The Albany register. [volume] (Albany, Or.) 1868-18??, 1875-02-19
THE TERRIBLE McWATERs.
A sketch OF noted western Desperad.

A Sketch or a Noted Western Desperate.
[Nebraska City Correspondence Chicago Times.l
Our District Court has just ad-
iourned. and the notorious desperate,
William Nc Waters, has been sentenced
to twenty-one years at hard labor in
the LINCOLN Penitentiary, and the pom
derous gates have hidden the criminal
from the world in which he regarded
human life no more than a sportsman
does prairie chichen. He was young
in years.. but graduated early among
the bushwhackers of Missouri, and is
known from Nebraska to Oregon as the
terrible McWaters-a living personif-
cation of just such characters as figure
in dime novels, and fill up the measure
of glory in saloon literature.
William McWaters was born in Platte
county, No., the year after the great
food-1S44. His mother was a Ken
tueky woman of superior character.
Soon after the rebellion broke out he
joined company of the boys who
burnt the Platte bridge and precipitated
the Hannibal and st. Joe train into an
awful chasm, killing many of the pas
sengers, because Federal soldiers were
among them. Then he enlisted with Jim
Giddins' band and fought under Gen.
Price for six months. On coming back
home to Bee Greek he found the family
residence burnt, his father and brother
killed by the militia, and the rest of the
family driven off in banishment. So he
associated himself with Bill Anderson,
John and Fleteh Taylor, and other
desperate bushwhackers, and resolved
revenge, and did pick off Capt. Cheese
man and thirty or forty of his men, who
were quartered IN the neighborhood.
But the rising glory of Quantrell drew
them over into Kansas again, where
McWaters found congenial work in the
saeking and burning of Lawrence,
Quantren afterward carried his free
hooters into Arkansas, and there they
fell out among themselves over woman,
and the sanguary Bill Anderson drew
away from Quantrall and raided back
through Northern Missouri like flame
of fire over the prairies, carrying young
McWaters in his train, who had many
adventures more strange than fiction,
and was assisted out of many hair
breadth escapes by a fair heroine named
Jennie May6eld.
At the close of the war we find Nc
Waters keeping saloon in Platte City,
when he shot man and his friend,
John Taylor, was shot by the police.
He then escaped to st. Joe, which was
seething with desperadoes from all par
ties, where his other friend, Fletch
Taylor, was shot dead by the police !;
and McWaters, in return, shot the
policeman.
By the aid of confederates he got out
of Missouri and came to Wyoming, in
this county, where romantic attach
ment sprung up between him and .
beautiful young lady, who was to have
married his friend Fletch Taylor, and he
was TO be the groomsman. and they were
on the way up when the affray took
place in st. Joe which ended the career
of Fletch Taylor. Miss Susie Davis
wedded McWaters, and through thick
and thin has idolized her husband-the
one bright picture in this narrative.
Two years ago McWaters shot Wolfe
dead in a row in Wyoming; and soon
after his brother-in-law, Woodson, who
is Q cousin of Gov. Woodson, of Mis-
souri, shot Barlow dead, and is now
serving a term in the penitentiary for
it. McWaters was cleared. But about
o year afterward John Crook and he
shot and killed an innocent man in
Dold's saloon, in this city. They were
caught and shut up in an iron cage,
where it seemed they were very safe for
trial. But, one evening, when the
guards were shifting them, they man
aged to steal the arms, and, at the
| pistols mouth, drove the guards into the
cage, locked them in, and escaped on
horses which had been placed outside
| by friends. In the Indian Nation the
men separated in bad blood, and Nc
Waters, for whom large reward was
| offered, was again caught at Hays City,
Kansas. But while the Sheriff's posse
was making the prison safe for him be
executed the old maneuver, and sud
emily shut six of them inside, while hf
escaped on the Sheriffs horse.
He then made his way northwarc
among the Blackfoot Indians, an6
shot one of them dead over bottle o.
whisky, and has his blankets yet, will
the bullet-holes, he running the gaunt
let of the whole tribe.
We next hear of McWaters at th'
little town of Sparta, Baker county
Oregon, where he visited relative anC
had famous needle-gun, with which
i he murdered man named George
Weed, with whom he had a quarrel in
gambling g-house. The man had gon,
| off some distance. but had on soldier
blue coat, and McWaters could not re
s1st the temptation of letting fly charg
| at his brass buttons shooting him i
the back.
Careless English.
A lady and gentleman were crossin
our meadow one cloudy day, when SUD
L L.