A Righteous Legacy

Several years ago, I purchased a book called A Dynasty of Outlaws by Paul I. Wellman. It is unique in that it details the history of outlaw gangs, primarily in the Midwest, during period from the Civil War until the early part of this century.

You may ask, what possible spiritual insight you could get from reading a historical book about outlaws?  Actually, history is a great topic to learn spiritual truths.  And, as I discovered, studying about outlaws can give you an amazing insight to the spiritual realm.

Wellman’s book begins with a description of a raid on August 21, 1863, in Lawrence, Kansas.  William Clarke Quantrill and his raiders sacked Lawrence and left 142 people dead. The book ends with the bloody death on October 21, 1934 of Charles Arthur Floyd, a.k.a. Pretty Boy Floyd. What lies between these two events reveals an astounding truth.

“For the squeamish, this book is not bedtime reading. . .” said one review. Truly, for this is a book that traces seventy-one years of violence among a series of outlaws in the mid-west.

I was fascinated with the history, but I was horrified at some of the acts these men and women performed with no apparent remorse.  Murder was met with the same excitement as a child greets Christmas.  But what astounded me even more was the fact that in seventy-one years, every one of these gangs was directly connected to the previous one in some way. Mr. Wellman includes a “genealogy chart” of these gangs to show their relationships.  Bear with me while I briefly review this.

From Quantrill’s original raiders came three groups of men named respectively, James, Younger, and Shirley.  From 1861 these groups were separate gangs.  The James and Younger boys united in 1866-1882 and a woman named Belle Starr became Cole Younger’s mistress.

The Daltons, cousins of the Youngers, formed their own gang, which lasted from 1891-92. A member of the Dalton’s gang, Bill Doolin, went on, after the deaths of the Dalton’s, to form the Doolin Gang.

Belle got a new boy friend and with her brother, they formed a gang.  She later got involved with three other men and from 1880-1889 she had her own gangs. She is murdered and it is suspected that her own son may have committed the crime in jealousy over her last boyfriend.

After her death, Belle’s son, Henry, and her last lover, Jim French, Cherokee Bill, Dick West and Ben Howell, former members of the Doolin gang, joined Bill Cook to form the Cook gang from 1893-1895.

Then, Al Spenser, survivor of the Cook gang, meets up with John Callahan, Eddie Adams and the infamous Pretty Boy Floyd.  Floyd has two more cohorts before his death in 1933.

The terrible things I read shocked me but the significance of this generational connection brought an even greater shock. Bloody Bill Quantrill was the father of a legacy of evil in the Midwest unlike anything I have ever known. In seventy years of death and destruction, each group begat a succeeding group, sometimes two or three. There were direct and overlapping connections within each group.  Pretty Boy Floyd could trace his criminal roots back to Quantrill.  What a horrible legacy!

I wondered later if any of these men and women knew of the connections they had to the past, beyond their own generation.  Did Floyd know he was a spiritual descendant of Bloody Bill Quantrill?  Did Henry Starr know he too, was a descendant?  Did the Dalton’s know who they really were?  Probably not.  Each of them would have viewed their exploits as being superior to any who came before.  And in some ways, they were right.  Each generation was more evil that the preceding one.  Each inherited a greater blood-lust.

You will think me foolish but as I closed the book, I thought about Quantrill and his dynasty, and I began to weep.  What a terrible legacy to leave behind.  He and his descendants left no noble deeds, no glory, no honor -- no good thing at all. They left behind death, destruction, sorrow and pain -- to themselves and to their victims.

Then I thought of my own family, my grandparents and great-grandparents.  I thought of all the things I knew, both good and bad, about them.  Into my mind came the memory of my grandmother telling me about how her father came to the Lord.

She told me about the time she was baptized in Salter’s Pool, a local swimming pool. As a child, when we passed this pool I would look down in the deep gully where it lay off the highway and think of her and imagine that day.

She told me about the camp meetings that were so prevalent at the turn of the century. I can trace my spiritual family back to the early 1900’s to a large, fairly poor, family who heard the early Apostolic ministers traveling through south Alabama.

Eventually, some were lost; some became preachers, and most continued on a walk with God until they left this world. Some of their descendents are still carrying on in the faith and some have joined other faiths.

When I went home a couple of years ago the pool was gone.  So is my grandmother but the legacy she and others left behind, it remains.  And oh my, what a wonderful legacy it is.  It shines with promise and there is no shame in telling our children of the past or the future.  There is a hope because someone blazed a trail and left a legacy of righteousness.