The man informally known as “the historian of Winn Parish,” Gregg Davies, spoke to the Winnfield Kiwanis Club on June 24 about the Outlaws of Winn Parish. Mr. Davies was born and reared here in Winn Parish and has worked under three Winn Parish sheriffs and one Winn Parish judge. He has also studied and researched the history of the parish and probably knows more about parish history than any other resident.
Mr. Davies commented on a column printed in the Winn Parish Enterprise for many years by Harley Bozeman titled “Winn Parish as I Have Known It,” which he has discovered got some things wrong about historical events in the parish, mainly because his information was gathered by word of mouth from ones who might be called old-timers. Now historians like Davies may use the internet to access the National Archives to find more accurate information about Winn Parish history.
From such sources, Davies reports Winn Parish was formed in 1852 from portions of the surrounding parishes. These were areas not deemed desirable by those parishes because they had little in the way of productive land and industry. He identified Dennis Mackey, the man who surveyed the areas to be incorporated into Winn Parish, as the “Father of Winn Parish.” It seems that Mr. Mackey made a deal to survey the land to be formed into the new Parish in exchange for land within the parish instead of money.
As for the outlaws of Winn Parish, Davies referred to a news article appearing in a Wisconsin newspaper in 1871 stating that Winn Parish was controlled by bad outlaws, namely, John West and Daniel Dean. According to historical accounts Davies has found, John West and Daniel Dean were both men who did not bother abiding by the law, both resided in Winn Parish and became engaged in a feud related to their respective illegal activities. Dean was persuaded to leave the parish and stayed away for several years but returned to Winn Parish eventually. His return resulted in a gun and knife fight with West and his gang. According to the article in the Wisconsin newspaper, after this gang fight, West kidnapped Dean’s parents and brother. Dean and his men discovered where his family was being held, rescued them and killed West and his men.
This type of vigilantism continued in Winn Parish for some months and years until John Abel, a circuit-riding Justice of the Peace, convened an inquest in which he, without hearing from any witnesses, determined that members of Dean’s gang were involved in the murders of the West gang. Some of these men were arrested and hanged. One of Dean’s compatriots, Loss (or maybe Laws, who knows how these names were spelled back in the “old” days) Kimbrell escaped to Texas but was eventually caught and hanged.
William Edenborn, who became the 10th richest American, acquired over 250 patents and became a close personal friend of President Teddy Roosevelt, constructed a railroad between Shreveport and New Orleans and owned the Coochie Brake between Atlanta and Verda. Another Winn Parish resident named Dick Merrill made the first transatlantic flight from America to Europe, which suggests that not everyone in Winn Parish was an outlaw.