SAM BASS

'Sam Bass' (21 July, 1851–21 July, 1878) was a nineteenth-century American train robber and western icon. Handsome and charismatic, he is best known for his brief, yet extremely lucrative career as a train and bank robber.

Contents

Early life

Life as an outlaw, shooting death

See also

External links

Further reading

Early life

Born to a farming family in Mitchell, Indiana, Sam Bass was orphaned at the age of 13. He lived for the next five years with an uncle, but in 1869 set out on his own. He spent the next year in Mississippi, but in 1870 headed for Texas. In 1871, he moved to Denton, Texas. He acquired a prized racing mare and made his living from racing horses from 1874 to 1876. He often traveled to San Antonio during this period. In 1876, he led a cattle drive north from south Texas. He completed the drive in Nebraska, but squandered the money gambling. He next tried gold mining in Deadwood, South Dakota, again without success.

Life as an outlaw, shooting death

In 1877, Bass and his friend Joel Collins set up a freighting business. When it failed, they turned to robbing stagecoaches. On the evening of September 18, 1877, they robbed the Union Pacific gold train from San Francisco. Their take was $60,000, shared amongst the 6 gang members. To this day it is the single largest robbery of the Union Pacific, and the one single event that launched Bass to Old West fame. With the Pinkertons and other law enforcement officers on his tail, including lawman Charlie Bassett, he headed back to Denton, Texas.
Bass and the others now began a string of train and stage coach robberies, including the first such robbery in Texas history in Allen, Texas, never netting over $500 at any one time. In 1878, they held up two stagecoaches and four trains within twenty-five miles of Dallas. The gang quickly found themselves as the object of a pursuit in the Denton area by Pinkerton Agents and by a special company of Texas Rangers headed by Captain Junius Peak. Bass was able to elude the Rangers until a member of his gang, Jim Murphy, turned informer when his father was imprisoned in Tyler, Texas. He cut a deal to save his father, and informed the lawmen about the gang's plans and movements. As Bass's band rode south, Murphy telegraphed Major John B. Jones, commander of the Frontier Battalion of Texas Rangers.
Jones set up an ambush at Round Rock, where Bass planned to rob the Williamson County Bank. On July 19, 1878, Bass and his gang scouted the area before the actual robbery. They bought some tobacco at a store, being noticed by Williamson County Sheriff Caige Grimes. When Grimes approached the gang, he was shot and killed, firing one round before he died, and a heavy gunfight ensued between the outlaws, the Rangers and the local lawmen. A deputy named Moore was mortally wounded, as was Sam Bass. The gang quickly mounted their horses and tried to escape, while continuing to fire. As they galloped away, Bass was shot again in the back by Ranger George Herold. Bass was later found lying helpless in a pasture north of town by the authorities. They took him into custody, and he died from his wounds the next day, July 21, 1878--his 27th birthday. Coincidentally, Sheriff Grimes was also 27 years of age.

One member of the gang, named Jackson, escaped capture and later settled in New Mexico. For many years his family petitioned, without success, for a pardon so that he could return to Texas. A gang member named Murphy returned to Denton, where he became an outcast, frequently sleeping in the county jail for his own protection. He died within a year when he swallowed some eye drops; whether the ingestion was an accident is unclear, but the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame states it was suicide [1]. "Rowdy Joe" Lowe, a former saloon keeper, gambler, and a man with somewhat of a reputation as a gunman, also was accused of having rode with the gang. However, if he did, he was never charged with any crime. He was shot and killed in 1899 after an argument unrelated to his alleged involvement with the gang.
Sam Bass was buried in Round Rock, not far from where he died. A few years after his death, his sister provided a tombstone which read "A brave man reposes in death here. Why was he not true?". Damaged beyond repair by souvenir hunters, the stone was replaced by a large granite replica provided by the ''"Sam Bass Centennial Commission"''.
As with many contemporary figures of the American Old West, Bass captured the public imagination in contemporary stories and songs, being portrayed as was common at the time by some as a ruthless desperado, but by others as a sort of Robin Hood figure whose misdeeds were not visited on the poor, but only upon the monied classes. The infamous confidence man, Soapy Smith, who with his cousin, Edwin B. Smith witnessed the shooting of Bass. The event changed Edwin's mind about taking the criminal path that the two boys were planning.
Despite his short lived career, Sam Bass was nonetheless colorful, and saw extreme financial success in his robberies from 1877 until his death in 1878. The well publicized and unsuccessful law enforcement pursuit of Bass and his gang following their $60,000 take on the Union Pacific train robbery was the event that brought him to the attention of the public and what captured their imagination. That single event, and his evading capture afterwards, led to Bass reaching the status of legend.

See also

★ Texas Rangers

★ American Old West

★ Western movie

External links

★ The Story of Sam Bass

★

★ FrontierTimes - Outlaws: Sam Bass

★ Old West Grave Sites - Sam Bass

★ Texas musician Mark David Manders' album ''Chili Pepper Sunset'' (2000) includes the song "Jim Murphy", the story of the man who betrayed Sam Bass.

★ Grave site:

★ - The City of Allen's Video - The Great Allen Train Robbery- Story about the infamous first train robbery in Texas.

Further reading

★ Miller, Rick, ''Sam Bass and Gang'', State House Press, Austin, 1999, LC Control Number 99034248, ISBN 1-880510-65-0 (alk. paper), ISBN 1-880510-66-9 (pbk. alk. paper), ISBN 1-880510-67-7 (alk. paper)

★ Martin, Charles Lee, ''A Sketch of Sam Bass, the Bandit'', Worley & co., Dallas, LC Control Number 16004209, no ISBN