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The subject of
this sketch was born in Henryville, Canada East, on September 22d, 1852,
and removed to Wichita,
Kansas with his parents in 1869, where he
continued to reside until attaining his majority when he left his home and
became one of the first inhabitants of this city.
In June 5,
1877 he accepted the appointment of Assistant Marshal, and in the
December, 1877, having displayed marked adaptability for the position, he
was promoted to the Marshalship, in the discharge of the duties of which
he continued until his unfortunate death.
Possessed of a
geniality of temperament, a kindness of heart and a richness of personal
bravery, he had many warm friends and admirers.
As an officer
he followed the dictation of duty, striving at all times for its honest
and complete discharge and gaming for himself the dignity and respect that
of necessity followed from his determined intrepidity.
He died in the
service he performed so well, and has added one other to the list of those
who, living, were so many representatives, each of his day and generation,
but who dead, belong to all time, and whose voices ring down the ages in
solemn protest against the reign of violence and blood."
July, 1878 - Kokomo, Indiana Dispatch
"The Wickedest City in America! Its character as a hell,
out on the great plains, will be maintained in the minds of traveling
newspaper writers, just so long as the city shall remain a rendezvous for
the broad and immense uninhabited plains, by narrating the wildest and
wickedest phases of Dodge City. ... My experience in Dodge was a surprise
all around. I found nothing as I pictured it in my mind. I had expected,
from the descriptions I had read of it, to find it a perfect bedlam, a
sort of Hogathian Gin Alley, where rum ran down the street gutters and
loud profanity and vile stenches contended for the mastery of the
atmosphere. On the contrary, I was happily surprised to find the place in
the daytime as quiet and orderly as a country village in Indiana, and at
night the traffic in the wares of the fickle Goddess and human souls was
conducted with a system so orderly and quiet as to actually be painful to
behold. It is a most difficult task, I confess, to write up Dodge City in
a manner to do impartial fairness to every interest; the place has many
redeeming points, a few of which I have already mentioned. It is not
nearly so awful a place as reports make it. It is not true that the
stranger in the place runs a risk of being shot down in cold blood, for no
offense whatever."
July 26, 1878 - Dodge City Times
"Yesterday
morning about 3 o'clock this peaceful suburban city was thrown into
unusual excitement, and the turmoil was all caused by a rantankerous
cowboy who started the mischief by a too free use of his little revolver.
In Dodge City,
after dark, the report of a revolver generally means business and is an
indication that somebody is on the war path, therefore when the noise of
this shooting and the yells of excited voices rang out on the midnight
breeze, the sleeping community awoke from their slumbers, listened a while
to the click of the revolver, wondered who was shot this time, and then
went to sleep again. But in the morning many dreaded to hear the result of
the war lest it should be a story of bloodshed and carnage, or of death to
some familiar friend. But in this instance there was an abundance of noise
and smoke, with no very terrible results.
It seems that three or four herders were paying their respects to the city
and its institutions, and as is usually their custom, remained until about
3 o'clock in the morning, when they prepared to return to their camps.
They buckled on their revolvers, which they were not allowed to wear
around town, and mounted their horses, when all at once one of them
conceived the idea that to finish the night's revelry and give the natives
due warning of his departure, he must do some shooting, and forthwith he
commenced to bang away, one of the bullets whizzing into a dance hall near
by, causing no little commotion among the participants in the "dreamy
waltz" and quadrille.
Wyatt Earp and
James Masterson made a raid on the shootist who
gave them two or three volleys, but fortunately without effect. The
policemen returned the fire and followed the herders with the intention of
arresting them.
The firing
then became general, and some rooster who did not exactly understand the
situation, perched himself in the window of the dance hall and indulged in
a promiscuous shoot all by himself. The herders rode across the bridge
followed by the officers. A few yards from the bridge one of the herders
fell from his horse from weakness caused by a wound in the arm which he
had received during the fracas. The other herder made good his escape. The
wounded man was properly cared for and his wound, which proved to be a bad
one, was dressed by Dr. T. L. McCarty. His name is George Hoy, and he is
rather an intelligent looking young man."
January 1, 1878 -
Letter in the
Washington D. C.
Evening Star
"Dodge City is a wicked little town. Indeed, its character is so
clearly and egregiously bad that one might conclude, were the evidence in
these later times positive of its possibility, that it was marked for
special Providential punishment. Here those nomads in regions remote from
the restraints of moral, civil, social, and law enforcing life, the
Texas
cattle drovers, from the very tendencies of their situation the embodiment
of waywardness and wantonness, end the journey with their herds, and here
they loiter and dissipate, sometimes for months, and share the boughten
dalliances of fallen women. Truly, the more demonstrative portion of
humanity at
Dodge City gives now no hopeful sign of moral improvement, no
bright prospect of human exaltation; but with
Dodge City itself, it will
not always be as now. The hamlet of today, like Wichita and Newton farther
east in the state, will antagonize with a nobler trait, at some future
day, its present outlandish condition. The denizen of little
Dodge City
declares, with a great deal of confidence, that
the region around about the place is good for nothing for
agricultural purposes. He says the seasons are too dry, that the country
is good for nothing but for grazing, and that all they raise around Dodge
is cattle and hell. The desire of his heart is the father of the
statement. He is content with just what it is, and he wants that to
remain.
He wants the cattle droves and his
associations and surroundings to be a presence and a heritage forever."
January, 1878 - Response to Washington article by the Ford
County Globe
"We think this correspondent
had a sour stomach when he portrayed the wickedness of our city. But we
must expect it unless we ourselves try to improve the present condition of
things. There is not a more peaceful, well-regulated, and orderly
community in the western country."
August 27, 1878 - Ford County Globe
"On Wednesday
last, George Hoy, the young Texan who was wounded some weeks since in the
midnight scrimmage, died from the effects of his wound. George was
apparently rather a good young man, having those chivalrous qualities, so
common to frontiersmen, well developed. He was at the time of his death,
under a bond of $1,500 for his appearance in
Texas on account of some
cattle scrape, wherein he was charged with aiding and assisting some other
men in "rounding up" about 1,000 head of cattle which were claimed by
other parties. He had many friends and no enemies among
Texas men who knew
him. George was nothing but a poor cow boy, but his brother
cowboys
permitted him to want for nothing during his illness, and buried him in
grand style when dead, which was very creditable to them We have been
informed by those who pretend to know, that the deceased although under
bond for a misdemeanor in
Texas,
was in no wise a criminal and would have been released at the next setting
of the court if he had not been removed by death from its jurisdiction.
"Let his faults, if he had any be hidden in the grave."
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