Bandit Starr is Second Robin Hood.
Is Henry Starr, of Lawton, Okla., the bandit chief, another Robin Hood? Does he, while engaged in robbing banks, keep in mind the hardships of the poor, as did the picturesque highwayman and poacher of early England? If only a part of the stories told of Starr are true, he might be called the “Robin Hood of Oklahoma,” although just now he is in Lincoln County Jail at Chandler, suffering from a broken leg, and with a long prison term pretty thoroughly mapped out for him. But here is what some of his admirers say he did:
“These things are of no value to me, but I’d hate it if the farmers had them to pay,” and with that remark Henry Starr, the bandit leader who, with his band of desperadoes, robbed two banks at Stroud and was shot down and captured by eighteen-year-old Paul Curry, once threw a heavy bundle of mortgages and notes, with a stone tied to them, into California Creek in Northern Oklahoma, and they were never recovered. Starr and his men had taken the bank’s papers when they rifled the bank at Caney, Kan., several years ago, and he said he took them just so the farmers would not have them to pay.
This incident in Starr’s bandit career was told by a long-time resident of the Cherokee country. He has known Starr for a number of years, has played poker with him frequently, and he insists that Starr is really one of the kindliest of men. After the Kansas robbery the Starr gang rode into northern Oklahoma and hid for some time, and it was at this time that the mortgages and notes were destroyed. The total value of the papers was perhaps never known, but a man who saw them declares the bundle was a foot thick.
It was following this same robbery, too, that Starr made one of his most spectacular get-aways. He and two men rode into an isolated community during the night and concealed themselves in a big stone barn, which was on the edge of a small valley with hills not far distant and almost surrounding it. Starr and his men slept until late in the day and then played pitch and shot craps for the small change they had obtained at the bank. They would shoot for a handful of the small silver, dimes and quarters, without any attempt being made to ascertain the amount.
The whereabouts of Starr and his two companions became known to the county sheriff, who, with a posse of twenty or thirty men, went to the barn with the intention of capturing the trio. The members of the posse were stationed on the hills surrounding the barn, and they thought it would be impossible for the outlaws to escape. When Starr was notified of the presence of the officers, he went into the barnyard and motioned to the sheriff, whom he knew, to confer with him. When the sheriff rode into the yard, Starr shook hands with him as though he was glad to meet an old friend, and then said:
“I am going to leave here at five o’clock; there are three of us. If you do not want your men hurt, you had better get them out of the way, for when we start we are going through your lines. Tell your men that for me.”
The sheriff returned to his men, called them together, and told them what Starr had said; within five minutes there was not a man other than the sheriff left within rifle distance of Henry Starr. That evening at five, as he had announced, Starr and his men rode quietly, and without being molested, away from the barn and toward the Osage Hills.
That Starr’s wife was the original of a photograph, “The Cherokee Milkmaid,” which was published worldwide several years ago, is the statement of Representative Walter R. Eaton, of Muskogee and Oilton. Eaton was engaged at that time in promoting the town site of Porum, and was going through the country in that vicinity with a photographer getting pictures to advertise that section.
Late one evening Eaton and the photographer drove by the home of Mrs. Starr, Henry’s mother, at a time when a very pretty young woman was milking a cow in the barnyard. The entire scene was one that would make a beautiful picture, and the two men finally persuaded the young woman to pose for several pictures.
“We got one fine picture,” said Eaton, “which we labeled ‘The Cherokee Milkmaid.’ It attracted instant attention because of its artistic merits and was published widely throughout the United States in both newspapers and magazines. It was about a year afterward that this young woman married Henry Starr.” Eaton says the young woman was a school-teacher at the time and was boarding at the Starr home.