Crooked Creek Gang Caused Much Trouble In Early Days
George Hallock, an 18 year-old Oakfield youth, who had become an expert shot with either rifle or revolver during his roaming over Western states, proved to be the nemesis of a band of outlaws known as the Crooked Creek Cowboys, who had terrorized Audubon and Cass Counties for a number of years in the early days.
The fearless cool headed youth
gave no quarter to the ruffians and his marksmanship dampened
the ardor of those members of the band who were so fortunate as
to keep out of Hallock's range. Hallock killed Carl Strahl, one
of the leaders of the outlaws, and seriously wounded his confederate,
Jesse Millhollin, in a gun battle near Oakfield, in Audubon County,
and the bullet which ended the notorious career of Strahl's 26
year-old son, Roll, was believed to have been fired from a gun
in the hands of young Hallock. The Crooked Creek Outlaws lived
southeast of Exira. Whiskey was their first assailant and under
its influence they became dangerous, lawless characters who delighted
in fighting, destroying property and terrorizing citizens by "shooting
up" villages and the countryside. From drunken brawls, the
gang went to thievery, arson and other crimes against society
and neighbors took to carrying guns for the protection of their
lives and property.
An Altercation in Lewis, IA
Carl Strahl came to Cass County from Guernsey County, Ohio, and soon gained a reputation as a bully. During the Civil War, the Atlantic Telegraph related, Strahl went to Lewis in search of trouble and made the rounds of business houses, defying anyone to dispute his assertion that "Jeff Davis is a better man than Lincoln." In a blacksmith shop he found a staunch defender of the Great Emancipator in Cyrus Baughman, a farmer, who gave Strahl the brand of argument for which he was looking. After one blow from Baughman which sent him sprawling out of the shop and into the street, Strahl picked himself up and went to the Yetzer store to nurse his injuries, but there he faced a more violent fate at the hands of the mob led by John R. Kirk, one of the earliest settlers in Cass County. With a rope around his neck, Strahl was led to a tree in the village square, but his pleas for mercy and words of praise for Lincoln won his release and he left town amidst a din of jeers from the mob members. Lewis was never again invaded by Strahl and after that he used more care in picking his fights, although his judgment was not always good and on one of these occasions he took the worst beating of his lifetime at the hands of W. K. Straight of Atlantic. This happened during the agricultural fair in Atlantic in 1870 when Strahl tried to "take the town." His campaign was successful until he encountered old "Pap" Straight and was mauled into submission, and after the fight for once in his life, showed a streak of sportsmanship. He took Straight by the hand and said, "Pap, you're the best man I've ever met."
Young Roll was getting an
education at his father's hands and, then only a lad of 13, he
joined in this fight and pummeled Straight with a club until onlookers
intervened. Shortly after Roll was slain, two of his cousins in
Guernsey County, Ohio, were killed by a schoolteacher whom they
attempted to chastise and for several generations vicious blood
was evidenced in the Strahl family. The most recent fate of that
kind was met in 1925 by a kin of Carl Strahl, who was found slain
in Oklahoma.
Members of the gang
Besides the Strahls, others in the Crooked
Creek Gang were Jesse Millhollin, 33; John Millhollin, 30; Frank
Brown, 28, and Grant Brown, 23, sons of James Brown, a prosperous
Benton township farmer; Lloyd Hinkle, 22, who made his home with
the Browns; John Hall, 22, who made his home with John Millhollin:
a brother-in-law of James Brown; Robert and George Van Winkle,
Will Northgraves, Del and John Anderson, 39, and a man known as
"Old Knowlton" and said to be the "brains"
of the outlaw band . Until nearly 1880, the outlawry ascribed
to the Cowboys was chiefly brawls and election fights, but enmities
thus incurred grew-especially when the ruffians were under the
influence of liquor-and they became more dangerous, giving vent
to their ire by despoiling harness and other property and burning
buildings, later turning to robbery and gunfights.
A Fight in Exira, IA
Saloons, as well as business places at Wiota, Exira, Brayton and Oakfield were "shot up" almost with regularity as the outlaws became more daring when the law failed to intervene. On one of these occasions a bullet grazed the head of a little girl who was walking down the street at Wiota as Jesse Millhollin began showering the town with bullets. Roll Strahl was badly wounded in a fight with Bill Anderson, an ex-convict, in Dickerson's Saloon at Exira December 27th, 1879. Anderson was playing billiards when Strahl walked into the saloon. "Now I've got you and will settle this matter here," Strahl shouted as he approached Anderson.
In the ensuing fight, the latter stabbed Strahl in the back and ran into the street. Though badly wounded, Strahl ran after Anderson, firing as he went, and when Anderson fell, his assailant snapped his gun over him several times, but luckily for Andersen all of the shells in the chamber had been fired during the chase. Strahl then pummeled Anderson with the butt of the gun until he collapsed from the knife wounds in his back.
For time it was thought the
wound would prove fatal to Strahl, but he made a surprising recovery
and Anderson, out on bond on the knifing charge, jumped bond and
fled. Fortunately for those signing the bond, it proved defective
.
The Robbery of Dr. Ballard
On January 6th, 1883, Dr. S. M. Ballard, a wealthy physician, was ill at the Donner farm home south of Exira; he was robbed of $2800 in cash and valuable papers by two men who came to the farm late at night and, pushing Mrs. Donner aside, walked into the physician's bedroom, beat him severely and took a satchel containing the money and papers. Later the papers were found in the middle of the road near the Donner home and the blanket in which they were wrapped was identified as that used as a saddle blanket by the Van Winkles, who, with Will Northgraves, left the country and never returned.
It was believed, according
to the Atlantic Telegraph, the robbery was planned by "Old
Knowlton" who received $300 of the loot. After the death
of his son, Carl Strahl declared Roll took the Van Winkles and
Northgraves to Des Moines a week following the robbery and that
he believed the valuable matched team which Roll drove home was
given him for aiding the robbers in their escape. He is also thought
to have known something about the robbery of John Frost of $515,
for which the Huntley brothers were arrested. Frost was the father
in law of Will Huntley. Carl Strahl believed his son knew too
much about the robberies and that he was "bumped off"
for that reason.
The Gang Meets George Hallock
Roll was fatally wounded February 16th, 1883, at Exira when he and John Millhollin became intoxicated and proceeded to "shoot up" the town as they were leaving for home in the sled. Strahl, seated in the rear of the sled, fired into a group of bystanders on the street with a double barrel shotgun. As the sled moved down the west side of the town square, shooting up and down the street became general and Strahl was struck over the right eye by a shot thought to have been fired by one of the vigilantes who had been deputized by the mayor of Exira to assist in maintaining peace in the community. Roll died the following day.
At first Carl Strahl blamed his son's knowledge of the robberies for the shooting, but later he became convinced that it was the expert marksmanship of George Hallock that brought Roll's career to an end and he then set out to avenge his son's death. Young Hallock was working for his uncle, Isaac Hallock, at the time and as he drove past the John Howlet saloon in Oakfield with a load of corn March 30th, 1883, he saw Strahl and Jesse Millhollin at the door, the latter dashing into the street and shouting at him. Strahl pulled Millhollin back into the saloon and as he left Oakfield, Hallock said he saw the two men following him in a buggy.
In his testimony at the coroner's inquest, Hallock related he started his team trotting and he turned in at the John Turner farm one and one-half miles north of Oakfield; Strahl and Millhollin were close behind him and were brandishing their guns in the air. As Hallock got off his wagon and drove the team through the gate, Millhollin pulled up his team and Strahl started to get out of the buggy with his gun level and shouted to Hallock, "Now, damn you, I've got you." Hallock replied with a shot which struck Strahl in the neck and as he fell from the buggy, the team bolted. Millhollin was preparing to shoot, but Hallock's next bullet struck Strahl's companion over the right eye as the buggy pulled by the frenzied team sped past. The team plunged over a culvert and Millhollin was thrown from the buggy a short distance from the scene of the shooting. Strahl died the following day and although his life was in danger for weeks, Millhollin recovered minus his right eye.
The shooting was witnessed
by John Turner, who was the principal witness at the coroner's
inquest. Young Hallock unloaded the corn and then went to Exira
and surrendered himself to officers. The coroner's jury exonerated
him, determining his action had been in self-defense. A shotgun
barrage claimed two more members of the gang, Frank Brown and
John Anderson, when they turned their guns loose on the town of
Wiota about 9:30 the evening of Saturday, June 2nd, 1883. Anderson
died at 4:00 the following morning and Brown died at 11:00 the
morning of June 13th.
A Shoot-Out in Wiota, IA
Brown and Anderson were in Atlantic during the day Saturday, drinking and brandishing their guns; both were kept peaceful by Lloyd Hinkle. In Atlantic, they had read the indictment which charged Brown, John Hall and Thomas Quinn with assault with intent to kill Thomas Winger which was returned following a shooting affray at Wiota February 5th of that year. Reading of the indictment only increased their wrath against society and they went in search of an Atlantic saloon keeper who had accused them of stealing a gallon of whiskey from him, and, unsuccessful in their search, Hinkle finally induced the pair to get out of town. The trio went to Wiota by train about 08:00 Saturday evening; Hinkle was again the peacemaker and but for him his two companions would have shot down Nat Yates, Benton township justice of the peace, whom they met in Stoodt's saloon south of the Rock Island tracks in Wiota. After a carousal lasting an hour and a half, during which they terrorized those in the saloon, Anderson and Brown started for the business section on the north side of the railroad tracks shooting and shouting as they went. At the south end of the business district they fell under a shotgun barrage fired from the shadows of the buildings on either side of the street.
The identity of the assassins was never learned and remained only a matter of conjecture, so numerous where the enemies of the pair in the two counties. At the time of his death, Anderson was under three indictments, one charging him with assault with intent to kill J. Kencer of Audubon, and the other two charging arson in connection with the burning of a saloon at Brayton and setting fire to hay on the Rogers farm near Exira, while Brown, as previous stated, was facing a true bill charging attempt to kill Thomas Winger.
In answer to a newspaper article of the effect that the two remaining members of the outlaw band, Jesse Millhollin and Grant Brown, were firing 50 rounds of ammunition daily in pistol practice in preparation to avenge the shooting of their confederates, the pair denied the report and asserted they had been treated unjustly. "The so-called Crooked Creek crowd has never murdered anybody, and that is more than some of the people can say," their reply in the Atlantic Daily Telegraph concluded.
Grant Brown and John Hall were found guilty by the Cass County District Court on the charge of assault with intent to kill in February, 1884. The former was sentenced by Judge Loofbourow to three years in prison, while Hall received a sentence of 18 months.
According to local tradition, Roll Strahl was slain because he knew too much about a robbery attributed to the two Van Winkles and Bill Northgraves. It is also said that Roll was shot to death on the streets of Exira by enraged citizens. Carl Strahl was killed by George Hallock, who shot Jesse Millhollin at the same time. The shooting was said to have been in self-defense, and Hallock was not placed under arrest.
According to the story told by Carl Strahl following the slaying of his son Roll, the latter had taken the Van Winkle boys and Northgraves to Des Moines about one week after the robbery at Ballard's and returned home driving a fine pair of matched horses which were said to have been the gift of the trio. Legend has it that Old Knowlton, another member of the band, planned the Ballard robbery and received $300 from the Van Winkles and Northgraves.
The articles above were taken from clippings compiled by Iva Milliman, Exira. The main article came from the Atlantic News Telegraph (date unknown). The articles are in a scrapbook in the Exira Courthouse Historical Museum reading room.