Cherokee Bill – An Outlaw’s Story

Crawford Goldsby was born February 8th, 1876 in Fort Concho, Texas, to George Goldsby and  Ellen Beck Goldsby. He was the second born and oldest son of 4 children by this couple. His father George was a mixed-race male his mother was a mulatto and his father was a white man. Ellen Beck was half African-American 1/4 white 1/4 Cherokee who lived in Fort Gibson Indian Territory. George and Ellen met when he was stationed at Fort Gibson and later was transferred to Fort Concho Texas where he became a first sergeant and Company D Buffalo Soldiers.

The civilian community of Santa Angela that bordered Fort Concho was where the soldiers went on their days off at the fort. It was in this town that change not only the life of George Goldsby but that of his wife and children as well. It was on a fateful day in February of 1878 when George was having a drink at Morris Saloon when a group of cowboys and buffalo hunters decided to approach him. The racial divide was large in Santa Angela and it came to a head as a man assaulted George, cutting his chevrons from his uniform and then making him leave the saloon.

Angry for being assaulted, George went back to Fort Concho and gathered some men and rifles. Together they went back to more Saloon and engaged in a gunfight with the men. Three civilians and one soldier were killed in the melee.  G.W. Arrington,  captain of the Texas Rangers, March through Fort Concho and stormed into Colonel Grierson’s office and demanded that goes to be arrested for murder. Grierson informed him he had no Authority on federal lands and had him removed from the fort.

Goldsby knew there would be a trial and knew he would be tried and convicted of murder, so on May 23rd, 1879, he went AWOL.  The other nine men that were a part of the Morris Saloon incident were indicted for murder, so in truth, George was not wrong of the outcome. Goldsby left Ellen and their four kids to face the aftermath of his desertion. She continued working as a laundress for Company D for a while before moving her kids back home to Fort Gibson.  Once they returned to Fort Gibson Ellen took her four kids and put them in homes of relatives. Crawford was given into the care of “Auntie” Amanda Foster, where he stayed until he was sent to an Indian school in Kansas.  After going to school in Kansas he was sent to a Catholic Indian School in Pennsylvania, school life wasn’t for him and he soon returned to Fort Gibson.

While Crawford was gone to school, and unbeknownst to him, his mother had remarried. Alan Beck Goldsby married William Lynch in 1889 and they settled in Fort Gibson, Indian Territory where Lynch became a barber.  The problem with this marriage was that Ellen was still legally married to Crawford’s father. At one point George Goldsby approached Ellen for a divorce but she denied him. At the same time George Goldsby, who by this time was known as William Scott also married.

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