Ellsworth: Ben and Billy Thompson’s Cow Town

By Richard H. Dillon, from the June 2008 issue of Wild West | Wild West  | 0 comments  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

Only 12 days after the shooting of Sheriff Whitney, the City Council again fired the entire police force. A weak choice for city marshal, a local barkeep, was succeeded by a strict but fair officer, J.C. “Charlie” Brown. It was policeman Brown, not yet marshal, who finished off Morco. Happy Jack was flagrantly violating the law by wearing two guns in public, and not just any two guns—they were John Good’s stolen ivory-handled Colts. When Brown ordered him to give them up, Happy Jack drew one of the Colts, much too slowly as it turned out. Brown shot him in the heart and then, for good measure, put a bullet into his head.

Ed Crawford ignored warnings that Texans would kill him in revenge for his murder of Pierce. He was shot in the stomach and head in a brothel of his choice in Nauchville. There were suspects but no arrests. Ed Hogue wisely left town and survived until 1877, when he was killed in the Black Hills of Dakota Territory. As for Ellsworth itself, it had given way to Wichita as the main Kansas cattle town by 1875. Ellsworth was settling down to the quiet existence of a farming center.

Ellsworth’s onetime top gunman, Ben Thompson, went on to become city marshal of Austin, Texas. In July 1882, Thompson killed Jack Harris, the owner of a variety store, in San Antonio. Thompson was acquitted of murder the following January, but on March 11, 1884, Thompson was back in San Antonio, and he and his pal, John “King” Fisher, were shot down by several men, including Joe Forster, who had been Harris’ partner.

California historian and longtime librarian Richard H. Dillon has written scores of books and articles on California and Western history. Suggested for further reading: Why the West Was Wild: A Contemporary Look at the Antics of Some Highly Publicized Kansas Cowtown Personalities, by Nyle H. Miller and Joseph W. Snell; and the Complete and Authentic Life of Ben Thompson: Man With a Gun, by Floyd Benjamin Streeter.

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