Sep 26, 2019 - Sale 2517

Sale 2517 - Lot 218

Unsold
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
(TEXAS.) Grierson, Robert K. Letter offering a graphic description of a fatal train station gunfight. Autograph Letter Signed to mother Alice Grierson. 10 pages, 10 x 8 inches, on 3 folding sheets; folds, minimal wear. Fort Davis, TX, 30 April 1888
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Much of this letter is devoted to a gun/knife fight at the train depot in the isolated town of Valentine in western Texas. "Our attention was attracted by two persons getting off the cars hastily right near us. The parties turned out to be the conductor of the train and Sam Taylor, a hard and dangerous case & son of Mr. Frank Taylor who owns the Taylor Ranch. Sam Taylor made a lunge at the conductor with a big dagger or Bowie knife. The conductor took a step or so backwards & said, 'you will stab me, will you!', and then fired his revolver at young Taylor. They then clinched & Taylor stabbed the conductor four or five times & the conductor fired three or four more shots. They both fell while still stabbing & shooting each other. . . . The conductor died almost immediately. I helped carry him into the depot. Some other men carried Sam Taylor into the dining room of the depot. Sam Taylor's young wife (formerly Miss Mary Musgrave & a very nice girl) was sent for. She was perfectly heartbroken, of course, at the horrible sight of husband all covered with blood. When she stooped over to kiss him & asked him if he knew her, he answered yes, and then used the most beastly language to her. It was perfectly awful. . . . I was informed that young Taylor died soon after the train left Valentine. I am sorry for the poor young wife, but as far as Sam Taylor is concerned, I am glad he is dead, for he was a desperado, dangerous to the community & was bound to wind up that way sooner or later. . . . I was not more than 15 or 20 feet from the whole affray. The whole thing was done so quickly that I could hardly realize what was going on at first. It didn't even occur to me to run away & I am very glad I didn't, as I might have got shot in the back as the bullets were flying around pretty lively. There was a general stampede from the platform. It was a horrible sight, the two men all covered with blood & great pools of blood on the platform. Sam Taylor was shot once in the head, carrying away part of the skull over the eye, & twice in the body."
The author Robert K. Grierson (1860-1922) was the son of Civil War general Benjamin Henry Grierson. He briefly attended the University of Michigan before a violent spell landed him in a mental institution. His family hoped to set him up as a rancher and bought him land in Jeff Davis County in western Texas, which explains his presence there in 1888. By 1900 he was back home in Jacksonville, IL, as an inmate in the Illinois Central Hospital for the Insane, where he spent the remainder of his days. See census records, and Leckie, "Unlikely Warriors: General Benjamin H. Grierson and His Family," pages 276-294. While we might consider Grierson an unreliable narrator, many of the details in this account are corroborated by a story in the El Paso Times of 29 April 1888, which names the tragic conductor as Charles Server.