By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
A hard-drinking Civil War veteran, Jim Curry, a once resident of Hays in the mid-1800s, was described by one account as "the most depraved specimens that visited the western country."
The account of Curry in 1883's "History of the State of Kansas" was as follows.
He was the embodiment of everything bad and disreputable. The very quintessence of all wickedness and a living personification of crime in its worst forms without a single redeeming quality.
No person was safe against his attacks. His murderous weapons were aimed at all alike. It require pages to recite all his murderous acts, but a few will suffice to show the desperate character of the man on his short stay in Hays City.
He killed several colored men. Some of whom he threw into a dry well. He killed a man named Brady by cutting his throat by which he threw him into an empty box car and fastened up the door.
Another time he was going up the street and meeting a quiet inoffensive youth named Estes, who was about 18 years of age, told him to throw up his hands. The youth begged for him not to kill him, but the villain, deaf to such appeals, placed a revolver to the boy's breast and sent a bullet through his heart, stepped over the dead body and walked away.
James Drees, local historian, chronicled the life of Curry during a lecture last week at the Ellis County Historical Society 50th anniversary celebration. The event included speakers, depictions of Old West shoot outs, a party and dance, and raffle.
Drees noted that much of what was in the early historical accounts of the Old West came from newspaper accounts, many of which were sensationalized to sell more copies. The reliability of many of Curry's murderous deeds may be in doubt.
This included the killing of the black soldiers in Hays during a vigilante town folk vs. soldier gunfight. The fight broke out after a drunken celebration among the soldiers on pay day.
Although the story goes that more than 500 shots were fired and multiple soldiers killed, there is no official record of any deaths among the soldiers that night.
"Jim Curry for good or bad has the reputation of being one of the wickedest men who ever lived in the Old West," Drees said. "I'm not going to argue that Curry's a saint. I'm not going to argue he's the wickedest man in the world.
"What I'm going to say is that Jim Curry when he was here in Ellis County, wasn't the man who he was in 1879. Once you hear what I have to say about him, you can make up your own mind about how you should think about him."
Curry was born in Ireland and immigrated to the United States with his brothers when he was 8 or 9 years old to escape the Irish Potato Famine. His parents were believed to have died in the famine.
Curry started hanging out in the rail yard in the New York City. He was hired on as a train fireman and worked his way up to locomotive engineer despite being functionally illiterate.
Before he was 21, he was considered one of the most skilled locomotive engineers on the Little Miami Railroad.
When the Civil War broke out, Curry was mustered into the service as a corporal for the 12th Ohio Infantry.
Curry survived the battle at Carnifix Ferry, during which the Union took heavy casualties. The Confederate artillery fired grape shot, cans of meatball-sized iron pellets, into their ranks, shredding their colonel into pieces and spraying all the men behind him with blood and gore. The men of the 12th turn and ran.
Numerous engagements, including the Battle of Antietam, followed for the 12th Ohio. Each time they took causalities. By the time the regiment's three years were up, about a third of the their ranks had been killed or wounded. Curry was never among those who was hit.
Drees suggested Curry, as did many veterans of the Civil War, likely suffered from post traumatic stress disorder. He further surmised that Curry, along with other veterans, including Wild Bill Hickok, treated their emotional distress by drinking heavily.
"As life went along, he drank more and more until he was a full-blown alcoholic," Drees said, "which ruined his career as a railroader and resulted in some very unfortunate things he did in Texas and New Mexico. ... "Basically his PTSD ruined his career as a railroader and everything else he tried to do and ultimately wrecked him as a man."
When Curry mustered out of the Army, the Union Pacific Railroad was building west through Kansas, and Curry signed on to be the engineer for the construction train.
Curry was sited as having killed men from his locomotive. The only corroborating evidence he could find for this was a newspaper account of tourists from an an excursion train who stopped in Junction City and viewed a scalp from what was believed to be a Kiowa medicine man that was allegedly taken by Curry. Drees surmised this might have been the first civilian killing Curry was involved in after the war.
Historical accounts have Curry in a shootout with Bobby Gill in Hays during a poker game. The accounts indicate Curry shot Gill in the mouth, but later writings contradict some of the specifics of what may have happened here in Hays.
During the winter of 1868-69 Curry joined the Forsyth Scouts to engage Native Americans. Curry was at the Battle of the Arickaree in summer 1868 in far northwest Kansas. Fifty-two soldiers engaged an estimated 250 to 500 Native Americans.
They were only able to hold out because the Scouts were armed with repeater rifles, and the Native Americans were primarily outfitted with bows and arrows, and lances.
The Native Americans resorted to a siege. The men were nearly starved until they were finally recused in late September at which time Curry returned to Hays.
During the time he was at Hays, he served as a guide for a group from an excursion train. Although U.S. Army and Native Americans were engaging violently in the area, tourists from the east were coming out on trains to sight see.
A writer from the excursion party described Curry in this way — a far cry from the villain in other historical and newspaper accounts.
His instinct was remarkable, and he rapidly acquired a knowledge of the country and an insight of Indian character, which have rendered him almost invaluable to the government. Incredible tales are told of his valor, adventures and hair-breath escapes.
In person, he is the bow-ideal of a Scout, not more than 25 of medium height with a figure faultless in its proportion, a face of almost classical regularity with close-shaven black hair, a neatly curly mustache and keen, nervous gray eyes, attired in corduroyed stretched in the legs of tall boots, a brown shirt collarless, with handkerchief knotted loosely around his neck, abrasive navy revolvers thrust into his belt with a Henry rifle swung across his back. He seemed just the daring courageous spirit that he is.
Although he was for a time a Hays resident, Curry was most noted for an incident that happened in Marshal, Texas, in March 1879.
Curry, working as a railroad detective, had just helped break up the notorious Sam Bass railroad gang and was on an alcoholic bender.
He went into a restaurant/bar and encountered several actors who were celebrating the local run of their play. One of them inadvertently tugged his ear. Curry thought that was a signal directed at him, so he confronted the man.
Two of the actors, Benjamin F. Porter and Reese Barrymore, didn't take this very well. Barrymore was a boxer in college and was fixin' for a fist fight. Curry, on the other hand, had his pistol hidden in the folds of his slicker, but told the men he was unarmed.
Drees explained Barrymore said, "I can beat you up all the better."
Curry raised his pistol and shot Ben Porter in the chest and Barrymore, standing there dumbfounded, in the arm. Barrymore has the sense to run and lives, Drees said. Porter died.
"The same guy through the entire history of Hays City was supposed have done all these killings, ... most of them died by the vigilantes, but it was always that dastardly Jim Curry who did all of that," he said.
"History doesn't seem to back any of that up. I could go on and on and on. Nope, Curry didn't do that, but that's how it is. This is a man who despite everything all these positive aspects of this time, history's determined him Curry the Curd. That's how newspapers referred to him as the wickedest man who ever lived in Kansas."