MY CRIMINAL PAST

11 October 2021

I love watching the genealogy shows where famous people have their family history traced.  Many of them are surprised to discover that they are somehow related to some famous royalty generations ago.  How would you like to be related to Henry VIII?

My family doesn't have that royal history.  My cousin did a lot of exploration on our family, or at least my mother's mother's side of it.  She was able to trace us back to Robert the Bruce in the 1200s-1300s. 

We weren't related to Robert the Bruce but Roger Kirkpatrick was a friend of his.  He was one of the attendants of Robert the Bruce at Dumfries when he met and slew the Red Comyn. Kirkpatrick is said to have met The Bruce rushing out of the church exclaiming that be believed he had killed Comyn. Kirkpatrick drew his dagger with the words, "I'll mak siccar" or "I mak sicker" meaning "I'll make sure" and went into Patrick's church and finished the task! This became the Clan motto and is surprisingly one of the few Scottish Clan mottos that is in Scots dialect. The Clan crest is described in heraldic terminology as "A hand holding a dagger in pale distilling drops of blood, Proper. Rogers bold and gruesome act is therefore commemorated forever in the annuals of Scottish history for all to know."

A hand holding a bloody dagger.  That's our history.

I don't know how many other relatives we have had who have who have had problems with the law but there was Ben Kirkpatrick., who was a member of the "Hole in the Wall Gang," run by Butch Cassidy. Among the "wild bunch" he was known as a poor shot but the best rider and forger. He was a master at copying signatures. He first joined up with his cousin Black Jack Ketchum and when Ketchum joined up with Butch, Ben went along.

Ben got caught during a train robbery and spent several years in jail. After he got out he tried to go straight for awhile but ended up back at the "Hole in the Wall" where he and another of the gang cooked up a scheme to rob another train. During this train robbery attempt he was shot down and killed by a guard and was buried in an unmarked grave near Sanderson, Texas in 1912.

Yesterday I was going through some old photo albums that belonged to my father and grandfather and found this article.

Leo Legler was my father's uncle.

It appears that I am just a member of a long line of criminals.