User:Btphelps/Sandbox/Fred Dodge

Frederick James Dodge (August 29, 1854—December 16, 1938)

The Tombstone careers of Bob Winders, Charley Smith, and their friend, Fred J. Dodge, in mining, gambling, and law enforcement during the years 1879 to 1888, provide a glimpse of this period's workaday world in the Arizona boom towns.

"Born on August 29th, 1854, at Spring Valley, Butte County, California. . . I was the first white child to be born in the northern part of Butte County", Frederick James Dodge wrote years later. Raised in the California gold country, Dodge learned to drive two-, four-, and six-horse hitches, "fast freight handling fruit into the Mining Camps." He also kept store and managed a railroad eatery for his parents, but, "lonesome for the mountains and the excitement of the mining camps", he proved a restless fellow. By his own account, Dodge "learned to play cards. . . of course I wandered around some". Fred's wanderings took him to Pioche, Nevada, and Bodie, California, and involved encounters with mining camp worthies Dave Neagle, Pat Holland, and Nellie Cashman, whom he would meet again in Tombstone. ✅

Meanwhile, ex-stage driver and mining camp veteran Fred Dodge arrived in Tombstone. Alarmed at the high incidence of stagecoach robbery in the territory, Wells, Fargo & Company's general superintendent, John J. Valentine, sent Dodge to Arizona as an undercover operative to report on outlaw depredations, as well as on the misdeeds of company employees and peace officers. Dodge probably arrived in Tombstone from San Francisco in the spring of 1880 and quickly became friends with the Earp brothers and their mining partners, Bob Winders and Charley Smith. Dodge later wrote that after he had gained entry into the ranks of Arizona law enforcement, "Charley Smith and I always rode together when urgent", an assertion borne out by contemporary accounts.

Dodge was an integral part in the investigation into the " Bisbee Massacre ," on December 8, 1883, where six desperados left four people dead inside the Goldwater and Castenada Store in Bisbee.

In December, 1890, Dodge went to work "openly" for Wells Fargo in Texas, where he worked on a number of cases, not only in the Lone Star State, but also in Oklahoma and Missouri. He and his wife bought a house and lived in Kansas City, Missouri from 1894-1899.

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1890s-wells-fargo-cos-express-special-1798661676

While vacationing in Leon Springs and the Boerne area with his wife, Patsy and daughter, Ada, Mr. Dodge fell in love with the beautiful and tranquil hill country. In 1906 he purchased several tracts which he renamed the 2000 acre Dodge Ranch.

After his first wife died, Mr. Dodge married again in 1917 and had a son named Fred James Dodge, Jr. in 1918. Fred Jr. grew to manhood on the Dodge Ranch and moved to San Antonio where he married his wife, Elouise. Upon the death of Fred Dodge, Sr. in 1938 at the age of 84 years, his widow, Jessie, sold the ranch in 1941.

http://www.txgenwebcounties.org/kendall/bdodg.htm

Fred Dodge took a more direct action against the lot jumpers about a week later, when Tombstone suffered its first major fire. "The next morning after the fire," Dodge explained, "Lot jumpers were much in evidence and were squatted on Many good business lots. The Title to all Tombstone lots were in dispute and were waiting the result in the courts." City Marshall Virgil Earp conferred with his brothers and the town's influential citizens and determined to restore possession to "the man who was in possession when the fire wiped him out", who "would then have to abide by the Court decision".

Dodge, and probably Smith as well, rode with the Earp posse that night. The horsemen "dropped a Lasso Rope over a Tent-pole and then on a Gallop, they jerked the tent free from its holding and left the Lot jumper lying there." Dodge recalled that the posse then instructed, "Lot jumper, you git, and they did." By this time, friendship forged in joint mining ventures and at the gambling halls caused the Earps to rely on Dodge and Smith. To Wyatt Earp, Charley Smith was a loyal comrade; he dubbed Fred Dodge "a fine companion and a wonderful friend".

On the night of October 27, 1880, Dodge followed Pima County deputy sheriff Wyatt Earp and his brother Morgan through dark Allen Street to arrest several cowboys shooting up the town. Wyatt borrowed Dodge's pistol and used it to buffalo the cowboy leader, Curly Bill Brocious, after Brocious shot Tombstone marshal Fred White at close range. Dodge guarded Brocious at the ramshackle village jail, while Wyatt and Virgil Earp rounded up the rest of the shootists.

Several months later, Dodge and Smith helped the Earp brothers hold back a would-be lynch mob aimed at hanging "Johnny Behind the Deuce" Rourke, who had killed mining engineer Philip Schneider in neighboring Charleston. "Terrible excitement on the main street," diarist Parsons wrote on January 14, 1881. After Rourke, a gambler, fled to Tombstone, "the officers sought to protect him and swore in deputies, themselves gambling men (the deputies, that is) to help. Many of the miners armed themselves and tried to get at the murderer. Several times, yes, a number of times, rushes were made and rifles leveled . . . Terrible excitement, but the officers got through finally and out of town with their man bound for Tucson."

Dodge stood, shotgun leveled, in the hollow square headed by Wyatt, which included fellow gamblers Virgil and Morgan Earp, Jack Salmon, George "Shotgun" Collins, Turkey Creek Jack Johnson, Doc Holliday and Sherman McMasters. The lawmen pushed through the mob without serious obstruction. Charley Smith drove the fast team that carried the Earp brothers and their prisoner to the railroad in Benson, bound for Tucson.

Despite his friendship with the Earp brothers, Fred Dodge shared the suspicions of many in Tombstone about the Earps' ally, John H. "Doc" Holliday, and his alleged involvement in, or foreknowledge of, the March 15, 1881 attack on the Benson stagecoach in which the driver and a passenger were killed. "Doc never played square with anyone in that country," Dodge asserted years later. Veteran Wells Fargo detective Bob Paul, who rode shotgun messenger on the stage on the night of the attack, seems to have shared Dodge's suspicions, which heightened the tension gripping Tombstone over Earp-cowboy antagonisms.

Notwithstanding his concern for remaining undercover, Dodge openly rode with the Earp brothers in pursuit of highwaymen who robbed the Bisbee stagecoach in September 1881. Years later, Cochise County deputy sheriff William M. Breckenridge, who also accompanied the posse, referred to Dodge as a gambler, indicating that Dodge's cover remained intact. The day after the robbery, the posse trailed two suspects to Bisbee. There the lawmen arrested Frank Stilwell, a deputy of Cochise County sheriff John Behan, and Pete Spencer. When the prisoners arrived in Tombstone, Deputy U. S. Marshal Wyatt Earp rearrested them for robbing the United States mail.

Probably because of his open collaboration with the Earps, Dodge - whom the Nugget identified as "a well-known sport" - tangled with a cowboy in Tombstone's Alhambra Saloon. Replicating the antics of his friend Charley Smith, Dodge fired at the cowboy "or in the floor, which it couldn't be definitely ascertained." Andy Bronk, one of Virgil Earp's city policemen, arrived before the smoke cleared and drew criticism from the pro-cowboy Nugget for his failure to arrest Dodge: We have not heard of the ordinance prohibiting the carrying or firing of firearms within the city limits being repealed. It is possible, however, that it only applies to laboring men, and is a case of 'special legislation' exempting a certain class."

In an attempt to enforce Tombstone's anti-gun ordinance against the Clanton and McLaury brothers, on October 26, 1881, the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday slew Frank and TomMcLaury and Billy Clanton. The cowboys' return fire wounded Virgil and Morgan Earp. Charley Smith and Fred Dodge quickly arrived on the scene. Smith joined the Citizens' Safety Committee, backing the Earps, and Dodge rose from a sickbed to join Wyatt at the site of the shooting on Fremont Street. Smith, Dodge, and Winders all supplied portions of the bail money for Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday in the aftermath of the street fight.

These actions made the three friends targets for cowboy retaliation. Shortly after Tombstone justice of the peace Wells Spicer released the Earps ad Holliday from custody, holding that they had killed the three cowboys in the discharge of an official duty, Dodge narrowly escaped an ambush laid from the second story of Allen Street's Grand Hotel as he was parading a rival gambler named Deadwood Scotty, the apparent decoy, in front of him at gunpoint. Dodge afterward learned "that it was arrainged [sic] with Scotty to get me down there opposite the Hotel and with some excuse he was to step aside and then I was to get it.

Shortly after the stagecoach bearing Tombstone mayor and Earp supporter John P. Clum was attacked, Dodge opened a faro game in Isaac Levi's Allen Street saloon. He hoped, he later recounted, to obtain information, "as there was much going on there in the way of Cooked work." Wyatt Earp had urged Dodge to reconsider his plan as there "were too many chances for me to be assassinated, but I took some chances and told Wyatt that I would quit there in a few days."

Circumstances seemed to justify Earp's fears. Dodge soon won ownership of the entire saloon from Levi, whom the gambler detective described as an inveterate, though not very skillful, faro player. Angry over his loss, Levi drew his pistol, fired, and narrowly grazed Dodge's shirt collar before being disarmed. Threatened with repossession at shotgun point, Dodge quickly assembled reinforcements in the persons of Charley Smith and Turkey Creek Jack Johnson. He held the saloon long enough to accept a cash payment from several of Levi's friends and relatives, settling the controversy.

Two nights after Dodge acquired the Allen Street saloon, the ambush shooting of Virgil Earp plunged Tombstone and Cochise County into a war marked by multiple homicides and the marching and countermarching of rival federal and county posses with the federal deputy marshals, led by Wyatt Earp, chasing "cowboys", and Sheriff John Behan and his deputies in pursuit of the Earp party. Lacking funds to deal effectively with the crisis, U. S. Marshal Crawley P. Dake turned to Wells, Fargo & Company for assistance. The company's general superintendent forwarded a check, which Dake used to mount a posse led by Deputy U. S. Marshal Wyatt Earp. Both Dodge and Smith rode with Earp, as he scoured the countryside in January 1882, seeking Virgil's assailants and suspects in two recent stagecoach robberies.

On the night of March 18, Charley Smith joined several Earp partisans who rushed to Morgan Earp's side after he fell mortally wounded, shot in the back through the rear windows of Campbell and Hatch's Billiard Parlor. "This is a hard way to die," Smith heard Morgan murmur as the doctors pronounced his wound fatal.

Ill with a recurring fever, Dodge received the news of Morgan Earp's murder from Wyatt early the following morning. "I know the fellows who killed Morg," Earp told Dodge, "and I am going after them. I've got Federal warrants for all of them in my pocket. Maybe they'll be fools enough to resist arrest."

Smith carried money from Earp partisans to the beleaguered federal lawmen afield after Morgan's killers. After one such foray, George Parsons wrote that "Tip [Daniel G. Tipton] and Smith [were] arrested this evening while entering town. Much excitement. False charges. [Cochise County sheriff John] Behan will get it yet."

Charged with helping the Earp posse elude Sheriff Behan after its exit from Tombstone on March 21, Smith and Tipton were released by Tombstone justice of the peace A. J. Felter on grounds that the arrests were illegal and the warrants upon which they were made were defective. Although the Epitaph discredited as "without foundation" the report that he had left town, Smith later admitted that he left Arizona Territory with the Earps when they headed for refuge in Colorado, leaving several dead enemies along their back trail.

Smith returned to Tombstone. After the expiration of Sheriff Behan's term, he and Dodge became Cochise County lawmen. Both secured deputy sheriff's commissions from Behan's successor, Jerome I. Ward. Smith retained his badge under the next sheriff, Robert Hatch. Dodge also partnered with Tombstone constable Isaac Roberts until Roberts's murder in March 1884. "I done all the riding and Ike [Roberts] done the town work," Dodge recalled. "I felt sure that he did not know my true Standing [as a Wells Fargo detective] and I never told him - It gave me a fine chance to attend to the getting of information that I was always looking for. Charley Smith still continued to ride with me and I gave him two-thirds of the money that come to me when Ike and I divided our Fee."

Dodge and Smith carried out a prickly assignment in 1884, repossessing a property from Charleston justice of the peace Jim Burnett, who maintained order at gunpoint in his bailiwick. Dodge narrowly eluded death from a spring-trap shotgun Burnett had rigged inside his cabin. Thirteen years later he testified as an adverse character witness on behalf of Burnett's killer, William C. Greene. Dodge provided a graphic description of Burnett's earlier attempt to murder him.

From 1883 through 1888, Smith and Dodge followed a familiar pattern. In December 1883 they were members of the posse that pursued the men who committed the Bisbee Massacre, until Smith fell ill as a result of his old Texas chest wound. Several years later, Dodge, abed with rheumatism, appointed Smith to fill his position as Tombstone night watchman and special police officer.

In 1887, the pair rode after the perpetrators of twin train robberies. This chase reunited them with their old friend Virgil Earp. His left arm crippled by cowboy shotguns in December 1881, Earp had recuperated in California, where he served as marshal of Colton. Probably working as a Wells Fargo detective while on leave of absence from his marshal's job, Earp wired Dodge and Smith to meet him in Benson. Riding across a mesa, the crippled lawman convulsed Dodge and Smith and horrified their Yaqui Indian tracker by allowing his boneless left arm to flop about. Earp remembered how the posse ascended a series of rough hills in their unsuccessful pursuit of the holdup men. "By George it was steep," he said. "We had to hold pon to the tails of the horses and let them pull us up."

A long-running quarrel with Charles Cunningham eventually ended Smith's Tombstone law-enforcement career. On November 25, 1885, Smith moved to separate two quarreling patrons of the Bank Exchange Saloon. Another drunken faro player, Charles Cunningham, attempted to interfere and (perhaps more significantly) called Smith a "damned hairlip son of a bitch." The unarmed deputy sheriff, seeing the larger Cunningham approach him with blood in his eye, grabbed a pistol belonging to Tombstone marshal Dick Gage and fired one shot, blasting Cunningham just below the right knee. Though Dr. George Goodfellow at first feared that Cunningham would lose his leg, Smith's antagonist recovered. After hearing testimony, the Cochise County Grand Jury dismissed charges against Smith the following February.

Almost three years later, the two Charleys resumed their quarrel. Late on the night of September 22, 1888, the pair argued in the French Wine House in Tombstone. According to one account, "Smith made a gun play at Cunningham, who was unarmed." Egged on, Fred Dodge believed, by an ostensible friend of both men named Lazard, Cunningham hastened to heel himself. Brandishing Lazard's pistol, he confronted Smith on Allen Street, shouted "Charley, does it go," and began shooting. Smith toppled off the board sidewalk, his "hip bone . . . shattered all to pieces.

Dodge arrived on the scene and found his stricken partner lying on a table in Pony Brown's saloon, with Lazard holding Smith's leg. "Mad and sore," Dodge ordered Lazard from the room. Dr. Goodfellow, who was attending Smith, told Dodge "that there was very little hope of saving his life. We got him onto a stretcher and carried him home. He lived with Bob Winders and had come to the country with him, and it had always been home to him. He did not die then, but his suffering was intense - he was a cripple and could hardly get around." Bnound over to appear before the grand jury, Cunningham was eventually released. In later years, he expressed is regrets to Dodge over the shooting, and his opinion that the false friend, Lazard, had been the cause of it all.

Dodge, writing in old age, stated that Smith died a couple of years later from the effects of Cunningham's bullet. The detective's requiem for his friend was premature, but understandable. A decline in silver prices, water flooding the mines, and a series of kindred disasters had combined to place Tombstone en borrasca. When author Owen Wister visited the camp a few years later, he wrote his mother that Tombstone "has a past but nothing else. . .many blocks of buildings stand entirely deserted. Houses, saloons, hotels, large shops - their doors nailed up and the panes cracked out of the windows." The safety of large silver shipments and mine payrolls no longer a concern, Dodge completed his undercover assignment for Wells Fargo. On October 10, 1888 he and his wife, Elizabeth (Patsy), sold their home and then, with stepson Charles and infant daughter Ada, departed for California.

Despite Fred Dodge's recollection that Smith died of wounds received from Cunningham, Charley proved harder to kill than that. He went on to serve as deputy sheriff, constable, marshal, and justice of the peace in Tempe. At the time of his death on November 28, 1907, he was wearing a Pinal County deputy's badge in the little town of Maricopa. The pharmacist, who initiated estate proceedings in order to collect his bills, valued Charley's net worth at "$222.43 in money and some few articles of wearing apparel."

Of the three friends, Fred Dodge fared the best and lived the longest. After departing Tombstone, Dodge worked openly as a detective for Wells Fargo until his retirement in 1918. He eventually acquired a ranch in Boerne, Texas, where he lived until his death at age eighty-four on December 16, 1938. Before he died Dodge wrote his memoirs and collaborated with Stuart Lake on a biography of Wyatt Earp.

Frederick "Fred" James Dodge (1854–1938) - Wells Fargo Detective, constable of Tombstone, Arizona, and Texascattleman, Dodge was born at Spring Valley, California on August 29, 1854 and raised in Sacramento. When he grew up, he went to work as an undercover agent for Wells Fargo, working in California, Nevada and Arizona. In December, 1879, he was working in Tombstone, Arizona and recommended thatWyatt Earp be hired as a guard and messenger for the stage line. The two quickly became good friends and Dodge supported Wyatt and his brothers in their troubles inTombstone after the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and during theEarp Vendetta Ride. He and Wyatt remained friends the rest of their lives.

Dodge was an integral part in the investigation into the "Bisbee Massacre,” on December 8, 1883, where six desperados left four people dead inside the Goldwater and Castenada Store in Bisbee.

In the end, five of the killers would be legally hanged, and when the sixth man, John Heath, was sentenced to life in prison, a vigilante group descended upon the Tombstone jail, where Heath was being held, and lynched him.

Later, Dodge was elected constable of Tombstone, while still working under cover for Wells Fargo, where he solved a number of train and stage robberies. In December, 1890, Dodge went to work "openly” for Wells Fargo in Texas, where he worked on a number of cases, not only in the Lone Star State, but also in Oklahoma. He was known to have teamed up with U.S. Deputy Marshal, Heck Thomas, in the pursuit of the Doolin-Dalton Gang.

While he and his wife, Patsy, and daughter, Ada, were vacationing in Leon Springs, Texas, they fell in love with the hill country and in 1906, Dodge purchased 2,000 acres, which he called the Dodge Ranch near Boerne, Texas. He retired from Wells Fargo in 1917 and settled down on his ranch. After his first wife died, he remarried a woman named Jessie in 1917 and the couple had a son named Fred James Dodge, Jr. the following year. Dodge continued to live on his ranch until his death at the age of 84 on December 17, 1938. He was buried at the Boerne Cemetery in Kendall County, Texas.

During his long career as a detective, Dodge was described as an intelligent and determined investigator. He was also an extremely meticulous man, who kept a daily diary of his activities and travels, collecting some 27 journals over the years. These would later be used as research for two books -- The Life and Times of Wyatt Earp and Undercover for Wells Fargo.

After the Gunfight at the OK Corral, Dodge contributed $500 each to the bond fund for Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp.

O. C. Smith, $1,000; Fred J. Dodge, $500; R. J. Winders, $1,000; James C. Earp, $2,500; Wyatt Earp, $7,000; W. H. Savage, $1,000; Dan O'Toole, $1,000; and William J. Hutchinson, $500, Total, $15,500.

Earp's friends and family O. C. Smith, $1,000; James C. Earp, $2,500; L. Rickabaugh, $5,000; J. M. Nichols, $2,000; Fred J. Dodge, $500; R. J. Winders, $1,000; W. H. Savage, $2,000; Chas. R. Brown, $2,000; A. C. Bilicke, $1,000; and Thos. Fitch, $10,000. Total $27,000. Total for both, $42,000