the legend of red beard and rowdy joe
Posted on 13. Aug, 2010 by Nick in culture
words > CRAIG AINSWORTH
In the year 1872, Delano’s dusty roads, cattle drives, and lawlessness set the scene for some of the most famous gunfights in the history of the West. Notorious gunfighter Joseph “Rowdy Joe” Lowe and his wife, Kate Lowe, also known as “Rowdy Kate,” established a saloon in the late summer.
Joe was intoxicated most of the time and was described as a “wild-man,” as unbearable to his friends as he was to his enemies. Kate was a very attractive young woman and was reportedly the only person that could keep a handle on Joe during his fits of rage. In the early fall of 1872, Edward “Red” Beard made his appearance in Delano and quickly opened a dance hall next door to Rowdy Joe’s. Red got his name from his red hair and beard. He was large in stature and said to be “red as a salmon,” a dirty, unkempt man with a “lazy walk.” During the Civil War, he deserted his wife and three children to head west.
Red Beard and Rowdy Joe owned the two main dance halls in west Wichita. They were situated side-by-side, 50ft apart and about 350ft from the west end of the Douglas Avenue Bridge, shielded from the sight of neighboring Wichitans by the row of cottonwood trees that lined the bank of the Arkansas River. Red Beard’s dance house was a rough, one-story building, made of unpainted cottonwood boards. The saloon was about 100ft long and brightly lit with kerosene lamps. The main entrance was on the south side of the building and accessible from Chicago Avenue, which is now called Douglas Avenue. The front doors opened directly into the dance hall. The back-end of the building had seven bedrooms and a kitchen that was divided by a central hall. The front end of the building had tables for gambling and an elevated stage for bands. On the other side of the dance hall was a long bar that would accommodate up to four bartenders. Stored behind the bartenders you could see four sawed off shotguns standing on their butts and lined across the back mirror. It is unclear if the guns actually worked or if they were just there for decoration.
In June of 1873, the chain of events that led to the death of Red Beard, and the end of Delano’s most famous Bawdy Houses, began. Tuesday June 3, 1873, soldiers from Company A in the 6th Calvary were drinking in Red Beard’s saloon. Emma Stanley, who was employed by Red, took five dollars from one of the soldiers. When she wouldn’t return the money to him, he drew his pistol and shot her in the “fleshy part” of her thigh. When this happened, Red grabbed his gun and began shooting into the crowd. Red shot two of the soldiers, one in the neck and the other in the leg, shattering his shinbone. The two men that started the shooting escaped the gunfight unharmed. The Calvary felt the shooting was unjust and vowed revenge. About two o’clock in the morning, thirty soldiers circled the Sheriff’s house to prevent his interference. The rest of the troops quietly moved to Beard’s dance hall, and with torches in hand they set fire to the structure. Two of the women that lived in the back rooms received slight wounds from the blaze. One of the girls that was burned was Emma Stanley, the same girl who had been shot earlier in the thigh for not returning the five dollars. While Red’s saloon was burning to the ground, bystanders decided to grab buckets of water to save Rowdy Joe’s building.
While Red was rebuilding, Rowdy Joe’s business increased dramatically. Joe’s success was a source of severe hatred for Red Beard. Red allowed his grudge to fester for months until Monday night October 27, 1873, when after spending the day in Wichita drinking with his friend Jim Goodwin, he decided to let loose his frustrations. The two returned to Delano about 6:30 that evening. Red was highly intoxicated and kept saying that there was going to be a fight that night. Goodwin left Beard and went to Rowdy Joe’s to warn him, but Joe, who was already quite drunk, did not pay any attention to the threats. Later in the evening, after finding out how business was at Rowdy Joe’s, Red walked over to the east windows of his place where he could see through into Rowdy Joe’s saloon. Beard had his “shooter” out and was threatening to settle a grudge between Joe and himself. Several times Beard, who was still quite drunk, moved to the east windows of his establishment where he could see Joe walking back and forth next door. Red started pointing his gun out the window toward Lowe’s saloon, but each time his friends dragged him away and calmed him down. Red’s flashy mistress, Josephine DeMerritt, tried to lure him to bed, but Red was focused more on blood than on sex. Finally Red braced himself against the bar and told the crowd, “All you sons of bitches keep away for I am liable to give it to any of you”. Holding his pistol in both hands, he fired at Rowdy Joe through the windows, hitting him in the neck. Minutes later Rowdy Joe, Kate, and four or five Texans, burst through Red’s front door. Joe said, “Who is the son of a bitch that shot me?” Then, like any good western, a gunfight ensued. It is unclear who shot first: one report claims that Red shot first as Joe entered the saloon, another says that Joe fired a shot into the ceiling with his double barrel shotgun, and yet another says that Joe punched Red and his gun went off in the scuffle. One thing that is clear is that Joe did fire his shotgun into the ceiling, accidentally hitting William “Billie” Anderson. Billie was hit in the head and blinded for life as a result. As the gunfire continued, Kate pushed Rowdy Joe out the front door as Red escaped through the side. Red returned a short time later claiming that he was “going to have blood tonight.” He began asking for his shotgun. His mistress, Josephine DeMerritt, or “Miss Joe” as she was known, told him that he had “left it in Wichita” earlier that evening. He accused Miss Joe of hiding it from him and flew into a rage, saying she had set up a “job” on him. He knocked her to the floor and would have shot her if not for the men who pulled him off. Once he was restrained, Miss Joe jumped up and ran into the back where the rest of the girls were hiding, but when Red was released, he raised his gun and began firing into the back room. Instead of hitting Miss Joe, he struck Annie Franklin, or “Miss Ann,” in the abdomen. Red then rushed out of the building to look for his shotgun in Wichita; however, Red Beard only made it as far as the west end of the Douglas Avenue Bridge. Rowdy Joe was waiting for him in the bushes and shot at Beard from behind, hitting him in the hip and shoulder. Rowdy Joe immediately went looking for City Marshal Mike Meagher at Progressive Hall, a billiard parlor in Wichita. Joe told the Sheriff that there had been a shooting across the river and he guessed that he had killed Red, though he was too drunk to be sure. Rowdy Joe was jailed and then released after he posted a $2,000 bond. Two weeks later, on Tuesday November 11th, 1873, Red Beard died. Not wanting to pay for a lengthy trial, the local sentiment was that by getting rid of Red Beard, Joe did more good for the community than bad. On Wednesday December 10th, 1873, after a short trial and a few minutes of deliberation, “Rowdy Joe” Lowe was pronounced “not guilty” on the charge of second-degree murder. Days later a new warrant was issued for Lowe in the shooting and blinding of Mr. “Billie” Anderson. Rowdy Joe was apprehended, but he soon escaped with the help of Rowdy Kate, one of his bartenders, a few friends, and possibly the help of a Sheriff that was bribed or may have just been sympathetic.
After a severe financial depression, a surge in crime, and the ending of the cattle years, Wichita began moving bawdy houses, casinos, and saloons into Wichita proper, in order to provide the town with more tax revenue and better control over the crime. M.R. Moser bought the building that was Red’s Dance House, moved it to Main Street and turned it into a wagon shop. Rowdy Joe managed to elude law enforcement, as well as many other people that would have liked to see him dead, until 1899 when the Wichita Eagle reported that a former policeman gunned him down in a Denver Saloon for insulting the Denver Police Department.
In its early history, Delano had no police to maintain the peace; instead saloon owners would take the law in their own hands and try to maintain order as best they could. However, many saloon, brothel, and bawdy house owners were as tainted as the outlaws they served. The site where Red Beard and Rowdy Joe’s saloons once stood, as well as the spot where some of the most famous gunfights in the history of the west took place, is still visible today. Located west of the West Bank Stage, between North Sycamore Street and McLean Boulevard, north of Douglas Avenue and just south of where the cottonwood trees are growing is the site of Historic Delano and some of the most famous gunfights the Wild West had ever seen.
