Cullen Baker

Cullen Baker was a bad man. And it seems he always was. His family came to Texas from Tennessee in 1839. Cullen was four years old at the time. They first settled at Spanish Bluffs northeast of DeKalb. They stayed there until 1842 when they moved again to Baker Creek. Here the Baker family built a cabin for the long haul. Then they built a smokehouse and planted crops. They also kept cows and chickens. The nearest store was a long way away so Cullen’s mother hand-made all their clothes. These hand-made clothes are what started his downfall.

One day, when he was about 15, his father sent him to a nearby grist mill to grind a bag of corn. Some other boys teased him about his badly fitting clothes. He tried to ignore them, but after awhile a bully named Atkinson stepped on his bare feet. Well, that was about all he could take. He launched an attack and may have killed him had not the other boys pulled him away. Thus began his reputation as a bully.

Baker began hanging out at the nearby saloons at Courtland and Forest Home, where fights frequently broke out. One day in 1853, when he was just 18 years old, his was drinking at the Forest Home saloon with his brother-in-law Matthew Powell. Somehow Baker and another man started fighting. Baker seemed to be winning, so a friend of the other man joined in. Then Powell joined Baker. Soon there was a free-for-all. Both Baker and Powell were injured in the fight. Powell was stabbed I the leg with a knife. A man named Morgan Culp knocked Baker unconscious with a tomahawk. The fight soon died out after that.

Baker regained consciousness at a friend’s house. The experience seemed to sober him up a little and he tried to stay on the straight and narrow path for a while. In January, 1854 he married Jane Petty. It seemed he meant it about settling down. Unfortunately it didn’t last. Just eight months later he was back drinking with his friends. One day he got into an altercation with a young man named Stallcup. He got a whip from a nearby store and beat the boy until he was nearly dead. There were several witnesses to the act. Soon he was brought up on charges.

A man named Wesley Bailey was one of the chief witnesses against him at the trial. Upon his arrival home, Baker accosted him there. He shot Bailey in the legs with a buckshot, “to teach him a lesson.” A few days later Bailey died from his wounds. When Baker heard about it he left the area, riding to Arkansas where he stayed with an uncle. Nothing is known of the two years he spent there. In 1856 he returned to Texas to get his wife, and took her to the uncle’s house. While there, she gave birth to a baby girl, Loula, on May 24, 1857. She died just three years later on July 2, 1860. Baker then returned to Texas, where he left his child with his in-laws.

Baker returned to his uncle’s home in Texas. But his reputation was known there. A neighbor, Mrs. Wartham, was outwardly critical of his crimes. Baker thought he would teach her a lesson. He took several hickory switches to the house and threatened to beat her. Her husband accosted Baker and they began wrestling for control of his gun. While his attention was diverted, Baker stabbed him with a knife. He died on the spot. Baker left town immediately and rode back to Texas.

He stayed out of sight and out of the news for awhile. He convinced Martha Foster he had settled down. They were married in July 1862. Shortly afterwards he joined the Confederate army. Shortly after he joined he was sent from Arkansas back to Texas with some army horses. While there, Baker noticed that the women and children were largely unprotected. He was gone so long, trying to help them, that the army labeled him a deserter. Different forces kept coming after the deserters because they were so desperate for men. One day a group called the "Independent Rangers" captured him. But they were a group of deserters and outcasts of both sides themselves. He fit right in with these men. They began a series of raids against the defenseless homes of the countryside. One large group even decided to leave the area in a wagon train because it had become unsafe. Baker and his men (he was a leader by then) followed them. He commanded the leader to turn the train around. For refusing, Baker shot him dead. A general fight ensued with many others dying for defying him.

After the war, Baker and his friends continued to terrorize the county. He frequently extracted protection money out of farmers and shopkeepers. In return Baker would keep out the freed blacks and the carpetbaggers. Amazingly they began to get a reputation has a Robin Hood type band of thieves. One incident occurred in July 1865. He and his men passed another group leading a group of horses. A little further up the road he met a woman who said some men just stole some horses from here, claiming that they were Baker and his men. Baker was infuriated anyone would impersonate him. He rode back to the other group, took the horses, and threatened them with death of they tried it again. He returned the horses to the woman.

Baker than settled down on the Sulphur River, where they established a ferry service. Shortly afterward, Martha died in March 1866. Baker was very upset about it because he had really adored her. Shortly afterward, some federal troops arrived at the house to arrest Baker. They did a lot of damage to his house and used his wife’s picture for target practice. He swore revenge. He followed the troops to Boston, Texas. There he became engaged in a shoot-out, and he was shot in the arm. Baker killed another man, a sergeant named Albert E. Titus. The state put up a $1,000 reward for Baker’s arrest.

About that time a man named Thomas Orr moved into Baker’s uncle’s neighborhood in Arkansas. Baker had wanted to marry his dead wife’s sister Belle. Unfortunately she was more interested in Orr. He had many disagreements and a fight with Orr.

Because so many people, federal and state alike, were after him, Baker had to live off the land. Occasionally he would rob remote stores or farms. Most of the victims just took it in stride. But one Mr. Rowden of Queen City, Texas, took exception. He was away one day, when Baker came into the store and took things from his wife, who was minding the store. Rowden loudly denounced Baker’s tactics. This got Baker’s attention. He rode into Queen City and promptly shot Mr. Rowden dead.

Christmas Day, 1867, was the beginning of the end for Baker. He rode into Bright Star, Arkansas and walked into a saloon there. A citizens group was getting ready to go out and raid the home of Howell Smith. Smith had recently hired some black workers. He did not have any suitable housing for them, so was allowing them to stay in their own house. Because the Smith’s had grown daughters this was considered an extreme broach of decorum. There were also rumors that Smith was having his way with one of the black women and that one of the black men had offended a white neighbr. These men elected Baker as their leader to whip the black man and warn Smith. Unfortunately things quickly got out of control.

Baker and the men demanded that Smith turn the black man over to them. He refused. A fight broke out and Smith and one of the black workers was killed. One of the Smith girls was clubbed and another was stabbed. Baker was shot in the thigh. Baker escaped and hid at the home of his father-in-law. Meanwhile a vigilante group formed from men in the Atlanta-Queen city area were on the lookout for the men responsible. Soldiers joined the group forming a committee of almost 300 men.

The posse got close to Baker and his men several times, but Baker always kept one step ahead. The area was full of swamps and bottomlands that Baker knew like the back of his hand. A group of six men tried to force the location of Baker’s hiding place out of one Seth Rames, a youth who knew Baker, but actually didn’t know where he was hiding. The men killed him anyway, believing he was holding back. He was on the run until October 1868, when he came out of hiding to kill W. G. Kirkman, the man who had shot him in the arm. A few days later, he and his gang killed J. P. Anderson, a U.S. Assessor, and H. F. Willis, of the Freedman’s Bureau.

Colonel R. Phillip Crump, a former officer of the Confederacy, heard that Baker was back at his old tricks. He wanted to try to convince him to leave the country. A conversation between the two actually did take place near Texarkana on November 14, 1868. Baker promised he would leave the country in a few days.

He met with Revernd Jesse Dodd in order to arrange something where he could return to a normal life. He wanted to declare a truce, though three men had to leave the country for Baker swore he would never allow them to remain alive. Just when he was fixing to settle down, he heard tell of a black man who had been boasting that he knew where Baker’s hiding place was. Somehow this tripped his trigger, and he began riding around on another killing spree. One of the man killed was Jim Salmons, the man who had killed Seth Rames. He killed the black man who had boasted of knowing his hiding place. He killed man named George W. Barron for participating in the man hunt the previous year. After than there was no hope that a truce or amnesty would be granted.

Then Baker rode to his father-in-law’s house, where he took him, Old Joe Davis, and Tom Orr prisoner. Tom Orr was hanged from a tree. Unbeknownst to Baker, Orr was still alive when his long-time lieutenant Lee Rames cut him down. Rames didn’t want Baker to know it so he threw a coat over his face. The outlaws rode on with their other two prisoners. When they reached Bright Star they let Foster and Davis go.

In December 1868, Baker and Rames went separate ways. Almost all of the men went with Rames. Only Dummy Kirby went with Baker. In January, the two headed back to Foster’s house for some unknown reason. Tom Orr saw them coming and went for help. By the time they reached Foster’s house, Baker and Kirby were already dead. Foster had laced his whiskey with strychnine. Kirby died when he ate some spare ribs also laced with strychnine. Each of the men standing nearby fired numerous gunshots into the dead body. The bodies were then taken to the U.S. Army barracks at Jefferson, where they wre put on public display.

Copyright 2000 by Beth Gibson

Source: "Cullen Baker, Purveyor of Death," Al Eason, Frontier Times, Western Publications, Austin, Texas, August-September 1966.

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Last updated: 7/9/00