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Show Genealogy Research of the West R by Kerry Ross Boren ' -'J&fcfl i Historic cowboy speaks of life in the old west On a cold November day in 1959 I drove from my home in northeastern Utah to the railroad town of Green River City, Wyoming to pay a visit to a man I had heard stories of since I was a small boy. I had often seen Tom Welch in the past when he was still rugged enough to sit his horse, but now the man was ninety-two years of age and retired from his ranch to a small frame house on the main street of Green River City. I had been warned that his past was shaded with incidents outside the law and that, even in old age, he was someone so-meone to be reckoned with if approached approach-ed wrongly.. .1 was apprehensive. "Come in!" The voice from within was sharp and I entered a dark sitting room which smelled of strong coffee and tobacco. In a corner of the room, half-cloaked in shadow, was the huge figure of a man in an over-stuffed chair, leaning forward on a curved cane. "Well, who are you and what do you want?" His tone was not inviting. I managed to convey that I was writing a book and wanted to interview him, especially about the early day outlaws of the area, some of whom I had been told he had known personally. "A book, you say? Well, I might tell you a few things, but by hell, as long as I'm alive, you keep my name out of it!" This was my first personal introduction introduc-tion to Tom Welch, born in Illinois in 1867 and who came across the plains in a wagon train headed for Washington when he was ten years of age. In 1878 young Tom helped his step-father freight supplies between Lander, Wyoming and Old Fort Thornburgh in the Uintah Basin. Later he was a driver for the Overland Stage Company between bet-ween Green River City, Rock Springs and Lander, Wyoming by way of South Pass. "I still remember that the fare was $26 a trip, one-way, and we had some " hair-raising old times on that route, let " me tell you. I was held up once on the Sweetwater and attacked by Indians twice, snowed in at Atlantic City and wrecked once on the Baldwin Dugway." "Did I know any outlaws?" Tom arose from his chair, still muscular and agile for his age, and approached where I was sitting. I thought perhaps I had said something wrong, but he took my hand and firmly shook it. "You have just shook the hand of the man who shook the hand of Jesse James! Now, you always remember that!" I always have. Tom was helping his step-father load a freight wagon at the Morris Brothers Mercantile in Green River City in the spring of 1879 when two men came out t of the saloon on Railroad Avenue and approached them. Tom's step-father had invited the two men to ride along with them to South Pass City. "That was Frank and Jesse James. They left us at South Pass City and it was the first and the last time I ever saw them in my life. Before they left they come up to me and shook hands and that's why I always tell people about shaking the hand that shook the hand of . Jesse James. They get a big kick out of it but it doesn't mean hell to me!" Tom Welch's life story encompassed a period of amazing events and accomplishments. ac-complishments. In about 1882 he went to work on the military road over the Uinta Mountains from Fort Bridger to Fort Thornburgh in the Uintah Basin for Judge William A. Carter, post sutler at Fort Bridger. In about 1884 Judge Carter died and his son, Willie Carter, sold his father's vast cattle herds to Buffalo Bill Cody. Cody hired Tom Welch, Tom and Mark Anson, and others to gather up the loose stock along Henry's Fork and drive them to Cody's ranch in the Big Horn Basin. For a brief time Tom carried the mail between Burnt Fork, Wyoming and Brown's Park, Utah, and sometimes over the high Uintah Mountains to Fort Ashley now Vernal. My grandfather, Willard Schofield whom Tom Welch once took a shot at had told me that Tom knew Butch Cassidy, but it was another old-timer, George Widdop, who told me how Tom and Butch first met. Tom Widdop George's brother and Tom Welch were riding over tne Uintah Mountains via the Carter Military Road one day when they encountered a mutual friend, Clark Logan, and a young man whom Welch did not know. The young stranger shared a bottle of Old Crow from his saddle bag and ad- ' mired Tom's horse and asked if it was for sale. The horse was Tom's favorite black and he declined. When the young stranger offered double Tom still declined. The stranger then turned to Clark Logan and winked and said to Tom, "I guess you don't know who I am. They call me Butch. ..Butch Cassidy." "With that," George Widdop told me, "Tom just stepped down off his horse and handed the reins to Butch, and they traded saddles and horses right there in the middle of the trail." ''Who the hell told you that?" he asked ask-ed gruffily, rising from his chair and coming near with his cane. I reluctantly told him the source. He went to an old trunk in one corner and lifted the lid and came out with a six-shooter. I felt the urge to run, thinking I had pushed the old hardcase too far, but the huge old man was between me and the door. "You see this gun?" he asked. I nodded nodd-ed weakly. "Butrh gave me this gu-n...and gu-n...and this old picture here is of my old ranch on Burnt Fork, and this here...", and we drifted off into four hours of reminiscences that I value to this day as cherished memories of a friendship which continued to grow between myself and this remarkable old man. My grandfather, Willard Schofield, had often told me the story of the Sawmill Springs raid where he and others had been ambushed by a group of cattlemen during the sheep and cattle cat-tle range conflict near the turn of the century. Grandfather reported that Tom Welch had been one of his attackers. at-tackers. When I confronted Tom with my grandfather's evidence, he didn't deny it. "Them was troublesome times," he retorted. He related how he and a group of the cattlemen had ridden down on the Sawmill Springs sheep camp just at breakfast one morning and "shot up their cookfire, just to scare 'em off, you know." In the fracas, Ole Neilson, one of the sheepmen, pulled his Winchester and shot one of the cattlemen, Don Sadlier, through the leg. The leg was later amputated. am-putated. Related Tom: "Not too long after that, I rode with Sadlier over to Sheep Creek where old Dowd Cleophas J. Dowd lived. Dowd was a surly guy when he wanted to be, you know, and he didn't like Sadlier anyhows, and he asked him how he got his leg cut off. "Oh, I had a hunting accident," says Sadlier, "up in the mountains hunting deer." Dowd looked him right in the eye and laughed with that mean laugh that he had and told him, "Deer, you say, Sadlier? I understand that the deer up your way go 'baa-a-a' like a sheep!" Tom Welch's life spanned nearly a century, and he lived every minute of it. In 1898 he had been one of the posse in Brown's Park who captured the notorious Harry Tracy after the killing of local rancher Valentine Hoy, and although he wouldn't admit it, was likely like-ly one of the men who hanged Jack Bennett Ben-nett in a lynch party during the same event. He was a good friend of the Negro rustler Isom Dart, and knew Tom Horn, the man who killed Dart. But most important of all, Tom Welch knew something else that was always a sore point with him. "Hell, no, Butch Cassidy didn't die in South America. I run into him and had a drink with him at the old South Pass Bar in Lander in 1925. ..If he was dead, I had a drink with a mightly lively ghost!" Tom ran into Butch again in 1929 and they went touring tour-ing together through Brown's Park, Rock Springs, Vernal and all the old haunts. Tom Welch slipped and fell in his bath tub one day and broke his hip, and died within a week of the effects. It was an inglorious end, typical of life's sometimes cruel jokes. But I never forget the friendship which evolved between this old man and myself. With his passing went a piece of the real old West, and a piece of myself too. I'm glad 1 have many hours of his interviews. inter-views. We will not see his kind again. |
