St. Landry democrat., 1880-01-24
SHEP. TIMERS CAREER.
Horse-thief, Counterfeiter, Minister, Poll
tician and Farmer.


Few Ohioans whose memory can cover
the past 90 years have not heard the
marvellous stories which tradition has
connected with Shep. Tinker. Fifteen
years ago the name of Shep. Tinker was
the bugaboo that sent thrills of terror
through the breasts of refractory chill
dren. Yet though his fame and name
have been for years common house
word from the Eastern Ohio 20 beyond
the Mississippi, the real biography of
this noted horse-thief has never been
written He is perhaps the only nota-
BILE horse-thief who ever retired from his
nefarious calling into the shades of pri-
vate life and settled quietly down in the
ncighborhood of his childhood's home,
where his misdeeds were the common
property of the country gossips.
In the year 1903 old John Tinker, the
worthy sire of the illuslrious Shep.,
whose stock of worldly gear was not as
unlimited as his physical energy, took
1t into his Yankee head to leave the
New Hampshire hills and "either find
or make his way West. 1nincum-
bered as he was, he found comparative
ly no trouble in pushing forward into
Central Ohio. He settled at Putnam,
and his honest face; broad shoulders
and brawny arms proved such Il RECON-
mendation that before many days ne
found wife in one of Putnam's bellies.
From this marriage, i'll TIVE year 1910,
Sheppard was born. In the year 1873,
when Shep. was three years Old, his
father once more set out on his travels,
and finally settled on a farm in Perry
County, about four miles from the pres
ent town of Chapel Hill, and midway
between Athens and GAINESVILLE. The
distance betweeh these two places is
fifty miles. Here John erected and
opened tavern for wayfarers which
has been known ever since as 6 Iinker's
Tavern but which long since lost its
hospitable character. "Tinkor'' Iav-
ern'' was at that time the only building
cupied the summit of one of the innum-
cradle hills that abound in Perry County,
from which "you could see,' as Shep
says, g as far as the sky would let YOU
OF the heyday of Shops youth
the village tradition does not
preserve any record. 1T is only known
that he was accounted a bright young
blade, intelligent but uncommonly wild.
Certain it is, however, that he soon be-
came the acknowledged leader of a set
of young rascals who inhabited the
ncig hboring hills. This was the nucleus
around which Shep. formed the celehra
ted Tinker gang of horse-thieyes. When
Tinker was twenty years old horse
tD1o
at New Lexington, and Shep. was sup
posed to be the thief. No evidence,
howeved, could be obtained against him
until one day while drunk he boosted of
having stolen the horse. Upon this
admission he was arrested and sent to
the penitentiary for six years. 1t after
wards transpiied that on the night the
horse was stolen Shep. had been some
twenty-five miles away and had in real
ity invented the story of the theft. The
joke, if joke it was, became a serious
matter before the end. When
released from the peniteniary he
Immediately set to work in earnest
to steal horses. He organized a band
of professional horse-t thieves, and was
so successful that in the year 1910 his
name was a terror to the farmers of
Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky. Mem
bers of his gang were located in almost
every county in this State and in a
large portion of Indiana. The horses
to be stolen were always carefully Sc
lected. Dark nights were chosen for
the raids, and the horses were carried
by nightly stages into the wilderness of
Perry County, near "Shep.'s" home,
where they were secreted. This country
was admirably adapted to the purpose,
being very thinly settled and covered for
the most part with heavy growth of
timber. The principal "hold'' of the
band, however, was a patch of woods
situated on the county line between
Athens and Perry Counties, called
Beech Woods, and which to this day
contains four square miles of forest in
terspersed with ravines and rocky
places. Sooner or later it occurred to
Shep. that counterfeiting might also be
profitable, and he turned his attention
to that branch of rascality. But before
long the eye of suspicion was on him,
and one day, having come to Zanes-
vile with saddle-bag full of spurious
coin, the Sheriff arrested him and threw
him into Jail. Shep. was accounted a
very handsome man, and succeeded in
making an impression on the Sheriff's
servant-girl, who, having stolen the keys
Of the jail, released him. Shep. fled, land
the Sheriff with posse of 10 men fol-
lowed him for two weeks without sue
cess. Leaving his Lieutenant, Henry
Raynor (who, by the way, afterwards
signalized himself in the annals of New
York crime by stealing whole herd of
cattle in Orange County,, in charge of
the gang, Tinker set off through the
West The news of his travels from
time to time reached GAINESVILLE. Hewas
heard of as Methodist minister, as a
political stump-speaker, and later as a
resident of the Iowa Penitentiary. Still
later it was heard that he had become
rich, and was the owner of a palatial
residence on the iowa River, which far
exceeded any thing in the State in point
of richness of appointment. At last he
returned, and, freely admitting that he
had served terms in the Penitcntiaries
of Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin, called |
upon the people to elect him as Justice
of the Peace, saying, naively 81 know |
all about crime, so you couldn't ito bet