Life of the Marlows

The story of the five Marlow brothers and their tribulations in late nineteenth-century Young County, Texas, was first related in 1892 by William Rathmell in Life of the Marlows. After killing a popular sheriff and escaping, Boone Marlow was murdered by bounty hunters. The other four brothers, arrested as accessories and jailed, made a daring break but were recaptured and later forced to fight off a lynch mob. Angry citizens ambushed the Marlows during a transfer to another town: two brothers were shot and killed, the other two severely wounded, and three mob members died. The surviving brothers eventually were exonerated, but members of the attack mob were prosecuted in cases that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Rathmell's book, biased in favor of the Marlows, has long been out of print. Robert K. DeArment has sifted through the evidence and presents an objective, annotated edition. Now the complete story can be told and readers can judge for themselves: were the Marlows as law-abiding as Rathmell claims? Or was the mob reacting with justified anger?