Longley
Born on the Texas frontier in the years building up to the beginning of the American Civil War (his family will move to the Texas town of Evergreen, where the youngster will learn to farm and ranch, become accurate and fast with a variety of weapons, and to hate Mexicans, Northerners, and the black slaves that soon will be made free men), Longley is the sixth child of ten to be born to American Revolutionary war veteran, Campbell Longley, and his wife, Sarah. At his maturity, he will stand six feet tall, be rail thin, with an angular face and high cheekbones, and have jet black hair. Among the jobs he will have before his life is ended at the end of an executioner's noose are farmer, horse breaker, cowboy, woodcutter, pack master, and teamster. But his real occupation is killer ... sometimes for revenge, sometimes as part of a robbery, and sometimes, just on a whim for the sheer delight in seeing another man take his last breath. While using a pair of Dance .44 revolvers for most of his outrages, Longley delights in taking credit for thirty-two individuals (he will state he "... was taught to believe it was right to kill sassy Negroes.") ... a number which can not be verified by Wild West historians. That being said, here is a mixture of truth and legend, highlights and most certainly lowlights of Mr. Longley's days as a gunman.
. Longley
1867 - Near his family's farm, on the road between San Antonio and Nacogdoches, Longley gets in an argument with a black soldier of the Civil War Reconstruction ... the soldier shoots at Longley with a rifle and misses. Longley takes out his foe with a ball of lead and hides the body in a ditch. He is fifteen-years-old.
1867 - Frustrated over the outcome of a Lexington, Texas horse race, Longley and a friend decide to shoot up a street dance of Afro-Americans ... they kill two (other reports have the number as nine) and wound several more celebrants.
1868 - Hearing that three former slaves are in the area, Longley and a few of his pals ride into the men's camp and gun down Green Evans, and while Evans' companions flee, rob the body of its few possessions.
1869 - Riding herd for cattleman John Reagon, Longley rides into Yorktown, Texas, where he is mistaken for another wanted killer, Charles Taylor. Fleeing the soldiers attempting to arrest him, from horseback using his revolver, Longley kills the sergeant leading the squad when the man draws to close to him.
1869 - While driving cattle to Kansas through the Indian Territory, Longley quarrels with the drive's trail boss, a man named Rector. Bad move by Rector, Longley empties his revolver into the man before fleeing to Salt Lake City (where he has relatives).
1869 - In the midst of a crime spree with his brother-in-law, John Wilson, in which they rob settlers in southern Texas, Longley kills a freed slave woman near his ome in Evergreen, and for his horses, slaughters a former slave named Paul Brice in Bastrop County, Texas.
1869 - Longley claims he is captured and lynched, but survives when a lucky shot from a member of Cullen Baker's outlaw gang severs the rope around his neck.
1870 - Authorities in Texas offer a $1,000 reward for the capture of Longley.
1870 - Another argument, another death ... in a Leavenworth, Kansas saloon, Longley kills a soldier.
1870 - Trying to stay ahead of the law, Longley moves north and joins a gold hunting party near Cheyenne, Wyoming.
1870 - Frustrated in his attempts to find gold, Longley joins Company B of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment stationed at Camp Stambaugh. Unsurprisingly not taking to military life, Longley deserts, is captured, court-martialed, serves four months of hard labor (he is sentenced to two years) strapped to a ball-and-chain that weighs 24-pounds, is released to his former unit, and deserts again in May of 1872.
1871 - When a crooked quartermaster that is his partner in a scheme to defraud the U.S. Army cheats Longley out of two hundred dollars for a set of mules, Longley undoes the partnership by gunning the man down.
1872 - Believing things have cooled enough for a return to the south, on his way to returning to Texas, Longley stops in Parksville, Kansas for a friendly game of cards ... and of course, the game does not remain friendly and Longley shoots down a young gambler by the name of Charles Stuart. Stuart's father ups the reward on Longley's head to $1,500.
1872 - Longley murders another freed slave in Bastrop County, Texas.
1874 - Hearing a woman in Comanche County, Texas has been insulted by a black man, Longley locates the man and puts two bullets in his brain.
1874 - Arrested for the Comanche County slaying by Mason County, Texas lawman J. J. Finney, Longley bribes his way out of incarceration using funds supplied to him by his uncle in California, Alexander "Pres" Preston Longley.
1875 - Discovering his cousin has been killed, and egged on by his uncle, Longley shotguns Wilson Anderson to death ... the same Wilson Anderson that was his boyhood friend.
1875 - While in hiding for the Anderson murder, Longley gets into a fistfight with a hunting buddy named George Thomas ... and when he doesn't like how things are going, goes to his revolver ... Thomas loses that argument, permanently.
1876 - Suspicious that riding companion, Lou Shroyer, might turn him in, Longley attempts to ambush the man in Bell County, Texas ... wary of Longley, Shroyer spurs his horse away from the encounter, but is wounded in the shoulder, and then hit four more times as he returns fire before falling off his horse. In turn, Longley is set afoot by a shotgun blast from Shroyer that kills his mount. Continuing to battle, Shroyer finally shuffles off the mortal coil when he is hit in the head with a slug of lead ... corpse found later, it has been punctured thirteen times by Longley's revolver.
1876 - Sharecropping in East Texas for a preacher named William Lay, Longley draws attention to himself when he battles Lay's nephew for the favors of a local teenager (sixteen-year-old Rachel Lavinia), beats up his rival, is jailed for the assault, escapes by burning a hole in the jail's door, and takes out his anger on his landlord, killing Lay with two barrels of turkey shot from a shotgun as the man milks a cow.
1876 - In Grayson County, Texas, Longley disarms Deputy Sheriff Matt Shelton and frees two friends from jail, the Sanders brothers, Jim and Dick, before fleeing into Louisiana.
Tiring of the continuing depredations of the killer, in 1877, Longley is located in De Soto Parish, Louisiana, living under the alias of Bill Jackson. Over the state border for justice, Nacogdoches County Sheriff Milt Mast, Deputy Bill Burrows, and Louisiana constable June Courtney, wielding shotguns, arrest Longley on June 6th. Brought back to Texas, Longley goes on trial in the Lee County Court for the murder of Wilson Anderson, is found guilty, and sentenced to death by hanging. Awaiting execution, Longley converts to Catholicism, complains about his death sentence when fellow Texan John Wesley Hardin only got a sentence of twenty-five years, appeals his conviction, and writes long letters to newspapers regretting his sins and asking for forgiveness. Appeal denied in March of 1878, Longley goes to meet his maker on October 11, 1878 before over a thousand witnesses in Giddings, Texas.
Longley And Captors
A busy ending, in the morning Longley meets with two priests, sings "Amazing Grace" with some of his jailors, and kisses his ten-year-old niece goodbye (the only member of his family to show for the leaving), Dressed in a black suit, with a white shirt and a black tie, a blue rosette in his lapel, he wears a broad-brimmed, low-crown hat to the gallows, escorted there in an enclosed ambulance by the two priests, Lee County Sheriff Jim Brown, and a squad of heavily armed guards. Last drink of water taken, last cigar discarded, he makes a few remarks to the crowd, and then goes through the trap door shortly after 2:15 in the afternoon when Brown cuts the release rope with a hatchet. Drop rope length miscalculated, he hits the ground on his first drop, is pulled back up, and groaning and moaning, slowly strangles to death (he is pronounced dead by three doctors eleven minutes after being strung up). The Texan gunman is only twenty-seven years old.
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Longley
Great story
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