The Remarkable Story of Willie Kennard: Yankee Hill’s Black Marshal

“NOTE: I’ve taken some liberties with the recorded accounts here. What I’ve done is put some of the historical accounts into the form of dialogue. Otherwise, it’s accurate.”

The man on horseback paused about a mile from the town. He studied it with a trained eye and wasn’t impressed. Like many old West communities, the builders constructed the town from logs. Some buildings were made of rough sawed boards. They nailed all of it together with dreams.

He studied the community for a moment longer before urging the horse toward it.

He didn’t look like much. He was a rangy middle-aged cowhand like so many cowhands across the West. But if you studied him, you noticed things about him. He wore his gun low, the sign of a man accustomed to fighting for his life. His gaze shifted this way and that, and he sniffed the air as if he might smell danger.

People looked at him in shock as he came into town. This was a novelty riding into this town. Some wondered what he was doing here. There were few of his kind around. The miners in the town of Yankee Hill, Colorado were certain that the man was trouble.

Why else would a black man ride into this town?

As if they didn’t have enough trouble of their own without him showing up!

The year was 1874. The mining town of Yankee Hill, high in the Colorado mountains. Its isolation made it the personal playground of a man named Barney Casewit. Casewit had bullied and terrorized the town for over two years. He’d killed townspeople just to kill them. He killed a marshal or two, scared off a few more. Then he raped a 15-year-old girl named Birdie Campbell. When confronted by her father, Casewit gunned him down and left him dead in the street. The town marshal, a man named Craig tried to arrest him. Casewit laid him out right next to Birdie’s father. Ben Reed from nearby Ruby Hill replaced Craig. He was gunned down as well. The next marshal left town after seeing Casewit kill two saddle tramps.

Like the giant Goliath in the Bible, men feared him. He swaggered around the town, secure in his domain and dominance over the citizens. No one could match him. And no one challenged him. This town was his, and no one, and nothing could beat him.

What for every Goliath there’s a David. Davids have an annoying tendency to just show up.

And his David had just ridden into town.

Matt Borden owned the Square Deal General Store. He was also the mayor of Yankee Hill. He and a couple of councilmen were at Fat Sarah Palmer’s Café talking business. No doubt the subject of town marshal was being discussed when the black cowboy walked in. He went straight up to them and said, “My name is Willie Kennard. I read your town is looking for a marshal. I’d like to apply for the job.”

Borden would say years later that he wasn’t impressed. The man didn’t look like a marshal. And there was the problem of a black man being marshal in an all-white community. One of the councilmen looked up at him from his seat and asked, “You can read, boy?”

If the comment irritated Willie, he didn’t show it.

Borden decided to try to scare the applicant off. “The hiring process is pretty steep. We have to make sure you can handle the job.”

“Oh. And what is that?”

“There’s a man in the bar across the street. He’s already killed several men, including two former marshals. Arrest him, and the job is yours.”

I wish I could have been a fly on the wall that day. I know men like Willie Kennard. I know the cloth they’re cut from. I’ve fought alongside these kinds of men and called them friends. These men are steel-hard and don’t scare. I wonder if Willie smiled and asked, “Is that all?”

They handed him the marshal’s badge. They were certain they would be getting it back soon.

“He’s over there,” they told him, and pointed toward Gaylor’s Saloon. “His name is Barney Casewit.” They gave him a description.

With a node, the newly minted marshal started walking across the street.

If these men expected Willie to run, or to die, they’d underestimated him. Willie was a battle-hardened warrior. He’d fought as a Corporal with the 7th Illinois Rifle Company. He also served with the Ninth Cavalry, one of the Buffalo Soldiers, that was at Ft. Bliss, Texas. Later they moved him to Ft. Davis, Arizona. There, he fought against the Apache’s. Being a Corporal made him a leader of men. His time in the unit soon convinced others he knew his way around a firearm. He became an firearms instructor at the Montrose Training Camp.

But when the war ended, Willie was put out of the Army. He looked around and found few opportunities for a man of his talents. So, he drifted to Denver and one day, he reads about this town that needed a marshal.

Now, with minutes behind the badge, he walks into the saloon and sees Casewit. He spent a moment studying him, noting how he also wore his pistols low. He also studied the man’s two associates.

He approached the table, and informed Casewit that he’s under arrest.

Well, Casewit and friends thought it was the funniest thing they had ever heard.

“I’m supposed to just come with you?” Casewit asked. “Where are we going?”

“It’s your choice,” Willie answered. “You can go to jail, or you can go to hell.”

Casewit was now in a pickle. He had exactly two choices. Surrender or add to his list of killings.

Option two was easy for him.

He stood and started to reach for his pistols.

What happened next is debated. Some say before he even touched the guns, Willie had drawn and fired twice. The bullets struck the pistols, nearly tearing them from the gunbelt. This rendered both weapons useless. Having been in gunfights and being a student of the gunfight, I have trouble buying this story. The first rule of gunfighting is don’t get killed. Shooting someone’s weapon could easily end up with your violating that rule if you miss. Besides, it’s not that easy, especially when the heat is on.

Others say Willie drew and clubbed Casewit hard across the side of the head with the drawn pistol. The action was so violent, it knocked him to the floor and out. This one, I’ll buy. Willie was outnumbered and the double-action pistol hadn’t been invented yet. That means he had to pull the hammer back after each shot. In that way, the pistol would advance to the next round.

Also, the old-time six-shooters were heavy. Unlike the Glocks and etc. favored today, the Old West pistol was American Heavy Metal at its best. They were so solid and heavy you could pound a nail with one if you had to.

That left Willie with two loaded and ready-to-go pistols.

There is disagreement about what he did to Casewit. But they agree on what happened to Casewit’s friends.

Both tried to draw on the new marshal. Before they even got halfway out, he’d taken them out with a bullet each and right between the eyes.

Casewit went to jail.

Justice was swift back then. Barney Casewit was tried for the rape of the Campbell girl and the murders. The new marshal took him to a pine tree and hung. Stories have it that he wrapped his legs around the tree to keep from dying. But all that did was prolong his agonies. Soon his strength gave out and he choked to death while dangling 10 feet off the ground. It was a fitting end for this brute of a man.

The town of Yankee Hill had a new marshal. He was paid $100.00 a month. (A little shy of $2300.00 in today’s money. He still did better than I did as a Deputy Sheriff.)

That’s not to say he never got tested again. Indeed, one of his tests shows his understanding of human psychology.

A robber named Billy McGeorge was an escapee from the territorial prison. He had formed a gang around himself and they preyed on the freight wagons and stages that ran the Gold Trail.

The Town Council asked Marshal Kennard to track them down.

Kennard realized that it wasn’t such a good idea. Colorado was a large area, and he’d chase them all over the territory and still never catch them.

“I’m going to make them come to me,” he said.

“And how are you going to do that?”

I can imagine he smiled as he went out to set up his plan.

Soon, wanted posters began showing up on trees and posts. The marshal had put a bounty on McGeorge’s head of a measly $50.00.

To say it ticked McGeorge off would be an understatement. Every other marshal around was asking at least $300.00. But fifty bucks! That almost wasn’t worth walking across the street for.

As expected, he and his gang showed up in Yankee Hill to explain the facts of life to this Black man who had insulted him so.

They found Marshal Kennard waiting for them with a double-barrel shotgun.

“You men can just drop your weapons!” Kennard ordered, leveling the shotgun at them.

One of them, an outlaw named Cash Downing, tried to pull on Willie.

Willie blew him off the horse with a blast from the shotgun. The blast also killed the outlaw right behind Downing and blew the window out of the general store.

With one barrel still loaded and aimed right at him, McGeorge told his men to surrender. But as Kennard took them to jail, they breathed out threats of vengeance.

They never got the chance. They soon found themselves dangling from the same tree that Casewit had died on a few months before.

By 1877, Yankee Hill was a quiet town. But it was also a dying town. The gold was running out, and people were moving on.

Willie looked around and realized the place was going to be a ghost town soon. He handed in his badge and said, “I’m going out east to find a wife.”

Today, there’s not a lot left to show Yankee Hill ever existed. There’s a few crumbling foundations and some logs that haven’t melted into the ground. In the overhead imagery, there appears to be the remains of a tailings dump. I couldn’t find evidence of a graveyard. The mountains have pretty well swallowed up the remains of the town.

I find very little about the community in newspaper searches. Aside from a few reminiscences that someone has written down, there’s not a lot to tell.

Today, the old ghost town is a popular destination for hikers and jeeps.

We know Willie was in Denver around 1884. He worked as a bodyguard for Barney Ford, a former slave who had built a thriving business there.

Then he vanishes from history. Where Willie went, when he died, and where he’s buried are unknown. I find very little on the internet about him. Newspapers, assuming Yankee Hill had one, no longer seem to exist.

Willie Kennard remains an enigma. Aside from a few brief flashes, he vanishes leaving few traces as well. I’d be happy to find out he found himself a nice lady. The married and had children. That means, someplace out there, he has great, great grandchildren.

I wonder if they know who he was or what he did.

WRITERS NOTE: To a very large degree, in my lawman series of novels, I’ve based Will Diaz’s buddy Jonesy (Michael Jones, LAPD) on Willie.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Like my blog and stories? Check out my novels available on Amazon. I have two out right now, The Cross and the Badge, and Against Flesh and Blood. A third novel, The Judas Tree will be coming out soon. Click on the novel names to be taken straight to them.

As always, thanks for dropping by and for your support. God Bless.

RESEARCH:

Yankee Hill, Colorado- And The Legend of “The Black Marshall” Willie Kennard | Life…Death…Iron

https://www.historynet.com/willie-kennard-yankee-hills-black-marshal.htm#:~:text=Kennard%2C%20most%20likely%20Colorado’s%20first,after%20he%20left%20Yankee%20Hill.

https://articles.historynet.com/willie-kennard-yankee-hills-black-marshal.htm

https://www.police1.com/evergreen/articles/your-choice-jail-or-hell-how-a-buffalo-soldier-turned-lawman-saved-his-town-KErsYfhWWnIYHIqR/

Kennard, Willie | Oxford African American Studies Center (oxfordaasc.com)

Additional resources possibly found at your library:

Cain, D. Lawmen of the Old West: The Good Guys (2000).
Childs, D. Willie Kennard-Black Cowboy (2013). 
Corgan, B. Mining Camp Lawyer (1897).
Lindemann, G. Willie Kennard Yankee Hill’s Black Marshall (1996).
Miller, R. H. & R. Leonard. Reflections of a Black Cowboy (1991).
Miller, R. H.  Cowboys (2004).
Milligan, B. & C. Shaw. Lawmen: Stories of Men Who Tamed the West (1994)