The real story of the Fort Worth marshal played by Billy Bob Thornton in ’1883’ series

The year was 1883. Jim Courtright, who had been the popular city marshal of Fort Worth in the late 1870s, was working, alongside friend Jim McIntire, as a hired gun in New Mexico’s American Valley.

In May, Courtright biographer Robert DeArment writes, Courtright and McIntire were members of a posse that was formed ostensibly to arrest cattle rustlers but that in actuality was formed to eliminate squatters. When a large landowner accused two men — Alexis Grossetete and Robert Elsinger — of squatting on his land, they refused to leave. The landowner sent the posse, led by cattleman William C. Moore, to eliminate the two squatters.

The posse confronted Grossetete and Elsinger traveling by horse and wagon and disarmed them.

Moore alone shot and killed Grossetete. According to DeArment, Moore ordered each member of the posse, including Courtright, to shoot Elsinger so that all would be equally guilty of his killing.

Both victims were shot from behind.

When the cold-blooded killings were blamed on cattle rustlers, Courtright and the rest of the posse did not argue and, in fact, rode out in search of the alleged killers.

But after one member of the posse confessed, murder warrants were issued for Courtright and McIntire. Suddenly Fort Worth’s favorite son had a $500 reward on his head.

Fans of the Paramount+ television show “1883” - a prequel to the popular “Yellowstone” series - have seen Courtright portrayed by actor Billy Bob Thornton. After gunning down several suspected killers in a Fort Worth bar, Thornton’s character says, “There’s only one killer in Fort Worth, and that’s me.” Though the show’s timing for Courtright’s tenure as marshal may not quite jibe with history, the ruthlessness of Courtright’s character does.

Wanted for murder, the real Courtright and his friend McIntire skedaddled into Old Mexico and then to El Paso. McIntire in 1902 wrote a book about his life: “Early Days in Texas: A Trip to Hell and Heaven.” He writes that in El Paso the two men took a train east to Fort Worth, paying $15 extra to have a smoking room to themselves.

McIntire writes that upon arriving in Fort Worth he and Courtright were “not molested.” But to be safe, the two gunmen “slept in the graveyard at night, with a grave for a pillow. ... Two nights, when we were making a lodging-house of the cemetery, it rained, and we slept in a vault.”

McIntire does not name the graveyard (Fort Worth had two in 1883), but it probably was Oakwood. Why? Because according to another Courtright biographer, Father Stanley Crocchiola, Courtright about 1873 had farmed “about where the Oakwood Cemetery is now located,” so Courtright would have been familiar with Oakwood.

For several months after his return to Fort Worth in 1883, Courtright, wanted for murder, walked the streets a free man. He even rejoined the volunteer fire department. And when the city’s new driving park opened in November, Courtright provided crowd control, later thanking horse-racing fans for not bringing their dogs to the park.

Courtright vowed not to return to New Mexico, convinced that he would be lynched.

He still had friends in Cowtown who protected him. In fact, Tarrant County Attorney William Pendleton petitioned Gov. John Ireland not to authorize extradition to New Mexico for Courtright. Pendleton cited, among other reasons, Courtright’s service to Fort Worth as city marshal in the 1870s.

But in October 1884 lawmen from New Mexico arrived in Fort Worth, arrested Courtright and planned to return him to stand trial for murder. But several friends of Courtright arranged his escape by hiding two six-guns under the restaurant table where Courtright and the lawmen were eating.

After his escape, Courtright again was a fugitive. He was sighted in more places than the dead Elvis: St. Louis, Tucson, Dakota Territory, Kansas, San Antonio, Waco, even Guatemala.

In January 1886, after 15 months on the run, Courtright returned — again — to Fort Worth.

The Dallas Morning News wrote that Courtright’s “triumphant entry into the fort” “set all the city agog with excitement.”

Courtright was quoted as saying, “I would rather be in a pine coffin in Fort Worth than be alive anywhere else in the world.”

(Be careful what you wish for, Jim.)

In November 1886 Courtright finally went back to New Mexico to stand trial for murder. But prosecutors could not produce witnesses, and the charges were dropped.

Courtright returned — yet again — to Fort Worth. He had dodged a murder rap. Life looked good again.

But Jim Courtright had only nine weeks left to live.

On the night of Feb. 8, 1887 Courtright confronted gambler Luke Short outside Fort Worth’s White Elephant Saloon. Courtright was brooding, perhaps because Short had refused to be shaken down by Courtright’s detective agency, which Fort Worth historian Richard Selcer in “Hell’s Half Acre” calls a “highly profitable protection racket.” Just after 8 p.m., in Cowtown’s most iconic one-sided shootout, Luke Short propelled Jim Courtright into wild West lore and back to Oakwood Cemetery, where Courtright had spent two rainy nights in 1883.

Mike Nichols blogs about Fort Worth history at www.hometownbyhandlebar.com.

This story was originally published January 7, 2022 at 4:45 AM.