Great grandpa Will Luce married as his first wife a woman who was daughter of a local rustler and the local madame. Grandpa Will later divorced her for adultery after he came home and caught her in bed with one of his ranch hands. She stayed in Big Piney, never re-married, and continued using her married name Luce.
The connection annoyed my very proper grandmother, who used it as as example of why people shouldn’t do genealogy. Nevertheless, I dig into the story from time to time.
This woman was Dorothy (Tarter) Luce (1878-1952). She was daughter of Jefferson Sharp and Mamie Bair. Bob Tarter, the rustler, was actually her step-father, not her father.
Today, I’m looking into Old Bob Tarter. Here’s rough outline from Daniel, Wyoming – The First Hundred Years 1900 – 2000:
“Soon, Bob Tarter was no longer thought of as a good neighbor and an upstanding citizen of the Teton Basin. He was described as being a notorious cutthroat and accused of requiring others to do the dirty work in his rustling operation while he got away with the spoils. Some of the settlers may have been suspicious of Bob’s ranching activities prior to these events. Undoubtedly, word would have reached Idaho that Bob’s brother Dan had been arrested for stealing horses.
“It became known that Bob Tarter’s primary source of income involved two, seperate groups of men. One unit roamed the country gathering horses, while the second unit remained at the ranch. The islands in the Snake River were used to conceal the horses. The rustlers also had a hideout on the east side of the south butte. From that elevation they could survey much of the surrounding country. Bob’s operation extended to Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Oregon and Idaho. His gang took cattle and horses from the Whitney Idaho (just below Preston) area and shipped them from Corrine, Utah or took them north to Montana. At times, these outlaws were so bold as to butcher the rustled cattle, take the beef to the owners homes, and offer it for sale.”
Bob and his family subsequently moved to Baker County, Oregon. Bob and his brother Dan Tarter got into a fight over a horse in 1893. Dan shot and killed Bob. The family story is that Bob’s gravestone used to have a ball on the top but after Daniel got out of jail he went and shot off the ball.
I find this one news item about the shooting:
Slew His Brother for a Horse.
PARKER CITY, Or., June 16. – News had reached here from Eagle Valley that Dan Tarter shot and instantly killed his brother Bob Saturday night. The brothers quarreled over the possession of a horse. Bob was the leader of a notorious band of horse-thieves who operated in the Teton Basin in Idaho for several years. Dan has served a term in the Washington penitentiary for horse-stealing.
The Arizona Republican; Phoenix, Arizona. June 17, 1893; Page One.
Today, I found just a bit more. Dan was apparently charged with 1st degree murder, convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to 12 years in prison. He appealed. The Oregon Supreme Court overturned the verdict and ordered a new trial. State v. Tarter, 26 Or. 38, 37 P. 53 (Or. 1894).
The court’s analysis gives us a bit of information about the incident. The horse they fought over was a filly named “June.” Bob and Dan’s mother bequeathed the filly to their sister May Lloyd. At the time of the killing, “the defendant [Dan] was in the possession of a mare or filly entrusted to him by his mother to deliver to his sister May Lloyd, and the deceased [Bob] at the time was attempting to take said property from him by force, with intent to convert the same to his own use feloniously.”
There must be more to the story, although it’s not clear from the court record what happened. “The testimony of defendant, and also of his sister and William Barnard, who were eye-witnesses to the shooting, was to the effect that the deceased was the aggressor, and that he was armed with a pistol; that he swore he would kill the defendant, and at the same time was reaching for his pistol; and that he was in the act of drawing it, to carry such threat into execution, when the defendant drew his pistol and fired.”
On the other hand, “testimony for the state tend[ed] to show that the deceased was unarmed and not the assailant, when the affray began; that he made no hostile demonstration toward the defendant, and committed no overt act, but that the shooting was deliberate and premeditated.”
It seems there was bad blood between the brothers at the time of the shooting. The court’s analysis includes a question of whether Bob had threatened Dan, which might have shown Bob was the aggressor, whether Dan knew about the threats or not. “Then followed several questions aiming to show that the deceased proposed to the witness to go with him, raise a posse, and hang the defendant and some others.”
Perhaps arising from the same incident, “The record shows that after the witness testified that he had talked to Robert Tarter, the deceased, a good many times shortly before the shooting, and just after tbe difficulty of the Tarters with Holstine….” The reference is probably either to George Holstine or his brother James Holstine, both of whom lived in Union County.
It would be interesting to find more about the events that preceded the shooting.
I haven’t been able to determine whether Dan was re-tried or what the verdict was. I’m guessing he got off. The Oregon Supreme Court reversed his conviction in 1894. He re-married in 1899 in Union County, Oregon, then he appears on the 1900 census in Custer County, Montana, and on the 1910 through 1930 censuses in Harding County, South Dakota.