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Robert "Bob" Havlin Paul (1830-1901) - Born in
Lowell, Massachusetts, Paul became a cabin boy on the whaling ship, Catherine,
when he was just 12 years old. Three years later, when the ship docked in San
Francisco,
California in
1849, Paul remained in the city and would make
California
home for the next three decades. The strapping six foot, six inch "boy" would
soon choose a life of law enforcement, serving as a constable, deputy sheriff,
sheriff and Wells Fargo agent over the years.
In 1878, Wells Fargo sent him to
Tombstone,
Arizona,
where he often rode shotgun on the stage coaches running through the area. In
March, 1881, a stage was held up near Drew's Station and the driver, Bud Philpot
was killed. When the bandits tried to run off the horses, Paul brought them
under control and brought the stage and its passengers safely into Benson,
Arizona. That
same year he was elected sheriff of Pima County,
Arizona and
in 1883 was sent to
Colorado with
the warrants to bring back the
Earps to answer to charges of murder, but was unsuccessful. Six years
later, Paul became a special officer for the Southern Pacific Railroad and in
1891, a
U.S. Deputy Marshal
for
Arizona in
1891, a position he held for four years. The fearless and persistent career
lawman died on March 26, 1901 of cancer in Tucson,
Arizona.
Junius "June" Peak (1845-1934) - Confederate
veteran, Dallas City Marshal, and
Texas Ranger,
Peak was born in Warsaw, Kentucky, on April 5, 1845 to Jefferson and Martha
Malvina Reasor Peak. When Junius was nine years old, the family moved to Dallas,
Texas in
1855. At the age of 16, he left home and and joined First Indian Brigade in 1861
at Fort Arbuckle,
Indian Territory.
After serving the Confederacy in
Oklahoma for
about a year, he transferred to General John H. Morgan's Raiders of the Second
Kentucky Cavalry Regiment, in which he participated in the Indiana-Ohio raid as
an aide and orderly to Major Ellsworth. Later, he was part of Nathan Bedford
Forrest's Third Tennessee Cavalry, where he was wounded twice in the Battle of
Chickamauga. After recovering from his wounds, he became a scout in the 8th
Texas
Cavalry, a position he held until the
Civil War
ended. He then returned to Dallas, where he worked as a deputy sheriff for a
time before he was hired by New Mexico ranchers to control the rampant cattle
rustling in 1872. In 1874, he had returned to Dallas and was elected City
Marshal, a position he held until 1878. At the height of
Sam Bass'
terrorism of
Texas, Peak
was commissioned by the governor as second lieutenant in the Frontier Battalion
of the
Texas Rangers
and tasked with raising a special detachment to track down the notorious outlaw
and his gang. By May, 1878, he had been made a captain, and pursued the outlaws
relentlessly, ultimately driving them from North
Texas towards
capture and death at Round Rock,
Texas. After
Bass was killed, Peak was transferred to San Angelo, where he fought against
the Indians and pursued outlaws in West
Texas. In
April, 1880, Peak resigned from the
Texas Rangers
and went to work for the Mexican Central Railroad Company, building and
equipping supply stations for the construction workers. In 1881, he married
Henrietta Boll in Dallas and the pair returned to Mexico. In 1884, Peak returned
to
Texas,
settling on a ranch in Shackelford County. However, in 1899, the couple returned
to Dallas so they could provide a better education for their two children and
Peak began a new career in real estate. He served as the superintendent of White
Rock Lake from 1919 to 1924. He died on April 20, 1934 at his home in Dallas.
George Peppin (1841-1904) - Long before George
Peppin got involved in
New Mexico's
notorious
Lincoln County War,
he was born in Mountsville, Vermont, October 1841. When he grew up he headed
west and in 1861, enlisted in the 5th Infantry
California
Volunteers. When the
Civil War was
over, he moved to
Lincoln,
New Mexico,
where he worked as a stone mason. There, he became friends with
James Dolan and
Lawrence Murphy,
who owned the
Murphy & Dolan
mercantile and banking operation.
Dolan and
Murphy soon
got into a bitter rivalry with
Alexander McSween and
John Tunstall, when they set up a rival business called H.H. Tunstall &
Company. The rivalry escalated into the
Lincoln County War,
in which, Peppin became a
Dolan-Murphy
"tool." After Lincoln County
Sheriff
William Brady
was killed by
Billy the Kid,
Peppin became the new officer. On July 19, 1878, he led the raid on the
McSween house in
Lincoln,
New Mexico,
which resulted in the deaths of several men. He was later indicted by a grand
jury but all charges were dropped. When the "war" was finally over, Peppin
worked as a butcher at Fort Stanton. He died
in Lincoln County on September 14, 1904.
Tom Pickett
(1858-1934) - Raised in Decatur,
Texas ,
Pickett would grow up to be both a
lawman
and an
outlaw at
various times of his life. He began a life a crime when he stole some cattle at the age of 17.
Soon captured, his father, a former officer for the Confederacy and a
member of the
Texas
legislature, mortgaged the family home to pay his fine. Pickett later went
on to serve as a
Texas Ranger
for a short time. He then followed a cattle
drive to
Kansas
and became a gambler. There he met "Dirty Dave" Rudabaugh and the pair
went to
Las Vegas,
New Mexico in 1879, where Pickett served as a "peace
officer" in the Dodge City Gang. When
the city of
Las Vegas ran the men out of town,
he and Rudabaugh soon joined up with
Billy the Kid's Gang
and were rusting cattle near
Fort Sumner.
After
Tom
O'Folliard was killed by
Pat Garrett's
posse, Picket and the others fled, hiding out in a stone house in Stinking
Springs,
New Mexico.
Garrett soon tracked them down on December 23, 1880 and in the ultimate
shoot-out,
Charlie Bowdre
was killed, and the rest of the gang
captured
and taken to
Santa Fe,
New Mexico .
After being released on a $300 bail, Pickett drifted into northern
Arizona
where he hooked up with the Hash Knife outfit and participated in the
Graham-Tewksbury feud. Wounded in the leg during
one of the many skirmishes, Pickett
returned to working as a
cowboy.
He married in 1888, but his wife and baby both died in childbirth. He
spent the rest of his days gambling, bartending, prospecting for gold and
working as a
cowboy.
However, he did serve a short stint as a
U.S. Deputy Marshal. After he was
forced to have his leg amputated, Pickett returned to northern
Arizona
where he died of old age on on May 14, 1934 in
Winslow,
Arizona at
the age of 76.
Allan Pinkerton (1819-1884) - Founder of the
Pinkerton Detective Agency in 1850, Pinkerton was born at Glasgow, Scotland
on August 25, 1819. Pinkerton worked as a barrel maker before immigrating to the
United States in 1842. Settling near
Chicago,
Illinois,
he went to work at Lill’s Brewery as a barrel maker but soon determined that working for himself would be more
profitable for his family and they moved to a small town called Dundee,
some forty miles from
Chicago.
When he stumbled across a gang of counterfeiters, he was instrumental in their
capture, which led to an appointment as the first detective with the Chicago
police force. That same year, he, along with
Chicago
attorney, Edward Rucker, founded, the North-Western Police Agency.
When, the business floundered, Allan joined with his brother, Robert who had
established himself as a railroad contractor in a business called "Pinkerton & Co."
When Allan joined up, the company name was changed to the
Pinkerton National Detective Agency, which provided a variety of detective
services, from private military contractors to security guards, but specialized
in the capture of counterfeiters and train robbers. In 1861, while
investigating a railway case, the agency uncovered an assassination
plot against Abraham Lincoln,
and was instrumental in foiling it. During the
Civil War,
President Lincoln hired the
Pinkerton Detective Agency to organize a
“secret service” to obtain military information on the Confederates
and sometimes act as
Lincoln's bodyguard. Working diligently,
Allan Pinkerton traveled under the pseudonym of "Major E.J. Allen." After the
Civil War, Allan
returned to his
duties at the detective agency, which was often hired by the
government to perform many of the same duties that are now regularly
assigned to the Secret Service, the FBI, and the CIA. The agency
also worked for the railroads and overland stage companies, playing an
active role in chasing down a number of
outlaws
including
Jesse James, the
Reno
Brothers, and
Butch Cassidy and his
Wild Bunch.
When Robert Pinkerton died in 1868, Allan assumed full control of the
Pinkerton Detective Agency. However, just a year later, in the autumn of 1869,
Allan suffered a paralyzing stroke which nearly killed him. However, Pinkerton
recovered and continued to operate the agency until his death. Pinkerton passed
away on July 1, 1884, and his agency was taken over by his sons, Robert and
William, who continued the agency's movement from detective work to security and
protection
Thomas William "Billy" Preece
(1856-1928) -
Utah
lawman, Thomas Preece, was best known for capturing several members of the
Wild Bunch.
Born at Salt Lake City,
Utah
on February 11, 1856, he worked on the Uintah Ute Indian Reservation when he was
a young man and later, as a freighter between Vernal,
Utah
and Rock Springs,
Wyoming
.
He was elected sheriff of Uintah County, Utah in 1896 and as such, quickly came
into conflict with members of the
Wild Bunch,
who were terrorizing the state. He was instrumental in capturing outlaws, Harry
Tracy, David Lant and Patrick Johnson. In April, 1900 Preece and other lawman
caught up with
Wild Bunch
member
Flat Nose George Curry and in the ultimate gunfight that ensued,
Curry was killed. Preece continued as Uintah County sheriff until
1906. In 1909, he became a U.S. Deputy Marshal at Whiterocks,
Utah and
later served as city marshal at Vernal. During his lifetime, he married and
fathered five children. He died on February 2, 1928 of dropsy, an old term for
the swelling of soft tissues due to the accumulation of excess water. He was
buried at Rock Point Cemetery near Vernal,
Utah.
Robert Jack Price (1848- 1930) - Born in Arkansas in 1848, Price's family moved to Texas in the late 1860's, where he married in 1872 and began a family. In 1891, Priced moved his family to Oklahoma Territory, and became the first constable for County B Township, which is now Potawatomie County. More familiarly called R.J., he was the first to put a man in the county jail and continued to serve as constable until 1894. R.J.
was also involved in the Anti Horse Thief Association and was a U.S. Deputy Marshal. He died in 1930 in Amber, Oklahoma at the age of 82.
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