Ted Carson

Ted Carson (1844-1901) was an American outlaw and the founder of the Carson Gang. He was captured and hanged by US Marshalls in 1901, along with many members of his gang.

## Biography

Ted Carson was born on May 27th, 1844, in Springfield, Missouri. When he was seven years old, his parents abandoned him with his twenty-year-old brother, Dean. Dean was a small-time thief and criminal, who had previously worked as a trick shot cowboy for pennies. He had since earned his living pickpocketing and theiving, but he did the best he could raising his brother. However, Dean's influence led Ted down a rough path from a young age, and Ted was soon learning how to pickpocket, theive, and fend for himself from his older brother. He also taught the young Ted to shoot, using the skills he learned in the circus. From this, Ted learned to fan a gun and make incredible shots, skills he would later pass on to James Kane.

When Ted was sixteen, Dean was arrested and imprisoned for robbery, and Ted planned on breaking him out of the town's jail. Masked and armed with his brother's spare Colt Navy revolver, the teen Carson broke through the back door of the jailhouse and knocked the deputy out with his gun, taking the key and using it to unlock Dean's cell. They fled out the back door on the deputy's horse, and their life of crime together truly began. The brothers went to Kansas, and Dean put a gang of other ouwlaws together, the Carson Gang. For the next seven years, the Carson gang ran together, running a loansharking business and a protection racket. It was during those years that Ted Carson learned to ride and shoot, as well as run an outlaw gang under his brother's wing. He was his brother's right hand man until Dean was killed in 1867 along with two members of the Carson gang by lawmen during a robbery-gone wrong. With Dean gone, the twenty-three year old Ted became the leader of the Carson gang. Ted took the gang in a more aggressive direction, towards armed train and stagecoach robberies rather than cunning, subtle crimes. That same year, Carson saved a young man named Marco Montero and his mother from being mugged, and the young Montero joined the gang. When Montero's mother was killed by the same muggers, Carson and Marco tracked them down and killed them, starting the young Mexican's life of crime.

Three years later, in 1870, Ted pulled a young cowboy named James Kane into an alleyway, at gunpoint. Carson meant to rob the young man, but the suprisingly strong Kane got him by surprise and disarmed the outlaw, holding him at bay with his own gun. However, Carson's partner in crime appeared and put a gun to Kane's back, ordering him to drop the revolver. Ted simply laughed and told the gang member to back down, and turned his attention to James. He took a shine to him, and offered him a place in his gang. Seeing an oppurtunity for adventure, wealth, and glory, Kane took him up on his offer and joined. He taught him to shoot over the next three years, and with a new, highly skilled shootist in their crew, the Carson gang later grew in noteriety in the Kansas area and aquired many new members over the years.

The Carsons weren't the only gang in the Kansas area, though. They had a rival in the Nash gang, a gang that ran various cons and also loansharked. Carson feared that they would encroach on their businessess, and in 1871, he took Kane and fellow gang member Marco Montero with him to confront the leader of the Nash Gang, Cody Nash. The two argued and threatened each other at first, but they reached an an agreement after negotiating and they agreed to merge into a single gang, the Carson-Nash Gang.

In June of 1872, Ted brought James Kane, now a spry young gunslinger, on his first large bank robbery. He had done smaller banks before, but the gang had set their sights on a bank in Reno, Nevada, and Kane felt ready. During the robbery, it all went well until a civilian managed to break a window and shout for help, and the lawmen were onto them. They were forced to shoot their way out, and Kane and Ted each put two men in their graves as they fled. Luckily, they managed to make out with a few thousand dollars, but Kane and Ted both grappled with guilt.

Over the coming years, the gang would rob many more banks, as well as trains, stagecoaches, and Ted would kill many more times. The gang was getting very powerful with Kane and Nash by Carson's side. By 1898, when the gang's power peaked, the gang had well over two-hundred members.

In 1900, Kane felt that the country had become too dangerous for outlaws like them, and he left the gang and started a family with a woman named Helen, much to the sadness of Ted Carson and the other founding members.

The next year, Ted Carson, Cody Nash, Tom Massey, Ray Dixon, and over a hundred other members of the Carson-Nash gang were caught by US Marshalls in Colorado. Of them, only Dixon was able to escape the Marshalls. The others were imprisoned, and in the case of Carson, Nash, and the more violent members of the gang, hanged.

Ted Carson's body was buried in a small graveyard, under an unmarked stone just outside Denver a week later.