I'm interested in Burden history.  My grt grandfather, Sam Leffler, was the City Marshal in Burden.

Winfield Courier, Thursday, February 18, 1886.

John Frost Gets Full of Liquid Hell and Raises the Dickens.

Sam Leffler, city marshal of Burden, came down Thursday and took Jack Frost, whose real name is John, to Burden for a trial before Justice Harvey Smith. Frost is a tough case about thirty years old. The other night Frost and a chum got a rig at Burden and went to a lyceum between Burden and Atlanta. They were pretty well boozed up and when they started home, met a rig in the road, and refusing to give an inch of the road, had a square collision. Frost swore that the other rig would get out of the road or he’d "blow h out of it!" The other fellows weren’t to be bulldozed, and Frost jumped out, knocked one of the opposition horses down with his six shooter, fired a few shots on the desert air, and made the air blue with profanity. The other fellows were Wm. Gentry and G. L. Burril, and they got up and dusted as soon as possible. Frost and "pard" went on and soon made another malicious, unlawful, and felonious attack—on a schoolhouse, smashing in the windows, kicking down the stove, and doing other deviltry. Gentry and Burril swore vengeance and went to work to bring the penalty of outraged law, peace, and quiet. Frost was raked in first, but his "pard" got "wind" and skipped for Colorado or some other foreign clime. There were two counts, one for an attack on Gentry and one on Burril, and Justice Smith gave Frost thirty days in the county bastille on one count and sixty days on the other—a nice little dose of ninety days in durance vile.  Mr. Frost is undoubtedly convinced that he can’t nip everything he runs across and that the way of the transgressor is harder to get over than a barbed wire fence. Both Frost and pal were peregrinating individuals, who imagined that, accompanied by a little rot-gut and a wicked "gun," they could rule with high-handed despotism.

 

I am interested in any information you might have available re: Sam and/or the city of Burden during that time.  Sam later moved to California and was murdered in 1891 while working as a secrurity night watchman at the SS Pacific Railroad yard by two "hobos."  He was only 39 years old and my grandfather (his son) was only three years old.  Sam left behind his widow and three young children. 

Thank you for your assistance.

Cherie Leffler

caleffler@cox.net