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The Lawmen and Outlaws Who Built the Old West

Khalid Elhassan August 29, 2021 35 min

11. Sharing a Jail Cell With the Deadliest Outlaw of the Old West

In the 1870s a young Johnny Ringo moved to Mason County, Texas, where trouble erupted between newly arrived German settlers and natural-born English-speaking Americans. It began in 1875 when a predominately German mob dragged a pair of American cattle rustlers from a local jail, and lynched them. That triggered a cycle of violence in which Ringo joined the American side in a campaign of terror against the newcomers. Lowlights in the ensuing Mason County War included the murder and scalping of a German sheriff’s deputy before his body was thrown down a well.

Ringo was front and center in the violence and participated in multiple murders. The Texas Rangers were eventually called in to reassert law and order. By late 1876, after about a dozen men had been killed, the violence petered out and came to an end. Ringo was arrested, but broke out of jail and went on the lam. He was arrested once again, and for a while shared a cell with notorious Old West killer John Wesley Hardin. The historic record is spotty about what happened next, but while Ringo’s accomplices were convicted, he appears to have been acquitted.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.