Knoxify

This is the sec­ond piece of a two-part series. Get caught up and read the first entry here.

The thrill of vic­tory pulsed through the veins of the KPD offi­cers on the train ride back to Knoxville from Jef­fer­son City. With pho­tographs, received days before by mail, and match­ing ser­ial num­bers from the bank notes in the suspect’s pock­ets with those miss­ing from the Great North­ern Rob­bery, they knew they had their man.

Within forty-eight hours of the shoot­ing at Ike Jones’ bar, they had cap­tured a man who had eluded fed­eral mar­shals and Pinker­ton detec­tives for years, and with­out fir­ing a sin­gle shot. Believ­ing that they were to be the ones to put the fin­ish­ing touches on the story of an old west out­law, what they were about to dis­cover was that the town of Knoxville was but a chap­ter, and by no means the last, in the leg­end of Har­vey Logan, a.k.a. Kid Curry.

To say Har­vey Logan had reached celebrity sta­tus in Knoxville would be a gross mis­un­der­stand­ing. A celebrity is some­one who gives hand­shakes and auto­graphs to fans, many of whom will gather for pub­lic encoun­ters. Pres­i­dent Theodore Roo­sevelt was a celebrity when he vis­ited Knoxville dur­ing Logan’s stay. And while local law enforce­ment con­cerned itself with his safety, pub­lic safety was never an issue as it was upon Logan’s arrival. Thou­sands did not push and shove to catch only a glimpse, or tram­ple one another for a chance to touch him, as they did for the famous out­law. The Knox County Jail had been solely designed to hold peo­ple inside, not to keep peo­ple out. Yet faced with a vir­tual siege, not from armed invaders, or a gang of the Kid’s cronies, but from a mob of wor­ship­ful Knoxvil­lians, Sher­iff J.W. Fox allowed open vis­i­ta­tion of the Kid that con­tin­ued on and off up to the trial. On Decem­ber 20, 1901, alone, the Sheriff’s office counted more than one thou­sand vis­i­tors. No, Kid Curry was not a celebrity. He was a phe­nom­e­non, an obses­sion that held dur­ing and beyond the two and a half year chap­ter of his life that was Knoxville, TN.

For­tu­nately for the Kid, that chap­ter ended on Sat­ur­day, June 27, 1903. Just seven months before, on Novem­ber 30, 1902, the Sixth U.S. Cir­cuit Court had sen­tenced Logan to 20 years of hard labor. His appeal process at its end, he now awaited trans­fer from Knoxville to a Fed­eral pen­i­ten­tiary in Colum­bus, OH.

At around 4:15 PM Knox County Jail guard Frank Irwin was stand­ing at Logan’s cell hav­ing his usual small-talk chat with the pris­oner. Across from the cell was a win­dow look­ing out onto the Ten­nessee River. The two were talk­ing about the river level, newly risen since a recent storm. Logan pointed to the water along the bank, and when Irwin turned to look, the Kid las­soed him around the neck with a wire taken from a broom they let him use to sweep his stall. He then made Irwin turn around, and he tied the guard’s hands to the bars with strips of cloth taken from his cell ham­mock. Using yet another lasso made from the ham­mock he secured a shoe­box from across the hall where the guards kept their pis­tols. Let­ting him­self out of his cell with Irwin’s keys, he forced at gun­point jailer Tom Bell to open the cell block door. He then took Bell out into the court­yard where he ordered him to sad­dle Sher­iff Fox’s horse. Logan then rode through the gate and onto Prince Street, turned right onto Hill Street, and then another right onto Gay. He was last seen gal­lop­ing across the Ten­nessee River on what would later be known as the Gay Street Bridge. Yee haw!

How Kid Curry met his ulti­mate demise is still open to spec­u­la­tion. Some say he com­mit­ted sui­cide in 1904 in Col­orado to avoid cap­ture after a rail­way rob­bery. Oth­ers say he escaped to South Amer­ica, where he reunited with ex-Wild Bunch con­fed­er­ates Butch Cas­sidy and the Sun­dance Kid and con­tin­ued rob­bing banks and trains. And still oth­ers say he wound up on a ranch south of Buenos Aires where he mar­ried and had eight chil­dren before dying at the ripe old age of 76.

Who can say for sure? With indi­vid­u­als such as Har­vey Logan, and in the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion they cap­ti­vate, any­thing is pos­si­ble. What we do know is that Kid Curry played a small, yet unfor­get­table, part in Knoxville’s colo­ful history.

Extra Source: Lynch, Sylvia. Har­vey Logan in Knoxville. Cre­ative Pub­lish­ing. Col­lege Sta­tion, TX. 1998. Photo by: bobster855

The Knox­ford Files shed light on Knoxville his­tory that is filled with all kinds of awe­some­ness. Want more of Knoxford’s Chuck Allen? Fol­low him or friend him.