Sheriff’s partner in life, law fit to fill post

After Miller County Sheriff Lish Barber was shot to death Oct. 30, 1925, Gov. Thomas Jefferson “Tom” Terral appointed Barber’s widow as sheriff.

Plenty of women worked outside the home in the 1920s, but in law enforcement? Nope.

Lillie Barber (1883-1937) was typical for her day in one sad respect: She’d buried a child. Alberta Barber’s headstone in Miller County’s Old Rondo Cemetery conveys that she was 7 when she died in 1909.

Two years later, on Jan. 23, 1911, Lillie’s name appeared in Little Rock’s Arkansas Gazette. Because she was arrested.

Women Fight on Street

Special to the Gazette. Texarkana, Jan. 22. — A great deal of excitement was caused on East Broad street by a fight between two white women yesterday afternoon.

The principals were Mrs. John Whitehead and Mrs. Elisha Barber, both of whom live a couple of miles southeast of town in the same neighborhood. Mrs. Barber is alleged to have been the aggressor and during the conflict she landed a savage blow over the right eye of her antagonist, blackening that member, and also pulled a couple of handfuls of hair from the head of Mrs. Whitehead.

A large crowd witnessed the battle. Both women were arrested on charges of disturbing the peace and will be tried Tuesday. Jealously is given as the cause of the trouble.

Lillie was 27. The next time her name appeared in the Gazette, she was 41 and the governor was naming her sheriff.

The so-called “shooting affray” in which Lish died was regional news (see my Old News columns of March 27 and April 3 and 10). Most of the Gazette’s many reports came from anonymous freelancers, but the newspaper sent its own man to lay eyes on the woman sheriff.

Despite being a reporter and former Little Rock police chief, and being destined for even more career diversity, Fletcher Chenault (1882-1940) seems rather typical for his day — based on

what he wrote. Slain Sheriff’s Widow Is Carrying On In His Place

By Fletcher Chenault Staff Correspondent of the

Gazette Texarkana, Dec. 5 — When you step into the sheriff’s office in the Miller county courthouse you go meekly and with your hat in your hand, for the high sheriff of Miller county is a woman, the only woman sheriff in Arkansas and one of the very few of her sex ever elevated to that strenuous office in the history of the world.

If you go expecting to see another two-gun “Calamity Jane,” or if you go expecting to see a timid woman dependent on women’s wiles and stratagems, in each case you are courting disappointment. Mrs. Lillian Barber is neither.

She went by Lillie, but the paper called her Lillian more than once.

Mate of a strong man who died with his boots on in the discharge of his duty, this Arkansas woman has set herself to the task of carrying out his policies, the policies they planned together. When that is done, Mrs. Barber is ready to quit.

“I will not be a candidate for the office after I serve out my husband’s unexpired term,” she said. “I haven’t the least doubt that I can carry on the duties of the office in a manner that will satisfy the people, but this is a man’s job. I do not go out on raids and don’t intend to, but I believe a sheriff should not ask his deputies to do anything he or she would not do. That’s why this is a man’s job.”

Let’s interrupt Chenault again to note that when the 1926 election rolled around, she had changed her mind. She ran against six men and almost won. On Aug. 14, 1926, the Gazette reported that Fleet Magee beat her, 845-766.

Later that same week, something even stranger happened. It vaulted Lillie Barber from the ranks of period curiosities — “woman sheriff” — to the ranks of dramatis personae in true crime fiction/folklore.

At 4 a.m. Aug. 18, Kinnie Wagner, described by the Gazette as a “remarkably handsome man,” appeared at the sheriff’s office to surrender for killing two Miller County men and wounding their brother. He claimed self-defense.

Turns out, the 6-foot looker was a “noted desperado” wanted on one murder charge in Mississippi and under death sentence in Tennessee for two. He’d been hiding in the area five months, working at a sawmill.

You can look him up online. I’ll wait. One source that covers a lot of ground is Murderpedia: bit.ly/2ota8Vy. And here’s Lyle Lofgren with lyrics from a blind preacher and gospel singer: bit.ly/2ptKptQ.

Why things turned out the way they did has been guessed at by fanciful novels and songs. The upshot was Arkansas didn’t try Wagner for murder or hand him over to Tennessee to die. He was given to Mississippi, which sentenced him to life in prison. Several well publicized escapes brought him even more notoriety, but he lived out his term there, dying of a heart attack in 1958.

Back to Chenault’s assessment of Lillie in 1925:

Attired in a plain black dress, affecting no badge of authority and no ornament except a wedding ring on one finger and an Eastern Star ring on another, Mrs. Barber turns the full gaze of a pair of large brown eyes on the visitor and this gaze never falters or wavers for a second. Her figure is matronly, and her brown hair is piled in a smooth coiffure on her head.

“I never bobbed my hair because my husband preferred it this way,” she explained to W.B. Weeks, former police judge and Gazette correspondent. “He is the only person I ever cared to please.”

She “paraded” neither affection nor grief.

There is firmness in her smooth features, firmness in her poise and dignity, firmness in her clear, incisive speech. Yet this is not Amazon and in her home life the gentleness of her sex is revealed. When her lips part you are expecting her to smile and you are astonished when the smile is not forthcoming. The surprise must have been manifest for she said:

“My niece said to me yesterday: “Auntie, I don’t like to look at you anymore. You never smile.’”

Noting it was unnecessary to explain why the smile had faded, Chenault proceeded to.

Here was a woman who had been the pal and constant companion ever since she was 16 years old of the only man she ever loved, and his untimely death was a severe blow. It is not because she is an ardent suffragette or a strident advocate of women’s rights that Mrs. Barber is working hard to make a success of her political appointment. It is because of her loyalty to the memory of the man who is dead. …

Mrs. Barber and her husband were born at Mena, but Mr. Barber was living in Texarkana when they were married. When he became sheriff they moved into the jail and Mrs. Barber was the jailer. Although she does not carry a pistol and does not approve of women handling firearms, she was taught by her husband how to shoot and can play a tune with a pistol.

As a for-instance, Chenault told an anecdote in which she fails to stop an escape:

One night, while Sheriff Barber was out of the city

three men broke jail. Mrs. Barber was aroused just in time to see the slowest member of the trio skipping across the jail yard. Down came a trusty Navy six and “blam! blam! blam!” echoed on the still night air. No redskins bit the dust, but the astonished fugitive gave a yell which woke the town and a leap which landed him in Texas, and for all that is known to the contrary he still is running.

Coincidentally, on Dec. 31, 1926, the eve of Magee’s first day as sheriff, eight prisoners somehow acquired saws and broke jail. The Gazette reported Lillie as “chagrined.”

But back to Chenault, with still more evidence of her feminine bonafides:

The exacting work of the office is a great help to the widow for its endless routine keeps her mind engaged.

“I got up and cooked breakfast for 52 people this morning, including the 43 prisoners,” she said. “We have cooks but I woke early and couldn’t go back to sleep. When I can’t sleep at night I get up and work on my books and records.”

A note of loneliness and grief crept into her voice as she stared through the window across the sunlit courthouse lawn.

“We planned to build a home,” she said wistfully. “I am left all alone in the world. I have nothing to live for, yet we must all live.”

Lillie was 54 when she died in 1937, at home in Texarkana. She is buried in the Old Rondo Cemetery.

Next week: More Than 1,000 Women See Mrs. Wilson Make Economical Dishes