Written by Clay Riley – It was in June, 1898, that an attempt was made by four bandits to rob the express car on the Santa Fe railroad, running from Brownwood to San Angelo. The perfect spot to attempt the robbery was at Coleman Junction.
As the railroad built west, the railroad established a junction point here, being in those early years, simply a stub line into Coleman. Since the railroad did not go directly through Coleman, a side track, or spur was made so that the train could back up into Coleman, pick up passengers and freight, then go back forward to the main railroad track to San Angelo. This delay in track change-over, made the train vulnerable to robbers.
At Coleman Junction on the night of June 9th, 1898, the train was held up by four men, Pierce Keaton, Bill Taylor, Jeff Taylor and Bud Newman; the Taylor boys being brothers, and Newman was the leader of the band. They covered the engineer, James Stanton, and fireman Johnson, and marched Johnson back to the express car and told him to ask the express agent, L. L. White to open the door.
Fireman Johnson did as he was instructed, under threat of death at the hands of the bandits. Before Express Agent White could respond, several shots were fired by W.F. Buchanan, the traveling Livestock Agent of the Santa Fe, who had discovered the train was being held up. The fire was returned by the bandits, and in the gunfire, fireman Johnson was mortally wounded, Newman was shot through the left arm, and Keaton was shot through the right leg.
The bandits, with no loot and two of them bleeding from their wounds, then hurried to their horses and made their way to the ranch of the Taylor brothers in Sutton County. That hard and painful ride was a distance of 125 miles, going all of the way without stopping to get medical attention for the wounded men. The unconscious fireman Johnson, was placed on the train and it was backed into Santa Anna, where he died.
Sheriff Rome Shield of Tom Green county, was notified to be on the lookout for the bandits, as they had in their haste, left several sticks of dynamite in a newspaper bearing the advertisement of a Sonora merchant. The newspaper was the clue that led to their apprehension by a posse headed by Sheriff Shield, and composed of Deputy United States Marshal Hodges, and the sheriff of Sutton County and several deputies.
Upon their arrival in Sonora the posse went directly to the Taylor brothers’ ranch and arrested all of the men without killing or wounding any of them. Only one shot was fired, it being fired by Sheriff Shield from a rifle he had borrowed. He missed his human target only because the front sight on the borrowed rifle had been shifted to one side. However, after the one shot the bandits came out and surrendered with uplifted hands.
In the trial that followed Newman turned state’s evidence and gained immunity for himself, but the others were convicted. Keaton and Jeff Taylor received a term of 99 years each in the penitentiary for the killing of Fireman Johnson, and each got eight years for attempting to rob the express car.
Later while waiting transfer to the State Penitentiary in Huntsville, Bill Taylor escaped from the Brown County jail, but was captured before he got very far. He escaped a second time, but was captured by Newman, who placed him into the hands of the authorities at Comstock under the pretext of making an attempt to hold up a west-bound Southern Pacific train.
Bill Taylor managed to escape a third time, and went to Edwards County where he found Newman and in a gunfight Bill Taylor killed Newman. Taylor then vanished, and had never been seen since.
Pierce Keaton was paroled in 1915, and he later settled in Bisbee, Ariz., where he died in 1931.
Sources: Train Robbery at Coleman – As told by J. Marvin Hunter, The Houston Post – June 19, 1898, Contemporary newspapers of the time. Frontier Times Magazines.
Photo – Brownwood Public Library, Local History & Genealogy Branch
This and many other stories are available at the Brownwood Public Library – Genealogy & Local History Branch at 213 S. Broadway. Volunteers from the Pecan Valley Genealogical Society are there to assist you in your family history research.
Clay Riley is a local historian and retired Aerospace Engineer that has been involved in the Historical and Genealogical Community of Brown County for over 20 years. Should you have a comment, or a question that he may be able to answer in future columns, he can be reached at; pvgsbwd@gmail.com.
