DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker tells it like this, and I'm just the one passin' it along. February 25, 1896. A Tuesday afternoon in Wichita Falls, Texas, and two cowboys walked into the City National Bank at Ohio and 7th Street with nothing good on their minds.
Their names were Foster Crawford and Elmer Lewis — folks called him Kid Lewis — and what they did that afternoon set the next twenty-four hours on a course that wouldn't end well for anybody. They robbed the bank. They killed cashier Frank Dorsey.
And they rode out of town on horseback with about four hundred and ten dollars. Now, Wichita Falls was not a town that was going to sit still for that. A posse came together fast — citizens and Texas Rangers both — and that same night, before the darkness had even fully settled in, they found Crawford and Kid Lewis hiding in a thicket outside of town.
Captured. Done. The law had them.
Here's where the story takes its turn. The Rangers had their prisoners. The prisoners were in the jail.
And then — the Rangers departed. On the night of February 26, a mob dragged Foster Crawford and Elmer Lewis out of that jail and lynched them in front of the very bank building where Frank Dorsey had died the day before. Four hundred and ten dollars.
One cashier dead. Two men lynched. And a town left to reckon with what two nights in February of 1896 had made of it.
What the marker says
On the afternoon of February 25, 1896, two cowboys, Foster Crawford and Elmer "Kid" Lewis, robbed the City National Bank, then located at Ohio and 7th Street (2 blocks east). They killed cashier Frank Dorsey, took about $410 cash, and fled on horseback. A posse of citizens and Texas Rangers captured the pair that night hiding in a thicket outside of town. The next day, after the Rangers departed, the anger of the townspeople turned to violence. On the night of February 26, a mob dragged the prisoners from the jail and lynched them in front of the bank building. (1978)