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WILLIAM TILGHMAN
Vol. 3, p. 962-963

Old Indian Territory and early Oklahoma gained an unenviable
notoriety as the headquarters for some of the most famous bands of
outlaws known in the history of crime. While the passing of the
outlaw has been observed with relief by every industrious and law-
abiding citizen, there were one or two features about the reign of
the outlaw which served to illuminate an otherwise unpleasant
picture. Pitted against the train robbers, cattle thieves, and
ruffians of every type, were the officials of law and justice,
comprising a group of men probably never excelled for
resourcefulness, personal courage, coolness and promptness in times
of emergency, and whose skill finally purged Oklahoma from its stains
of crime and border desperadoism. One of the most notable of these
figures was William Tilghman, who spent nineteen years as a deputy
United States marshal, and is now living retired in Oklahoma City.

Born at Ft. Dodge, Iowa, July 4, 1856, "Bill" Tilghman, as he is
everywhere known throughout the Southwest, has spent nearly all his
life on the borders of the frontier. His parents were William and
Amanda (SHEPARD) Tilghman. His father, who was born in 1823 on the
eastern shore of Maryland, is descended from Richard Tilghman, who
came from County Kent, England, along with Lord Baltimore, the
founder of the Maryland Colony. A number of the Tilghman family are
still found along the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. When a boy the
senior William Tilghman left home, saw service in the Florida Indian
wars, drifted to the West at a very early day, and finally located at
Fort Dodge, Iowa, when there was really a fort there, and for some
time carried on a sutler's store in the army post. In 1856, he
removed to Kansas, locating four miles east of Atchison, and was one
of the pioneers engaged in farming and stock raising until 1883. He
then returned to Fort Dodge, living there some seven or eight years,
and on the opening settlement of the land of the Sac and Fox Indians
in September, 1891, established a new home a quarter of a mile from
Chandler in Lincoln County, and lived there until his death in 1910
at the age of eighty-seven. His wife died at eighty-six on February
7, 1915. They were people who possessed all the hardy virtues of
early settlers and pioneers.

Mr. William Tilghman had no formal education in schools, and his
early life was one continuous training in those practices which make
men proficient in all the crafts of the frontier. He left home at the
age of fifteen and for the next fifteen years may be said to have
practically lived with the wild Indians. When Oklahoma was opened to
settlement he was among the first arrivals on that historic day of
April 22, 1889, and established his first home at Guthrie. In 1891 he
was appointed a deputy United States marshal, and thereafter
continuously for nineteen years was in the service, being re-
appointed by every United States marshal in Oklahoma until 1910. He
performed his duty with a capable efficiency and courage that would
be difficult to match, and by those who are competent to judge it is
said that Bill Tilghman while deputy marshal had more criminals to
contend with than any other officer of the law in the entire
Southwest. Not long ago the famous Western sheriff and personal
friend of Theodore Roosevelt, Bat Masterson, wrote an article for the
magazine Human Life, in which he gave many interesting incidents and
details of Tilghman's service as deputy marshal and the article
furnishes an emphatic proof of the statements already made as to Mr.
Tilghman's high standing as an officer of justice.

After retiring from the marshal's office in 1910, Mr. Tilghman was
elected a member of the State Senate from the Thirteenth Senatorial
District. In 1911 he resigned from the Senate to become chief of
police in Oklahoma City, and in that new office his record serves to
increase his standing as a man of devotion to duty. In 1914 Mr.
Tilghman finally retired from active life, and is now enjoying the
fruits of a long career during which he has witnessed the reclamation
of the entire Southwest from the domain of the barbarian Indian and
desperado into a country that is bearing some of the finest fruits of
civilization.

In 1915 Mr. Tilghman was instrumental in bringing out a moving
picture series entitled "The Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaws," the
scenes of which have been re-enacted under his direction by many of
those who were actually engaged in the original work of hunting down
the outlaws. This dramatic representation was reproduced in the
rugged country of the old Creek and Osage Nation, where many bloody
dramas in the conflict of law and order against desperadoism
occurred. There is an instructive moral element in the moving picture
drama, which depicts the life of the outlaw from the first act of
crime until he inevitably becomes entangled in the toils of justice,
and contrary to many representations of that class of people the
outlaws in this drama are not represented as heroes who would readily
gain the admiration of young boys, and it is Mr. Tilghman's judgment,
based on a long and thorough experience with criminals, that there is
no such thing as an outlaw hero.

In 1878 Mr. Tilghman married Miss Flora KENDALL. Her mother was Mrs.
Nancy (KENDALL) MARRS, of Fort Dodge, Iowa. Mrs. Tilghman died in
1910 leaving four children: Charles A., William, Jr., Dottie and
Vonnie. In 1903 (sic) Mr. Tilghman married Miss Zoe A. STRATTON. Her
father, Mayo E. Stratton, better known as Uncle Pete Stratton, was
prominently known all over the Southwest, lived in Southern Kansas
and later in Ingalls, Oklahoma, and was one of the pioneers of
Oklahoma cattle men, having driven, in 1868, the second bunch of
cattle over the old Chisholm Trail, which led from the Texas range to
the northern pastures and markets. Mr. and Mrs. Tilghman, who reside
at 824 West Twelfth Street in Oklahoma City, have three sons: Tench,
Richard and Woodrow Wilson Tilghman.

Typed for OKGenWeb by Vickie Taylor, January 12, 1999.