Author Discusses New Book With A Local Connection

By CATHERINE ELLERTON

Moapa Valley Progress

The Lost City Museum hosted the first of a proposed series of Book Signing Programs on Tuesday, October 14. Author Jackie Boor introduced the true story of her great-grandfather in a biography titled, “LOGAN, The Honorable Life and Scandalous Death of a Western Lawman.”

At a family reunion in 1985 in Belmont, Nevada, a transcript of the Coroner’s Inquest of the killing of Sheriff Tom Logan, which had been found in the Tonopah dump, was given to Jackie by Allen Metscher, one of the founders of the Central Nevada Historical Society. The search began. Thirty years later, the book that developed was dedicated to the “families and descendants of fallen peace officers. We become one in our struggle, our healing and our triumph.”

During those years of visiting museums, reading newspapers and gathering stories from descendants of those involved, Boor began to realize that this was a “story that screamed to be told.”

The setting was the emerging State of Nevada during the mining booms: the vigilantes, bordellos, quests for land to farm and ranch and the opportunity to begin again.

The characters were some of those strong individuals who battled the desert; including Robert Howard Logan who purchased a farm in Moapa Valley in 1871 with a wagon and two horses to create a life in what was then St. Joseph. That settlement became known as Logan and was later changed to Logandale in 1917 to avoid confusion with Logan, Utah.

Logan married Mary Elizabeth Perkins from Sacramento, the Valley’s first postmistress and the first Valley dweller to be buried in St. Joseph.
One of their seven children Tom Logan eventually came to be the Sheriff of Nye County in 1899 and is the star of this tale. He married Hannah Hamblin who was the niece of Jacob Hamblin, “The Buckskin Apostle,” and whose 4th great grandmother Hannah Emerson Dustin was the first woman in North America to have a monument erected in her honor in Haverhill, Massachusetts for her bravery as an early colonist.

As sheriff of Nye County, Tom Logan’s path crossed with many historical figures such as George Wingfield (a cowboy gambler and millionaire mining magnate), Patrick McCarran (the architect of the “McCarran Miracle” so named when he helped to free Sheriff Logan’s killer), Wyatt Earp and Tasker Oddie (the Governor of Nevada from 1911 to 1915).

On April 6, 1906, Sheriff Tom Logan, unarmed at the time, was shot and killed by gambler William Barieau in Manhattan, Nevada, at the Jewel House. Barieau was pronounced “not guilty” by the jury on July 14, 1906. In her book, Jackie Boor explores indications of the prosecutor being unprepared, witnesses being paid off, the demonization of Tom Logan and the possibility of a planned elimination of a sheriff that wouldn’t take sides.

As the story unfolded, author Jackie Boor found herself on a quest to help Tom Logan “regain his voice.” To, perhaps, find the answer to the questions: “What actually happened? Had the truth survived? What could be proven?”

On Memorial Day 2011, on the one hundred and fifth year after Sheriff Tom Logan’s death and on the occasion of his 150th birthday, Tom Logan was posthumously awarded by Nye County Sheriff Anthony DeMeo the Medal of Valor and Purple Heart in remembrance of his being killed in the line of duty.

This book, which can be obtained at The Lost City Museum gift shop, is a must read if you like genealogy, Nevada history, the wild west and local history. Or, you can wait for the movie. Jackie advised that she was beginning to write the screenplay.