The Making of a Criminal
By the time he was thirteen, Sam Bass
was an orphan. He lived with his uncle for five years, but he ran away
from his uncle's house in 1869 and worked in a sawmill at Rosedale,
Mississippi. He worked at many different jobs: cowpuncher, roustabout,
fence builder, firewood cutter, teamster, and freighter. He got interested
in horse racing and bought a fast horse known as the "Denton Mare."
He won most of the races, but he got into the habit of gambling an lost
most of his winnings. So, he needed more and more money.
He found a partner named Joel Collins,
and started running steers from Texas to Dodge City, Kansas. Once the
cattle were sold, Bass kept the money instead of returning to Texas
to pay the owners of the cattle. He tried freighting and prospecting
for a while, but he didn't make enough money at either. His solution
was to turn to robbing stagecoaches for extra cash.
The Deadwood Stage
Bass and Collins didn't have a lot of
luck robbing stagecoaches. They usually picked stagecoaches whose passengers
were not carrying very much money. The two tried to rob the stage at
least seven different times, but never got away with very much money.
Bass had a "trademark" of always giving one dollar back to
his victims after a robbery, and sometimes, there wasn't much left to
take. Since Bass and Collins weren't having too much luck with stagecoach
robbery they decided to switch to train robbery.
The Big Springs Union Pacific Train Robbery
Their first train robbery was at Big Springs
Station in Nebraska. After dark on a night with a full moon (September
18, 1877), Bass, Collins, and four other masked men forced the station
master to stop the express train. When it stopped, they got on and found
only $450 in the "way safe." They beat the express messenger
with a pistol so he would open the "through safe," but he
could not open it because it had a time lock. They found some wooden
boxes and broke them open. Amazingly, there was $60,000 in freshly minted
twenty-dollar gold pieces hidden in the boxes. The gang also stole $1300
in gold and valuable from the passengers. This was the biggest train
robbery in history at that point.
Some Historians disagree that this is really a photo of Sam
Bass
Bass and his gang continued their criminal
spree for the next year, but never succeeded in finding a lot of money
to rob again.
Other Robberies
- December 21, 1877. Stagecoach robber. Stole $43 from two passengers
- January 1878. Stagecoach robbery. Stole $400.
- February 22, 1878. Houston and Texas Central Railroad. Collected $1,000 but was outwitted by an express messenger who hid a large amount of money in a stove.
- April 4 and April 10, 1878. Texas Pacific Railroad.
The people of North Texas got pretty fed
up with the Sam Bass gang, and the governor decided to call in the Texas
Rangers. This was the beginning of "The Bass War." For four
months, Sam Bass and his gang hid in the hills and swamps, and escaped
by hiding in thickets. They always got away form the Rangers, until
Bass was betrayed by a former gang member. He was shot when he was in
town to case the bank for his next robbery. A member of his gang helped
him get away, but he was found lying under a tree the next day, and
was taken back to the town, where he died on July 21, 1878, his 27th
birthday.
The grave of Sam Bass in Round Rock, Texas
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