Colfax history: Who murdered William Kidd?
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By LeAnn R. Ralph
COLFAX — Who was William Kidd?
What happened to him?
Where is he buried?
When Colfax Messenger reader Gary Swartz came across a story in the “Irish Genealogical Quarterly Newsletter” about a man who had grown up in Colfax, went out West, and was killed by two men robbing the train on which the man from Colfax was the conductor, Swartz thought it would make an interesting history story for the newspaper.
Swartz is a local history enthusiast and has spent many years working to help make the new Chippewa County History Center a reality. He also is a member of the Colfax Municipal Building Restoration Group and is a member of the Colfax Elevator Commission.
William Kidd — not Billy the Kid, who was really William H. Bonney — grew up in Colfax and was killed in Idaho in June of 1911 when he served as a conductor on a train and had tried to help a sheriff’s deputy while the deputy was arresting two men who had robbed a saloon.
Dave Miller, a genealogist who is known as “The Ancestor Guy,” wrote about William Kidd in an article posted on his website in January of 2021 titled, “When the Wild West Shows up in Your Family Tree!”
Miller writes, “When I was young, I was fascinated to hear the stories about the western U.S. during the 19th and early 20th centuries or the Wild Wild West, as it was once called. I also enjoyed hearing family stories from the older generation. These stories recalled the lives of the previous generations who were no longer around. Little did I know that later in life when I began my genealogy search, I would discover an ancestor who was involved in another type of Wild West tragedy. This particular story involved my great-great-uncle, William R. Kidd. And to clarify things right from the beginning, I’m not referring to Billy the Kid.
“My great aunt Ada Anthes had told me about this William Kidd who was shot and killed by robbers when he was a railroad conductor in Idaho. She was 16 in 1911 when this tragedy occurred. My aunt remembered traveling, along with her family, to Idaho for the funeral of her uncle, William R. Kidd.”
Martha and James
William Kidd’s mother, Martha Jane Mathews Kidd, was born on February 8, 1835, and died January 21, 1904 — seven years before her son was killed in Idaho.
His father, James Kidd, was born November 1, 1839, and died November 11, 1922.
Both Martha and William are buried at Hill Grove Cemetery west of Colfax on county Highway BB.
According to information included on Find-A-Grave for William’s mother, Martha was born in 1835 near Dromara in County Down in Ireland.
When Martha was about 13 years old, she and her sister Deborah, along with Deborah’s family, arrived in New York and settled in Oneida County, New York.
Martha married James Kidd on October 28, 1861, in Utica, New York.
Martha and James settled near Auburn, New York, where their first child, Lillian, was born in 1866.
William was born in Utica, New York in 1869, and Lizzie Louise was born in 1871.
Colfax
James and Martha Kidd and their children moved to Dunn County near the village of Colfax.
Martha Jane was born in 1875, and another daughter, Ellen Margaret, was born in 1879.
Ellen Margaret died three days after she was born.
James, Martha and their children stayed in the Colfax area, and Martha died of pneumonia on January 21, 1904.
According to her obituary, also included on Find-A-Grave, William already lived in Idaho at the time of his mother’s death.
Martha’s daughter, Mrs. L.J. Weber, is listed as being of Colfax. Another daughter, Mrs. H.W. Anthes, is listed as being of Clintonville, and a third daughter, Mrs. Morris Houghtaling, is of Tainter.
Lizzie Louise was Mrs. Anthes. It was Dave Miller’s great aunt Ada Anthes who had told him about William.
William is buried at Mountain View Cemetery, Pocatello, Banncock County, Idaho.
William’s sister, Lillian Francis Kidd Weber, died in 1921 and is buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Menomonie.
Lizzie Louse Kidd Anthes died in October of 1945 and is buried at Graceland Cemetery, Clintonville, Waupaca County, Wisconsin.
William’s sister, Martha Jane Kidd Houghtaling, died in June of 1933 and is buried at Mont Meta Memorial Park, San Benito, Cameron County, Texas.
Miller’s great aunt Ada Dorothy Anthes died in 2000 (at the age of 104) and is buried in Graceland Cemetery in Clintonville.
William
William and his wife, Harriet, were married in Utah in 1895. The couple lived in Idaho Falls, Idaho, at the time of the 1900 census, and were the parents of three children, according to Miller’s article.
The first child had died by 1900. The second child, Mildred, was born in Pocatello, Idaho, in 1899, and a third child, James, was born in Idaho Falls in 1903.
The 1900 census also lists William as a railroad conductor, Miller writes.
On the front page of the Idaho Register for June 20, 1911, Miller saw the headlines, “Manhunt on in Hills East of City,” and “Search Continues with Every Prospect of Capture,” and “Last Seen Late Yesterday,” along with “Slayer of Kidd and Wounder of Three Others Still at Large!”
The newspaper stories tell about two men who were involved in a series of events that began with the robbery of a saloon in the Town of Monida along the Montana-Idaho border.
William Kidd was shot on the train when he was attempting to help the deputy sheriff who was trying to arrest the robbers.
The story indicates that the robbers jumped off the train, and one headed west, while the other headed east toward the Teton Range east of Idaho Falls. The first robber shot a rancher and stole his horse and also took some sandwiches.
After William died the next day, armed men, police officials and trained dogs began tracking down the two men, Miller said in his article.
The newspaper article Miller had read noted that the Oregon Short Line was offering a $1,000 reward.
Colfax Messenger
In the June 23, 1911, edition of the Colfax Messenger, the headline “Colfax Boy Shot and Killed,” tells about William’s death:
“William Kidd, son of our towns man, James Kidd, was shot last Saturday by a desperado, whom an officer was attempting to arrest. It seems that two men who were accused of robbing a saloon were on the train on which Mr. Kidd was conductor, in Idaho, and when an officer boarded the train and unarmed the men and had laid the revolvers in a seat while he proceeded to handcuff one of the outlaws, the other seized the revolver and shot the sheriff; whereupon Mr. Kidd seized the fellow, but was also shot in the abdomen and died about 24 hours after. Mr. Kidd’s sister, Mrs. M. Houghtaling, left here Sunday to be present at the funeral. The deceased leaves a wife and three children, besides his aged father, and three sisters, who were deeply grieved at his sudden demise.”
Birthday
Next to the story of William Kidd’s death in the same Colfax Messenger on June 23, 1911, is another article, “James Kidd Honored” —
“Quite a large crowd of M.E. church officials and ladies of the Aid Society met at the Morris Houghtaling home last Friday evening to help celebrate the 72nd birthday of Mrs. H’s father, James Kidd, who makes his home with them.. Mr. Kidd was presented with a fine gold-head cane and a watch chain as tokens of esteem. A fine supper was served and a pleasant evening spent.”
Tragic End
Another article was published in the June 30, 1911, edition of the Colfax Messenger under the title “W.R. Kidd’s Tragic End.”
“Corrected reports from the west relative to the shooting and death of William R. Kidd of Pocatello, Idaho, passenger conductor on the Oregon Short Line R.R., say that two bandits boarded the train at Spencer, Idaho, and that when a deputy sheriff attempted to arrest them, he fell, with three bullets in his body.
“The wounded officer called for conductor Kidd, who hastened to his assistance, and seized one of the robbers from behind, holding him between the other desperado and himself.
“Mr. Kidd called for help, but the passengers rushed in terror to the other end of the car.
“In the struggle, the brave conductor received a bullet in his left breast, which lodged in the vertebra. In a special train he was hurried to the hospital at Pocatello, where he died the next morning, being conscious to the end.
“Mr. Kidd had requested a private funeral without flowers or display; but his friends decreed otherwise.
“He was buried from the Methodist Episcopal Church, of which he had been a devoted and earnest member for nineteen years. His untimely death takes from the Pocatello church the president of the Board of Trustees and one of its truest and best men.
“The funeral procession was headed by a Platoon of police, followed by Boy Scouts, pall bearers’ carriage, flower wagon, railroad officials and employees, ladies’ auxiliary of the B.R.C. and the O.R.C., church officials and church organizations, Masons and the hearse.
“The deceased was born at Colfax, Wisconsin, on January 29, 1869, where he attended the Public School and assisted on the farm, until he grew to manhood, when he migrated to the west. For twenty years, he was a faithful and trusted employee of the Oregon Short Line Co.
“His wife and three children with his esteemed father and three sisters, Mrs. L.H. Weber of Vancouver, B.C., Mrs. H.W. Anthes, Clintonville, Wis., and Mrs. Morris Houghtaling, Colfax, Wis., have the sympathy and prayers of a host of friends.”
Robbers
Dave Miller, the genealogist who was related to William Kidd, wrote another article several years later, “So, Who Murdered Conductor William Kidd?”
“After writing the original story about the murder of Conductor Kidd, I started looking into the incident to see who these men were and whether they were caught and tried,” he wrote.
Miller said that since he did not have the names of the robbers, he read through various newspaper articles from that time and was surprised to find many articles had been published after the incident in 1911.
Many of the articles were printed in the 1920s, 1930s and as late as the 1960s.
The September 15, 1911, edition of The Idaho Republican indicated the man who had killed William Kidd was Hugh Whitney.
“Hugh and his brother, Charley, were notorious in the region in the early 20th century. It was later determined that Charley was not a party to the saloon robbery and train murder, but that a criminal by the name of William Ross was Hugh’s accomplice,” Miller wrote.
The Whitney brothers were suspected of a Cokeville, Wyoming, bank robbery in September of 1911, “one of the many crimes the pair would commit in the years following the shooting of Conductor Kidd.”
The infamy of the brothers increased over the years because the authorities were “never able to bring them to justice.”
On several occasions, police and sheriff’s deputies thought they had finally caught the Whitney brothers, only to find out they were not the Whitneys, according to Miller’s article.
Three years after William Kidd was killed, an article published in the Salt Lake City Evening Telegram stated that Hugh Whitney had been killed in a train robbery.
A gold watch had been found on the man that was inscribed “Hugh Whitney” with the date May 10, 1911.
As it turned out, the dead man was not Hugh Whitney but he, and the others who robbed the train, were Hugh’s accomplices and one of them was a Whitney cousin.
Hugh and Charley
Both Hugh and Charley Whitney “remained under the radar” for the rest of their lives, Miller wrote.
The Idaho State Journal published a series of articles in the 1960s about “Outlaws of the Old West.”
A feature article on the Whitney brothers was published November 8, 1963, that indicated an admission to his crimes from Charley in the 1950s.
“According to Charley, both he and his brother Hugh had decided to go straight after the Cokeville incident. They eventually left Montana and traveled for a time, with stops in Wisconsin and Minnesota. During World War I, they enlisted in the U.S. Army and served in France. After the war, they returned to the West, Hugh to Canada, Charley back to Montana,” Miller said in his article.
“Both had changed their names by this time. Hugh became George Walter Brown, while Charley became Frank S. Taylor … Taylor was known to be a man of integrity, serving on the local school board and involved in community affairs. ‘Frank’ stated this brother Hugh Whitney died in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, on October 25, 1951.
“Two years after his brother’s death, feeling pangs of conscience and freed of a sense of needing to shield Hugh, Charley approached Montana Governor Frank Barrett to confess his part in the Cokeville robbery. Barrett sent ‘Taylor’ to a district judge, who sentenced him to five years of probation at home. Charley Whitney, alias Frank S. Taylor, died in Hot Springs, Montana, on November 13, 1968,” Miller wrote.
Miller said in his article that even though Charley Whitney had provided information about the date and location of his brother’s death, Miller was never able to find any additional information about Hugh Whitney/George Walter Brown.
