Henry Brown
by J. Young

Henry Newton Brown was born in 1857 at Rolla Missouri (Phelps County). Henry was orphaned by his parents and left in the care of relatives in Rolla. Brown also had a sister living somewhere in Iowa. When he was seventeen, he headed west to become a cowboy. Brown’s build was of a small frame body to a medium build, brown hair and blue eyes. He turned up in Colorado, working some ranches before drifting south to Texas. While in northern Texas, Brown killed a man in a gunfight at a cow camp he was working and moved on to New Mexico Territory, where he soon became involved in the Lincoln County War. Fighting on the side of the McSween-Tunstall faction, known as The Regulators. Brown befriended Billy the Kid, and after the war, rode with the gang rustling cattle and boosting horses. After the gang showed up in Tascosa, Texas with some cattle and horses to unload, they disbanded. Henry Brown decided to stay in Texas.

In 1880 Brown took a job with Captain Willingham Barnes, as deputy sheriff of Oldham County, Texas. Some reports suggest Brown was fired for picking fights with drunks. Brown moved on to Oklahoma, where he worked several ranches before making his final move to Caldwell, Kansas.

In 1882 Marshal Batt Carr hired Henry Brown as a deputy town marshal of Caldwell, Kansas. He was re-appointed 3 times as deputy, eventually taking the lead position as Town Marshal. Brown ruled the town with an iron fist and was often quick to use his guns to end encounters. In fact his old boss Captain W. Barnes once said “The only fault found with Brown as an officer is that he was too ready to use his revolver or Winchester.”

Marshal Henry Brown had the complete trust of Caldwell’s citizens who felt comfortable with Brown keeping things in order in the rather rough town. They also liked the fact that Brown did not drink, smoke or gamble.

When Brown gunned down two outlaws in the streets of Caldwell in 1883, The Caldwell Post bragged that Brown was “one of the quickest men on the trigger in the Southwest.”

So impressed were the town’s citizens, that they presented him with a new engraved Winchester rifle.

Brown later hired Ben Wheeler, aka: Ben Robertson, aka Ben Burton to work as his deputy.

The marshal continued to serve the city well and the Caldwell Commercial Newspaper called Brown “cool, courageous, gentlemanly and free from vices.”

In early spring of 1884 Brown married a local woman, named Alice M. Levagood. The couple purchased a house and furnishings and seemingly settled down. However, unknown to his wife and the citizens of Caldwell, Brown had been living beyond his means and debts were piling up. 

Henry Brown, along with his deputy Ben Wheeler and two other former outlaw friends out of Texas named William Smith and John Wesley, planned to rob the bank in Medicine Lodge, Kansas.

The lawmen, under the ruse of traveling to Oklahoma to apprehend a murderer, left Caldwell, and met up with Smith and Wesley, and headed to Medicine Lodge.

On April 30, 1884, Brown, carrying the same rifle he was gifted by the citizens of Caldwell, entered the bank with the other 3 men just after it opened and demanded the cash. When Bank President E.W. Payne reached for his gun, one of the men shot and killed him. Although cashier George Geppert had his hands up, he too was shot. However, before he died he managed to stagger over to the vault and closed the door. Their robbery attempt failed, so the gang quickly mounted their horses and fled with an angry mob right behind them. About 4 miles southwest of town the posse trapped them in a dead end at Cedar Canyon. Brown and his men were backed into a water hole and were standing about waist deep in cold water. After a two hour shootout and standoff, Brown asked for protection if they would surrender. The mob agreed and out came Brown first followed by the rest at about 1 pm. They were taken to the Medicine Lodge and by 3 pm they were in dry clothes, fed, photographed and placed in jail, which was just a small home owned by a deputy sheriff. Outside, close to 300 citizens were getting riled up and wanted to lynch the would be robbers. Henry Brown wrote his wife a letter in the meantime asking her forgiveness and letting her know she could sell his things if he was to be killed.

At about 9:00 p.m. the mob broke in and demanded the prisoners be turned over to them. The deputy refused but was overpowered by the mob. As the prisoners attempted to dash for freedom, Brown was shot and killed first, his body was riddled with bullets. Wheeler ran for about 100 yards when he was hit with three rifle balls in his back, his right arm was shredded with lead and his fingers were shot off. Wheeler’s screams were reportedly heard from over a half mile away. Wheeler was mortally wounded but was dragged along with Wesley and Smith to an elm tree just outside town and hanged. The bodies of the criminals were buried in the ground at Medicine Lodge.

The Caldwell city representatives; Ben Miller, Harvey Horner, Lee Weller and John Blair went to Medicine Lodge to investigate the matter. They learned that bodies of the dead were wrapped in blankets and buried in pine boxes at the local cemetery. They requested to exhume the bodies of Calwell marshals; Brown and Wheeler and were granted. The men took note that the expressions on the faces of the recently deceased were as natural as if they were just asleep. There is a story that Brown’s widow showed up with a wagon to retrieve his body. The corpse of Henry Brown was taken back to Caldwell and buried in The Caldwell City Cemetery. His grave is currently unmarked and should not be confused with a soldier who is buried there with the same name.

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