Bill Tilghman made a name for himself chasing outlaws
By David Dary
For The Transcript
Thirteen years ago this month the U.S. Postal Service issued its “Legends of the West” series of 29-cent postage stamps. Each stamp featured the likeness of one of several
prominent figures in the Old West. They included Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, Chief Joseph, Bill Pickett, Charles Goodnight, Wild Bill Hickok, and Bill Tilghman, who made a name for himself as a deputy U.S. Marshal in Oklahoma.
The story of William Matthew “Bill” Tilghman began in Fort Dodge, Iowa, where he was born July 4, 1854. He left home by age 15 and was hunting buffalo on the southern plains with his older brother Richard. They killed countless buffalo and sold their hides in Dodge City, Kansas.
When nearly all of the buffalo on the southern plains had been slaughtered, the Tilghmans gave up hunting and moved to Dodge City. In the spring of 1877 Bill Tilghman and Henry Garis became owners and operators of the Crystal Palace saloon.
The following year someone claimed Tilghman was involved in a train robbery in a neighboring county. He was not. A few months later Tilghman was arrested by Ford County Sheriff Bat Masterson for horse stealing. The case against Tilghman was dismissed.
Tilghman and Garis continued to operate the Crystal Palace saloon. At some point Tilghman became a Ford County deputy sheriff at Dodge City. It was his first job as a peace officer.
In the spring of 1878, Tilghman and his partner sold the Crystal Palace saloon. Tilghman bought another saloon, the Oasis, for his brother Frank to run. A Dodge City newspaper reported that the specialty of the Oasis would be “Methodist cocktails and
hard-shell Baptist lemonades.”
After Cheyenne Indians raided white settlements on the southern plains in the fall of 1878, Tilghman was hired as a scout by the U.S. Cavalry. He was back in Dodge City within a few months. When George M. Hoover, a wholesale liquor dealer, became mayor,
Tilghman became city marshal of Dodge City. He also continued as a deputy sheriff.
Tilghman soon became ill with erysipelas or “St. Anthony’s Fire,” a bacterial infection that caused bright red blotches on his face and lower extremities. Tilghman recovered and his friends presented him with a $40 gold badge to welcome him back.
Tilghman remained city marshal until March 1886. He resigned one month before his term was to end. He remained a deputy sheriff and occasionally performed duties. He was hired to police voting polls in newly organized Wichita County located northwest
of Dodge City. Settlers there were arguing over which new settlement should be the county seat.
On Tilghman’s 34th birthday, he shot and killed a desperate character named Ed Prather in Wichita County. Six months later Tilghman was involved in another county seat dispute in Gray County west of Dodge City. He and other deputies got into a gunfight with settlers that killed one man and wounded eight others.
Tilghman soon decided to leave Kansas and joined the first land run in Oklahoma. When he arrived in Guthrie, Bill Grimes, the town marshal, hired Tilghman as his deputy. After the Organic Act was passed in 1890 and a federal court was established at Guthrie, Grimes and Tilghman were appointed deputy U.S. marshals.
Tilghman and other deputy U.S. marshals, especially Heck Thomas and Chris Madson, set out to bring law and order to Oklahoma Territory. Thomas, a native of Georgia, was first a police officer in Georgia and Texas before becoming a deputy U.S. Marshal in Judge Isaac Parker’s Fort Smith court in 1886. Madson, a native of Denmark, came to the United States in 1876 joining the U.S. Cavalry. He left the army in 1891 and became a deputy U.S. Marshal in Oklahoma Territory.
Outlaws called Tilghman, Thomas, and Madson “The Three Guardsmen.” They are credited as being largely responsible for cleaning up nearly all of the horse-riding outlaws in Oklahoma.
Tilghman became well known when he captured the notorious Bill Doolin in Eureka Springs, Arkansas in January 1895. Thomas later killed Doolin near Lawton after the outlaw escaped jail.
In 1910, three years after Oklahoma became a state, Tilghman retired as a lawman. Soon he was elected to the Oklahoma State Senate from Lincoln County. He resigned that position in 1911 to become chief of police in Oklahoma City.
Tilghman enjoyed watching silent motion pictures, especially westerns, but when in 1913 he viewed a film produced by former outlaw Al Jennings, Tilghman said the film’s portrayal of lawmen was slanderous.
Tilghman and some associates produced their own film The Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaws to correct the misconceptions in Jennings’ film. Tilghman and other former marshals appeared in the film, After it was edited, Tilghman took a print and began touring Oklahoma towns showing the film and giving lectures.
After oil was discovered in Oklahoma, Tilghman was asked to come out of retirement and clean up the corrupt boomtown of Cromwell, Oklahoma. On Halloween night, 1924, Tilghman, 70, was killed by a corrupt federal prohibition officer, Wiley Lynn who was
charged with Tilghman’s murder. In court, however, a jury accepted Lynn’s account that he killed Tilghman in self-defense.
Citizens and lawmakers paid tribute when Tilghman’s body was taken to the state capitol before being buried in Oak Park Cemetery at Chandler in Lincoln County. In 2002, the Oklahoma State Senate dedicated a portrait of Tilghman painted by Harold T. Holden that hangs in the capitol.
