Heathcock Genealogy Database - Person Sheet
Heathcock Genealogy Database - Person Sheet
Notes for Tommy Stringfield
"Texas Tales" Column1475
Two Braids
by Mike Cox
More Texans owned horses than automobiles in 1910, but when the middle aged man rode into Eagle Pass that summer, people noticed. Something about the way he sat on his horse attracted attention.
His dress alone caused second looks. He wore buckskin, not store-bought clothes. Even more noticeable was the multi-colored streaks of paint slashed across his leather-skinned face.
The man made it known that he would be putting on a trick-riding performance in the vacant lots across the street from the Rio Grande Hotel. He did not advertise in the local weekly, depending on word of mouth to draw a crowd.
"His feats were clever," the Eagle Pass News-Guide reported on Aug. 19, about three weeks after his one-man "Wild West" show. "His 'life' would make refreshing reading-a few facts only are here given."
That the newspaper only provided those few facts is a shame, because this man had quite a story. Unfortunately, much of it has been lost with the passage of time, but the skeleton remains, along with some interesting questions.
On Sept. 28, 1870, rancher Thomas Wesley Stringfield, his wife Sarah Jane and their three children - a girl and two boys - were traveling in their wagon. About 15 miles from their home in McMullen County, a party of 21 Indians and Mexicans surrounded them. The Stringfields bailed out of the wagon and ran to a nearby stand of trees.
The twenty-eight-year-old father used his rifle to defend his family until a bullet hit him in his arm. Gathering his family, Stringfield tried to get them to a nearby house where he assumed the occupants would come to their aid.
But the raiders encircled them, shooting Stringfield a second time and then moving in on the rest of the family with knives and lances.
"About that time I saw them stab my mother in the heart," Ida Alice Stringfield wrote years later. "I...screamed and started to my mother, but one of the men jumped between me and my mother. At that time another man picked me up before him on his horse and started to carry me away."
Ida Alice was only eight years old, but she was not going to be captured without a fight. "While I was on his horse," she continued, "I bit the hand he was holding me with. Then he cursed me in Spanish and told me...that he was going to kill me. I understood what he said."
The raider hurled the girl to the ground, apparently assuming it would crush her skull. But the little girl caught herself with her hands and was not hurt. Then another rider swooped her up.
Ida Alice grabbed the brush trying to pull herself off the horse. Again, her would-be captor said he would kill her if she did not stop. "I told him I would rather die than to go with them," she said. "He then said, 'All right, I will kill you then."
He threw her down and several of them ran their horses over her. Another Indian thrust his lance into her seven times.
"The last one of the men who rode his horse over me, stopped and caught hold of my hair, raised my head by my hair, and said something I could not understand, as it was not in English or Spanish. That was the last I knew for some time."
Eventually, a Mexican family who lived nearby came to the scene of the attack and took Ida Alice to their house. They cared for her until relatives came for her.
Her parents and six-year-old brother Adolphus were dead. The namesake of Ida Alice's dead father, four-year-old Thomas, was more fortunate, at least to the extent that his life was spared. Too young to resist to the extent that his sister had, he was taken into captivity. Eventually, after harsh treatment, he assimilated into the tribe of his captives. (Whether they were Apaches, Comanches, or Kickapoo is unclear, though the Eagle Pass account says they were Apaches.)
Somehow, Ida Alice never learned what had become of her youngest brother. "I and my relatives and friends have tried every way possible to locate the two brothers (the Eagle Pass account says Adolphus was killed)...but they have never been seen or heard of since they were carried away," she said in a sworn statement in 1925, part of the paperwork that led to a $25,000 settlement from Mexico.
But it was Stringfield who had ridden into Eagle Pass fifteen years before to make a little money off the riding abilities he acquired as a white Indian.
As the Eagle Pass newspaper explained it, "Just before Gernonimo died he told 'Two Braids" (that was his Indian name) that he would find his people 100 miles west of Corpus Christi....Last year [1909] he obtained a permit through the commanding officer at Fort Sill to go in quest of his people, and being partly successful he was granted complete liberty by President Taft."
The newspaper continued that "Two Braids" Stringfield "finds himself a free man without any clear notion of what to do with his liberty now that he has it, for, needless to say, the Apaches never taught any man a trade, nothing but hunting, theft and murder."
What Stringfield did with the rest of his life, and how long it lasted, is a mystery.
July 2003
Website Content Copyright ©1998-2003. Texas Escapes - Blueprints For
Travel, LLC. All Rights Reserved
This page last modified: July 6, 2003
Two Braids
by Mike Cox
More Texans owned horses than automobiles in 1910, but when the middle aged man rode into Eagle Pass that summer, people noticed. Something about the way he sat on his horse attracted attention.
His dress alone caused second looks. He wore buckskin, not store-bought clothes. Even more noticeable was the multi-colored streaks of paint slashed across his leather-skinned face.
The man made it known that he would be putting on a trick-riding performance in the vacant lots across the street from the Rio Grande Hotel. He did not advertise in the local weekly, depending on word of mouth to draw a crowd.
"His feats were clever," the Eagle Pass News-Guide reported on Aug. 19, about three weeks after his one-man "Wild West" show. "His 'life' would make refreshing reading-a few facts only are here given."
That the newspaper only provided those few facts is a shame, because this man had quite a story. Unfortunately, much of it has been lost with the passage of time, but the skeleton remains, along with some interesting questions.
On Sept. 28, 1870, rancher Thomas Wesley Stringfield, his wife Sarah Jane and their three children - a girl and two boys - were traveling in their wagon. About 15 miles from their home in McMullen County, a party of 21 Indians and Mexicans surrounded them. The Stringfields bailed out of the wagon and ran to a nearby stand of trees.
The twenty-eight-year-old father used his rifle to defend his family until a bullet hit him in his arm. Gathering his family, Stringfield tried to get them to a nearby house where he assumed the occupants would come to their aid.
But the raiders encircled them, shooting Stringfield a second time and then moving in on the rest of the family with knives and lances.
"About that time I saw them stab my mother in the heart," Ida Alice Stringfield wrote years later. "I...screamed and started to my mother, but one of the men jumped between me and my mother. At that time another man picked me up before him on his horse and started to carry me away."
Ida Alice was only eight years old, but she was not going to be captured without a fight. "While I was on his horse," she continued, "I bit the hand he was holding me with. Then he cursed me in Spanish and told me...that he was going to kill me. I understood what he said."
The raider hurled the girl to the ground, apparently assuming it would crush her skull. But the little girl caught herself with her hands and was not hurt. Then another rider swooped her up.
Ida Alice grabbed the brush trying to pull herself off the horse. Again, her would-be captor said he would kill her if she did not stop. "I told him I would rather die than to go with them," she said. "He then said, 'All right, I will kill you then."
He threw her down and several of them ran their horses over her. Another Indian thrust his lance into her seven times.
"The last one of the men who rode his horse over me, stopped and caught hold of my hair, raised my head by my hair, and said something I could not understand, as it was not in English or Spanish. That was the last I knew for some time."
Eventually, a Mexican family who lived nearby came to the scene of the attack and took Ida Alice to their house. They cared for her until relatives came for her.
Her parents and six-year-old brother Adolphus were dead. The namesake of Ida Alice's dead father, four-year-old Thomas, was more fortunate, at least to the extent that his life was spared. Too young to resist to the extent that his sister had, he was taken into captivity. Eventually, after harsh treatment, he assimilated into the tribe of his captives. (Whether they were Apaches, Comanches, or Kickapoo is unclear, though the Eagle Pass account says they were Apaches.)
Somehow, Ida Alice never learned what had become of her youngest brother. "I and my relatives and friends have tried every way possible to locate the two brothers (the Eagle Pass account says Adolphus was killed)...but they have never been seen or heard of since they were carried away," she said in a sworn statement in 1925, part of the paperwork that led to a $25,000 settlement from Mexico.
But it was Stringfield who had ridden into Eagle Pass fifteen years before to make a little money off the riding abilities he acquired as a white Indian.
As the Eagle Pass newspaper explained it, "Just before Gernonimo died he told 'Two Braids" (that was his Indian name) that he would find his people 100 miles west of Corpus Christi....Last year [1909] he obtained a permit through the commanding officer at Fort Sill to go in quest of his people, and being partly successful he was granted complete liberty by President Taft."
The newspaper continued that "Two Braids" Stringfield "finds himself a free man without any clear notion of what to do with his liberty now that he has it, for, needless to say, the Apaches never taught any man a trade, nothing but hunting, theft and murder."
What Stringfield did with the rest of his life, and how long it lasted, is a mystery.
July 2003
Website Content Copyright ©1998-2003. Texas Escapes - Blueprints For
Travel, LLC. All Rights Reserved
This page last modified: July 6, 2003
Notes for Tommy Stringfield
From Kenneth Garrison:1476
“Stringfield massacre????? Well..........I've heard family talk about it all my life. We have one of the very few copies of the book about Two Braids which my grandfather Raymond Garrett Hobbs helped Two Braids write down while they were both staying at Talman Hugh Hobbs home in 1910-1911 and which was published by the Hamilton, TX Herald Print shop. I've got copies of the muster roll of the Rio Frio Home Guard militia from 1861 with names of all officers and members, including Amery Olive and Talman Hugh Hobbs and Thomas Wesley (killed in the massacre in 1870) and another Stringfield who is, I think his brother. Another Stringfield brother was in a different Confederate regiment in the CW and died while in the service and I have a copy of the history of that regiment. I've learned that the other Stringfield boy who was killed after capture, Dolfus M., was buried in the Catholic churchyard in Laredo, TX but haven't had a chance to check out the parish records or attempt to locate his grave. We have photos of the Double Heart monument which Two Braids erected over his parents grave in 1911. I've found copies of the very hard to find old True West magazines from the 1960's and early 1970's in which articles and letters about the Stringfield Massacre appeared. I've found a website with an extensive family tree on the Stringfields going back into the 1700's. I've got leads on the descendants of the older Stringfield girl, Ida Alles, who was severely wounded but recovered and was raised by Talman Hugh Hobbs (Talman's wife was Mrs. Stringfields sister) but I haven't contacted any of them yet. I plan to. When Mom and Grandma took a trip to the Near East in the 1960's, they visited all over that area of Texas and came home with some old tintypes of the Stringfields which have never been published. Mom has been gathering information on Tommy's Oklahoma connections for 35 years during her missionary work with various tribes in Oklahoma and New Mexico. I have not yet looked up the Claim for Compensation which Ida Alles filed with the federal government in the national archives. I'm trying to locate Tommy Two Braids grave. I'm trying to locate records of the Wild West show he and his daughter rode in. There's a lot about the Stringfield Massacre which I don't know. I'm trying to put together a new book about it. I've got data never before published and which I believe no one else has. At least, I've never seen it in print or anywhere on the internet.”
In response to my question “Do you believe Two Braids was really Tommy Stringfield, Kenneth answered:
“Yes, I absolutely do!!! My Mother can get very bitter when discussing Ida's preliminary recognition and affirmation and joyful reunion with Tommy and her later rebuttal and refusal of him. Remember, Ida was pursuing a claim for compensation from the US of A federal government under a treaty with Mexico at that time (1910-1911). She claimed she deserved recompense for the loss of her parents and the "Stringfield estate". At that time she also made bitter denunciations of her Aunt and Uncle Talman Hugh and Nancy Mills Hobbs, who took her into their home and raised her to adulthood. [Ahhhh human nature...."It is greed and cupidity which isolate men" -- I Ching].
“Consider this:
“Two of Tommy's aunts and an uncle and one close friend of the Stringfield family positively identified Two Braids as Tommy and never withdrew nor recanted that. The aunts' identification was stated to be based upon a scar from a childhood injury and conversations and recounting of numerous events which Two Braids remembered from before the massacre.
“Two Braids and his Daughter Nucki performed trick riding exhibiitions around the San Antonio area in 1910-1911, picking up coins tossed by spectators from horseback at a full gallop. Tommy used the money to purchase and install a monument with two hearts over the gravesite of his mother and father. That monument is standing today. Tommy and Nucki traveled to Laredo to visit Dolf's grave where the Martins and Billy Franklin took his body for burial. An adult and married Ida never made any attempt to mark her parents grave. I have found no indication that she ever visited Dolf's grave. When Ida began to renounce Tommy, he simply faded from the scene.
“Look at the overall human behavior in these instances. What does that tell you??
“Tommy's history in Arizona and New Mexico and Kansas and Oklahoma and Texas is long and involved. He feared for many years that he would be imprisoned and treated like Geronimo and the rest of that band, including the Chiricahua Apache US Scouts who were employed by the Army to help achieve Geronimo's surrender/capture. When some "white eyes' from Texas went up to the reservation in Oklahoma and started asking questions do you think those Apache people opened up and told them everything they knew???
“Yes, I have no doubt that Two Braids was Tommy Stringfield. When I finally get all the evidence gathered from the national archives and organized with what we now have, I think reasonable people everywhere who see the evidence will have no doubts, neither.”
“Stringfield massacre????? Well..........I've heard family talk about it all my life. We have one of the very few copies of the book about Two Braids which my grandfather Raymond Garrett Hobbs helped Two Braids write down while they were both staying at Talman Hugh Hobbs home in 1910-1911 and which was published by the Hamilton, TX Herald Print shop. I've got copies of the muster roll of the Rio Frio Home Guard militia from 1861 with names of all officers and members, including Amery Olive and Talman Hugh Hobbs and Thomas Wesley (killed in the massacre in 1870) and another Stringfield who is, I think his brother. Another Stringfield brother was in a different Confederate regiment in the CW and died while in the service and I have a copy of the history of that regiment. I've learned that the other Stringfield boy who was killed after capture, Dolfus M., was buried in the Catholic churchyard in Laredo, TX but haven't had a chance to check out the parish records or attempt to locate his grave. We have photos of the Double Heart monument which Two Braids erected over his parents grave in 1911. I've found copies of the very hard to find old True West magazines from the 1960's and early 1970's in which articles and letters about the Stringfield Massacre appeared. I've found a website with an extensive family tree on the Stringfields going back into the 1700's. I've got leads on the descendants of the older Stringfield girl, Ida Alles, who was severely wounded but recovered and was raised by Talman Hugh Hobbs (Talman's wife was Mrs. Stringfields sister) but I haven't contacted any of them yet. I plan to. When Mom and Grandma took a trip to the Near East in the 1960's, they visited all over that area of Texas and came home with some old tintypes of the Stringfields which have never been published. Mom has been gathering information on Tommy's Oklahoma connections for 35 years during her missionary work with various tribes in Oklahoma and New Mexico. I have not yet looked up the Claim for Compensation which Ida Alles filed with the federal government in the national archives. I'm trying to locate Tommy Two Braids grave. I'm trying to locate records of the Wild West show he and his daughter rode in. There's a lot about the Stringfield Massacre which I don't know. I'm trying to put together a new book about it. I've got data never before published and which I believe no one else has. At least, I've never seen it in print or anywhere on the internet.”
In response to my question “Do you believe Two Braids was really Tommy Stringfield, Kenneth answered:
“Yes, I absolutely do!!! My Mother can get very bitter when discussing Ida's preliminary recognition and affirmation and joyful reunion with Tommy and her later rebuttal and refusal of him. Remember, Ida was pursuing a claim for compensation from the US of A federal government under a treaty with Mexico at that time (1910-1911). She claimed she deserved recompense for the loss of her parents and the "Stringfield estate". At that time she also made bitter denunciations of her Aunt and Uncle Talman Hugh and Nancy Mills Hobbs, who took her into their home and raised her to adulthood. [Ahhhh human nature...."It is greed and cupidity which isolate men" -- I Ching].
“Consider this:
“Two of Tommy's aunts and an uncle and one close friend of the Stringfield family positively identified Two Braids as Tommy and never withdrew nor recanted that. The aunts' identification was stated to be based upon a scar from a childhood injury and conversations and recounting of numerous events which Two Braids remembered from before the massacre.
“Two Braids and his Daughter Nucki performed trick riding exhibiitions around the San Antonio area in 1910-1911, picking up coins tossed by spectators from horseback at a full gallop. Tommy used the money to purchase and install a monument with two hearts over the gravesite of his mother and father. That monument is standing today. Tommy and Nucki traveled to Laredo to visit Dolf's grave where the Martins and Billy Franklin took his body for burial. An adult and married Ida never made any attempt to mark her parents grave. I have found no indication that she ever visited Dolf's grave. When Ida began to renounce Tommy, he simply faded from the scene.
“Look at the overall human behavior in these instances. What does that tell you??
“Tommy's history in Arizona and New Mexico and Kansas and Oklahoma and Texas is long and involved. He feared for many years that he would be imprisoned and treated like Geronimo and the rest of that band, including the Chiricahua Apache US Scouts who were employed by the Army to help achieve Geronimo's surrender/capture. When some "white eyes' from Texas went up to the reservation in Oklahoma and started asking questions do you think those Apache people opened up and told them everything they knew???
“Yes, I have no doubt that Two Braids was Tommy Stringfield. When I finally get all the evidence gathered from the national archives and organized with what we now have, I think reasonable people everywhere who see the evidence will have no doubts, neither.”