Llano River at Castell

Last spring on a beautiful sunny morning, I found this spot on the Llano River. The view is from the county road low-water crossing of the river at the tiny village of Castell, Texas. This village was founded by German settlers. It was an outlying village settlement to the larger German settlement of Fredericksburg, Texas.

The German settlers primarily raised cattle and sheep on the open range. Over time, English-speaking peoples, migrating from the United States, also settled in the area and they also were ranchers. Some of the English-speaking settlers didn't have the funds to buy the land and they camped along the river. They were the "have-nots" and there was resentment towards the German- speaking and the English-speaking settlers that owned the land.

In the days before fencing, the cattle ranged free on the open range. Both the Germans and the Americans ranchers kept up with the ownership of their cattle by putting their brands on the cattle. They generally did the branding about once a year. Calves following a branded cow were branded the same as the mother cow.

The "have-nots" got into serious conflict with the "have's" by branding any animal they could find that did not already have a brand. This was called cattle rustling. Since the brands were filed at the county courthouses, it didn't take a lot of detective work to figure out who the rustlers were. If a rancher found one of his cows, with his brand on it, and the calf following his cow, already had a brand on it belonging to somebody else, he was immediately enraged.

Along about where this painting was made of the river, in 1875, a fellow named Tim Williamson, a "have-not", was camped on the bank of the river. Camped with him were his wife and a young man named Scott Cooley. Scott had been a Texas Ranger. He recently had contacted typhoid fever. Mrs. Williamson saved his life and had nursed him back to health.

The local ranchers believed that Tim was rustling their cattle.

On May 13th, in 1875, another beautiful sunny spring morning, Sheriff Clark, in Mason, Texas, about a dozen miles up the river, sent Deputy Sheriff John Worley down the river to Castell, to arrest Tim Williamson with a charge of cattle rustling. After he was arrested and they had started back up the river toward Mason, they were encountered and stopped by about a dozen of the local ranchers that took justice into their own hands by killing Tim. Apparently, Deputy Sheriff Worley, made little or no effort, which was his duty, to protect Tim from the ranchers.

Back at the Williamson camp, the young man, Scott Cooley, was enraged over the murder of his friend. He made a list of those that could be identified that were in the vigilante mob that murdered Tim. He got several of the other "have-nots" in the area to join him in seeking revenge. Included in this gang were two young men, George Gladden and Johnny Ringo. These two would later become notorious "outlaws and gun-slingers". Johnny Ringo would later be in the famous shoot-out at the OK Corral with the Earp brothers in Tombstone, Arizona.

Scott was suffering from some sort of fits or seizures. It was said that his brain was infested with "brain fever". Perhaps, he was suffering from a brain tumor.

First on the revenge list was Deputy Sheriff Worley. In August, he was found shot in the head. As the gang worked their way through the list, the community became terrified, especially those that had been part of the vigilante mob. There were about a dozen or so murders. The gang also had several big shoot-outs with Sheriff Clark and his posse that had been trying to capture them.

Things got so bad that the Governor sent the Texas Rangers to the area to stop the killings. What happened to all the participants will have to be in another story. As to Scott Cooley, he was arrested, but escaped from jail. While he was on the run, after eating dinner (the noon time meal) at the Nimitz Hotel in Fredericksburg, he collapsed and died, apparently from whatever it was in his brain that was causing the seizures. He was about twenty-one years of age at the time of his death.

I got this story from the Lone Star Travel Guide, Texas Hill Country, Sixth Edition, by Richard Zelade, pages 116 -119.