Fort Worth Characters

Chapter 4: Marshal Sam Farmer: Fort Worth’s First Professional Peace Officer

67 Sam Farmer was a man of principle. Sam Farmer was a scoundrel. Sam Farmer was a dedicated lawman. Sam Farmer was a slacker. He was all of these depending on which aspect of his life and career one chooses to focus on. Like so many Western lawmen (see Jim Courtright), Sam Farmer’s character had its dark side. When I first started digging into his life, I thought here was a breath of fresh air after Jim Courtright’s stormy tenure in the Marshal’s Office—a paragon of virtue, a pillar of law enforcement. That impression lasted until I dug into his life in Missouri before he came to Fort Worth and into the court records of his divorce. No Fort Worth marshal was re-elected more times than Sam Farmer, but he proved to be far more than just an eight-term marshal. On April 1, 1879, Sam Farmer was elected city marshal of Fort Worth against a field of five other candidates, most of them with larger reputations and more impressive résumés. It was a bitterly fought campaign with name-calling and charges of ethical misconduct flying back and forth. His opponents were all friends and fellow officers before the election, including former marshal H. P. Shiel, veteran policeman W. P. Thomas, and incumbent marshal T. I. Courtright. When he entered the race, he had an understanding with Courtright that the three-time marshal would not run for a fourth term but instead ChapTeR 4 Marshal Sam Farmer: Fort Worth’s First Professional Peace Officer Fort Worth Characters / 68 would throw his support to Farmer. Courtright reneged on the deal four months before the election and jumped into the race with both feet. Sam’s first reaction was to drop out and not challenge the popular Marshal, but when the Fort Worth Democrat publicly urged him to reconsider, he jumped back in. To assist the voters, the Fort Worth Democrat limned the top three candidates in broad, symbolic strokes: “Farmer smokes, Courtright takes [his] beer straight, and Thomas drinks lemonade.”1 In the end, the electorate preferred the smoker over the two imbibers and the rookie over the two veterans. Farmer’s margin of victory was forty-nine votes more than the total of the other five candidates, but his election represented more of a protest vote against the status quo than a ringing endorsement for the novice Marshal . Prior to his victory, Sam’s career on the Fort Worth Police Department (FWPD) almost did not get out of the gate. The police force operated on one-year appointments; it was reconstituted every year following municipal elections in April. Sam joined the force in the middle of February 1878 as a temporary replacement for Officer J. W. O’Connell, then stayed on to fill in for W. P. Thomas when that officer had to take a leave of absence. While Sam did good service, The only known pictures of Sam Farmer from his marshalling days are these studio portraits taken in D. L. Swartz’s Fort Worth studio in the mid-1880s: (left) with a custom-made badge and sporting a Wyatt-Earp walrus-style mustache; and (right) with wife Mattie Johnson Farmer. (Courtesy J. R. Taggert of Lohman, MO.) Marshal Sam Farmer: Fort Worth’s First Professional Peace Officer / 69 he would still have to apply for reappointment come April. When Jim Courtright won his third term in April 1878, he invited Farmer to stay on. But things got complicated after that because the prickly Marshal butted heads with the Mayor and Council over the composition of the force for the coming year, a dispute that dragged into May. Finally, Sam became one of four officers appointed by the Council at its May 21 meeting, but only after they reduced the force from six to four in a retrenchment move. He barely made the cut as number four on the list. But at least he was guaranteed a job as a Fort Worth police officer for the next eleven months.2 During those eleven months, Sam came to believe he would make a better marshal than Courtright, so after his false start in December , he formally filed for office in March 1879. He probably owed his subsequent victory to a change in the political winds. Decent folks were fed up with their town being taken over by the cowboys every spring...