Tag: texas

Chill Wills

Theodore Childress “Chill” Wills was born on July 18, 1902 to a family in Seagoville, Texas.  His father was a farmer by the name of Robert Bruce Wills and his mother was the former Frances Elizabeth “Fannie” Rublee.  Chill was the youngest of six children of this union and his father Robert Bruce died in 1907 when he was only forty-four and Chill was five.  Robert Bruce Wills is believed to be buried in Oakland Cemetery in South Dallas.  It does not appear that this Wills family is related to the family of country singer/band leader Bob Wills.  Fannie Rublee Wills had married John Dunaway by 1910 and the couple were living near downtown Dallas with their family that now consisted of John, Fannie and seven children.  What eventually became of John Dunaway is not known at this time.  By 1920, Chill was living with his mother a little further out of downtown on Kings Highway and she was married to Allen E. Barse.  The census forms say that both Chill and his stepfather Barse worked at a saddlery in Dallas.

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1894 Longview Bank Robbery by the Bill Dalton Gang

According to a Washington, D. C. Evening Star newspaper account on May 24, 1894, a bank robbery had occurred in Longview, Texas the day before, involving suspected members of the Dalton Gang.  When read today, the account could easily be the story line from a Hollywood western.

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Jules Bledsoe

Famed baritone vocalist Julius Lorenzo Cobb Bledsoe was born December 29, 1887 in Waco, McLennan County, Texas to Henry Lee Devalt Bledsoe and Jessie Cobb Bledsoe.  His father died when he was still an infant and by the time he was about two and a half years old, he and his mother were living with her parents, the Cobbs, near downtown Waco.  His grandfather Stephen Cobb has been mentioned as a founder of Waco’s historic congregation, New Hope Baptist Church.  It was at New Hope where young Julius had sung solos by the time he was five years old.  In 1914, Bledsoe graduated as valedictorian of Central Texas Academy, founded by African American Baptists in 1901 in Waco.  From there, Julius went on to enroll at Temple College in Waco before transferring to Bishop College in Marshall, Texas where he earned his A B degree.

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Murder Victims of the Barrow Gang – Private Citizens

Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker are believed to have first met around January of 1930 in Dallas where they both were living.  At the time, Clyde was 21 and Bonnie was 19.  Clyde was arrested a few weeks later in the latter part of February for the burglary of the Motor Mark Garage in Denton.  In early March of 1930, while he was awaiting trial for that burglary, Clyde was transferred to McLennan County in connection with burglary and automobile theft charges there.  Barrow was indicted along with William Turner by the McLennan County grand jury for these charges.  Clyde pleaded guilty to a number of them, including the theft of an automobile belonging to W. W. Cameron, a Waco lumber dealer.  It’s unclear if Barrow had also been sentenced by then, but newspaper accounts say that Turner had been sentenced and was awaiting transfer to the Huntsville prison at the time that Bonnie smuggled a gun into the McLennan County jail.  Turner, Barrow and another prisoner named Abernathy were able to escape with the aid of Bonnie Parker and the smuggled gun.  Bonnie remained in Waco as the three escapees left Texas, but the trio were captured in Ohio and returned to the state less than two weeks later.  Barrow was held a few months before being sent to the Eastham Prison Farm to begin serving a fourteen year sentence.  He was paroled in February, 1932 after which he and initially his brother Buck and a number of different associates over time would operate as the Barrow Gang for a little more than two years until he and Bonnie Parker were killed in the ambush is Louisiana in May, 1934.

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