Friday, April 12, 2013

My Great Grandfather Rode With Billy The Kid*

My grandparents never told me about my Great Grandfather. What little I know I have had to dig out from scattered records and stories passed down through other branches of the family.

His name was John Scroggins. He was born in Georgia in 1852. In 1872 he travelled to St. Louis and enlisted in the U.S. Cavalry. He served in the 4th Cavalry Regiment, mostly in Texas. He was in the Regiment during the epic raid into Mexico fictionalized in John Ford's movie Rio Grande, starring John Wayne. After the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876, the Regiment went north to round up Chief Dull Knife's band of Cheyenne warriors in late 1876. He was discharged in 1877.

The next appearance of John Scroggins in available records was in the census of 1880. He and his wife Kate (Wampler) Scroggins were living in Palo Pinto County, Texas with two small children, next door to John's father in law, Roderick Wampler, who was also working on the railroad.

So what happened between 1877 and 1880?

It turns out that on April 4, 1878, John Scroggins rode into Blazer's Mill, New Mexico, with Billy the Kid and a large posse (the Regulators) seeking the assassins of John Tunstall. Not long after the shootout at Blazer's Mill, John Scroggins disappeared from New Mexico.

In Texas, he is said to have worked as an Indian Scout, disappearing for months at a time and on one occasion turning up with an Indian woman and a small child. The woman died and is supposed to have been buried outside the fence of the cemetery in Strawn, Texas. He and his wife had about thirteen children, ran a store for miners at nearby Thurber, Texas and eventually a rooming house in Mineral Wells.

John Scroggins is said by some descendents to have been a hard drinker and a gambler, allegedly drinking up much of the family's profits.

In other words, a typical westerner of the day.

My grandfather, Valentine Scroggins (named for a maternal uncle and a maternal great grandfather) was born in Palo Pinto County April 2, 1886, eight years almost to the day after the shootout at Blazer's Mill.

*Maybe. It fits. So far I can't disprove it.


1 comment:

Unknown said...

We are related, I am John Scroggins and I believe the John you speak of is my great, great uncle,my family is mostly buried in the strawn cemetery and my grandfather c.c. scroggins buried down the road in Dublin. I still reside in the area myself.