Sheridan Resident Recalls Friendship with Missouri Outlaw in 1915

Frank and Jesse in Montana, display at The Museum of the Upper Missouri, Fort Benton, Montana,

Frank James died on Feb. 18, 1915. In the Cokeville Register newspaper on March 13, 1915, there appeared this small, almost insignificant article. On Feb. 25 The death of Frank James recalls an intimate friendship which existed between him and Mr. and Mrs. T.J. Foster, when they came to Sheridan County thirty eight years ago. They remembered the notorious bandit as a kindly, agreeable man. The same article appeared in the The Miner, of Hudson, Wyo March 5; The Wheatland Times, March 10; The Meeteetse News, March 5, and many others around the state.

Another source said that Frank actually suggested to Foster than he homestead in the Story area, instead of on Clear Creek. It also mentioned that Foster didn’t at first believe that he was the infamous bandit, but that his doubts were soon removed.

Liberty, Missouri, Frank James family home, is a long way from Sheridan, Wyoming, over 900 miles, and about 12 hours via automobile. In the late 1800s, there were several railroads in the east, but only one, the Union Pacific, through Wyoming, and it was in the southern part of the state. To get to Montana there were steamships up the Missouri and the Yellowstone. From the rail-heads and the steamship stops, one had to travel a horseback or via the stage. Still, there was a lot of traveling throughout the country.

Th James brothers, both Frank and Jesse, traveled from Missouri into Montana and Wyoming. After the Civil War, many of the southerners who refused to surrender and take an oath to the Union looked for a place to hide. According to information in The Museum of the Upper Missouri, at Fort Benton, Montana, William Quantrill, the leader of the James brother’s during the Civil War, came to the area and discovered that the Missouri River badlands were the prefect hideout. The old fort, which started as a trading post along the Missouri River, was built in the years between 1847 and 1860.

At the end of the Civil War, there was little or no law around Fort Benton. Frank and Jesse James spent the winter of 1873-1874 in the Fort Benton area. Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch also spent time in the badlands area. It isn’t too far from Fort Benton to Sheridan, Wyoming, being only 350 miles.

It is known that Frank and Jesse spent time around Big Horn and Story. An early reference to them is in a Sheridan Post in April of 1897. Mr. and Mrs. Ellery Foster (T.J. Foster’s son) were in town this week buying ranch supplies for the famous Foster ranch on Piney. It is the oldest ranch in that section and volumes could be written about it. In fact, no history of Wyoming would be complete without as extended mention of the place. As it was on this ranch that Fort Phil Kearny was located, and the solders were quarteredthere who were slaughtered on the famous Massacre Hill. Jesse James and his gang often visited the ranch.

According to some accounts, Jesse James spend some time at the well known Hole-In-the-Wall country as well while hiding from pursuit.

In the Cheyenne Daily Leader on July of 1901, there is this article, Fleeing to Hole-in-the-Wall:Anaconda Mont., July 8—Special dispatches from a stall correspondent of the Anaconda Standard on the ground are to the effect that there is now but little hope of the sheriffs overtaking the men who held up the Great Northern Express train at Wagner Mont., last Wednesday. The correspondent has just returned from the section of the country where the posse was expecting to overtake the robbers. His account is that the pursuers have been outwitted and that the robbers have alluded them. There are now two theories presented. One is that the outlaws were are far better mounted than their pursuer and have already crossed the Missouri river and are well on their way toward the Hole-in-the-Wall country in Wyoming, the most notorious refuge of criminals in the United States.

It was a perfect place to hide from the law, no matter where you rode in from. The Hole-in-the-Wall created a safe haven for a steady stream of outlaw gangs rotating in and out of the red-walled valley from the late 1860s up until the early 1900’s. By 1910, however, fewer and fewer outlaws used the hideout, and it faded into history.

In a Sheridan Post, article in October of 1910 titled, Tales Of Other Days; H. G. Williams Of Tacoma A Real Wyoming Pioneer. Tells Some Things That Are Interesting to the Old-Timers and Amusing to the Pilgrims “The proprietor of the Foster house in Sheridan was then located on Piney, and O. P. Hanna on Big Goose. I believe that I was the second white man on Big Goose, Mr. Hanna being the only one who preceded me. Neither Sheridan nor Buffalo existed in those days, and the only cabin on either Big or Little Goose, was one at Big Horn, where it was reported that Jesse James and his outfit were camping. I went there but found the cabin empty, and nothing there but the carcasses of a few deer hanging on the outside.

Five months after Jesse was killed in 1882, Frank surrendered to Missouri Gov. Crittenden. In a Cheyenne Weekly Leader, in October of 1882, there is this article: Frank James Moralizing. Kansas City, Oct, 5.—A Jefferson City special has a letter from Frank James, addressed to Gov. Crittenden, dated St. Louis, Oct. 1st^. The letter from James proffers a surrender. It is a lengthy document. He says he was prompted to act through considerations for his wife and children, and a desire to relieve his name from the shadow which has been cast upon it, and through it upon the good name of western Missourians. He makes the plea that he is not as bad as he has been painted; that though an outlaw, he has thoughts and impulses of a man, and has a desire to return to his house and his parents, and there, with his family, pass his days In peace and thus gain the respect of his fellow man. “I came to Missouri to try to regain a home and standing among her people. I have been outside her laws for twenty-one years. I have been hunted like a wild animal from one state to another. I have known no home. I have slept in all sorts of places—here to-day and there to-morrow. I have been charged with nearly every great crime committed in either Wisconsin or her neighboring states…..I am tired of this life, of taut nerves, of night riding and day riding, of constant listening for foot falls, crackling twigs, rustling leaves and creaking doors…. Tired of the saddle, the revolver and the cartridge belt; tired of hoofs and horns with which a popular belief has equipped, me, and I want to see if there is not some way out of it.…. I shall prove myself worthy of mercy.”

In the Buffalo Voice, February 26, 1915: The Passing of Frank James. Frank James, one of the notorious James gang died on his farm at Excelsior Springs, Mo., February 18th. He was 74 years old. It may be of interest to some of our readers to learn that Frank James and his brother Jesse, lived in a cabin they had built on what is now known as the Jake Warner ranch at Big Horn. This was the winter of 80….The band’s unparalleled career of crime during the civil war and the unsettled period that followed kept the people of a dozen states in terror, but Frank James has been living the life of a quiet farmer for more than thirty years.

T.J. Foster died a few months later and in his obituary from the Sheridan Post, April 1915 it mentions his son, Ellery Foster referenced above. The article added that TJ Foster was born in Ohio in 1843. He fought for the confederacy in the war between the states, fighting with the First Missouri Cavalry. In 1865, after the war, he took an oath of allegiance to the United States. He came to Laramie in 1868, and then came to the Sheridan area. He and Mrs. Foster pitched their tent on the grounds of Fort Phil Kearny in 1876. He engaged in ranching and became a justice of peace serving for six years.

Most likely, his former support of the Confederacy lead to a friendship between the two men. Foster had undoubtedly heard of the exploits of the infamous outlaws, as the James Gang’s crime spree started around 1868.

Whether or not the James boys committed any major crimes in this area is unknown at this point. Perhaps they saw Wyoming as a place where they could lay-low for a time before riding east again, to rob the next bank or the next train.

An unusual friendship between a law-abiding rancher and justice of the peace and a well-known Missouri bandit is one of the little known history tidbits of early Sheridan County.