Texas in the early 20 th century was awash in guns. Hamer was wounded, but the shoot was deemed righteous. When the smoke cleared Gus was dead–shot through the heart. Words were exchanged, and the two men slapped leather. Putnam, an inveterate career killer, had been packing the newfangled Luger pistol the Ranger Captain in the foreground is now brandishing. Hamer is shown here standing on the left after he killed Ed Putnam. On October 1 st, 1917, Frank and Gladys were filling up their car in Sweetwater when they bumped into Gus McMeans, Ed Sims’ brother-in-law and himself a former Texas Ranger. Gladys and her brother had been charged with Ed’s murder the year before. Interestingly, Gladys was the widow of one Ed Sims. However, he was a holy terror in a gunfight. Frank Hamer (left) was legendarily courteous, respectful, and polite around women. Sundry gunfights cemented his reputation as a frontier lawman with whom one should not trifle. Hamer worked the Texas border battling arms smugglers and bootleggers grown rich off of Prohibition. Frank Hamer’s Law Enforcement career began on horseback and extended into the modern era. Hamer waded right in and started cracking heads. During the course of two years, more than a hundred men were killed in brawls and shootouts. In 1908 he served as City Marshal in Navasota, Texas, a riotous boom town veritably awash in violence. Hamer served as a Ranger for decades, leaving the service to take other jobs in Law Enforcement before coming back for varying reasons. Hamer killed the man with a single round to the face from this Winchester Model 94 rifle. The first criminal he killed was a bloodthirsty murderer named Ed Putnam holed up in a brothel. The Professional Peace Officer Hamer is the fresh-faced kid on the left, and he was stone cold in a fight. Frank in his later years described himself as the only “Oxford-educated Ranger” in Texas. Oxford eventually dried up into a ghost town. He was devoutly Presbyterian and spent many of his formative years in the Texas town of Oxford in Llano County. Young Frank was one of five sons, four of whom ultimately grew up to become Texas Rangers. The timely intervention by an African-American friend saved his life.įrancis Augustus Hamer was born in 1884 the son of a blacksmith in Fairview, Texas. He was shot for the first time with a load of buckshot at age 16. Origin Story The young Frank Hamer was the product of some rugged frontier upbringing. Disputes regarding the relative age of the earth notwithstanding, the last surviving dinosaur actually passed away in 1955. However, I would assert that all that is wrong. Paleontologists theorize that the cause might have been some planetary plague, climate change, or a catastrophic meteor strike. However, it seems one example actually lived well into the 20 th century. There are a great many theories concerning what ultimately led to the demise of the dinosaurs.
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