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Seaborn Barnes
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Seaborn Barnes was born in Cass County, Texas, and it is widely believed in my family that Seaborn lived with my great-grandfather John Sylvester Barnes' family as a youth.
According to Barnes cousin Cecilie Gaziano, Seaborn was the son of John and Martha Barnes. This is according to circumstantial evidence from books about the Sam Bass Gang. "Seab" was supposed to have been born about 1849-1853 in Cass County, Texas, and his mother to have moved to Handley, Tarrant County, Texas with her five children after she was widowed. The odd thing about Seaborn's family is the fact that his father actually ran for the office of Sheriff in Cass County prior to his death!
Bill O'Neal's Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters reports that Seaborn fell into trouble as early as the age of 17, when he was jailed for shooting someone in the streets of Fort Worth. This would have been about 1870 or 1871.
My family's stories report that upon his release, Seaborn was sent to live with my great-grandfather's family in Missouri, where he supposedly became a member of what was reportedly a remnant group of Quantrill's Raiders, who tore up Kansas and Missouri during the Civil War.
Seaborn apparently got into some big trouble, because the tale then goes that he was smuggled out of Missouri in 1873 in a false-bottomed wagon by the same Barnes relatives. He was taken to live with the family in Comyn, Comanche County, Texas, where it was hoped young Seaborn would start a new life and behave himself.
However, it was not to last. According to a source, Seaborn was reportedly in jail again in 1874 in Calahan County, Texas for fighting. He would later escape and have his leg irons removed by a local blacksmith.
Sometime around spring 1878, it is told that Sam Bass came around to Denton, where Seaborn was reforming by becoming an apprentice to a potter named A. H. Serren. Bass offered Seaborn a plan for some "easy jack" and easy living - a plan that Seaborn went for. The two became fast friends, and Seaborn quickly became Sam's second in command, or his "Right Bower".
And did they ever have a good time! They rode around the state robbing banks and trains, and holding up the occasional stagecoach. Because they knew they had a traitor in their midst, it was a great trick of their's to put out the word to the gang that they were going to hold up a certain bank in a certain town on a certain day. True to traitorous form, the law would be there waiting with their big guns blazin', only to find that Sam and Seaborn had led the boys to rob a totally different bank in a totally different town at the exact same time.
The rest of the story is evident from his tombstone. My outlaw relative was sold out by the gang's traitor, a yellow-bellied dog of a man named Jim Murphy, and was shot in the head by a Texas Ranger in Round Rock on July 19, 1878. He was shot while in the process of trying to get the horses together so he, Sam, and Frank Jackson could make a get away. Only Frank would survive.
Judging by the tombstone erected by either the City of Round Rock or the State of Texas, none of our family chose to erect a monument to our own true "Black Sheep" of the family. Maybe one day I will.
