CHAPTER LI.
ALLEN PARMER.
Allen Parmer is a Missourian. His boyhood days were passed principally in Jackson county. When the late war broke over the country, Allen Parmer was a youth, little fitted to enter the ranks with fighting men. Yet he became a member of Quantrell's band. He first came into prominence among his comrades in August, 1863, at the capture and sack of Lawrence, Kansas. That day Parmer was a member of the squad led by Bill Anderson, who murdered without compunction and destroyed without feeling. He escaped with the rest of the band. He was at Independence; at Lone Jack; at Camden; at Weston; in their lairs among the Sni Hills, and along the waters of the Blues. He was one of the six men who remained with Todd at Judge Gray's house, near Bone Hill, Jackson county, when Captain John Chestnut arrived in that neighborhood, in September, 1864, bearing a communication from General Price to the Guerrillas, which at once caused a rally of the old partisans. He was selected by Lieut. Geo. W. Shepherd as one of the picked men ordered on a dangerous expedition to the north side of the Missouri. The Guerrilla campaign there was short but bloody. The terrible massacre and rout at Centralia was the crowning event, and Parmer performed a conspicuous part in that conflict. All through the operations of the Guerrillas he was one of the most daring in the band. He was one of the executioners of Bradley Bond, a militiaman of Clay county. He and Frank James captured the man, and afterward he was shot.
Allen Parmer.
(Williams & Thomson, Photographers, Kansas City, Mo.)
When Missouri no longer offered a field for operations, and Quantrell entered upon his last campaign in Kentucky, Allen Parmer was one of the old Guerrillas who followed him. The Federal garrison was compelled to surrender at Hustonville, Lincoln county, Kentucky. Thenceforward Quantrell was known in his true character. In a fight in Jessamine county, George Roberson and a member of Quantrell's command, was captured, taken to Louisville, and confined in prison, but subsequently escaped. Afterward he was captured again, taken to Lexington, transferred to Louisville once more, and there arraigned before a court-martial, tried, convicted and sentenced to be hanged on a charge of murdering the Federal major at Hustonville, who fell by the hand of Parmer. Roberson was afterward publicly executed at Louisville.
Parmer took part in all the dreadful frays of Quantrell's little band in Kentucky.
When peace once more brooded over the land, he returned to Missouri, and commenced a commission business in St. Louis, with J. W. Shawhan for a partner, under the style of Shawhan & Co. This was in 1866. It does not appear that the firm was very successful. Parmer is said to have lost several thousand dollars in this venture. Later, the business was closed out. Payne Jones, and some others, among them Jim White, a friend of Parmer, were implicated in a bank robbery at Richmond, Mo. Mayor Shaw was killed at that time. Suspicion attached to Parmer as being one of the robbers, and he was arrested, but, on examination, discharged. Then he led a sort of roving life for some years, sometimes in Missouri, then in Texas, sometimes in Colorado, then in the Indian Territory. Finally he came to regard Texas as his home. In 1870 he returned to Jackson county, where his boyhood had been passed. For a long time his relations with the James family had been friendly, and when he came to woo Miss Susan James, the sister of Frank and Jesse, she did not deny his suit, and they were married, and removed to Arkansas the same year. He remained in that state during the autumn and winter, and in the spring of 1871 he removed with his family to Texas. For a time, his wife taught a school at Sherman. Subsequently, Parmer established a ranche near Henriette, Clay county, Texas, about 120 miles west of Sherman. Clay county lies on the Red river, directly south of the Kiowa Indian reservation. Here he had all the freedom he desired, and for some years he tended his herds and was prosperous. He frequently made trips to Kansas City, St. Louis and Chicago with droves of cattle.
When the train robbery at Glendale took place, the authorities sought for clues to the robbers in every direction. Mr. Grimes, the express messenger who was knocked down by one of the robbers who wore no mask, was able to give a vivid and minute description of the features of his assailant, and that description suited the personnel of Parmer. Deputy Marshal Whig Keshlear was dispatched to Texas by Marshal Liggett to effect Parmer's arrest. He proceeded to Sherman, where he met and conferred with Mr. Everhart, sheriff of Grayson county. That officer readily consented to assist in the arrest of Parmer, and proceeded at once to his ranche, near Henriette. The officers effected the arrest without difficulty on the 2d day of November, 1879, under a requisition from Governor Phelps, of Missouri.
Parmer was taken by the officers to Sherman. He was followed by a number of his friends from Clay county. There the prisoner attempted to regain his liberty by a writ of habeas corpus. But the judge before whom the writ was returned ruled out testimony, and remanded the prisoner to the custody of the officers from Missouri, in obedience to the requisition of the governor of that state. Parmer took exceptions and appealed. Marshal Liggett, however, had sworn out a warrant for his arrest before a United States Commissioner, charging him with interrupting the United States mail. But this was unnecessary, for, on hearing the case, the state authorities of Texas discharged the writ, and remanded the prisoner again to the custody of the Missouri officers, who at once set out for Kansas City, where they arrived with their prisoner Sunday morning, November 23d, and Parmer was promptly incarcerated in the Jackson county jail. He emphatically denied all complicity in the Glendale affair, or any knowledge of the parties who accomplished the robbery, and after four weeks' imprisonment he was discharged by the Grand Jury, the authorities failing to connect him, in any way, with the Glendale affair.