Eugene F. Bunch

Love all the comments about Bunch and Hobgood. Here are a few snippets I found out about Eugene Bunch’s personal life.

“Eugene F. Bunch, who robbed the express car on the Northeastern railroad, on Saturday morning, November 3. Of about $28,000, was at one time a resident of Biloxi.

In 1858 or 1859 Bunch’s father and family came to Biloxi and rented Mrs. Shearer’s house on Water street. The family consisted of wife, sons and daughters, and were very respectable people.

Eugene Bunch was a young man, 16 or 17 years of age. They lived in Biloxi a year or two and were then lost sight of to our informant.

During their residence in Biloxi they associated on terms of intimacy with the most respectable people in the two and were respected and esteemed, and so far as the rest of family are concerned, no whisper of bad conduct on their part has ever been heard. All lived respectably and died in good repute.

Eugene Bunch, the robber, came to Biloxi on Sunday last summer and spent the day in social intercourse with friends and old acquaintances. He seems of late years to have been a black sheep in a family of respectability.”

The Biloxi Herald. November 11, 1888.

A little something about his “wife.” 

“…Cora Ellis, passing as Mrs. Girard, of Tyler, Tex., who had arrived here on her way from Covington, LA (the place where Pounds was arrested), to Texas, was arrested, and $300 of the stolen money was found sewed in her clothing. She has been living with E.F. Bunch, who committed the train robbery. The woman confessed that Bunch gave her the money.

The detectives expect to capture Bunch within two days. He secured $10,300 cash from the express car. He is 45 years old, was born in Noxubee county, Miss., is six feet two inches tall, has red hair and whiskers, was once school teacher at Amite, La., and later clerk of Cook country, Tex.; resided at Gainesville, but was indicted for forgery, and left there two years ago; was with the Burrows boy in the Texas Narrow Gauge train robbery near Texarkana; was arrested, turned state’s evidence, was bailed out by the Southern Express company, disappeared and was not heard of again until the robbery ten days ago.

Among the articles found in ‘Mrs. Girard’s’ trunk was a package containing eight dynamite cartridges. She also had two heavy revolvers, which, she stated, she always carried, and slept with them under her pillow.”

Trenton Evening Times. November 13, 1888.

“… He was well known about Oskya, Miss., about sixteen miles east of which town he once resided. He had an inordinate passion for gambling, which caused him to be disliked in some neighborhoods, and it is said taught some of his scholars to play poker instead of the rudiments of learning.

…The officers who know him say that Bunch is a desperate character, and some make the prediction that he will never be captured alive unless he is caught unarmed, which is hardly probably, since a brace of six-shooters and a bowie knife are his constant companions.”

The Daily Picayune. November 15, 1888.

“… Eugene F. Bunch was born in Mississippi in 1841. The family removed to Louisiana in his childhood and settled in Tangipahoa Parish. He was an apt student and received a good education. When the war broke out he enlisted in a company raised in the parish and made a gallant record in the service. The wildness of his disposition first manifested itself in the campaign in Eastern Louisiana.

At the close of the war Bunch returned to Tangipahoa and opened a school at Amite. Dissipation soon led to his retirement and he went to Texas, locating at Gainesville. He reformed, was elected City Clerk, and did a thriving business as a land speculator. The tide turned, and he defaulted to a large amount. He then became a train robber, and twice in quick succession held up trains near Texarkana in 1886-7.

While enjoying the proceeds of these robberies he became acquainted with a woman, attractive, educated, and of good family, who had left her husband and was living in Dallas. She became infatuated with him and accompanied him on his return to Louisiana.

On Nov. 3, 1888, Bunch robbed the New Orleans and Northeastern train at Derby, Miss., securing nearly $30,000. He fled to the wilds of Honey Island, and from thence has made more than one raid on trains, principally on the Illinois Central Railroad. Of these raids the most recent and most profitable were the robberies at Duck Hill and Newsom’s Mill.

Detectives were put on this track immediately after the Derby robbery, but their search met with only indifferent success.”

The New York Times. August 23, 1892.

“The youngest of a family of two sons and a daughter… Bunch proved to be a good solider and gave many evidence of that bravery approaching almost to desperation which marked his career in life. While not exactly of a quarrelsome disposition, he was quick tempered and became involved in many quarrels and fights with his comrades, but nothing serious came from these differences. He contracted some bad habits, however, during the campaign around Port Hudson, Baton Rouge and Eastern Louisiana which was a passion for gambling and drinking.

… taught school at Amite city. His habits mitigated against his success as a pedagogue and soon his dissipation became known and, as usual in a small country, became common talk. He was deposed and for a time matters went from bad to worse. He became a confirmed drunkard, and was soon an object of pity or contempt.

Finding that all chances of obtaining a livelihood in that community were at an end, Bunch emigrated to Texas and started anew a career which ended in his death. Gainesville, in Cooke county, Tex., was the place at which he determined to remain and he quickly became quite a popular man, having in a great extent reformed, especially the drinking habit. His father, mother, sister and brother had meantime died, victims to consumption, of which insidious diseases Bunch believed he would himself eventually fall a victim.

He was elected city clerk in Gainesville, and having access to all the books and papers, as well as handling considerable cash, Bunch lived in clover. Land was at that time being eagerly sought for in that locality, and Bunch availed himself of this fact to reap a harvest of money. His financial ventures and the discrepancies in his cash soon became known, but not before Bunch had shaken the dust of Gainesville from his feet. His ill-gotten wealth, however, seemed to take unto itself wings, and was soon gone. Bunch thus adopted the life of a train robber.

… Bunch was a tall, not bad looking man. In fact a typical Texas brave, and strange as it may appear, the woman became infatuated with him. In the latter part of May or early in June 1888, Bunch assumed the name of captain, and with his ostensible wife he appeared in New Orleans. They took up their quarters at a Carondelet street boarding-house, and although living quietly, yet attracted attention from the contrast in their appearance.

During the following month the pair frequently absented themselves from the city, sometimes for several days at a time; their little tours or excursions being to Bay St. Louis, Pearlington, Pearl River, Covington and various places in St. Tammany, Washington or Tangipahoa parishes, to all which Bunch was well acquainted, and knew every foot of ground, every bypath, stream or road, for he was an excellent woodsman and hunter, being a splendid shot with the rifle, and thanks to his Texas education, exceedingly quick with his revolver and a good marksman. These accomplishments in a manner explained his great fondness for weapons, a good stock of which he always had in his room…”

The Daily Picayune. August 23, 1892.

“…When Rube Burrows was killed in Alabama there was a disposition to make a sort of outlaw hero of him. He was not, however, to be compared with Bunch in any respect, whose life if fully told, would give enough material for half a dozen sensationally stories.

Detective Jackson, who led the chase against both me, and who knew both thoroughly, says that to compare Bunch with Burrows was a compare a comet to the lighted end of a cigar.

‘Burrows,’ he said, ‘was made a hero of by the enthusiasts. He would peach on his pals when in a tight place; he would sacrifice his liberty of his partner in crime to his own personal safety. Bunch would have died before doing that. He was a far braver man, far more dangerous and far more reckless; but his heart was as big as a bucket. He was jovial, jolly and gay – a typical bandit, who thought his profession of road agent a brave and proper one. He had two faults, and might have excaped but for them – he was too companionable and talked too much, and he believed too much in human nature. He had an unfortunate confidence in his friends.’

This opinion is shared by every one who knew Bunch, and no man was better known in the Southwest under his own name or as Gerard or Grail, as he frequently called himself. He went everywhere and met everybody; was a great traveler, and had been to every portion of the country, and there are probably thousands of people who have met a jolly, companionable, good-looking man full of fun and generous to a fault, and been very much taken with him, never knowing that it was Capt. Eugene Bunch, the great train robber.

The Kalamazoo Gazette. October 19, 1892