The name Cullen Montgomery Baker strikes fear into the annals of American Frontier history, marking a period of unparalleled ruthlessness and violence. A man whose very existence carved a bloody path across Texas and Arkansas, Cullen Montgomery Baker embodied the untamed savagery of the post-Civil War era, refusing to lay down arms and instead waging a personal war against Reconstructionists and former slaves.
Early Life and the Seeds of Violence
Born in Weakley County, Tennessee, on June 22, 1835, Cullen Baker’s early life was marked by poverty and constant relocation. His father, John Baker, was an honest but struggling farmer who moved his family first to Clarksville, Arkansas, and then, in 1839, to Davis County, Texas, where he received a substantial land grant of 640 acres. Despite the land, the Bakers remained poor, and young Cullen was often a target of taunts at school due for his humble attire and bare feet. Though initially described as slender and withdrawn, these early experiences forged a rebellious spirit within him. He soon began to retaliate against his tormentors, acquiring an old pistol and a rusty but functional rifle, which he mastered through diligent practice, laying the groundwork for his infamous future.
By the age of 15, Baker had developed a taste for whiskey and a proclivity for confrontation, often challenging those who annoyed him to draw their weapons. His quick temper and heavy drinking frequently led to brawls in saloons, painting a picture of a quarrelsome, boastful, and mean-spirited individual. An early incident saw him knocked unconscious by Morgan Culp, who struck him with a tomahawk. While this temporarily subdued his volatile nature, it was merely a lull before a storm of escalating violence.
From Farmer to Fugitive: A Life of Crime Unfolds
On January 11, 1854, still bearing the scar of Culp’s attack, Baker married 17-year-old Martha Jane Petty, attempting to settle into the quiet life of a farmer. However, this domesticity proved short-lived. Within eight months, he reverted to his old ways. A drunken altercation with a youth named Stallcup escalated dramatically, with Baker brutally beating the boy with a whip, leaving him near death. Charged with this crime, Baker then confronted a witness, Wesley Bailey, at his home, shooting him in both legs with a shotgun and abandoning him to die days later. Before he could be apprehended for Bailey’s murder, Baker fled to Perry County, Arkansas, seeking refuge with his uncle, Thomas Young, for almost two years.
His time in Arkansas was no less violent. In 1856, during an argument over horses, Baker stabbed a man named Wartham to death. He then returned to Texas, but the unresolved murder charges for Bailey’s death soon drove him back to Arkansas. During his absence, his wife Martha had given birth to their daughter, Louisa Jane, on May 24, 1857. The following year, he briefly returned to Texas to retrieve his wife and child, only for Martha to tragically die on July 2, 1860. He left Louisa Jane with his in-laws in Sulphur County, Texas, never to see his daughter again.
The Civil War and the Rise of a Guerrilla
In November 1861, Cullen Montgomery Baker joined Company G of Morgan’s Regimental Cavalry, ostensibly to fight for the Confederate Army. He married for a second time in July 1862, to Martha Foster, who was reportedly unaware of his bloody past and outstanding murder warrants. Though listed on muster rolls and receiving pay through August 1862, Baker was officially designated a deserter by January 10, 1863. Rather than returning home, he gravitated towards a group of Confederate guerrillas known as the “Independent Rangers.”
The “Independent Rangers” were supposedly tasked with apprehending Confederate Army deserters. In practice, however, they exploited the wartime chaos, preying on isolated communities. With most able-bodied men away fighting, Baker and his cohorts engaged in a reign of terror, marked by intimidation, rape, theft, and indiscriminate violence. Anyone possessing property was deemed an enemy, branded a Union sympathizer, and subjected to the Rangers’ brutal whims. The depredations became so severe that many residents abandoned their homes and fled the areas under the gang’s control.
An ongoing feud developed between the “Independent Rangers” and a Union guerrilla band known as the “Mountain Boomers.” Both groups roamed Arkansas, indiscriminately committing acts of robbery, arson, and murder, further plunging the region into lawlessness.
The Massacre of Saline
The extent of Baker’s cruelty was starkly demonstrated in November 1864. A small group of mostly elderly men, women, and children, desperate to escape the relentless turmoil of war, attempted to flee west with their possessions. As they crossed the Saline River in the Ouachita Mountains, they were intercepted by Cullen Montgomery Baker and his Independent Rangers. The Rangers, claiming the settlers’ attempt to flee was “unpatriotic,” though truly needing little justification for their brutality, ordered them to return. When the leader of the settler band refused, Baker drew his pistol and shot him dead. He then promised the remaining settlers that no one else would be harmed if they complied and returned to the east side of the river. However, once the vulnerable group had crossed back, Baker led his Rangers in a heinous attack, shooting and killing nine more men and plundering all their valuables. This horrific event became infamously known as the Massacre of Saline, cementing Baker’s reputation as a cold-blooded killer.
Word of the massacre spread, and the local populace, having endured enough, began to organize to wipe out Baker’s murderous gang. Alerted to these preparations, Baker and his men fled, taking with them their stolen booty of horses, mules, and other valuables.
Later that year, in Spanish Bluffs, Arkansas, Baker, wearing a Confederate hat in a saloon, was approached by four African American Union soldiers seeking identification. Without hesitation, Baker drew his pistol and shot, killing a sergeant and the three other soldiers.
Reconstruction Era Terror and Personal Vendettas
As the Civil War drew to a close, Baker’s violent tendencies did not subside. One account describes him encountering a group of travelers in Sevier County, Tennessee, on his journey home. He verbally harassed a Black woman within the group before shooting and killing her, illustrating his continued disregard for human life and his animosity towards African Americans, particularly in the emerging Reconstruction era.
Baker briefly settled with his second wife, Martha, near the Sulphur River area in southwestern Arkansas, managing the Line Ferry. However, this period of relative calm was short-lived. Martha fell ill and died on March 1, 1866. Though Baker reportedly grieved deeply for her, his disturbing nature soon resurfaced. Just two months later, he proposed to Martha’s 16-year-old sister, Belle Foster. Belle rejected his proposal, choosing instead to marry Thomas Orr, a local schoolteacher and political activist. Enraged by this rejection, Baker initiated a campaign of harassment against Orr, attempting to provoke fights, striking him with a tree limb, and publicly ridiculing, cursing, and threatening him in front of his students at school.
The period of Reconstruction was underway in Arkansas and Texas, an ideological shift that Baker vehemently despised. He and another outlaw named Lee Rames formed a new gang, operating from the dense Sulphur River bottoms near Bright Star, Arkansas. This gang embarked on a crime spree characterized by robbery and murder, allegedly responsible for the deaths of at least 30 people, many of whom were ambushed, outnumbered, or shot in the back.
The gang’s reach extended into Texas, where Baker assassinated John Salmons, who had previously killed Seth Rames, Lee Rames’s brother. He also murdered W.G. Kirkman, a Reconstruction official, and George W. Barron, a man who had participated in a posse hunting Baker. Their violent rampage continued through Queen City, Texas, and Texarkana, Arkansas.
On June 1, 1867, Baker returned to Cass County, Texas, where he brazenly stole items from John Rowden’s General Store. When Rowden, armed with a shotgun, rode to Baker’s house to demand payment, Baker promised to pay later. Four days later, on June 5, he murdered Rowden instead.
Fleeing back to Arkansas, Baker encountered a Union sergeant who recognized him on a ferry. Baker killed the officer, but a private managed to escape and report the murder, prompting relentless pursuit by Union forces.
On July 25, 1867, near New Boston, Texas, Baker engaged in a deadly altercation with several Union soldiers, resulting in him being shot in the arm but killing Private Albert E. Titus. This incident led to a $1,000 reward being placed on his head, “dead or alive.”
In December 1867, Baker and his gang traveled to Bright Star, Arkansas, to raid the farm of Howell Smith, who had recently hired several freed slaves. During the attack, one of Smith’s daughters was stabbed, another clubbed, and a Black man was shot and killed. Smith valiantly resisted, leading to a shootout that wounded several raiders, including Baker, who sustained a gunshot wound to the leg.
The violence continued through 1868. On October 24, Baker and his gang were implicated in the killings of Major P.J. Andrews, Lieutenant H.F. Willis, and an unnamed Black man in Little Rock, Arkansas, during which Sheriff Standel was also wounded.
The End of the Trail for Cullen Baker
By late 1868, Lee Rames, Cullen Montgomery Baker’s co-leader, began to question Baker’s erratic and increasingly dangerous leadership, fearing it would lead to the gang’s inevitable collapse. Rames openly defied Baker, who, uncharacteristically, backed down, leading to the gang’s dissolution in December 1868. All members, except for a loyal associate known as “Dummy” Kirby, sided with Rames.
Baker and Kirby retreated to Bloomburg, Texas, seeking refuge at the home of Baker’s in-laws in January 1869. It was there, on January 6, 1869, that both Cullen Baker and “Dummy” Kirby met their violent end, though the exact circumstances remain shrouded in conflicting accounts.
One prevalent version suggests that Baker’s father-in-law and his associates poisoned a bottle of whiskey and some food with strychnine. Both Baker and Kirby allegedly consumed the poisoned offerings and succumbed. Their bodies were then reportedly riddled with bullets posthumously. Another account posits that Thomas Orr, Baker’s long-standing rival and the man who married Belle Foster, led a small posse that ambushed Baker and Kirby at the Foster home, shooting and killing them outright.
Following their deaths, the bodies of Baker and Kirby were dragged through the streets of Bloomburg, a gruesome display of frontier justice, before being transported to the U.S. Army outpost near Jefferson, Texas, where they were put on public exhibition. Thomas Orr is believed to have collected a portion of the reward money offered for Baker’s capture.
Conclusion: A Legacy of Brutality
Cullen Montgomery Baker was ultimately laid to rest in Oakwood Cemetery in Jefferson, Texas. Curiously, despite his classification as a deserter, his grave marker notes his service with Morgan’s Squadron, a Confederate cavalry unit. In the years following his death, some attempted to romanticize Baker’s actions as a defense of “Southern honor.” However, a careful examination of his life reveals a starker, more brutal truth: he was a relentless, cold-blooded killer who inflicted violence upon anyone who crossed him, regardless of their loyalties or affiliations. Historians and authorities estimate his victim count to be between 50 and 60 people, firmly placing him among the most ruthless and dangerous figures of the American Frontier. His story remains a chilling reminder of the chaotic and violent underside of a transformative period in American history.
