In the spring of 1866, almost a century before the black-and-white movie "Psycho" would give theater go'ers chills, Baker was sitting in his East Texas cabin chatting with an effigy of his dead wife.This effigy, as someone who saw it later wrote, was "so natural as to startle the beholder." Baker dressed it in his late wife's clothes, adorned it with some of her jewelry, and spent hours talking to it.Two months later, however, he had sufficiently overcome his grief at the loss (to natural causes) of his wife to propose marriage to his l6-year-old sister-in-law. She said no.Baker clearly was a real-life psychopath - well, at least a sociopath - but no Norman at the Bates Motel. He didn't stab ladies in showers. He killed soldiers, federal Freedmen's Bureau officials and blacks, usually blasting them from ambush with a double-barreled shotgun. Even the most conservative estimate credits him with at least 15 murders, though some authors have put Baker's body count as high as 76.In 1869, shortly after he was finally gunned down in Arkansas, an East Texas newspaper writer opined that the "future novelist, in search of facts as a foundation for a thrilling romance, will find no more fruitful theme than that of the life, exploits, and death of Cullen M. Baker."Indeed, much has been written about Texas' first famous outlaw, including one of the late Louis L'Amour's early Westerns, "The First Fast Draw" (1959). Unfortunately, not much of it has been accurate, including L'Amour's assertion (made earlier by other writers) that Baker invented the fast draw of Western movie fame.Finally, the first scholarly treatment of the Cullen Baker story has been published. The book is "Cullen Montgomery Baker: Reconstruction Desperado."

Written by Barry A. Crouch and Donaly E. Brice, an archivist with the State Library, the 190-page book was published by Louisiana State University Press and sells for $34.95.Baker was born in Tennessee, but his family came to Texas during the days of the republic. Not much is known about his early life, but something sure made him mean. Though some of the writers who have helped shape his legend portrayed Baker as an ex-Confederate soldier who kept fighting for the lost cause, in truth he was a mental case - a man with a bad drinking problem who seemed to enjoy killing for the sake of it.We know the general state of disorder that followed the Civil War as Reconstruction. But one New York newspaper called it "The New Rebellion," which seems more accurate considering the things that happened in Baker's territory of northeast Texas, southwest Arkansas and northwestern Louisiana.Baker may have evolved into a folk character, but he is no folk hero, at least not to anyone who is not a racist wtth genocidal notions. The authors have done a fine job in separating truth from myth, considering the scarcity of primary sources.While there are things about Baker and his short but sanguinary life that may never be known, most folks at least agree that he died when his tombstone says he did. That's more than can be said for another famous outlaw, Billy the Kid.Cullen Montgomery Baker.

Cullen Baker was a Civil War era outlaw whose terrorizing, murdering, and other escapades were well known in the northeast Texas, southwest Arkansas, and northwest Louisiana area (known as Baker's Country), during the mid to late 1860's.

Considered by some to be a Robin Hood of sorts, he managed to evade capture, sometimes retreating into the Sulphur River bottoms, when trouble came his way. His journeys also led him to Perry County, AR, home of his uncle Thomas Young, on several occasions. Cullen had only one child, Louise (Loula) Jane Baker, born May 24, 1857. She was raised by her grandfather, Hubbard Petty, after the death of her mother, Jane, in July 1860.

After the end of the Civil War, Cullen became more aggressive in his terroristic activities, losing the tolerance of his former friends and neighbors. The reward offered for Cullen added incentive for them to bring an end to his days as an outlaw.

On January 6, 1869, Cullen Baker was killed by a group of men from the community, at the farm of William (Billy) Foster, Cullen's former father-in-law.   Cullen's body was taken to Jefferson, Texas, where he was buried in the Oakwood Cemetery. His grave was unmarked for almost a century. In 1966, a tombstone was erected in a ceremony attended by relatives and interested parties.

Cullen's stories have been told for generations in the Cass County, Texas area. You might say he has become a local legend. Bloomburg, Texas hosts an annual Cullen Baker Fair, held the first Saturday in November, downtown Bloomburg.

Several books have been written telling the stories of Cullen Baker's life. Look for the titles listed below for further reading on Cullen Montgomery Baker. There is also an unpublished manuscript by T.U. Taylor, in the archives of the Texarkana, Texas Public Library.

The Borderlands and Cullen Baker, by Yvonne Vestal
Cullen Montgomery Baker ~ Champion of the Lost Cause, by Robert Teel
Cullen Montgomery Baker, Reconstruction Desperado
Cullen Montgomery Baker ~ Reconstruction Desperado, by Barry A. Crouch &
Donaly E. Brice
First Fast Draw
The First Fast Draw, by Louis L'Amour (fictionalized)

"CULLEN BAKER STORIES

"Cullen Baker was born in 1835 in Tennessee. When he was seven years old his father moved the family to a farm on a tributary of the Sulphur River in north Cass County, Texas, where he was raised. The Baker family was typically pioneer - honest and industrious - but some quirk or peculiarity of character soured Cullen's temper early.His exploits ranged from Robin Hood like altruism one day to senseless violence and psychopathic killing the next. On one occasion he single handedly captured a United States quartermaster wagon hauling supplies to the garrison at Boston. (Bowie Co, TX). Afterwards as his mule pulled the wagon down the road, he handed out the load of bacon, flour, and coffee to people who had been subsisting on beans and cornbread. On the other hand, he would summarily beat, stab, shoot, or hang any man he considered to be an enemy or who happened to be in the vicinity when he lost his temper, a frequent occurrence.Baker had joined the Confederate Brigade raised by Colonel Phillip Crump in Red River County, Texas, in 1862. He fought in two battles in Arkansas, one at Spring Hill and the other at Elkhorn. He then was put on detail to drive back to Texas the horses whose riders had joined the Missouri foot soldiers. Back home he learned that his family had been robbed by runaway slaves. He never returned to the army. When the Confederates sent parties of scouts to hunt him and other deserters, Baker fled to the Sulphur River bottoms. He became known as the Swamp Fox of the Sulphur and soon commanding a gang of deserters and outlaws sympathetic to the Confederate cause.Baker and his men took every available opportunity to harass the Union soldiers stationed at Boston during reconstruction. Baker killed many of them in several fights; he also killed the chief of the Freedmen's Bureau at Boston, a man named William Kirkman.After the shooting of Kirkman, the United States government raised the reward for Baker to $3,000, but he was never taken by federals. It was left to his father-in-law and others who had once been friends and neighbors to rid the area of Cullen Baker.Years of heavy drinking and unbridled violence had intensified his paranoia to the degree that he no longer knew friend from foe, and he murdered indiscriminately. On January 6, 1869, Baker and his side kick drank some drugged liquor provided by Baker's father-in-law, fell asleep, and were pumped full of bullets. The region's most famous outlaw was dead at age 34.Source: Texarkana, a Pictorial History, page 26.

In 1870, the life of Cullen Baker, most desperate killer northeast of Caddo Lake, was written by Thomas Orr, his brother-in-law. It has been out of print for many years, and the only known original copy now in existence is in Washington, D. C. Tales of his daring deeds may be learned in conversation with men who heard them from their parents. To some of these people Baker was a wonderful man, "my father's friend": to others e was a ruthless killer and despoiler of homes and property; to all he was a man to be feared. Baker's exploits are as notable in this area as those of Jesse James in is locale.Cullen Baker was born in Weekly County, Tennessee, June 22, 1835. His father was John Baker, and his mother was a descendent of the best families in the state. When Cullen was a young boy, his parents settled on the south bank of the Sulphur Fork of Red River, a few miles west of the Arkansas line. This was in Cass County, later known as David County, and then renamed Cass.In his boyhood, Cullen was indulged by his parents, who allowed him to hunt and fish to his heart's content. He joined the Confederate Army as a private soldier, and, according to Thomas Orr, returned home as the mood struck him, and finally left the Army. Orr's account of Baker's life is, in all probability, tinged with prejudice, since Baker, at one time, hanged him from the limb of a tree with a rope. Settlers told that Orr "played possum", pretending to be dead, and was mistakenly cut down too soon" by Baker's men. Such a historian could hardly approach Baker's life from an objective viewpoint! Orr states that Baker hid out from enrolling officers until the spring of1864, when he joined the Federal force at Little Rock, Arkansas, and took the oath of allegiance. This may be true, but seems unlikely, since a few months later he became the leader of the "Independent Rangers", and rode about the country like a hunted animal with Federals in hot pursuit.Cullen Baker hated Yankees and is credited with killing as many as forty or fifty Yankee soldiers during Reconstruction. In the spring of 1876, Captain Davidson of the United States Army came to Old Boston, county seat of Bowie County, and established a Freedmen's Bureau. Baker was reported to him as an offender, and four men were sent to his home. Two maiden sisters kept house for Baker, who was then away from home, and they reported to their brother the conduct of the soldiers. They opened their trunks and drawers, carried off watches and jewelry belonging to Baker's dead wife, and offered indignities and insults to the two sisters. Baker immediate went in hot pursuit of the carpetbaggers and the sergeant who had plundered his home. Baker always rode a pacing mule and went well armed at all times. It is said that at his death he carried his big double-barreled shotgun, four six shooters, three derringers, and twenty-seven keys of various kinds. This time he hitched his mule to a post, entered a saloon on the square, and wrote a note to the commanding officer demanding the unconditional and immediate surrender of the entire garrison. He gave a boy a dime to deliver the note, bought some cheese and crackers, and calmly ate his lunch. Sixteen soldiers were sent to reply to the note, and Baker engaged them in a sixteen to one battle, firing with a re - ((Missing some of the story here))((missing some of the story here)) barreled shotgun. Friends of Baker said the Negroes allied with Yankees to capture him, but he alluded them all until he was betrayed into the hands of his enemies, Orr and Davis. Matt Kirby, an Irishman, was devoted to Baker as a faithful dog to his master and died by his side. It is said that no man would ever have succeeded in killing him face to face. Some believe that his mother-in-law betrayed him to Orr and Davis, and they killed Baker and Kirby while they slept in her home. Another story is that he was given poison whiskey, which caused him to fall into a deep sleep under a tree, where he was killed. Orr and Davis, together with three helpers killed Baker and Kirby as they slept and took their bodies to Jefferson at night by wagon. The bodies were covered with brush, for they were in great fear of Baker's friends. And they were delivered to General Buell, and the reward was claimed.Thus Cullen Baker, Badlands desperado, or Badlands patriot died with his boots on, by ruse and for cash reward, at the hands of kinsman.Source: Caddo Scrapbook, Memoirs of Mrs. J. K. Bivins, Quarterly Vol. XVIII, 1991.

Cullen Montgomery Baker, Reconstruction Desperado written by Barry A Couch and Donald Lee Brice. In this engrossing biography the authors sift through folklore, legend, and fact to provide accurate account of this southern desperado, whose exploits, if more widely publicized, "would (make) Jesse James and all the other gunmen of the Pioneer pale into insignificance," according to one promoter of the Baker legend. A disillusioned former Confederate soldier, Baker gained fleeting national notoriety promoting a defeated dream in the occupied south. Sharing many white southerners' resentment toward the North, he took to murdering individuals who cooperated with reconstruction efforts. His actions encouraged the rise of outlaw bands and indirectly assisted in the formation of the Ku Klux Klan. Influenced and led by men like Baker, the outlaw gangs brutalized Union Agents and freedmen. Locals (among them: William Foster, his ex father-in-law) concealed and otherwise aided gangs, making it difficult for police forces, politicians, and news agencies to gather reliable information on the "New Rebellion" as it was termed by the New Or Tribune in 1869. Numerous problems, from the powerlessness of the Civil authorities to the insufficient number of the military, continued to weaken the Reconstruction government. Baker and his ilk had in effect, incited a Second civil war. This book is essential to understanding how deeply class and race divided the South during the Reconstruction era. Baker was more of a "public monster," a wartime coward and deserter with a big psychological problem , who went around shooting innocent people after the south lost the war. Cullen was so adept in the wilderness he was known as "The swamp Fox of the Sulfur" Three years before the end of his criminal reign he allegedly said "Men have called me bad, but I will show them I have not done anything compared to what I will do," On another occasion he said, "If I could sink this whole country into hell by stomping upon the ground, I would stomp with all my power, and send it and every living creature, with myself, into the infernal regions," As a youngster he chose to wear clothing that was less than common. With breeches held up by one suspender or a piece of leather for a belt, he became the hillbilly of the bottoms. He wore a coat or shoes only in the bitterest of cold weather. No buttons were noted but wooden pegs served the purpose. A coarse, floppy woolen hat settled deeply down over his head. The odd characteristic of dress was apparently not because of poverty so much as personal fancy.

The horrible aspect of Cullen Baker's criminal activity was that he allegedly would kill a man just because he didn't like his looks or because he disagreed with him. He had a habit of shooting dogs and freed slaves for target practice.  Once he rode up to the Red River Ferry at Index and yelled for the ferryman, to come back across and give him transport. The ferryman who hired two freedmen, yelled back. "Cullen I am afraid you will kill my Negroes." After Cullen assured him that no harm would come to them the ferryman came back across and delivered Cullen to the other side.

In a well documented tirade Baker went to Bright Star on Christmas Day 1867 and convinced a large number of people to go with him to the farm of Howell Smith and killed some people and wounded some others. He had heard a rumor they were collaborating with the Federal Reconstructionist "scoundrels" The tragedy there led to his undoing. It convinced the community that Baker now had to be stopped. Before that incident he had been tolerated and even supported, but three hundred of his neighbors got up in arms to stop him.  The swamp fox could not be found.

He committed other crimes before he was stopped. On December 7, 1868, Cullen Baker and a group of die hard accomplices crossed into Arkansas and proceed to the house of William Foster, Cullen' ex father-in-law, where he captured Thomas Orr, a school teacher and two others, outlaw hated Orr and had vowed to kill him. They took Thomas Orr, William Foster and Mr. Davis to a tree where the sentence of death was to be administered. Orr was hung first, and as the life was draining from him, the others debated about who was next.  The lot fell to Davis. The rope was cut and Orr fell to the ground, Baker for some unknown reason left the scene. The others then postponed hanging the rest of the men. Orr miraculously survived and they managed to get back to Fosters house.

The end of Baker came four weeks after the botched hanging. Cullen and Matt Kirby came back to kill Orr. His ravenous appetite for vengeance was exceeded by his appetite for whisky which was plentifully supplied by William Foster, who had allegedly poisoned the whisky. Orr and a company of men came and Baker was unconscious . Records indicate that Joe Davis, Frank Davis, Leonard Spivy, Billy Smith, and Thomas Orr all participated in firing shots into Baker and Kirby. Baker's reign of terror had ended.

From the Handbook of Texas ONLINE:

BAKER, CULLEN MONTGOMERY (1835?-1869).

Cullen Montgomery Baker, infamous desperado and guerilla, the son of John and Elizabeth Baker, was born in Weakley County, Tennessee, probably on June 22, 1835. The family moved to Texas in 1839 and eventually settled in Cass County, where John received a land grant of 640 acres from the Texas Congress. Cullen soon became a hard drinker, quarrelsome and mean-spirited. He temporarily ceased his dissipated ways and married Mary Jane Petty on January 11, 1854, but nine months later
he killed his first man. In the years before the outbreak of the Civil War he spent considerable time at the farm of his mother's brother, Thomas Young, in Perry County, Arkansas. After Mary Jane died on July 2, 1860, and Baker had murdered another man, he returned to Texas. By now the war had begun.Baker joined Company G, Morgan's Regimental Cavalry, on November 4, 1861, at Jefferson. His name is on the muster roll for September-October 1862, and he received pay through August 31, but he is designated a deserter on January 10, 1863. On February 22, 1862, he joined Company I of the Fifteenth Texas Cavalry at Linden. He is listed on the muster roll from February 1862 to February 1863; after "August 1862" beside his name is written, "left sick on the Arkansas River." After his service he was paid $252.80 and discharged due to disability. He married Martha Foster on July 1, 1862. His activities until the war's end are surrounded by numerous legends. Some believe he led a band of Arkansas guerrillas that preyed upon everybody, regardless of wartime sympathies, although there is no evidence for this. When peace returned, Baker and his wife briefly settled in Cass County, where Baker attempted to earn a living in the ferry business. Martha died on March 1, 1866, and, by most accounts, her death deeply depressed Baker; nevertheless, he proposed to her sister, Belle Foster, two months later.But Belle married Thomas Orr, a schoolteacher and later a prominent community activist and politician, and he and Baker became bitter enemies. Somewhat later, the Union Army and the Freedmen's Bureau came to the area, and Baker
focused his attention upon harassing and killing employees of the bureau and their clients. In December 1867 Baker also wrought havoc upon Howell Smith's family because of their alleged "unorthodox" relations with the black laborers they employed. He was wounded, but the local citizenry and the army failed to capture him. Baker returned to the Reconstruction scene again in mid-1868 as the leader of various outcasts and killers. He and his group are credited with murdering two Freedmen's Bureau agents, one in Texas and another in Arkansas, and numerous black men and women, all the time eluding the army.When his gang disbanded in December 1868, Baker returned to his home in Cass County. There a small group of neighbors led by Orr, whom Baker had earlier attempted to hang, killed him and a companion on January 6, 1869. Legend has it that the whiskey Baker drank was laced with strychnine. Orr collected some of the reward offered for Baker. Baker may have had links with the Ku Klux Klan. Although he began his killing long before that organization appeared, he abetted the Klan's rise to prominence. As an obstacle to federal
Reconstruction, he became notorious in the Southwest and even drew the notice of the New York Tribune. He received the nickname "Swamp Fox of the Sulphur" because of the area where he grew to manhood. Although he was not the legendary quick-draw artist some have maintained, writers have made much of Baker's prowess with a six-gun, his harassment of the United States Army, and his defense of "Southern honor" during and after the Civil War. Others see him as a mean, spiteful, alcoholic murderer.  Louis L'Amour memorialized Baker in his novel The First Fast Draw.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Ed Ellsworth Bartholomew, Cullen Baker, Premier Texas Gunfighter (Houston: Frontier Press of Texas, 1954).
Al Eason, "Cullen Baker:  Purveyor of Death," Frontier Times, August-September 1966.
Boyd W. Johnson,  "Cullen Montgomery Baker: The Arkansas Desperado," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 25 (1966).
James Allen Marten, Drawing the Line: Dissent and Loyalty in Texas, 1856 to 1874 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1986).
Thomas Orr, ed., Life and Times of the Notorious Desperado, Cullen Baker (Little Rock: Price and Barton, 1870).
William L. Richter, The Army in Texas during Reconstruction, 1865-1870 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1987).
William L. Richter, Overreached on All Sides (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1991).
T. U. Taylor, Swamp Fox of the Sulphur, or the Life and Times of Cullen Montgomery Baker (MS, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin).
Yvonne Vestal, The Borderlands and Cullen Baker (Atlanta, Texas: Journal Publishers, 1978).

For a map and further information on BAKER