RUBE BURROW.CHAPTER I.LAMAR COUNTY, ALABAMA—THE HOME OF THE BURROW FAMILY—BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF RUBE BURROW’S ANCESTORS.
LamarCounty, Alabama, the home of the Burrow family, has become historic as the lair of a robber band whose deeds of daring have had no parallel in modern times, and the halo of romance with which that locality has been invested has converted its rugged hills into mountain fastnesses, its quiet vales into dark caverns, and the humble abodes of its inhabitants into turreted fortresses and robber castles. The county of Lamar, divested of the drapery of sensationalism, is one of the “hill counties” of northern Alabama, and takes high rank in the list of rich agricultural counties of the State. It possesses a charming landscape of undulating hill and dale, watered by limpid streams, and amid fertile valleys and on the crests of its picturesque uplands are found the peaceful and prosperous homes of many good and law-abiding people, thus proving that good people are indigenous to everyclime and land where the hand of civilization has left its kindly touch. “It does not abound in grand and sublime prospects, but rather in little home scenes of rural repose and sheltered quiet.”
Lamar County was formed in 1868 from the most fertile portions of Fayette and Marion Counties, and has changed its name three times; first it was called Jones, then Sanford, and, finally, it was named Lamar, in honor of the distinguished statesman and jurist who now adorns the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. This section of the State, though not until the last decade possessed of the advantages of development which more fortunate sections have long enjoyed, has always had an excellent citizenship. Here, in the olden time, were found ardent followers of the political faith of the founders of the Republic, and while the bonfires of the zealous pioneers of that day and time lighted the hill tops, the valleys of that section of northern Alabama reverberated with the campaign songs of their enthusiastic compatriots. From this section, no less renowned in war than in peace, a large company of soldiers was sent to the Creek war, and a full quota of gallant men went forth to the Confederate army, three companies of which were in the Twenty-sixth Alabama Infantry, one of the most superb regiments in the Army of Northern Virginia.
This much, in truth and justice, should be said in behalf of Lamar County, which has gained anunenviable notoriety as the birthplace of Rube Burrow, and later as the rendezvous of his confreres in crime. When metropolitan places, with well-equipped police powers, give birth to such social organizations as the anarchists in Chicago and the Italian Mafia in New Orleans, and become asylums for organized assassins, the good people of these cities are no more responsible for the resultant evils than are the law-abiding people of Lamar County, Alabama, for the deeds of outlawry of which one of her citizens, by the accident of birthplace, was the chief exponent. The Burrow family, however, were among the earliest settlers of Fayette County, Alabama, from which Lamar was taken, and from their prolific stock descended a numerous progeny, who, by the natural ties of consanguinity, formed a clan amongst whom the bold outlaws found ready refuge when fleeing from the hot pursuit organized in the more populous localities which were the scenes of their daring crimes. Chief among Rube’s partisans and protectors was James A. Cash, a brother-in-law.
Allen H. Burrow, the father of Rube, was born in Maury County, Tenn., May 21, 1825, his parents moving to Franklin County, Ala., in 1826, and who, in 1828, settled within the vicinity of his present home in Lamar County, Ala. In August, 1849, Allen Burrow married Martha Caroline Terry, a native of Lamar County, who was born in 1830. From this union were born ten children—five boysand five girls. John T. Burrow, the oldest child, lives near Vernon, the county seat of Lamar. Apart from harboring his brother Rube, while an outlaw, he has always borne a fair reputation. He is of a rollicking disposition, possesses a keen sense of the ridiculous, is a fine mimic and recounts an anecdote inimitably, and, though crude of speech and manner, having little education, is a man of more than average intelligence. Jasper Burrow, the second son, is a quiet, taciturn man; he lives with his father, and is reputed to be of unsound mind. Four of the daughters married citizens of Lamar County. The youngest, who bears the prosaic name of Ann Eliza, is a tall blonde of twenty summers, and is yet unmarried. She is of a defiant nature, has a comely and attractive face, and is a favorite with many a rustic youth in the vicinage of the Burrow homestead. She was devoted to Rube, afforded a constant medium of communication between the parental home and the hiding place of the outlaws, and was the courier through whom Rube Smith was added to the robber band while in rendezvous in Lamar County.
Reuben Houston Burrow, the outlaw, was born in Lamar County, December 11, 1854. His early life in Lamar was an uneventful one. He was known as an active, sprightly boy, apt in all athletic pursuits, a swift runner, an ardent huntsman and a natural woodsman. He possessed a fearless spirit, was of a merry and humorous turn, a characteristicof the Burrow family, but he developed none of those traits which might have foreshadowed the unenviable fame acquired in after-life.
James Buchanan Burrow, the fifth and youngest son, was born in 1858, and was, therefore, four years the junior of his brother Rube, to whose fortunes his own were linked in the pursuit of train robbing, and which gave to the band the name of the “Burrow Brothers” in the earliest days of its organization.
The facilities for acquiring education in the rural districts of the South, half a century ago, were limited, and Allen Burrow grew to manhood’s estate, having mastered little more than a knowledge of the “three R’s,” and yet talent for teaching the young idea how to shoot was so scant that Allen Burrow, during the decade immediately preceding the late war, was found diversifying the pursuits of tilling the soil with that of teaching a country school. Among his pupils was the unfortunate postmaster of Jewell, Ala., Moses Graves, who was wantonly killed by Rube Burrow in 1889. Many anecdotes are current in Lamar County, illustrating the primitive methods of pedagogy as pursued by Allen Burrow. It is said that the elder Graves, who had several sons as pupils, withdrew the hopeful scions of the Graves household from the school for the reason that after six months’ tuition, he having incidentally enrolled the whole contingent in a spelling bee, they all insisted on spelling everymonosyllable ending with a consonant by adding an extra one, as d-o-g-g, dog; b-u-g-g, bug.
Allen Burrow served awhile in Roddy’s cavalry during the civil war, but his career as a soldier was brief and not marked by any incident worthy of note. Soon after the close of the war he made some reputation as a “moonshiner,” and was indicted about 1876 for illicit distilling. He fled the country in consequence, but after an absence of two years he returned and made some compromise with the Government, since which time he has quietly lived in Lamar County. While possessed of some shrewdness, he is a typical backwoodsman, with the characteristic drawling voice and quaint vernacular peculiar to his class. Martha Terry, the wife of Allen Burrow, claims to be possessed of the peculiar and hereditary gift of curing, by some strange and mysterious agency, many of the ills to which flesh is heir, and had she lived in the days of Cotton Mather she might have fallen a victim to fire and fagot, with which witchcraft in that day and time was punished. There are many sensible and wholly unsuperstitious persons in northern Alabama, where old Mrs. Burrow is well known, who believe in her occult powers of curing cancers, warts, tumors and kindred ailments, by the art of sorcery. Capt. J. E. Pennington, a prominent citizen, and the present tax collector of Lamar County, tells of two instances in his own family in which Dame Burrow removed tumors by simpleincantation. The witch’s caldron “boils and bubbles” on the hearthstone of the Burrow home, and whether the dark and fetid mixture contain
“Eye of newt and toe of frog,Wool of bat and tongue of dog;Adder’s fork and blind worm’s sting,Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,”
“Eye of newt and toe of frog,Wool of bat and tongue of dog;Adder’s fork and blind worm’s sting,Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,”
“Eye of newt and toe of frog,Wool of bat and tongue of dog;Adder’s fork and blind worm’s sting,Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,”
“Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog;
Adder’s fork and blind worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,”
or what not, many good but credulous people come from far and near to invoke the charm of her occult mummery, despite the fact that our latter-day civilization has long since closed its eyes and ears to the arts of sorcery and witchcraft. Here, amid the environments of ignorance and superstition, evils resulting more from the inherent infirmities of the rugged pioneer and his wife than the adversities of fortune, the family of ten children was reared. It is from such strong and rugged natures, uneducated and untrained in the school of right and honesty, that comes the material of which train robbers are made.