Scarce partly-printed DS, signed twice as “J. E. Reed,” one page, 8.25 x 13.75, January 19, 1895. Document granting Reed $9 in expenses for serving on a posse. In part: “I, J. Ed. Reed of Wagoner, I.T.…proceeded in company with said Marshal [C. J. Lamb] to…Ind. Ter. where we arrested George & James Pierce returning from thence via Wagoner to Ft. Smith.” Signed twice below by James Eddie Reed, and countersigned by George J. Crump as U.S. Marshal, Stephen Wheeler as U.S. District Court Clerk, C. J. Lamb as Deputy Marshal, and Ellyn Small as U.S. District Attorney. In fine condition, with partial separations to folds.
James ‘Eddie’ Reed (1871-96) was the son of outlaw Belle Starr ‘the Bandit Queen’ (1848-89) and outlaw James Reed (1845-74), a Quantrill raider who fought alongside the James and Younger brothers during the Civil War. His father was shot dead in Texas in 1874. His mother was ambushed and murdered in 1889. From 1889-93 he was in prison for stealing a horse. Noted as a fearless gunfighter, in late 1894 he was hired as a guard by a railroad company. He supplemented his income by bootlegging in the Indian Territory and by serving on posses. In 1895 (the same year as this document) he became a U.S. Deputy Marshal at Fort Smith for ‘Hanging Judge’ Isaac C. Parker. As Deputy Marshal, he gunned down two former U.S. Deputy Marshals who fired on him first. He also arrested the last man sentenced to hang by Judge Parker. On Dec. 14, 1896, he was ambushed and gunned down walking into a saloon in Claremore by the two men he was there to arrest. His life was depicted in the 1953 film Son of Belle Starr.
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