Cattle Kate - A Mystery Lynching

Cattle Kate a/k/a Ella Watson

SweetwaterValley-1880-DPL.jpg (518x170 -- 61691 bytes)

Sweetwater Valley, 1980, Denver Public Library

In addition to homesteading, Jim started a general store and tavern on his land. The businesses were successful due to the close proximity of his land to the Oregon and Mormon trails.

After Jim met Ella, he convinced her that she should move with him to his homestead. Inviting her to fix meals for the hungry customers, he suggested she could charge 50 cents per meal and keep the money. He also suggested that she might be able to homestead her own piece of land, a tract that was adjacent to his own. Ella agreed and was soon living in the Sweetwater Valley.

Ella’s divorce was finally official in March 1886 and just a few short months later, James and Ella applied for a marriage license in Lander, Wyoming. It is unclear if the couple ever did actually marry, as the completed application was never returned. Some said the two planned to get married after Ella proved her own homestead (only one claim per family was allowed.).

On June 29, 1886, Jim was appointed as the postmaster of his newly created community, as well as being made the Justice of the Peace. Living with Averell at his home, Ella worked for him in the general store and cafe. Ella saved her money and eventually purchased some cattle with her earnings. Settling on the adjacent land in August 1886, she built a two-room log house and began digging irrigation ditches. Ella tried to get a brand registered for her cattle but was refused due to what was known as the Maverick Law, passed in 1884.

This law provided that unbranded calves, found on the open range, could not be legally taken off the range by just anyone. They were to be branded on the neck with an “M” and became the exclusive property of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, a powerful group of men that controlled the cattle industry in Wyoming at the time. The Wyoming Stock Growers Association was also appointed as the official law enforcement agency for the Wyoming cattle industry.

The law also provided that those young calves be auctioned off to the highest bidder only by appointed representatives of the association and that the proceeds went to the association to cover the costs of policing the range. In 1886, a provision was added to the law that no one could brand calves except those receiving registered brands from the state. Further, small cattle ranchers or homesteaders were not permitted to bid on mavericks, unless they had a registered brand.

In essence, the law locked out the small ranchers and homesteaders from competing with the large Stock Growers Association. It also put their own calves at risk if they were to stray too far from their own property. When this occurred the association would round them up and sell them.

At this same time, the big cattle owners of the area began to illegally file claims to much of the area land. By placing movable cabins on their claims, they could state that the property had been “improved,” a requirement of the homestead act. After the claim was filed, they would then place logs under the cabins and roll them to another homestead property, repeating the process over and over again. Jim Averell, as a Justice of the Peace, began to write letters to the newspaper at Casper, Wyoming, which infuriated the large cattlemen.

Branding cattle in 1891.

This image available for photographic prints and downloads HERE!

Cheyenne, Wyoming in 1868.

This image available for photographic prints and downloads HERE!

On March 23, 1888, Ellen filed her official homestead claim with the Land Office in Cheyenne. Between both homesteads, James and Ellen now owned more than 320 acres of land. Ella continued to improve her property by building corrals for the livestock and fencing much of the property.

Finally, with a new governor, the 1888 Legislature repealed the Maverick Law under heavy pressure from the small cattle and landowners. In the fall of that year, Ellen bought 28 head of cattle from a man who was driving them from Nebraska to the Salt Lake basin.

But by the time he had arrived in the area, the cattle were footsore and in poor condition. On December 3, 1888 she applied for the WT brand through the Carbon County Brand Committee in Rawlings, but they rejected her application. On March 16, 1889, she bought a brand from a nearby rancher and since it was already registered with the Brand Committee, this time her application was accepted.

Early in 1889, Ellen unofficially adopted an eleven-year-old boy by the name of Gene Crowder. Crowder’s father, John M. Crowder, was a widower, a drifter, and a heavy drinker. Crowder had several children, but was unable to take care of young Gene, so Ellen took him in. Gene helped her with her growing ranch along with another fourteen-year-old boy named John L. DeCorey, who Ellen had hired to work for her. In April, Ralph Coe, Jim's twenty-year-old nephew from Wisconsin, joined the ranch.

Another friend who helped them was a neighbor by the name of B. Frank Buchanan who helped mend fences and helped Ellen with branding the cattle. By the middle of July 1889, Ellen had 41 head of cattle, branded with her new LU brand.

Continued Next Page

<<Previous 1 2 3 4 Next >>

From the Rocky Mountain General Store

From Hardtack to Home Fries by Barbara Haber

Culinary historian Barbara Haber takes a unique approach to the history of cooking in America, focusing on a remarkable assembly of little-known or forgotten Americans who helped shape the eating habits of the nation. As Curator of Books at Harvard University's Schlesinger Library, Haber had access to more than 16,000 cookbooks from which she has drawn inspiring and often surprising stories of the way meals have shaped America's past. Peppered throughout with recipes, Haber's fascinating survey adds a delicious new dimension to America's cultural heritage. New, paperback.