Chandler Bank Robbery of 1894

Though only eight years old at the time of the raid, Mary Mitchell Tomberlin was present on the day her father J. B. Mitchell (buried in Wright Cemetery, Chandler) was killed. Newspaper accounts of the event are marred by their hunger for the sensational. Mary's account may not be accurate either, but it comes from her own family tradition, which is certainly worthy of attention. It also cites the famous lawman Sheriff Bill Tilghman, who was there in person.  

“The Bandits' Raid on the Chandler Bank”, as told by Mrs. Mary Mitchell Tomberlin. From Today’s Tales of Yesterday by Mrs. Kirby Williams.

My father, John B. Mitchell, was a barber by trade; a very kindly man and well liked by employee and patron alike. His shop was a favorite meeting place for the man about town and the stranger passing through, as is the custom in small towns where benches and chairs are provided, and many a yarn was spun and many a plan was mapped out there by citizen and stranger alike.

Had the casual visitor or his employee noted I do not know, but the keen eyes of my mother had discovered some time past that father’s composure was disturbed: he seemed preoccupied with little to say, finally when questioned he had confided to mother that he was worried.

He told her that some tough looking strangers were camped just outside of town. He had seen them on several occasions when they had visited his shop. His dependable helpers, Jesse Funk and little Jakie Mayer, reported that the men had used bad language while they loitered, eliciting information from the boys as to the exact location of the principal places of business--such as the banks, the stores, the hotels, and making a rough map of the town.

Father’s shop was located at the northeast corner of 10th and Manvel Avenue in the Dawson building while diagonally across on the southwest corner was the bank run by the Key brothers and Fred Hoyt. Father was on very friendly terms with these fine townsmen, and it is my firm believe that he must have confided to them what he feared the strangers might be up to, and so through such warning and the direction of Divine Providence, the time lock on the bank was set back an hour, to open at 10:15 instead of the regular opening hour of 9:15 each morning.

Father was a neighborly person, and in addition to running his shop, he willingly lent a hand where help was needed, and at the time was helping care for a man who was sick with a fever in a small room just back of the bank. He had just returned from such ministrations that morning and had seated himself on a bench in front of his shop when the outbreak of trouble occurred. It started with little warning except that the strangers were seen a short time before, entering town and riding down the main street as if on parade. All were dressed in rich and flashy garb--velvet shirts, silk neckerchiefs and fancy chaps. Their horses too were the finest, with bridles and trappings studded with silver trim, for the men were outlaws and robbers, as they were soon to prove themselves to be, and so could well afford the best.

The riders had separated at about the center of town, some remaining boldly on Manvel, while others disappeared into the alley back of the bank. Suddenly a shot exploded, apparently the signal to the gang to begin shooting, for a volley of shots followed, intended to scare the residents into immobility.

The leader, later identified as “three-finger Jack Dalton” called out a warning: “If anyone moves he is a dead man.”

Inside the grocery located right across the street from Dad’s shop, the owner, a Mr. Gene Deacon, hearing the shots rushed outside to see what was going on. Father seeing him called out a warning that it was the Cooks and the Dalton boys making a raid on the bank, and with these words, Dad turned around and started back inside his shop. Just as he opened the screen door, one of the bandits opened fire at him, killing him instantly. The bullet went through his body, passed through the heart and came out through the left breast. Dr. Alfred . Wolcott and Dr. Harriman who examined him said that his heart had ben torn into fragments. It is supposed that the bandits, knowing that he had two fine guns hanging on the back wall of his shop, believed he had started inside to secure a weapon.

The shooting had centered on the bank building and continued while a number of the bandits entered and raided the bank itself, taking about seven hundred dollars, plus additional securities. They hadn’t waited for the opening of the time lock although an attempt had been made to force it open, but had rushed out again almost immediately to their horses held by a member of the gang and streaked out of town.

But God was with Chandler folks that day. Others doubtless would have been deliberately shot down except for the intervention of our famous Deputy U. S Marshal, Mr. Bill Tilghman, who had been on hand and so kept the people unmoving saving them from becoming targets for the indiscriminate killers. Then Marshal Tilghman took out after them, following hot on their trail that led in a northeasterly direction, catching up with the robbers that night when one of them was killed, and bringing another back to jail. Mr. Tilghman had been joined by Lon Polling of Guthrie and other marshals from towns that had recently been raided, and all had finally caught the gang at Coffeyville, Kansas, after they had made a bloody raid there, killing a number of towns people. [Mary Tomberlin is confused here. The famous Coffeyville raid was in 1892.] There the robbers themselves were killed. They had been laid out on slabs and photographed for identification and a personal history made of each one.

Years later, Mr. Tilghman brought me a picture of the man, telling me that I could see the man who assassinated my father if I so desired. That had been the last conversation I ever had with him. He asked if I knew who had killed my father, and I told him I was not sure. He replied: “It was Bill Doolin, one of the most dangerous gunmen that ever lived. He had thirteen notches on his gun, and it was told that he even had killed a child, a boy who was hunting rabbits in the hills where he lived.”

Others in the gang were: Kickapoo Bill, Indian bandit; Cherokee Bill; Three-finger Jack Dalton; two or three of the Cook brothers, and Elmer Lucas. 

Lucas had been the bandit who held the horses of the others while the bank was being raided. Another bandit hadn’t taken part in the raid, being at the time asleep under the old east viaduct or bridge.

Considerable damage had been done to the bank building, window panes were shattered. The report was that something around four hundred shots had been fired altogether. Those were dangerous days until Law and Order were finally firmly established.

This record of “Today’s Tales of Yesterday” is accurate to my best recollection, and I hope this expose will open the eyes of any young person who reads it and that they recognize such outlaws as the ruthless kills they were who left destruction and heartbreak wherever they struck.

I am very truly yours, Mrs. Mary Estella Tomberlin, 929 Northeast 10th St., Oklahoma City, Okla.

The Lincoln County Republican, 15 Jan 1958