Stone Gardens: An Arkansas-born outlaw rode the frontier in the Dalton and Doolin gangs for a little more than seven years
- Dennis McCaslin
- 4 hours ago
- 4 min read
William Marion Doolin came into the world in 1858 on a remote homestead along Big Piney Creek in Johnson County t,thirty-five miles northeast of Clarksville.
His parents, Michael Doolin, an Irish-American sharecropper, and Artemina Beller Doolin, worked a modest farm where life demanded constant labor from the soil.
Michael died when Bill was seven, leaving Artemina to manage the place with her children, including Bill as the only son among siblings like half-brother Barton and sisters such as Melinda.
Formal schooling remained limited; Bill learned practical skills instead—riding horses, handling firearms, building fences and structures—while helping sustain the family through tough sharecropping years.
At twenty-three in 1881, he left the farm behind and headed west. He took odd jobs freighting goods from Caldwell, Kansas, into Indian Territory before finding steady work as a cowboy on Oscar Halsell's HX Bar Ranch along the Cimarron River.
Halsell, a Texas cattleman, recognized Doolin's reliability and mechanical aptitude. He taught the young man basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, and elevated him to an informal foreman role. Doolin built ranch buildings and corrals, gaining respect among hands.
There he met Emmett Dalton, a connection that would soon pull him into a different line of work.By July 1891, Doolin landed in Coffeyville, Kansas, where a drunken altercation turned violent; he wounded two lawmen in a shootout.
He joined the Dalton Gang shortly after, participating in several train robberies across Indian Territory and Kansas from May 1891 through July 1892, including stops at Leliaetta near Wagoner, Red Rock, and Adair.
He missed the gang's disastrous double-bank attempt in Coffeyville on October 5, 1892—often attributed to a lame horse--when Bob, Grat, and others died in a citizen-led firefight that claimed eight lives total
With the Daltons gone, Doolin organized a new outfit in late 1892, drawing in men like George "Bitter Creek" Newcomb, "Tulsa Jack" Blake, Dan "Dynamite Dick" Clifton, "Arkansas Tom" Jones, George "Red Buck" Waightman, Charley Pierce, Bill Dalton (Bob's brother), and others.
Known variously as the Wild Bunch, Oklahombres, or Doolin-Dalton Gang, they specialized in banks, trains, and stagecoaches across Kansas, Oklahoma Territory, and nearby states
.Their run began November 1, 1892, with the Ford County Bank in Spearville, Kansas, netting cash and over $1,500 in treasury notes. June 11, 1893, brought a Santa Fe train holdup west of Cimarron, Kansas, yielding about $1,000 in silver—though Doolin took a wound to the left foot during the ensuing chase, leaving him with a permanent limp.
The gang scattered after that but regrouped for hits like the Clarkson, Oklahoma Territory, store and post office on January 3, 1894 (by Pierce and Waightman), the Farmers Citizens Bank in Pawnee on January 23, and the Santa Fe station in Woodward on March 10 for more than $6,000.
Other actions included attempts at Sacred Heart and later strikes in Pawnee, Woodward, and Dover through 1895. The most intense clash came September 1, 1893, in Ingalls, Oklahoma Territory, where marshals surrounded the gang.
A fierce gun battle erupted; the outlaws escaped, but one marshal died and two suffered mortal wounds. Doolin reportedly killed Deputy Richard Speed during the chaos
On March 14, 1893, amid the crime spree, Doolin secretly married Edith Ellsworth in Kingfisher (or Ingalls, sources vary), a preacher's daughter from an area sympathetic to outlaws.
Ttheir son, Jay (later taking the name Samuel Meek), arrived around 1894. Edith remained loyal, moving with or near him despite the risks.Relentless pursuit by the "Three Guardsmen"--Deputy U.S. Marshals Bill Tilghman, Heck Thomas, and Chris Madsen--wore down the gang.
Many members died or faced capture by late 1894. Doolin, nursing injuries, traveled with Edith to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, for the medicinal springs. On January 15, 1896, Tilghman—tipped off--entered a bathhouse and arrested him without shots fired, one of the quickest captures of a major frontier outlaw.
Transported to Guthrie jail, Doolin faced murder charges tied to Ingalls and refused a fifty-year plea deal.
On July 5, 1896, he escaped with others (some accounts suggest a possible prior arrangement, though unproven). He fled briefly to Mexico before returning to visit Edith and Jay at her parents' place near Lawson in Payne County, Oklahoma Territory.
On the night of August 24-25, 1896, Heck Thomas's posse-- including Bill Dunn and others--ambushed him as he left the house leading his horse, Winchester in hand. Under bright moonlight, Thomas called for surrender. Doolin fired twice (once with the rifle, then pistol shots); the posse responded with rifles and a double-barreled shotgun.
Buckshot riddled his chest--reports cite around twenty wounds, several piercing the heart. He fell dead at thirty-eight.
His body went on display in Guthrie for identification before burial in Summit View Cemetery's Boot Hill section (Block 22, Lot 353), marked initially by a twisted buggy axle.
Edith filed a $50,000 wrongful death suit against the marshal's office; it was dismissed in 1897. She remarried soon after.
Doolin's grave lies near outlaw Elmer McCurdy's, a quiet end for a man whose four-year run marked one of the final chapters of large-scale Old West gang activity before law enforcement closed the frontier era.
