YOCUM'S INN:
THE DEVIL'S OWN LODGING HOUSE
By W. T. Block
Reprinted from FRONTIER TIMES, January, 1978, p. 10ff;
also note all sources in footnotes of Block, HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY, TEXAS, etc. p.
78. The best source is Seth Carey's memoirs, "Tale of a Texas Veteran,"
Galveston DAILY NEWS, Sept. 21, 1879, as reprinted in Block, EMERALD OF THE NECHES, pp.
158-163, at Lamar University and Tyrrell Libraries. Many other writings of recent vintage
are pure fiction.
Stories about the old Goodnight and Chisholm Trails have so dominated
the writings of Western Americana that even Texans have forgotten that their first great
cattle drives ended up at New Orleans rather than Abilene or Dodge City, Kansas.
When the Spanish viceroy lifted a trade ban between Texas and Spanish
Louisiana in 1778, a New Orleans-bound cattle drive of 2.000 steers, driven by Francisco
Garcia, left San Antonio in 1779, the first drive of record along the unsung Opelousas
Trail. By the mid-1850s, more than 40,000 Texas Longhorns were being driven annually
across Louisiana, and no one welcomed the cattle drovers more enthusiastically than did
Thomas Denman Yocum, Esq., of Pine Island settlement in Southeast Texas.
The first Anglo rancher along the Opelousas Trail was James Taylor
White, who by 1840 owned a herd of 10,000. In 1818 he settled at Turtle Bayou, near
Anahuac in Spanish Texas, and he was a contemporary of Jean Lafitte, whose pirate
stronghold was on neighboring Galveston Island. By 1840, White had driven many large herds
over the lonely trail, and a decade later, had more than $150,000 in gold banked in New
Orleans, the proceeds of his cattle sales.
By 1824 there were others from Stephen F. Austin's colony, between the
Brazos and Colorado Rivers, who joined White in the long trail drives, and a favorite
stopover was Yocum's Inn, where the welcome mat was always out and the grub was always
tasty and hot.
Thomas Yocum settled on a Mexican land grant on Pine Island Bayou, the
south boundary of the Big Thicket of Southeast Texas, around 1830. It was then a virgin,
sparsely-settled region of prairies, pine barrens, and thickets, and any settler living
within ten miles was considered a neighbor. The deep, navigable stream, 100 feet wide and
75 miles long, was a tributary of the Neches River and had already attracted ten or more
pioneers who also held land grants from the Mexican government. Often they heard the pound
of hoofs and bellowing of thirsty herds, bound for the cattle crossing over the Neches at
Beaumont. There were more than thirty streams which intersected the trail and which had to
be forded or swum in the course of travel. And always Yocum rode out at the first sound of
the herds and invited the drovers to quench their thirst and satisfy their hunger at the
Inn.
Some people who stopped at the Inn were headed west. Sometimes they
were new immigrants driving small herds into Texas. Some, like Arsene LeBleu, one of Jean
Lafitte's former ship captains, were Louisiana cattle buyers carrying money belts filled
with gold coins, and were en route to White's Ranch or elsewhere to buy cattle. The
popularity of Yocum's Inn spread far and wide. Its genial host soon became the postmaster
of Pine Island settlement under the old Texas Republic, supervised the local elections,
served on juries, and was widely respected by his neighbors and travelers alike.
Yocum acquired much land and many slaves, and by 1839 his herd of l500
heads of cattle was the fourth largest in Jefferson County. While other settlers rode the
wiry Creole, or mustang-size, ponies of a type common to Southwest Louisiana, Yocum's
stable of thirty horses were stock of the finest American breeds, and his family drove
about in an elegant carriage.
A gentleman's life , however, held no attraction for Squire Yocum, a
man who literally was nursed almost from the cradle on murder and rapine, and for many
years Yocum's Inn was actually a den of robbers and killers. What is the most startling is
the fact that Yocum was able to camouflage his activities for more than a decade,
maintaining an aura of respectability while simultaneously committing the worst of
villainies, with a murderous band of cutthroats unequaled in the history of East Texas.
How Yocum could accomplish this since he used no alias, is
unexplainable, for he, his brothers, his father, and his sons were known from Texas to
Mississippi as killers , slave-stealers, and robbers. If any neighbor suspected that
something at Yocum's Inn was amiss, he either feared for his life or was a member of the
gang.
One account, written by Philip Paxton in 1853, observed that Yocum,
"knowing the advantages of a good character at home, soon by his liberality, apparent
good humor, and obliging disposition, succeeded in ingratiating himself with the few
settlers."
Squire Yocum was born in Kentucky around 1796. As a fourteen-year-old,
he cut his criminal eyeteeth with his father and brothers in the infamous John A. Murrell
gang who robbed travelers along the Natchez Trace in western Mississippi. At first Murrell
was reputed to be an Abolitionist who liberated slaves and channeled them along an
"underground railroad" to freedom in the North. Actually, his gang kidnapped
slaves, later selling them to the sugar cane planters of Louisiana.
Murrell soon graduated to pillage and murder, but slave-stealing
remained a favorite activity of the Yocum brothers, and on one occasion two of them, while
returning to Louisiana with stolen horses and slaves, were caught and hanged in East
Texas.
When law enforcement in western Mississippi threatened to encircle
them, the Yocums fled first to Bayou Plaquemine Brule, near Churchpoint, Louisiana, then
in 1815 to the Neutral Strip of Louisiana, located between the Sabine and Calcasieu
Rivers. Until 1821 the Strip knew no law enforcement and military occupation, and hence
became a notorious robbers' roost for the outcasts of both Spanish Texas and the State of
Louisiana.
In the Land Office Register of 1824, T. D. Yocum, his father, and two
brothers were listed as claiming land grants in the Neutral Strip; and during the 1820s,
according to the Colorado "Gazette and Advertiser" of Oct. 31, 1841, Yocum's
father was tried several times for murder at Natchitoches, La., and bought acquittal on
every occasion with hired witnesses and perjured testimony.
By 1824, Squire Yocum, once again feeling the pinch of civilization,
had moved on to the Mexican District of Atascosita in Texas. He lived for awhile in the
vicinity of Liberty on the Trinity River. Writing about him in 1830, Matthew White, the
Liberty alcalde, notified Stephen F. Austin that Yocum was one of two men who allegedly
had killed a male slave and kidnapped his family, and as a result "were driven across
the Sabine and their houses burned." But Yocum was not about to remain so close to
the hangman's noose and the fingertips of sheriffs and U. S. marshals. And he soon took
his family and slaves to the Pine Island Bayou region where he built his infamous Inn.
Having acquired some wealth and affluence by 1835, the old killer and slave stealer could
become more selective with his victims.
Among the many travelers along the dusty Opelousas Trail, the eastbound
cattleman often stayed at Yocum's Inn and left praising the owner's hospitality. And of
course the genial proprietor always invited him to stop over on his return journey. It was
the westbound Louisiana cattle buyer and the Texas rancher who had already delivered his
herd in New Orleans whose lives were in danger. Usually drovers paid off and dismissed
their hands in New Orleans. Texas cattlemen often traveled alone on the return trip, and
if any of them lodged at Yocum's Inn, a bulging waist line, which usually denoted a fat
money belt of gold coins, virtually signaled his demise. The drover's bones were left to
bleach in the Big Thicket, at the bottom of the innkeeper's well, or in the alligator
slough.
In East Texas, Squire Yocum's crimes spawned more legends, many of them
about his buried loot, than any other man except Jean Lafitte. And every legend tells the
story differently. One relates that a Texas rancher was backtracking a missing brother,
who was overdue from a New Orleans cattle drive, and stopped at Yocum's Inn to make
inquiries. A Yocum cohort informed the rancher that no one had seen the missing brother on
his return trip; then suddenly the missing brother's dog rounded a corner of the Inn.
Glancing elsewhere about the premises, the rancher recognized his brother's expensive
saddle resting on a nearby fence. When the conversation became heated, Yocum's partner
grabbed for a shotgun, but the rancher fired first and killed him. As told in the legend,
Yocum overheard the conversation and accusations from a distance, and quickly fled into
the Big Thicket.
Another legend tells of a foreigner who was carrying a grind organ and
a monkey with him when he rode his big gray stallion to Yocum's Inn in search of a night's
lodging. Earlier the stranger had played the hand organ for some children who lived nearby
and who had given him directions to reach the Inn. The story adds that Yocum traded horses
with the foreigner during his stay. When the children later found a battered hand organ
abandoned beside the trail, there was little doubt about the foreigner's fate.
There are many early records, written at the time of Yocum's demise,
which chronicle the innkeeper's death, but they sometimes conflict. The longest of them
was written by Philip Paxton in 1853, and his account of how Yocum's misdeeds were exposed
appears to be the most plausible. {{Indeed, his account is deadly accurate. See sources at
end}} Paxton claimed that a man named (Seth) Carey, who owned a farm on Cedar Bayou near
Houston, had killed a neighbor during a quarrel over a dog and fled to Yocum for asylum.
It was agreed that Yocum would receive power of attorney to sell Carey's land grant and
that Yocum would forward the proceeds of the sale to Carey in Louisiana. A gang member,
however, told Carey that he had no chance of escaping to Lousiana. Yocum planned to pocket
the proceeds of the sale and, besides, Carey had wandered upon some skeletons in a Pine
Island thicket and thus had learned "too many and too dangerous secrets" about
the murder ring at Yocum's Inn.
The earliest published account, which appeared in the San Augustine
"Redlander" of Sept. 30, 1841, stated that Yocum was killed by the
"Regulators of Jefferson County who were determined to expel from their county all
persons of suspicious or bad character." The newspaper chided the vigilantes for
killing Yocum and not allowing him the due process of law and a speedy trial. But the
editor conceded that Yocum had a notorious record in Louisiana "as a Negro and horse
stealer, repeatedly arrested for those crimes."
Three other accounts, however, two in the Houston papers of that era
and another in the "Colorado Gazette and Advertiser," published at Matagorda,
Texas, alleged that "Thomas Yocum, a notorious villain and murderer, who resided at
the Pine Islands near the Neches River, has been killed by the citizens of Jasper and
Liberty Counties . . . ."
"Yocum has lived in Texas twenty years and has committed as many
murders to rob his victims. The people could bear him no longer so 150 citizens gathered
and burned his premises and shot him. They have cleared his gang out of the
neighborhood," thus putting an end to the Pine Island postmaster, his gang, and his
Inn. Of course, only Yocum could reveal the true number of murder notches on his gun,
which may have reached as many as fifty.
According to Paxton, the Regulators found the bones of victims in
Yocum's well, in the neighboring thickets, in the "alligator slough," and even
out on the prairie. They then burned Yocum's Inn, the stables and furniture, but allowed
his wife, children, and slaves a few days to leave the county. The posse trailed the
killers into the Big Thicket and eventually caught up with Yocum on Spring Creek in
Montgomery County. No longer willing to trust a Yocum's fate to the whims of any jury, the
vigilantes gave the old murderer thirty minutes to square his misdeeds with his Maker, and
then they "shot him through the heart" five times.
Paxton also reported that "not one of Yocum's family had met with
a natural death." Little is known of the fate of Yocum's sons other than Christopher,
who in 1836 who had been mustered into Captain Franklin Hardin's company at Liberty, and
who had served honorably and with distinction for one year in the Texas Army. Chris, whom
many believed to be "the best of the Yocums," may not have been implicated in
the murder ring at all, but he fled, leaving his young wife behind, perhaps because of the
stigma that his surname carried and the public anger that was then rampant.
Believing that the public clamor for revenge had died down after a span
of four months, Chris Yocum returned to Beaumont, Texas, one night in January 1842.
Sheriff West, although he had no specific crimes to charge him with, was aware that a
thirst for retribution still lingered and he arrested young Yocum for his own protection.
Jefferson County's "Criminal Docket Book, 1839-1851" reveals that Chris was
lodged in the county's log house jail on the afternoon of Jan. 15, 1842. What the book
does not reveal is the fact that young Yocum faced Judge Lynch and an unsummoned jury of
Regulators on the same night. The following morning West found him swinging from a limb of
an oak tree on the courthouse lawn, with a ten-penny nail driven into the base of his
skull.
During the second administration of Sam Houston as president of the
Texas Republic, there were many excesses and assassinations, principally in Shelby County
in East Texas, attributed to vigilante bands, who called themselves
"Regulators." On Jan. 31, 1842, he issued a proclamation, ordering all district
attorneys to prosecute the Regulators stringently for any offense committed by them. The
proclamation began as follows: "Whereas . . . . certain individuals . . . have
murdered one Thomas D. Yocum, burned his late residence and appurtenances, and driven his
widow and children from their homes . . . ."
Whether or not President Houston's paper might have been worded
somewhat differently if the chief executive had been forced to witness the bleached bones
in Yocum's well or to bury some of the skeletons out on the prairie is, of course, another
question.
Almost from the date of T. D. Yocum's death, legends began to circulate
concerning the murderer's hoard of stolen treasure, because the vigilantes knew that
neither the old robber nor any member of his family had had time to excavate it before
they were driven from the county. Some of them thought that only Yocum and one of his
slaves actually knew where the loot was hidden. Others claimed that Chris Yocum knew where
the treasure site was, and that one of the reasons for his returning to Beaumont was to
dig up the gold so that he and his young wife could start life anew somewhere under an
assumed name. For years treasure hunters dug holes along the banks of Cotton and Byrd
Creeks, and decades later sinks and mounds in the Pine Island vicinity were said to be the
remains of those excavations.
Time passed, the Civil War was fought, and the Yocum episode became
only a dim memory in the minds of the early settlers. Finally it was an elderly black
woman in Beaumont who triggered the second search for Yocum's gold. She told her
grandchildren that about 1840 she was a young slave girl who belonged to the owner of a
plantation in the vicinity of Yocum's Inn. One day whe was picking blackberries when she
heard voices nearby. She moved ahead along the banks of a creek until she finally spotted
Yocum and one of his young slaves at a low spot or crevice in the creek bank. Both of them
were busy backfilling a hole in the ground.
As a result of the old lady's story, another network of pot holes were
dug up and down the banks of Byrd and Cotton Creeks. And once or twice a stranger appeared
who claimed to have a map drawn by an old Nagro who said he was formerly Yocum's slave.
But if anyone ever found the treasure, that fact was never made public, and one writer
claims it is still there awaiting the shovel that strikes it first. Maybe so, but gold
hunters usually don't print their findings in newspapers. And they, like buccaneers, ain't
especially noted for their wagging tongues either.
