"Machine Gun" Kelley
Cottondale, Wise County, Texas
Marker Inscription
During the Prohibition Era, organized crime increased. Big-name gangsters like Al Capone ruled the streets while public enemies such as Bonnie and Clyde swept across the country. One of the most infamous criminals of this time was George Francis Barnes Jr., also known as George B. “Machine Gun” Kelley. Born on July 17, 1900, in Chicago, Barnes grew up in Memphis. He briefly held a job and family, but following divorce and the loss of his job, he fell into bootlegging. He built up a nasty reputation, being jailed numerous times, and headed westward by the late 1920s. In 1930, he met the widow Kathryn Thorne. They eventually married, and joined together to go on crime sprees of higher and higher magnitudes, robbing banks across the south and midwest. Kathryn was known to be a good shot with various firearms, and eventually bought a Thompson machine gun for her husband, earning him his nickname. George and Kathryn robbed banks for years, gaining large amounts of money and notoriety. On July 22, 1933, the couple set out to kidnap Charles Urschel, an oil baron in Oklahoma City. They held him at the farm house of Kathryn’s stepfather Robert “Boss” Shannon in Wise County until the ransom of $200,000 was paid. However, in August the couple was caught and arrested. During one of the first court cases under the new Lindbergh law on kidnapping, George, Kathryn, and much of the Shannon family were given life sentences in prison, although boss was granted clemency after 11 years. George died of heart disease in Leavenworth Prison on July 18, 1954. George Barnes was buried here by Boss Sannon as nobody from George’s immediate family claimed the body.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
During Prohibition, George Francis Barnes Jr. — better known as "Machine Gun" Kelly — rose from bootlegger to notorious bank robber, aided by his wife Kathryn, who bought him the Thompson gun that gave him his name. In July 1933 the couple kidnapped Oklahoma City oil baron Charles Urschel and held him at a farmhouse in Wise County until a $200,000 ransom was paid. Caught within weeks, they were sentenced to life under the new federal kidnapping law, and Kelly was buried here after dying at Leavenworth in 1954.
Why it matters
The Urschel kidnapping was a landmark case for the young FBI and the new federal anti-kidnapping statutes, marking the era when Washington took on Depression-era gangsters.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · George "Machine Gun" Kelly
- · Kathryn Thorne Kelly
- · Charles Urschel
- · Robert "Boss" Shannon
Related events
- · Charles Urschel kidnapping
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Paschall
Bridgeport, TX
Robert and Molly Paschall settled near Salt Creek in 1876 and by 1902 had turned their home into the hub of a small farming community — housing the Paschall post office and the Paschall-Cottondale Telephone Company. Neighbors built a one-room schoolhouse called Gravel Hill and organized a Sabbath school, literary society, and Farmers Alliance chapter. Though the community faded in the early 20th century, the Paschall family has worked the land for six generations.
Site of Old Town Paradise
Paradise, TX
One of Wise County's earliest settlers, O.H.P. Read, made his home here in 1858 in a community first called Eldorado, where William M. Anderson opened a general store and surveyor Ben Banks laid out a town square. Renamed Paradise after a post office naming conflict in 1876, the town shifted northeast in the 1890s to be near the new Rock Island rail line, and "old" Paradise faded away by 1927 as its cotton crops failed. Today only a home built by Confederate Lt. William Hall Jay remains on the old square.
Trimble Cemetery
Decatur, TX
Trimble Cemetery served the tiny late-nineteenth-century community of Flatwood, also called Davis City, and takes its name from landowner James W. Trimble, who bought the ground in 1877. Its earliest marked graves—a one-year-old and a sixteen-year-old, both dying in 1877—date the burial ground to the community's first years. Formalized as a three-acre cemetery in 1921, it endures as one of the few remaining traces of a settlement that has otherwise vanished.
New Salem Freewill Baptist Church
Decatur, TX
In April 1893, Reverend Josephus Wesley Ford and several families organized this Freewill Baptist congregation southwest of Decatur. Ford, who had earlier pastored in Missouri, led the church until his death in 1898. Meeting at first only once a month, the congregation grew and eventually settled into a former schoolhouse after the Perrin School consolidated into Decatur's district.