From Harrison Daily Times today!!
William Baker carried the mail near Gaddy's Corner!
William Baker left no doubt as to his feelings.
“I was scared all right,” he said, “when the red-complected one they called Jesse pointed his pistol at me and demanded the mail pouch. They got $105 in money and some registered mail.”
Baker had been carrying the mail near the Boone County community of Gaddy’s Corner (now Burlington) on that day in 1870 (there is some dispute about the year, some saying it was 1874) when he was accosted by four robbers. The men were later identified as members of the Frank and Jesse James gang.
The Gaddy’s Corner robbery has been described by various authors, including noted Ozarks historian Ralph Rea in his “Boone County and Its People” and by Shay E. Hopper, T. Harri Baker and Jane Browning in their book “An Arkansas History for Young People.”
In his writing, Rea said that it was known for certain that Frank and Jesse James, along with Jim and Cole Younger, had been in the area on several occasions.
Rea went on to explain that, shortly after the Civil War, a mail route had been established between Forsyth, Missouri, and the Crooked Creek Post Office, now the city of Harrison. The route generally followed the present course of U.S. Route 65, and on more than one occasion, mail carriers on horseback were robbed in some lonely spot along the way.
Alan C. Paulson, in “Roadside History of Arkansas,” presents in good detail the robbery and the aftermath, including Baker’s reaction to meeting up with the infamous Jesse James. Incidentally, according to Rea’s account, Baker as a child had survived the Mountain Meadows massacre in Utah.
Paulson goes on to say that after the robbery, Baker rode six miles north to the Omaha settlement to raise the alarm. Local residents began to assemble a posse, while from the south, Captain W. F. Pace rode with another group of men. When the groups met, Pace took command.
By that time, a local preacher, Parson J. F. New, joined the group and reported several suspicious riders at an old log home of a man named Perry near Gaddy’s Corner.
When the posse arrived at the cabin, it was barricaded, and Pace deployed his men among the surrounding trees.
Pace shouted out to the men in the cabin to surrender, and he was met with a reply that they would discuss the terms if a single man would be sent forward.
Pace rode up to the cabin with his rifle lying across his saddle, when two men appeared at the window. Pace recognized them as Frank and Jesse James. Inside the cabin could be seen a table covered with guns and ammunition.
Jesse James suggested that Pace order the posse to leave and forget the whole matter. Pace declined the offer, instead insisting that the gang surrender.
After briefly conferring with his brother, Jesse James said to Pace, “If you’ll send Parson New up here, we’ll surrender to him.”
Pace rode back to his men, and the parson agreed to accept the surrender.
However, as New rode up to the cabin, the James brothers appeared, and Jesse put a bullet in the parson’s head. He had killed the man who had betrayed them, he shouted.
The posse prepared to light some torches, but just then, the four robbers rushed out of the cabin, firing their pistols at anyone who moved. Jesse James “flapped his arms and crowed like a rooster,” and the outlaws escaped into the woods without so much as a scratch.
“The posse was unwilling to accept a complete defeat in the fray,” Rea said, “so they sought out the man, Perry, who was alleged to have harbored the outlaws. They killed Perry as a partial settlement for the casualties they had suffered.”
According to Rea, Pace was responsible for most of the detailed account of the fight. It had been passed down to him by his father, who had been a good friend of Pace.
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