| Notes |
- MOFFAT COUNTY, COLORADO, A FEW NOTABLE BURIALS
BASSETT FAMILY CEMETERY
Bassett, Elbert 1880-1925, outlaw, committed suicide
Bassett, Elizabeth 1855-1892, born Elizabeth Chamberlain, married Herbe
Bassett in AR in 1878.
Bassett, Josephine 1874-1964, daughter of Elizabeth and Herbert, said to have
been a sweetheart of MacKnight in 1893. Claimed to have visited Butch Cassidy
long after he supposedly died.
Bassett, Ann 1878-1956, daughter of Elizabeth and Herbert, leader of Bassett
outlaw gang.
Willis, Frank 1883-1963, rancher and husband of Ann Bassett.
Women Who Won the West
By Jonathan Joyce
The Colorado-Wyoming frontier was a tough place at the end of the last
century. Ruthless cattle barons drove their huge herds onto the smaller
spreads and hired gunmen to harass and kill small-time ranchers. A cowpoke
might have said it was "no place fer a lady."
He would have been wrong. One family of remarkable women held its own
- and then some. They were the Bassett women - and neither cattle baron
death threats, assassins nor expensive lawyers could drive them off the
land.
Elizabeth, the mother, gave most of the orders on the family ranch in
Brown's Park, Colorado. Her unconventional daughter, Josie, dated Butch
Cassidy and outlasted six husbands. Her other daughter, Anne, became known as
"the Queen of Brown's Park".
They all knew how to ride the range, give orders, run a ranch a
shoot with the best of them. When Anne was just 12, she watched Elizabe
disarm three gunmen who had just killed one of their ranch hands. Once, when
20 of the Bassett's steers were rustled by a rancher, Elizabeth risked being
shot or prosecuted to lead them back herself.
Anne and Josie were courageous cowpunchers and beauties as well.
During the 1890's, the Bassett ranch became a stopping place on the notorious
Outlaw Trail. Bob Parker, alias Butch Cassidy, worked for the Bassetts and
courted Josie. But even after he became a train robber, he and his Wild Bunch
could count on bed and breakfast at the ranch. As Anne put it, "People of all
types came and went. On the whole we kept our noses out of other people
business."
A few years after Elizabeth's death in 1892, the fights with the
cattle barons turned into a range war. The headstrong Josie was involved in a
stormy relationship with her first husband, and it was left to Anne, then all
of 20 years old, to defend the Bassett turf. She rode the range alone,
shooting trespassing steers or herding them into the Green River to drown.
The barons labeled her a rustler.
Anne was involved in her first romance - with a cowboy named Matt Rash
- when events took a deadly turn. Ora Haley, owner of a spread called the Two
Bar Ranch, arranged for the paid assassin Tom Horn to investigate the
disappearance of cattle. Horn's idea of justice was to establish an alibi and
then shoot his suspects in cold blood.
Anne and some of her neighbors received anonymous notes that read,
"Get out of Brown's Park within 30 days or die." Matt Rash was shot in the
back. Isom Dart, a Bassett ranch hand, was killed by rifle fir
Terrified ranchers resigned their boundaries and let Two Bar cattle
graze their land. Some moved. But Anne stayed on. Two bullets splintered
through her door one night, "imbedding themselves in the wall less than six
inches from where I had been sitting," she later recalled. Anne killed
hundreds of Two Bar cattle, then finally resorted to seductio
The Two Bar Ranch depended on "the best damn ranch manager around," Hi
Bernard. Anne invited him to her ranch. He had hired Tom Horn and thus aided,
at least indirectly, in the murder of Anne's friends. Hi must have wondered,
Is it a trap? It was - but a different kind than Hi had in min
Anne put on a corset, a pretty dress and perfume. Hi later recalled
that she was "curved in all the right places." He proposed, and in that April
of 1904, Hi got a wife, and Anne got a ranch manager.
The marriage, which ended in divorce in 1910, did much to solidify the
Bassett holdings. Hi staked out a homestead next to Anne's property, expanding
their joint holdings, and they formed the Bassett-Bernard Cattle Company.
Ora Haley got so exasperated he hauled Anne into court for rustling,
but his attack backfired when he was tricked into admitting that he had
cheated on his taxes. Anne was acquitted. While bands blared, she was carried
out of the courtroom.
But legal expenses had bled the Bassetts dry. It took some hard ranching
to climb back, and Anne and Josie moved to Utah. Anne remarried in 1923. Her
new husband, Frank Willis, was a good-natured cowboy who put up with a lot.
"Once", he recalled, "she waited for me when I came home drunk, knocked me out
and left me until I came to."
In 1956, Anne died of a stroke at age 78. Josie bootlegged apricot
brandy in her old age, still riding horseback and splitting wood. She died in
1964 at age 90.
In their time, the Bassett women were accused of being rustlers,
outlaws - even murderers. None of the charges were true. They just possessed
qualities some men found - and still find - intimidating, namely self-reliance,
courage and the conviction that a woman could do as much as a man -
or more - to tame the Wild West.
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Bassett Family Association Database
- 1892