Legend says that after Stuckey was left by his fellow outlaws, he opened a small inn near the banks of the Chunky River on an old dirt stage road that had been cut from the humid pine forests of the Mississippi wilderness. While the Dalton Gang are an historically documented group of criminals, there is unfortunately no evidence to support the tale that the Dalton Gang ever actually passed through the town of Meridian, or even that a man named Stuckey had been a member of the gruesome bunch however, their infamy as train robbers would have most certainly made its way to the burgeoning railroad town, igniting the imagination and fear of the locals. Legend says several other members of the gang got away, but on that fateful day in 1892, the violent crime spree of the Dalton Gang would finally come to an end. He was captured and sentenced to a life in prison. Emmett Dalton survived despite receiving 23 gunshot wounds. Grat and Bob Dalton, as well as their fellow gang members Dick Broadwell and Bill Powers were also killed in the ensuing shootout. But their plans were quickly discovered and violence escalated rapidly in the streets of the small town leaving numerous dead, including the town Marshall Charles Connelly. On Octoin Cofeyville Kansas, the Dalton brothers and their cohorts attempt to do exactly as Bob had said, target two banks at once. He aspired to be the most infamous of them all, boasting he could "beat anything Jesse James ever did-rob two banks at once, in broad daylight." Unfortunately these haughty aspirations and inflated ego would quickly lead to the gang’s demise. In the Old West this wasn’t necessarily a stretch, tales of lawmen turned outlaw are rampant, but the Dalton Gang were a particularly infamous and violent bunch, only preceded in fame by the likes of Jesse James and Bonny & Clyde. Marshall, hunting down a horse thief in Oklahoma, their goodwill began to change and due to various reasons- mostly financial- the brothers ended up on the other side of the law. Initially they were a family of law men, but when the oldest brother Frank was killed while serving as Deputy U.S. Led by the three brothers- Grat, Emmett and Bob, the Daltons were born in Missouri and began moving west with opportunity. The Dalton Gang were some of the most notorious bank and train robbers in America at the time. But it was at this point, when Meridian began to grow with exponential leaps and bounds that legend claims a violent group of outlaws named the Dalton Gang passed through, leaving behind one of their members- a man that local legend suggests would terrorize the community just as the Dalton Gang would infamously go on to do out west. Its population of approximately 2,000 in 1870 doubled over the following decade to over 4,000, catalyzing a Golden Age of manufacturing and industry, making the once small settlement the largest city in the state for half of century. Once the war concluded Meridian began to rebuild, turning itself into a bustling post-war town. The town of Meridian was left in shambles. The troops were ordered to destroy as much of the railroad and military infrastructure of the town as possible, and by the time they left, over 115 miles of tracks were left in ruins, alongside dozens of bridges, storehouses and locomotive engines. Sherman led the campaign, reaching Meridian on February 14, 1864. The Union Army began to plan its assault eastward toward Meridian. Grant captured nearby Vicksburg in 1863 and in the process of his campaign burnt Jackson, capital of Mississippi, to the ground. But the decade of growth that came from the railway’s was quickly turned around by the destruction caused during the Civil War. Ball, would eventually become incorporated as Meridian in 1860. The community that grew around the new railway station, built by John T. Construction of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad began in 1853 on land that McElmore had sold. After receiving a 2,000 acre land grant, McLemore built a plantation and began partitioning off some of his acreage to attract newcomers. By 1831, Virginian Richard McLemore became the first settler to lay roots in the newly acquired American territory. It was the first treaty carried into effect by the infamous Indian Removal Act. On December 27, 1830, the federal government coerced the Choctaw leaders into signing the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit, ceding 11 million acres of tribal land to the United States in exchange for 15 million acres in what is today Oklahoma. Until 1830, this part of Mississippi was inhabited by the Choctaw, the first of what were considered “five civilized tribes” to be removed from the Southern portion of the United States.
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