Mt. Vernon, Texas Jail break sparks shoot out

From The East Texas Journal, March 2022

By Hudson Old, Publisher

Ed’s note: The following story of the reign and demise of a 19th century outlaw band has been compiled from stories included in the Franklin County Historical Association’s “Early Days in Franklin County.” In that volume are accounts of the 1879 killings of two citizens, one shot during a jail break gone bad, and another ambushed after a confrontation with men he’d accused of stealing his cattle.

Col Dan T. Bolin was past 60 when he wrote a series of articles for the town newspaper on the occasion of Franklin County’s 50th anniversary in 1925.
Three of the 12-part series tell the story of a lawless band and the attempt to bring them to justice.
Sam Wilson, the Colonel said, lived in Titus County on White Oak Creek, owning good property there in the spring of 1879.
A new Franklin County courthouse and jail had just been completed and the first of April that year, the district court convened.
Sheriff Joe Templeton had wasted no time putting his new jail to use.
“At this time,” Col. Bolin wrote, “a set of bad characters had almost overrun this and the adjoining counties.”
With a number of men in his jail, and persistent rumors of a jailbreak, Sheriff Templeton called for armed citizens to guard the prisoners. It was nearly dusk on a Saturday evening, April 5, when the men broke for supper. Thinking it too early in the evening to expect trouble, they left Bob Morgan as a lone guard.
Two men were riding out of town when they saw a band of six or seven men, Sam Wilson among them, riding for the jail. The men wheeled and raced back into town, but by then the shooting had begun.
Sam Wilson’s parents both died when he was a boy, Col. Bolin later wrote, but up until the jail break, he’d never been considered an outlaw, “but considered wild. . . a hale fellow well met, and always true to his friends.”
The others riding with Wilson that night included Mack Allen, Ed Murphy, Bill Bird, and others called John Red and Buffalo Bill, whose real names the colonel didn’t recall.
Courtroom testimony later would finger Bill Bird as the man who stole under cover to the side of the jail and fired the shot that felled Robert Morgan. Morgan fired once before he died, a shot that grazed Bird’s scalp.
By then, a gun battle broke out with the outlaws firing several times at Lige and Tom Williams, the boys who’d spotted them coming into town and ridden back to spread the alarm. Mounted again, the outlaws raced from town, being fired upon by a man named Jackson as they sped away.
Word of Morgan’s killing raced through the town even as the outlaws were racing away. A vigilante mob assembled at the jail.
“It looked for a while like the jail would be burned with its inmates,” the Colonel recalled, but pleadings from the judge and officers — not to mention the prisoners themselves — persuaded the citizens to disband.”
Morgan was buried and a mass meeting was called for the next Saturday.
On the Friday night before the meeting, Dan Caudle reported two good horses stolen from his home three miles southwest of Mt. Vernon.
Mr. Caudle made up a posse and Sheriff Templeton sent Deputy J.A. Leftwich in search of the outlaws.
A.J. Majors rode with deputy Leftwich, riding in a different direction than the Caudle bunch.
The lawmen picked up the trail of two of the horse thieves east of Mt. Pleasant.
A third man, whose identity isn’t known, was killed by Mr. Caudle “and the parties he stole the horse from.”
Streams were swollen with spring rains. Deputy Leftwich and Mr. Majors followed the trail of the outlaws east into Cass County. At Linden, Mr. Majors’ horse went lame and he turned back. “Captain” Leftwich stayed on the trail to the Texas, Louisiana line where the thieves stole another horse and separated. The captain followed one man into Arkansas. He was gone for two weeks, and during that time, word of his chase came back only once to Mt. Vernon. He cornered his man, Bob Hollis, at a livery in Camden, Arkansas.
“He ordered him to throw up his hands, which he did without much persuasion as he was looking down the muzzle of a gun,” the Colonel wrote.
Jailed in Mt. Vernon, Bob Hollis identified the other horse thief as his cousin, Joe Hollis, who was also wanted for murder in Texas.
In a later chapter of the book, writer W.M. Christian tells of Capt. Leftwich going after the killer, a trip on which Mr. Christian apparently accompanied the captain.
“He was in the saddle the better part of four days and nights, making a trip into the northeastern portion of Arkansas, where he captured a very bad man by the name of Hollis,” Mr. Christian wrote. “He arrived just after dark and sent for me to stand guard for the night and he handcuffed Hollis to his left wrist and they slept that way all night. The charge of murder against Hollis was in some of our western counties where he was carried later and paid the penalty.”
Meanwhile, the men who’d attempted breaking their friends from the jail remained at large. The law’s first break came after Mack Allen hired out to an Arkansas farmer, the Colonel wrote.
“Allen had hired out to a farmer over there. One night the man he was living with heard Allen praying; in his prayers in asking to be forgiven, he mentioned his troubles at Mt. Vernon, Texas. This man immediately notified Sheriff Templeton who had him arrested and brought back.”
Mack Allen fingered Whit Murphy, a brother to Ed Murphy, as one of the men involved in the jail break attempt. Sheriff Templeton captured and jailed him; a few days later he fell ill, dying in custody. Ed Murphy was killed later in a fight with Arkansas lawmen.
Six months after Robert Morgan’s murder during the attempted jail break, the district court convened. Joe Hollis was given five years for horse theft. Mack Allen remained jailed, as did a man named Sam Kelton.
Just before the November term of the court adjourned, Titus County orphan turned outlaw Sam Wilson turned himself in and made bond, returning to his farm.
A few days after the court term ended, a jailer was passing a bucket of water through the prisoners’ cell door when they pulled him into the cell.
Mack Allen, Sam Kelton and Joe Hollis broke for the open door, passing through the guard room where Mr. Kelton and Mr. Allen armed themselves. Sheriff Templeton had died the month before and Capt. Leftwich had been appointed to fulfill his unexpired term.
Leftwich’s son, Willie, ran into the street to spread the alarm.
“Judge Davenport ran out in the street with a gun, firing one barrel to further raise the alarm,” Col. Bolin wrote. A citizen named J.L. Turner ran up, seizing Judge Davenport’s shotgun, and giving chase along with Sheriff Leftwich. The outlaws opened fire, hitting Mr. Turner in the shoulder.
Mr. Kelton was wounded and a few days later the other escapees left him at a home where officers arrested him. He was sentenced prison and died behind bars several years later.
Some years later, Joe Hollis was captured in west Texas and sent to prison, never to be heard from again, the Colonel reported.
Twenty or more years later, the Colonel says, a man named Bill Wiley was arrested in Arkansas and returned to Mt. Vernon. He was kept in jail for a while as many “thought him to be Mack Allen.” He was finally set free for lack of evidence.
A few days after Titus County’s Sam Wilson turned himself in, made bond and went back to his home on White Oak Creek, James McCoy, who lived across the creek near Panther’s Chapel, reported some cattle stolen.
The Saturday before Christmas, Mr. McCoy was in Hagansport where he’d gone to the mill when he “met a crowd of drinking fellows, among them the parties who’d been reported for stealing his cattle.”
Same Wilson and a man named James Clampitt were also in the crowd.
“I’m not sure whether Wilson was implicated in the theft of McCoy’s cattle, but the bunch of rowdies began to pick at old man McCoy for making complaint against some of their bunch. The old man made the best of the situation that he could.”
Around dark, Mr. McCoy got his sack of grist and was going for his horse when the crowd came upon him. Witnesses said he tried defending himself but was caught and held and stabbed in the chest. Mr. McCoy lived ten days or two weeks, and before he died he said it was Sam Wilson who stabbed him.
On the night Mr. McCoy died, Sheriff Leftwich learned of a dance where it was believed those charged with McCoy’s death would be.
The sheriff “summoned a crowd of resolute men, nine in all including himself,” and rode for the dance. Learning from informants that their men were at the dance, the posse stopped in the woods, built a fire and laid their plans.
Arriving at the home where the dance was being held, the men rushed upon a group at a fire in the yard while the dance was going on in the house.
Sheriff Wilson was the first man at the door and he found Sam Wilson on the dance floor, his pistol off on a bed.
Meanwhile, the other men subdued Mr. Clampitt in the yard.
“The two prisoners were brought to Mt. Vernon and put in jail,” the Colonel wrote. “A strong guard was placed around the jail through the fear of their friends trying to liberate them.
“I remember the young men from all around Mt. Vernon and quite a number from across White Oak were pressed into service as guards.”
The trials began in April, 1880, a year after Sam Wilson rode with the outlaws in the foiled jailbreak.
Now charged with murder, his friends did their best to pin Mr. McCoy’s killing on Mr. Clampitt who was convicted and given 20 years. Seven years later he was pardoned by the governor. Returning to Franklin County, he died a few years later.
Sam Wilson was granted a change of venue and sent to Camp County for trial.
He was convicted there and, at the age of 28, sentenced to 12 years in prison.
“It was said that he was a very stubborn and unruly prisoner and it was said the guards beat him unmercifully in trying to subdue him,” Col. Bolin wrote. “This was in the summer of 1880. I was informed by C.C. Dupree, who was afterwards sheriff of Franklin County, that Sam Wilson died in July of 1882 from being overheated. His association with bad company no doubt contributed largely to his coming to a bad end. This completes my story of Sam Wilson, another one of the crowd of jail breakers.”