Customer Reviews

Alias Frank Canton

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Frank Canton, whose real name was Joe Horner, was a fascinating Old West character. In fact, he's one of those characters that seem to fit perfectly those stereotypical views of what Old West characters are supposed to be: daring, full of bravura, mysterious, dangerous, dismissive of the law. Canton was all these things.

He started life in Virginia in 1849 as Joseph Horner. He went to Texas after the Civil War and became a cowboy. When not punching cattle he began stealing Indian ponies and then shot a soldier in a barroom brawl in Jacksboro, Texas. He was eventually arrested and sent to prison in Huntsville. In August 1879, while on a work detail outside the prison walls, Hunter escaped and headed north. He changed his name to Frank Canton.

More cowboy work brought him to Johnson County, Wyoming, where he became sheriff. When the Johnson County War broke out between large cattle ranchers and small farmers, Canton accepted a position with the Wyoming Stock Growers Association and sided with the big ranchers. He was there when the violence took place in 1892, a hired gun.

None of the violence in Johnson County ever resulted in a trial, so Canton left the state for Oklahoma. Here he had a change in conscience and began working on the side of the law bringing in criminals. In 1897, he went to Alaska where he became a deputy U.S. marshal; he also met the author Rex Beach there and had many prospecting adventures with him.

When he was relieved of his duties after an investigation of his past dredged up some of the unsavory details of his life, he returned to Oklahoma, where he became the state's first adjutant general in 1907. He retired in 1916, a success, and died in 1927.

Canton's reported life was filled with mystery and half-truths. He wrote an autobiography that was published posthumously in 1930 that distorts or eliminates facts regarding events in his life. DeArment does an excellent job of correcting these mistakes and filling in the gaps. His research is extensive (I loved the marginal notes he cites that he found in a copy of Canton's aoutobiography in the Buffalo, Wyoming, public library, where the anonymous reader points out one lie after another, ending with "Too bad he didn't hang."). And the writing is excellent. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the Old West or in unusual and controversial characters.

Frank Canton was sheriff of Buffalo, Wyoming in the 1880s and during the Johnson County War. Later he was a Deputy US Marshal in Oklahoma Territory, rising to high rank in Oklahoma law enforcement. He wrote an autobiography titled "Frontier Trails" that is a classic of western adventure about his life as a western lawman. Only, Frank Canton completely left out a significant part of his life history--his real name was Joe Horner and he was a convicted bank robber and murderer from Texas who had escaped from prison.

Alias Frank Canton fills in the blanks Canton left in his story, and does it very well. The reading was interesting and appeared to have been very well researched.