 ranch in northeastern Wyoming, owned by Joe Elliott’s friend Elias Whitcomb, “branded 20,000 calves a year for several years” (Hope).

The harsh winter of 1886-1887 had a couple of important consequences. For one, it killed off large numbers of cattle, precipitating the consolidation of some of the large outfits. For another, it was devastating to most small ranchers. Prior to that winter, Joe Elliott was a foreman in charge of large roundups, having as many as 300 hired cowboys under his supervision at one time. When his outfit, the Six Half Circle, merged with another company in ‘87, he found himself unemployed. This led him, within a year or so, to take a job as a stock detective for the Wyoming Stock Grower’s Association. Here’s what he said of that time:

After the hard winter of ‘86-’87, when so many cattle died, the PLR and Six Half Circle were turned over to Billy Ricketts to run with the Half Circle L outfit, and I was out of a job.

I’m not clear on my moves for the next year or so. I jumped around so much at that time that I’m not sure of dates.

I drove one or two herds for the 101. They were driving up onto Beaver Creek in Montana. One, I think, I drove part way and turned over to Doc Long, who was driving a herd ahead of me, and I went back after another bunch.

I took a crew and went over and rounded up Uncle Whit’s (E. W. Whitcomb’s) horses. He wanted me to stay with him, on the expectation that he and his foreman would part company, and that I would take over. But I wouldn’t do it. I told him, “If you’re going to fire George now, I’ll go to work.” But I didn’t want the job otherwise.

Jack Rogers was sheriff of Crook county. He told me that if I wanted to, to come in and work for him as deputy sheriff. I didn’t. I think I went up and got one man, and brought him back to Sundance.

It was about this time that I went to work for the Association as a stock detective. They put me at Merino (now Upton) [in Weston county]. That was my headquarters as long as I worked for the Wyoming Association.

As another consequence of the harsh winter, many of the cowpunchers who had worked for the large ranches also lost their jobs. Many of these cowboys, knowing the land and the cattle business, took advantage of the Homesteader Act and staked out their own claims on the range. These new ranchers were a threat to the big companies, who were now under great pressure from their financial backers in the East to restock their herds, and most of these cow hands-turned-homesteaders were blackballed from further work with the large ranches.

Tensions erupted on all sides. It is undoubtedly true that many new homesteaders grew their herds by stealing cattle, especially by cutting out unbranded calves (mavericks) from the company herds that covered the range. Yet many honest homesteaders would find their own stock missing after a company drive crossed their land and subsumed their stock. This happened when company drovers moved their cattle onto homesteaders’ land in search of better grass on an already over-grazed range. Fences were still a rare thing on the Wyoming range.

What made things even worse was resentment over the “Maverick Bill,” which the WSGA had pushed through the territorial legislature in 1884. The bill fanned the flames of a steadily building class war between the WSGA member ranches and the homesteaders. The bill gave the association “sole authority to conduct roundups in the territory and claim mavericks. This bill… was bitterly resented, flagrantly violated, and practically unenforceable…. The detectives continued to identify stock thieves, develop evidence of their guilt, and arrest them, but it became increasingly difficult to obtain indictments and convictions because of a rising tide of resentment against the Maverick Bill, the big cattlemen, and especially the detectives themselves” (Alias Frank Canton, DeArment, pp. 80-81). This state of affairs led the residents of Johnson county to organized their own stock association, and to schedule their spring roundup of 1892 a month ahead of the regular WSGA roundup. This infuriated WSGA member ranches, who saw it as a ploy to rustle every maverick on the range. By most accounts, the the WSGA’s ill-fated “invasion” of Johnson county in April of 1892 had already been planned, but the announcement of an earlier roundup in Johnson county made the WSGA’s action more urgent and hasty. Joe Elliott, who participated in the invasion, said this:

Something had to be done, yes, but not what we did nor in the way we did it. Our affair was badly planned and badly managed all the way through. What we should have done, when we heard that the rustlers were planning this shot-gun roundup, was to have gone into Buffalo with a few good men, say 20 well armed men, and told the people there that we didn’t want any trouble, but that we were going to see to it that the roundup was held according to custom and law. We’d have had Angus [Johnson county's sheriff] on our side, I’m sure of it. I believe that suggestion was made, and rejected. I didn’t make it; I was just a hired man.

Wyoming Photos

Here’s a link to some photos I’ve taken this summer and fall here in Wyoming. Feel free to check out the other albums too.

(It seems you’ll probably have to cut and paste the link to your address bar — the hyperlink feature isn’t working for some reason. Sorry.)

http://s248.photobucket.com/albums/gg164/chadeller/Wyoming/

Charles Amiah and Mary Elizabeth Davis-Elliott

Yesterday I received a short e-mail from a granddaughter of Joe Elliott. She attached these photos of Joe’s parents, Charles and Mary Elizabeth. Very cool to recognize some of the features, like Mary Elizabeth’s chin, that can be seen in my family. Thank you, Beth.

The “Invaders”

Taken at Fort Russell, Cheyenne, Wyoming, 1892. Joe Elliott is standing, third from the right.

An older Joe

B. W. Hope’s photo, taken in the early 1940s, when Joe was about 80 years old.

More about Joe

Here’s Joe Elliott while under arrest after the Johnson County Invasion of April 1892. This photo was taken probably within days of his 32nd birthday. To the chagrin of most Johnson County residents, none of the invaders were convicted, mostly due to the county’s lack of funds. The county’s case against Joe Elliott for the November 1891 attempt on Nate Champion’s life was also dropped. (Champion identified Joe as one of his 3 attackers that morning, but Joe vehemently denied any involvement, stating in the Hope interview that he had never met or seen Champion until the April ‘92 standoff at Kaycee, where both Champion and his companion, Nick Raye, were killed.)

Joe Elliott was released in the fall of 1892. Shortly afterward, a Gillette, Wyoming, newspaper announced his arrival in that city with Mike Shonsey, another stock detective who participated in the invasion. Joe told B. W. Hope the following:

After the trial was over, Mike Shonsey started to Montana to take charge of a herd there, and I went along as, I suppose, what you’d call a bodyguard. We left the train at Moorcroft, and Billy Ricketts, of the Half Circle L, met us at the 101 with horses. He warned us to turn back, said we’d be killed if we didn’t. The man in charge of the ranch at the 101 asked us if we planned to spend the night there. We said, yes, we’d planned to. He said, “You’re welcome, of course, but if you stay I’m going to take my family and get out of here, because there’ll sure be a battle before morning.” Well, that convinced us, and we turned back.

Wyoming and Joe Elliott

 On my first day in Sheridan I went to the public library to see what I could find relating to my great-grandfather, Joe Elliott. I had one title in mind, and a long one: Banditti of the Plains, or the Cattlemen’s Invasion of Wyoming in 1892 [The Crowning Infamy of the Ages] (1894), by Asa Shinn Mercer. Seattlites might know of Mercer. Here’s the biographical blurb from the dust jacket:

Asa Shinn Mercer founded the University of Washington and established several frontier publications before going to Wyoming in 1883. There he edited Northwest Live Stock Journal and wrote his most significant book, The Banditti of the Plains.

More about this book later. 

As I was browsing the shelves around Banditti I saw another title: Secrets: The Tom Wagoner Story (2007), by Collene Pottat. I thumbed through its notes section at the back and noticed reference to “Joe Elliott’s Story.” A little more page turning directed me to the archives of a magazine called Annals of Wyoming, which the Sheridan library has in their “Wyoming Room.” 

Thanks to my cousin Marny, most members of my family have a copy the story that B.W. Hope assembled after interviewing Joe Elliott in the early 1940s. I had assumed, for some reason, that it hadn’t made it into publication, so was surprised to find it. I was also very relieved, because I had managed to forget to pack my copy before coming out here. 

I will elaborate later on the Wagoner story when I find out more. What I know so far is what Joe Elliott wrote: that many people assumed at the time, and throughout his whole life, that he had killed Wagoner (he denies having done it, but admitted to threatening him). Indeed, most of the things I’ve found so far through web searches mention Joe Elliott as at least involved in Wagoner’s lynching.

After I had made photo copies of Joe Elliott’s Story, I talked to the Wyoming Room librarian about what I’m researching. He asked if I knew about ancestry.com or other genealogy web sites. Such sites typically charge monthly subscription fees, but the library subscribes to at least two sites, which library card holders can access from the library. To show me an example of what I can find, he asked me where Joe Elliott was in 1930. Within a minute he had printed out a page from the 1930 census for Boise, Idaho. Here is what I found under the categories that I could make out (many were illegible).

Head of household, Joe Elliott, age 64; age at first marriage, 42.

Wife, Nettie V. (my mother’s namesake), 56; age at first marriage, 37

Son, Sidney L. 17

Daughter, Virginia J. (my maternal grandmother), 15

Son, Joe, 14

Son, George, 11

Niece, (Della?) Smith, 18

The census also says that everyone in the household could read and write, and all of Joe’s and Nettie’s children had attended school at some time in 1929, though not their niece. They lived at 1419 24th Street in Boise, Idaho. The value of their house was $2,000.

The details that jumped out at me once I had deciphered the blurry printout were, first, that Joe Elliott, having been born in 1860, would have been 70 years old in 1930, not 64 as the census shows. Another discrepancy is Joe’s and Nettie’s ages at the times of their first marriages (and odd and telling category). Joe’s is listed as 42, and Nettie’s as 37. 

Joe Elliott was 42 years old in 1902. According to the Story, he was probably in California at this time. He didn’t meet Nettie until he got to Boise, Idaho. Assuming that her first marriage was to Joe, they would have married in or around 1911, when she was 37 — 9 years after Joe Elliott’s assumed first marriage. 

Only his marriage to Nettie is mentioned in the Story, and I haven’t heard from any family members about another marriage, but it is very believable, especially after hearing that a woman claiming to be Joe Elliott’s granddaughter is looking for his other descendants. As for the incorrect age on the census form, the only explanation I can think of, aside from a clerical error, is that he lied, perhaps because he was still working and was avoiding age discrimination. If it is a lie, I doubt is has anything to do with hiding the first marriage, as there would still be a 3 year discrepancy with the false age.

The librarian’s quick search also yielded information about Joe Elliott’s work. He didn’t show me where he’d found it, but said that Joe Elliott was a “laborer” and worked for the city of Boise (which might further explain why he would lie on the census). 

So, as you can see, the details are already coming in — and I’m just scratching the surface. 

So that you can get a better idea what and whom I’m researching, here is the note by B.W. Hope that introduces “Joe Elliott’s Story”:

Joe Elliott (1860-1946) was a stock detective for cattlemen’s associations in Wyoming and South Dakota in the 1880s and 1890s. His name appears frequently in accounts of the range conflicts of the those years. Particularly, histories and reminiscences of the period name him as one of those involved in the hanging of Tom Waggoner, as a member of the party that attacked Nate Champion in the fall of 1891, and as one of the “invaders” in the Johnson County War.

 

In met Joe Elliott in  Boise, Idaho, in the early 1940s. I found him to be an old gentleman who might have been a retired military man. He was intelligent, , well read,  respecter of law and authority, somewhat reserved and severe in manner, but as we became better acquainted, willing enough to talk about his past life.

 

In conversations that extended through several months, he told me of his experiences in the early days in Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana. As my notes on our conversations began to grow into a sequential account of his past life, we decided that after the war we would take a trip into Wyoming and South Dakota, in expectation that visiting old scenes would bring forth new and more complete memories of his experiences. But before this expedition into the past could be undertaken Joe Elliott died, April 17, 1946.

 

The following record of Joe Elliott’s reminiscences was set down as nearly as possible in his own word. Much of it is exactly as he told it, and all of it is as faithful as possible to Mr. Elliott’s recollections, his opinions, and his manner of speech. Absolute accuracy cannot be guaranteed, of course, due both to the possible deficiencies in my note taking and to the limitations of Mr Elliott’s memory, particularly, it should be pointed out that he never saw my manuscript (since it was considered to be preliminary to the more complete account that I intended to draft after our trip to Wyoming) and he thus had no opportunity to correct or clarify the record. However, I regularly checked and rechecked with him concerning matters on which my notes were incomplete or uncertain, and I believe that the possibility of serious inaccuracy is minimal. 

A new chapter…

If you’re reading this you probably know I quit walking in the beginning of July, about a day’s walk west of Pocatello, ID, after walking almost 800 miles. For weeks I was losing motivation and fretting about money. Also, no matter how I looked at it, I couldn’t figure out how I would get through the western half of Wyoming without serious help. I could go pretty far without buying food, but barely more than a day without refilling water — and there were LONG stretches ahead with no water.

Amazingly, the opportunity has now come up to stay in Wyoming for a while. About a month ago, after spending some time with my family in Idaho and Washington, I came to Sheridan, Wyoming, for a couple of weeks. My good friend Chris lives there with her husband, Scott, and since they were already expecting me on my way through the state, they invited me out for a visit. We had such a good time together for those two weeks (despite Chris having to weather a family tragedy that happened the week I arrived) that they offered to let me stay longer, perhaps through the winter. I was here once nine years ago, also in the winter, and loved the snow and cold. Now I get to see if I can handle a whole Wyoming winter.

Aside from the snow, the Bighorn Mountains, and potential employment, Wyoming has something else that’s drawing me: family history. My great-grandfather, Joe Elliott (my maternal grandmother’s father), was a cowboy in Wyoming from the late 1870s to about 1888. From that time until the late 1890s he worked for the Wyoming Stock Growers Association investigating and arresting cattle rustlers, and he became known (‘infamous’ is the more correct word) for his involvement in the Johnson County Cattle War. (Link here to see a picture and to find out more about the Cattle War: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Invaders.gif>. (He’s the third from the right.) Forty years after the fact, Joe got to tell his side of the story to an interviewer, B. W. Hope. By that time, many books and articles had been written about the event, and he refers to a couple of sources in those interviews. So far, I’ve seen very little of the information that’s out there, but that will soon change.

The cattle war proved to be one of the defining events in the “taming” of the West, and afterward, he and the other “invaders” became known and widely hated. He was one of only a small handful of men from the posse who lived and worked in Wyoming (the majority of the fifty or so “invaders” were paid mercenaries from Texas), and living there after the incident must have been difficult. During my trips to Wyoming, virtually every local I’ve talked to about the Johnson County War was familiar with it, and they all said the same thing upon hearing which side my grandfather fought for: “One of the bad guys.” He ended up spending about six more years in Wyoming before leaving, according to his own account, on foot, making it about 200 miles before catching a train to Sacramento, California.

Nighthawk

I once saw one of these in mid-afternoon, but otherwise only in the evenings and at night. They make a strange sound sometimes that isn’t a normal “call,” and it wasn’t until my last night of camping that I got a firsthand demonstration of how they do it. As I was setting up my tent I heard the already-familiar sound just above my head. Then I got the first of many repeat performances: It flew high into the air, over 100 yards, and held a position face-first into the wind. It wobbled, almost vibrated, on its long, thin wings in drafts until the decisive moment when it brought its wings in close and dove, using the wind for downward accelleration until it reached a dizzying speed. Just before reaching the ground –once under six or seven feet — it pulled out of the dive, making a loud buzzing noise with its wings. After watching this stunt a few times, I saw that the wings were held in a downward bow while it pulled up from these dives — an impressive-looking feat of strength. I thought that it was another strictly territorial behavior until I saw another nighthawk sitting on a sandy patch of ground about 30 feet away, watching the other’s diving as attentively as I had been. The diver would occasionally land in the same sandy patch, where I once saw it give its mate an impressive display of fanned feathers. It appeared the two were courting, and I hoped that my presence, rather than a disturbance, had given the male an opportunity to show off how effective of a protector he could be. When I awoke at sunrise, six hours later, the diving was still going on above my tent.