The last article in this series brought into question the oral history sources we have on the early criminal career of Buck English, noting especially people’s tendency to over-dramatize his exploits. Let me now present the facts as we have pulled them from court documents dating to the late 1870s. What will become evident is that the image of a Wild West desperado is somewhat tamed by the realities of the historical record.
It appears that Lawrence Buchanen English began his career of crime on June 19th, 1876 when he and a man named John Good had a shootout in the streets of Middletown. On July 7th, English is indicted by a grand jury for the crime of “assault with a deadly weapon and instrument with intent to commit murder” and he makes bail for $1,500. His freedom is short-lived, though, when he is arrested along with William Turner for allegedly stealing two hogs from one man and a steer from another in September of that year. When two separate grand juries indict the duo for grand larceny in October of 1876, English now faces three separate trials: one for assault and two for grand larceny. The month of October is a rough one for English as he is found guilty of grand larceny for stealing the two hogs and sentenced to San Quentin for one year and six months. Later, it seems as if his assault case goes well and he is found not guilty because we never hear of it again.
English spends the rest of 1876 in San Quentin until he is brought back to Lake County in January of 1877 for the end of his other grand larceny trial. Yet again English and Turner are found guilty and sentenced to an additional one year in prison. English is blessed with a great team of defense attorneys, though, and both grand larceny cases go before the State Supreme Court on appeal on April 30th, 1877. Remarkably, both appeals are upheld and the Supreme Court orders new trials for English.
It appears that English is brought back from San Quentin in May of 1877 for the beginning of the retrials. He quickly makes bail in July and enjoys about two months as a free man until he is once more placed in the jail in Lakeport at the end of September. He remains in the court’s jail (located in the part of the Historic Courthouse Museum that now houses the restrooms) until October 8th when he is once more released.
That is the last we hear from Buck English until January of 1878 when he is arrested for robbing a man at gunpoint. Unlike the assault and two grand larceny cases, this charge actually sticks and he is successfully sent to San Quentin until October of 1882. After being released, English remains in Lake County a short while before leaving for British Columbia and then Oregon. He would never step foot in Lake County again. He wouldn’t even return to California until one week before his final gun battle in May of 1895.
From the beginning of his criminal career in June of 1876 until his departure for Canada in 1882/3, English was in county jail or state prison all but four or five non-consecutive months. In that short time he committed at least four felonies. No evidence exists (as of yet) that he robbed a stage coach near Lower Lake or shot at or killed a man at a skating rink in Middletown. Beyond those few months of freedom, Buck English was largely out of sight and out of mind.
Hardly the figure of a wild desperado who would have a shootout with sheriff’s deputies, is it? But in the early 1870s English was only a young man in his early 20s, 15 years would transpire before his final showdown in Napa County.
The evidence does indicate that Buck English was a man who had no qualms about taking from others what he couldn’t get legally himself. When asked to sign court papers, he simply drew an “X”, which suggests that he couldn’t write. However, his brothers could sign their own names so education was not unheard of in the English household. In fact, it is entirely possible that Buck simply refused to sign his name, as just one more way of thumbing his nose at the law. The documents show that 11 different men willingly signed his bail bond in July of 1876 when he was indicted for assaulting John Good. From this bit of evidence we can safely assume English was charismatic and well-liked — at least within his group of acquaintances.
And what a rough and tumble group of young men these acquaintances were. Buck English appears as a witness for the defense in a January 1876 case in which one of his friends was accused of robbing a man in Middletown. When English needed his own witnesses for his crimes he called on people like Thomas Dye, who would go on to murder a man in Middletown in October of 1878. Birds of a feather flock together, as the saying goes.
I started this series of articles with the intention of evaluating the folkloric image of Buck English. I end it here, with a sober reflection on the difficulties of such a venture. You would think that more would be known about a man as famous as Buck English. Unfortunately just as hands smear and fade a photo too often handled, so did each retelling of his exploits ultimately obscure English’s imprint on the historical record. Ironically, it would be easier to reconstruct his life if he hadn’t become so famous. Primary sources like court documents can clean up his image, making definite what had become blurred, but ultimately we are still left with only a vague notion of who Lawrence Buchanen English was and what he did in life. Perhaps the truth doesn’t make for as good a story. I suppose that’s why people chose to remember Buck English in more gratifying terms. After all, every county needs a good outlaw figure, even with the days of the Wild West long gone.
