Brett Cogburn - Rooster: The Life and Times of the Real Rooster Cogburn, the Man Who Inspired True Grit

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Book:
Rooster: The Life and Times of the Real Rooster Cogburn, the Man Who Inspired True Grit
Author:
Brett Cogburn
Publisher:
Kensington
Genre:
Books / Detective and thriller
Year:
2012
Rating:
3 / 5
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Rooster: The Life and Times of the Real Rooster Cogburn, the Man Who Inspired True Grit: summary, description and annotation

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Fans of frontier arcana will revel in this biography of the Arkansas cowboy, outlaw, and immortal Wild West frontiersman (Publishers Weekly).
Celebrated in Charles Portiss classic novel and three hit films, the real Rooster Cogburn was as bold, brash, and bigger-than-life as the American West itself. Now, in this page-turning account, Cogburns great-great-grandson reveals the truth behind the fictionand the man behind the myth . . .
He was born in 1866 in Fancy Hill, Arkansas, the descendant of pioneers and moonshiners. Six foot three, dark eyed, and a dead shot with a rifle, Franklin Rooster Cogburn was as hard as the rocky mountain ground his family settled. The only authority the Cogburn clan recognized was God and a gun. And though he never packed a badge, Rooster meted out his own justicetaking on a posse of US deputy marshals in a blazing showdown. Now a wanted man, with a $500 reward on his head, Roosterproud, stubborn, fearless, and ornery to the bitter endrode into legend.
In Rooster, [Brett Cogburn] . . . amazes and astounds us with the true-life story of a genuine American icon, and unforgettable man of the West (Booklist).
The author has done extensive research to bring the times and his ancestor to life. Its an interesting read, especially for history buffs. His descriptions of the Fort Smith area, Indian Territory and southeastern Oklahoma are outstanding. The Oklahoman
In this book, [Cogburn] has blended family lore and good research to produce an entertaining portrait. The Dallas Morning News

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Table of Contents

Afterword

T o all my fellow Cogburns, Im truly sorry if this book has jerked some skeletons from the closet or has accidentally left the notion in readers minds that all the old-time Cogburns were heinous whiskey peddlers, outlaws, and ruffians. Such notions would be far from the truth. Because of those very worries I debated for years whether or not to write this book, or if it should be published.

In the process of telling the interesting portions of Franklins life, I have left out many of the kind actions and daily living of his family and the many good people who lived alongside him. A prerequisite for a good story is the exciting or the unusual, especially in anything dealing with the Old West. Raising children, chopping wood, plowing fields, picking cotton, and weeding corn arent what most readers are looking for.

Many of the Cogburns of Franklins era were good people, more apt to obey the law than break it. Of the lawbreakers, the majority of them were only moonshiners. Franklin can proudly claim many good citizens descended from him. They are hardworking, honest, middle-class people. In my own family, every one of my grandfathers children went to college, a testimony to the desire to raise themselves up from the hard times the family had endured.

In my mind Franklin was a good man, even if my telling of his story has shown some of his faults. Im too far removed from that generation to ever truly understand his kind. Many of we Americans have pioneer blood running in our veins and family stories worth retelling, but we can never truly lay hand to the past. How can people used to refrigeration, cable TV, and cell phones ever understand the old days when men were men and the women had to be damned tough to keep them in line? How can people who are used to crossing multiple states on freeways at seventy miles per hour without ever seeing a thing but pavement ever hope to understand what a days journey was like back in the horse-and-buggy age? Many outdoor types hunt for sport, but what was it like to have to shoot straight when your family went hungry if you didnt? How many of us who have grown up with the availability of 911 emergency dispatchers and police forces a phone call away will ever feel that our wits and weapons are the only thing protecting our lives, property, or family? We romanticize the Old West, but at the same time we are prone to analyze and judge the raw and often violent events of that time with opinions and beliefs far different from those we hope to understand. Can a generation that settles its differences and squabbles with lawyers and files civil lawsuits at the drop a hat ever understand men who dueled with smoking guns over sometimes so small a thing as honor, a blood feud, or proving their courage against their enemies?

A close family friend from down in the mountains of McCurtain County used to tell us a story from his boyhood. Oklahoma became a state in 1907, but remained wild. Things there have always been twenty years behind the times, and horseback robberies were still happening up into the 1920s. This family friend told us how a band of rustlers had come through and stolen several horses. He rode with a party of grown men who trailed the outlaws and found their camp in the dark by the glow of its fire. The kind man I knew in my childhood, then only a child himself, was ordered to hold the saddle horses while the grown men with him snuck up and surrounded the sleeping bandits. Without a word of warning they shot every one of the thieves in their bedrolls. Come daylight, they buried the bodies and rode home with the recovered stock and not a single look back over their shoulders. Until Mr. Buddy told folks his tale in his senior years, not a word of that nights vigilante events had ever slipped out. Justice needed no explaining.

How are we to understand such old-timers and the life they led or the choices men and women made while scraping out a living in a land that often demanded you fend for yourself? My dear old Papaw, true to his raising, used to tell us that God wouldnt hold it against a man shooting a criminal in defense of his home or family any more than he would if that man killed a mad dog. There are many now, kinder, gentler sorts who would debate that the value of property or ones life does not go so far as the authority to defend them with deadly force. But they didnt live in 1888, and perhaps would change their minds if they had.

In the end, any attempt at history is often nothing more than digging up old graves, figuratively as well as literally, and those who wish may try to identify the bodies. As for myself, all I can say is that I know Franklin Cogburn a little better than before I wrote this book. I make no claims to totally understand him or to know everything about his life. I have made every effort to be truthful, but any errors or omissions in his biography are mine alone. I can only say that Im proud to bear his last name. And be you a Cogburn or not, Id like to think that theres a little bit of Rooster in us all.

Id like to keep writing, but Ive got chores to do. The horses need fed, my guns could use a cleaning, and my still needs tending. Times are tough, money hard to come by, and good whiskey is dripping into an almost full jug.

Notes and References

CHAPTER 1

The court records and family lore are unclear as to who this constable may have been. There is no evidence of Black Springs having a city marshal in 1888. There was a justice of the peace and a few other county-appointed officials. Perhaps Sheriff Golden employed one of them, or simply a local, to aid him.

Jefferson County Board of Agriculture, Manufactures, and Immigration, Jefferson County, Arkansas, Full Description (C. S. Burch Publishing, 1888), p. 23.

The exception for pistols of a size used by the army and navy is curious. It would seem that a Colt or Remington revolver, or any of the other large-frame pistols available at the time, were legal to conceal. Perhaps full-sized revolvers were thought to be large enough to be difficult to hide under clothing and easier for a lawman to spot. On the other hand, the public and lawmakers had certain perceptions and biases even in the 1800s. Standard-sized pistols might have been acceptable defense weapons for gentlemen during the nineteenth century, whereas holdout weapons such as sleeve guns and derringers were seen as the trademark of gamblers, prostitutes, highwaymen, and other members of the criminal element. Along this line of thought, pocketknives were okay to be concealed but other edged weapons were not.

Montgomery County: Our Heritage , Montgomery County Historical Society (1986). An old-timer once told me that he could remember prisoners cuffed to the tree alongside tied-up teams and saddle horses.

Circuit court docket, Montgomery County, Arkansas, January 1February 1, 1888.

CHAPTER 2

George Washingtons letters, Washington Papers Online, Library of Congress.

Patrick Cogburn, John Franklins grandfather, continued to use the Cockburn spelling until well after he emigrated from Tennessee. Sometime between the 1860 and 1870 U.S. censuses he changed to the modern spelling. Some of the Cockburns changed their last name to Cogg-burn and then to Cogburn, thus confusing genealogists. Both of these later spellings have survived to the present.

1860 U.S. census, Montgomery County, Arkansas; 1850 census, Marion County, Tennessee; survey and work document, Greene County, Tennessee, May 6, 1844; land records of the three counties from 18351859. An approximate date of departure can be derived from the sale of Wash Porters real estate in Sequatchie County, and the party of pioneers obviously arrived in Arkansas in time to be listed on the census there.

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