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BAH, BAH, BLACK SHEEP
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BAH, BAH, BLACK SHEEP by
Joe M. Leonard, Jr.
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REVIEWS
"Leonard used first-hand accounts to
reconstruct the life of an Indian Territory native who grew up with every
advantage but earned a reputation as a notorious outlaw and renegade"
Wilbert Wiggs, Daily Ardmoreite
"This book is a historical narrative that is well
worth reading and sharing with others"
Wilma Easley, Marietta Monitor.
"Shades of Bonnie and Clyde without Bonnie! A true
story of a good boy gone bad in the early 20th Century in North Texas and
Southern Oklahoma"
Frank Haley, Radio Station KFLQ, Albuquerque,NM
| About the Book
The main character, Haney Horace Hix
Liddell, was a notorious southwestern outlaw and renegade, born in
1893 in Oklahoma Indian Territory, which is now Love County,
Oklahoma. He spent most of his life in Gainesville, Texas, the son
of a prominent family, John Clower and Emma Bracewell Liddell, Sr.
The father established a very successful and highly profitable
business as a landowner raising cotton and also brokering the
product as well as that raised by others in the North Texas/Southern
Oklahoma area. At one point in time his business activity reached as
far north as the Kansas state line and as far south as the Rio
Grande River in Texas.
Young Haney had a bright mind and his first
job was working for his father as a salesman in his firm. Three other
of his brothers also followed in their father’s footsteps and
established cotton brokerage business of their own in Dallas,
Wichita Falls, and Gainesville. If he had stayed with his father,
the chances are that he would have never wound up as a hunted
outlaw, but fate found him thumbing his nose at law and order. His
first serious brush with the law came in 1917, at age 24, when he
gunned down a tenant farmer in Thackerville, Oklahoma, over what was
believed to be a minor difference. At a trial held in November, he
was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to four years in
prison. The case was appealed and the conviction later reversed by
the state, leaving him once again a free man. In 1927 , Haney teamed
up with a Marietta abstractor, in a fraudulent scheme to obtain
loans on Indian land which they did not own. Both men were indicted,
but Haney escaped and never was brought to trial. On January 25,
1928, he and an accomplice robbed the Love County National Bank of
Marietta. His partner was killed, and the local sheriff was mortally
wounded and died. Still on the run, and now on the “Most Wanted”
list, Haney made an attempt to rob the First National Bank of
Marietta on November 15, 1928, but while trying to escape he was
blinded and seriously wounded. He died in Love County jail on
November 21, 1928, with three outstanding felonies pending, which
were: Murder, Bank Robbery, and Fraud.
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About
the Author
Joe M .Leonard, Jr. is a native of Gainesville, Texas.
Born there June 20, 1919. He attended public schools in Gainesville
and graduated from high school in 1937. He also attended the
University of Texas in Austin, 1937-41, graduating with a BA degree in
Arts and Sciences. During World War II he served in the United States
Army Signal Corps, 1942-45, rising to the rank of Captain. Twenty-two
months of service was overseas, serving in London in Signal
Intelligence Headquarters, the invasion of Normandy, and campaigns of
France, Belgium, Ardennes, and Germany. Joe’s professional experience
has included newspaper, radio broadcasting, music recording and
publishing, and merger/acquisition consulting. He is a member of NARAS,
National Academy of Recording Arts and Science; The Rockabilly Hall of
Fame, Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge, Texas Association of
Broadcasters Pioneers and Past Presidents, and Vestryman Emeritus of
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. His first book, Rockabilly, Radio, and
WWII, was published in 2002 by Nortex Press, Austin, Texas.
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