Bill Doolin And The Town Of Burden Kansas.

Burden Kansas seemed to be a quiet little town like most towns of Kansas. But Burden would soon be known as the hideout of the notorious Bill Doolin, train robber and gunslinger. The Doolin gang had split up in the summer of 1895, In September of 1895, Doolin took his wife and child away from Lawson Oklahoma, and head for the populated Osage county. The Doolin family toured Osage county for a while then his wife took ill, Doolin droved north to Burden where his wife had family. While there the family lived in a tent that had been pitched near a spring, about a mile and a half west of town, on a farm owned by a Mr. Johnnie Wilson. Will at Burden Bill used the name of ( Thomas Wilson ), and posed as an impoverished would-be-homesteader, who had not yet found his land.

Every couple of weeks he drove into town for supplies, “in a dilapidated old wagon hitched to a team managed with rope lines, dressed in ragged clothes and looking the part of a played-out Oklahoma boomer. In truth Doolin probably had enough stolen loot stashed away to buy and sell half the people in town. Word soon got around about “that poor suffering family out there in the tent.” The kind hearted citizens Burden were soon being food and clothing to the suffering family.

Bill had it made for a while then Marshal Bill Tilghman of Oklahoma who been on the trail of Doolin for many months received a tip to Doolin’s whereabouts and headed for Kansas. But about this time Doolin was getting a uneasy feeling about the attention the family was getting. Two days before marshal tilghman rode into town Doolin had packed up his family and left for some unknown parts leaving marshal Tilghman no trail to follow.