Author: Karen Sikes Collins
When Kate Moore was 16 years old, a handsome 19 year old Confederate soldier came here to court her. Kate, the beautiful daughter of Martin and Elizabeth Moore, grew up here in this log house. Her family was fairly rich; her father was a successful merchant, land investor, cattle raiser, and horseman.
Her suitor, Ben Thompson, had joined the Confederate army the day after newspapers announced the attack on Ft. Sumter. So by the time he went AWOL to court Kate, he had two years of fighting to help his image of an experienced older man. She fell hard for Ben and four months later they married. Kate was barely 17 and Ben had just turned 20. Ben left her two days after their wedding beginning a lifelong pattern of quick visits and long absences.
Back in Austin a few months later, Ben had a run-in with Kate’s sixteen year old brother, Jimmy. Probably here in this log house, Ben found his mother-in-law crying because Jimmy had taken all her iron pots and skillets to sell to a local factory needing iron to melt for cannon balls. Ben said he would take care of the matter. Kate’s mother, aware of Ben’s reputation (he had killed his first man when 14 years old), told Ben not to hurt Jimmy. When Ben found Jimmy, he fired over his head, but it scared Jimmy so badly that he left town and didn’t return until after the war ended.
Ben left again to join his unit on the Rio Grande. A gambling incident turned deadly and he hurriedly returned to Kate who by then was living with Ben’s mother in Austin. One evening seeing Ben get his gun, both Kate and his mother begged him to stay home. But he left and ended up seriously wounding two men. Kate advised him to spend the night at neighbor Sterzing’s house for safety. One of the men died but Ben’s trial was delayed till the end of the war (the Confederacy was short of men).
Kate and Ben were friends of the Davis family who lived north of this log house where Northwest Park is today. After the Civil War when Austin was under the governance of Federal troops, Ben, in trouble again, raced his horse north on the Upper Georgetown (Burnet) Road. Blackstone Davis was hoeing corn that morning when he heard shooting in the direction of town. He went to the fence and saw a horseman coming with a squad of cavalry shooting at him. He knew that anyone the Yankees were shooting at was a friend of his, so he took the top rails off the fence and motioned the rider to turn. When the rider got close, Blackstone saw it was Ben Thompson, a long time friend. Ben jumped the low place, waved at Black, and headed for the timber on Shoal Creek. Black replaced the rails and hid in the corn.
In July 1865 Kate gave birth to a daughter, Mary Elizabeth. Six weeks later she was daily visiting her husband who was in jail awaiting trial. He managed to escape, and this time he fled to Mexico and joined Maximillian’s army. During the nearly two years Ben was fighting in Mexico, little Mary Elizabeth died.
When Ben finally returned from Mexico, he resumed his profession as a gambler and he and Kate, who was pregnant again, moved into their own home. It wasn’t long before Kate’s brother Jimmy began harassing her. When he struck her knocking her to the floor, Ben hunted him down and again tried to scare him with gunshots but this time a bullet cut into Jimmy’s side. Tried by a military court, Ben was found guilty and sentenced to four years in the Huntsville Penitentiary. He passed his 25th birthday and learned of Ben Jr.’s birth while in prison. Kate moved in with her mother, Elizabeth, two teenage sisters and bullying brother Jimmy who had fully recovered. Kate’s mother was financially secure thanks to her dead husband’s land and livestock investments and her own judicious stewardship. In the fall of 1870 President U. S. Grant pardoned Ben and others only two years into his sentence. He returned to Kate and son Ben Jr. in Austin.
Ben described himself as a gambler; others called him a deadly gunfighter; but even though he was addicted to gambling and drinking and excitement, he must have been a loving husband when he was around Kate. When he and his pal Phil Coe opened a successful saloon in Abilene, Kansas, Ben sent for little Bennie and Kate, who was pregnant again. On an evening buggy ride, the carriage overturned injuring all three. While Ben and Bennie’s broken bones healed, Kate’s arm had to be amputated.
Buck Walton, a lawyer and friend of the family, wrote about this incident: “This needful amputation of the arm of his wife gave Ben more pain than all other scenes of life. He stood by her while she, under the influence of chloroform, submitted for the arm to be taken… She is a beautiful woman, supremely lovely when young, and now retaining it all in matronly form.”
After three months convalescing, the little family traveled back to Austin to Ben’s mother’s house. The end of that terrible year brought the birth of a healthy baby girl named Katherine Florence called Katie. Ben managed to stay out of trouble for a whole year.
In 1873 Ben and his volatile brother Billy went to Ellsworth, Kansas, to gamble and enjoy the prostitutes there. Meanwhile Kate’s mother died. After a quick visit with his bereaved wife, Ben spent another year in Wichita, Kansas, as a dealer for faro and monte. He was back in Austin in February of 1875 where he, Kate, and two children were living with Kate’s recently married younger sister, Sallie Farrell. He was absent again when his 6-month old daughter Augusta Lorraine died.
Kate’s husband Ben was said to have killed dozens of men though the number was much fewer. When interviewed by a journalist, Ben explained that he always let the other man fire first trusting that he would miss because he was in a hurry. Then Ben took deadly aim and was always judged not guilty because he fired in self defense.
Ben found by this time that many citizens of Austin admired him. He and Kate purchased a lovely home at 2009 University Avenue which would later look across the street at the University fountain. He had a financial interest in the gambling establishments in Austin and often was flush with cash. Sometimes short of cash, however, Ben would pawn Kate’s silver, and she would immediately redeem it. In 1880 he won an election for city Marshall. The newspapers noted that the town had never seen as quiet a time.
After killing a man in San Antonio and being jailed for months while awaiting trial, Ben told a reporter he intended to buy a farm just outside Austin and finally settle down.
His luck ran out in 1884 when he was ambushed and killed. A reporter said of Kate: “Although a lady usually of remarkable courage and bravery, she broke completely down…” For 21 years Kate had apparently loved her troublemaking philandering gambler husband, and his death seemed to unmoor her. Once wealthy, she was now faced with her husband’s many debts. Her 13-year-old daughter Katie went to Bastrop to live with her father’s sister, Mary Jane Gill. In 1891 Kate remarried a man named Baker and moved to Paris, TX. She was dead by 1895, at about 50 years old.
Kate was the only child of Martin and Elizabeth Moore to have children who survived to adulthood. Kate’s son Ben Jr. died at the age of 24 of tuberculosis and had no children. Katie Florence, however, married Bastrop County Judge Joseph Barton Price and they had one son, Ralph T. Price. From Ralph’s only child, Anne, lovely Kate and gunfighter Ben now have adult great great great grandchildren who are the result of their unusual love story. They are also the ONLY descendants of the builders of the Moore-Hancock Farmstead.
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