Joseph Saddler

The subject of our sketch is Joseph Saddler who was a Chickasaw citizen by marriage.  Elsewhere in this website, we discussed the shootout at the Lee Brothers hideout in the Arbuckles.  We also covered the finding of the bodies of Bud Stephens, the outlaw who lived at Sorghum Flat, along with his wife who was killed by Bully July.  Mr. Saddler was there when these events occurred.

Joseph was born in Iowa in 1856; came to Pickens County in 1867, where he attended a neighborhood school for some time.  In 1878, after playing the role of renter for a period of eight or nine years, he married Miss Jennie Alexander, the daughter of Chili Alexander, at that time a wealthy Chickasaw, but recently in humble circumstances.

After this marriage, he moved to Caddo Creek and from thence to his present residence close to Erin Springs (on the Washita River west of Maysville) where he has two hundred fifty acres under cultivation and some cattle.

Mr. Saddler was at one time lieutenant in the Chickasaw Militia and was in the massacre at Caddo Creek where Jim Guy, Billy Kirksey and the Roff Brothers were shot down by the Lee gang from the shelter of a fortified building.

During about ten or twelve years the subject of this sketch was present at the deaths of many persons, some of whom were the victims of malice and revenge.

Among these were Sam Rail who was killed at Berwyn by one Meeks over a disputed race and Eastman Burris who was shot dead by some officers on the day of B. C. Burney‘s election, in the vicinity of the voting precinct.

Mr. Saddler and a comrade of his, Charlie Henderson, composed two of the party who discovered the dead bodies of Bud Stephens and his wife in the Arbuckle Mountains in 1883, and for which July, a Negro, suffered capital punishment.

Mr. Saddler’s family consists of a wife and two children, Lavina and James - - the former aged twelve years and the latter four years.

Contributed by Dennis Muncrief, September 2003.