Lottie Deno and Mary Poindexter
Cowboys and longhorns, soldiers and forts, Comanche, the buffalo trade, 18 saloons, and an abundance of "soiled doves" were the sights greeting beautiful Lottie Deno as she rode into Fort Griffin Flat from Jacksboro, sitting next to the driver atop the stage coach. To the denizens of Fort Griffin Flat, known as "The Toughest Town in Texas," and described as "one of the wildest... gambling hellholes ever spawned on the frontier," this was shocking behavior from an apparently well-bred lady of culture and refinement.
The wild and woolly town of Fort Griffin, also known as "The Flat," enjoyed a reputation in the 1870s as having "a man for breakfast every morning." The frontier community sprang up at the crossroads of two major cattle trails that converged below a bluff, atop which the U.S. military established a frontier fort in 1867 during the Indian Wars. Frontier legends Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, John Wesley Hardin, Billy the Kid, Sheriff Pat Garrett and Bat Masterson once sauntered down its streets.
Lottie Deno was one of the most famous lady
gamblers in the Old West.
Lottie took up residence in a Clear Fork shanty. An air of mystery developed about her. She was a vivacious redhead with sparkling brown eyes, who was seldom seen except when she visited the stores for supplies, or at night when she played cards at the Bee Hive Saloon or presided over its gambling room.
Lottie was known by many names, including Carlotta J. Thompkins (the name she was christened with), Laura Denbo, Faro Nell, and Charlotte Thurmond. She was dubbed Lottie Deno the night she won every hand of poker from every opponent foolish enough to think he could win. After the very last hand of the very last game had been played and won by her, a drunken cowboy yelled out from the saloon's rear corner, "Honey, with winnings like them, you oughter call yourself "Lotta Dinero."
Seeing the advantages of a nickname to protect her real identity from family and friends, she thereafter called herself "Lottie Deno." This new name protected Lottie's pious Episcopalian family back in Kentucky from knowing that she supported herself by gambling, and that the money she frequently sent them came from what they would have considered shocking and illicit means. Instead, she told her mother and sister that she had married a wealthy cattleman from Texas. She would never see her family again nor would they ever learn the truth about her.
She was born on April 21, 1844, to upper-class Warsaw Kentucky farm owners. Warsaw, in the area of Lexington and Louisville, traded with both northern and southern states (her father served in the Kentucky General Assembly), though the region was southern in flavor, and slavery was prevalent. As did many a young lady of the same exalted station in life, Lottie had her own nanny, Mary Poindexter, a seven-foot-tall slave who exhibited devotion and loyalty to Lottie as both protector and companion, even after the Civil War and for many years to come.
The main crops of the Warsaw region were tobacco and hemp, which were shipped north to Detroit and south to New Orleans. Other interests of the area, then as now, were horse breeding, horse racing and horse trading. Lottie's father engaged in these lucrative pursuits as well as selling crops.
Instead, Lottie, Johnny, and the ever-present Mary Poindexter, took to the Mississippi River, becoming experts at working the riverboat gambling parlors and tidewater towns.
"Not much is known about Lottie's days on the river," says Rose, but in her later life, Lottie recounted a story that "the boat she and Mary were traveling on stopped along a sandbar in the river. Late in the evening, Lottie and Mary decided to take a walk. Lottie preceded Mary along the shoreline, carrying her parasol and enjoying the evening air. Suddenly Mary's sharp eye spotted a large rattlesnake coiled and ready to strike her mistress. The tall, strong woman lunged forward and threw herself on top of the reptile, saving Lottie from injury. Mary herself was bitten and became deathly ill, necessitating the amputation of a finger."
Mississippi Riverboat gambling, 1890s.
Near the end of the War, Lottie decided to head west for San Antonio where she continued practicing her profession. On one occasion, a young Union soldier accused Lottie of cheating and went for her. Mary Poindexter jumped between the two, grabbed the soldier and threw him overboard into the river.
On the frontier, every professional gambler cheated. As one biographer put it, "An expert card player, Lottie could win a good percentage of the time," but "that was not enough for a woman who depended on gambling for a living and expected to maintain the standard of elegance she had known from childhood."
San Antonio was a wide-open gambling town, and Lottie was soon hired as a dealer at Frank Thurmond's University Club, receiving a percentage of the winnings. Cowboys lined up, hats in hand, for the privilege of playing the pretty lady.
As a lady of social distinction, Lottie wore the latest fashions and never permitted smoking, drinking or cussing at her table. Mary Poindexter sat behind her on a stool and watched for cheaters or surly losers. Lottie's dress and manners dispelled suspicions of her cheating and she became the highly respected "Angel of San Antonio."
Lottie fell in love with part-Cherokee boss Frank Thurmond and remained loyal to him, dumping her other admirers. During a poker game, Frank and another player got into a fight. Frank killed the man with his Bowie knife which he kept on a string down his back and could easily access just by reaching down his shirt collar. The man's family put a bounty on Frank, who was forced to leave town. It is thought that Frank later taught the Bowie knife hiding place to his friend, Doc Holliday.
Soon Lottie followed looking for him, gambling her way around West Texas in Fort Concho (where she was called "Mystic Maude"), San Angelo, Denison, Fort Worth and Jacksboro, eventually finding Frank working at the Bee Hive in Fort Griffin. Lottie got a job there dealing cards and it was here that she was introduced to Frank's friend, Doc Holliday, who soon became an admiring customer at Lottie's faro table. On one well-recorded occasion, Doc lost $3,000 to the lady.
Doc Holliday was one of the most deadly shootists
in the American West.
Over the front batwing doors of the Bee Hive hung this rhyme:
Within this Hive, we are alive;
Good whiskey makes us funny.
Get your horse tied, come inside;
And taste the flavor of our honey.
Legend has it that, during a faro game at the Bee Hive, Doc and Lottie were in the middle of a game when Big Nose Kate Elder, Doc's girlfriend, arrived in a jealous rage. An argument ensued in which both women drew their guns, ready to fire. Doc had to step in and stop the fight.
Cynthia Rose claims that, "according to several historians, Kate and Lottie had heated words one night over Doc. After Kate and Doc had made it known they were a team, Kate began to show her jealousy" and "one evening she accused Lottie of trying to steal his affections. The accusation brought Lottie to her feet:
"Why you low down slinkin' slut!" shouted Lottie. "If I should step in soft cow manure, I would not even clean my boot on that bastard! I'll show you a thing or two!" whereupon she pulled a gun, and Kate also drew a weapon. Doc Holliday placed himself between the two women."
Bearing in mind Lottie's reputation as an elegant lady, and the fact that stories tend to get ever juicier when told by many people over a long period of time, this may not be historically accurate, no matter what the historians say. But one thing is probable -- the two women had serious words over Doc.
At Fort Griffin, Johnny Golden, the jockey-gambler, came back into Lottie's life—but not for long. Although he found his former sweetheart dealing cards at the Bee Hive, next day, he was shot dead on the street behind the saloon. Lottie paid for his burial suit plus $65.00 for a coffin, but did not attend the funeral. Rather she sat in her house with the curtains drawn.
The most famous story about Lottie during her Fort Griffin days is this one, taken from "Doc Holliday" by John Myers:
It was during the time Lottie was dealing faro in the Flats that a couple of tinhorn gamblers, known respectfully as Monte Bill and Smokey Joe, quarreled over a short card game. Each accused the other of cheating, and each was probably right. Each thought he could beat the other to the draw and each was only half right. There were two corpses on the floor when Sheriff Bill Cruger rushed in to take charge. Everybody that could had made tracks, with the exception of the red-headed Lottie, who was coolly counting her chips as the sheriff arrived. When the sheriff said that he couldn't understand why she had remained on the scene, she merely murmured, "But then you have never been a desperate woman."
In several versions of the story, the money on the table that night disappeared and most witnesses believed it ended up in Lottie's purse.
It was said of Lottie that she had class and refinement. A lifelong friend told an interviewer many years later that she "was a fine looker... in manners a typical Southern Lady. She had nothing to do with the common prostitutes... she was not a 'gold digger'." Lottie, "stood apart from the rabble".
After five years, Lottie and Frank left Texas for New Mexico where they finally married. Not long after, Frank for the second time used his Bowie knife to terminate a man. It was self-defense, but it was the turning point for Frank and Lottie. They swore off gambling and settled down in Deming. Frank succeeded in mining and real estate, eventually becoming vice president of the Deming National Bank.
Lottie, under her married name Charlotte Thurmond, became a well respected member of the community. Although she quit dealing, according to legend, in 1892 the original structure of St. Luke's frontier church was financed by $40,000 of winnings from a poker game with Doc Holliday in attendance and hosted by Lottie Deno. And, for a fact, Lottie Deno made one of the altar cloths used by St. Luke's. Respectability was at last hers.
Frank and Lottie were together over 40 years when he passed away in 1908. Lottie lived another 26 years. When she died in 1934, she was buried beside Frank, her headstone set a few inches behind Frank's left shoulder "in the lookout seat."
Epilogue: The character immortalized as the beautiful, redheaded Miss Kitty who ran the Longbranch Saloon in the famous "Gunsmoke" radio and television series, was based on Lottie Deno.
The wild and woolly town of Fort Griffin, also known as "The Flat," enjoyed a reputation in the 1870s as having "a man for breakfast every morning." The frontier community sprang up at the crossroads of two major cattle trails that converged below a bluff, atop which the U.S. military established a frontier fort in 1867 during the Indian Wars. Frontier legends Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, John Wesley Hardin, Billy the Kid, Sheriff Pat Garrett and Bat Masterson once sauntered down its streets.
Lottie Deno was one of the most famous lady gamblers in the Old West.
Lottie took up residence in a Clear Fork shanty. An air of mystery developed about her. She was a vivacious redhead with sparkling brown eyes, who was seldom seen except when she visited the stores for supplies, or at night when she played cards at the Bee Hive Saloon or presided over its gambling room.
Lottie was known by many names, including Carlotta J. Thompkins (the name she was christened with), Laura Denbo, Faro Nell, and Charlotte Thurmond. She was dubbed Lottie Deno the night she won every hand of poker from every opponent foolish enough to think he could win. After the very last hand of the very last game had been played and won by her, a drunken cowboy yelled out from the saloon's rear corner, "Honey, with winnings like them, you oughter call yourself "Lotta Dinero."
Seeing the advantages of a nickname to protect her real identity from family and friends, she thereafter called herself "Lottie Deno." This new name protected Lottie's pious Episcopalian family back in Kentucky from knowing that she supported herself by gambling, and that the money she frequently sent them came from what they would have considered shocking and illicit means. Instead, she told her mother and sister that she had married a wealthy cattleman from Texas. She would never see her family again nor would they ever learn the truth about her.
She was born on April 21, 1844, to upper-class Warsaw Kentucky farm owners. Warsaw, in the area of Lexington and Louisville, traded with both northern and southern states (her father served in the Kentucky General Assembly), though the region was southern in flavor, and slavery was prevalent. As did many a young lady of the same exalted station in life, Lottie had her own nanny, Mary Poindexter, a seven-foot-tall slave who exhibited devotion and loyalty to Lottie as both protector and companion, even after the Civil War and for many years to come.
The main crops of the Warsaw region were tobacco and hemp, which were shipped north to Detroit and south to New Orleans. Other interests of the area, then as now, were horse breeding, horse racing and horse trading. Lottie's father engaged in these lucrative pursuits as well as selling crops.
Instead, Lottie, Johnny, and the ever-present Mary Poindexter, took to the Mississippi River, becoming experts at working the riverboat gambling parlors and tidewater towns.
"Not much is known about Lottie's days on the river," says Rose, but in her later life, Lottie recounted a story that "the boat she and Mary were traveling on stopped along a sandbar in the river. Late in the evening, Lottie and Mary decided to take a walk. Lottie preceded Mary along the shoreline, carrying her parasol and enjoying the evening air. Suddenly Mary's sharp eye spotted a large rattlesnake coiled and ready to strike her mistress. The tall, strong woman lunged forward and threw herself on top of the reptile, saving Lottie from injury. Mary herself was bitten and became deathly ill, necessitating the amputation of a finger."
Mississippi Riverboat gambling, 1890s. Near the end of the War, Lottie decided to head west for San Antonio where she continued practicing her profession. On one occasion, a young Union soldier accused Lottie of cheating and went for her. Mary Poindexter jumped between the two, grabbed the soldier and threw him overboard into the river.
On the frontier, every professional gambler cheated. As one biographer put it, "An expert card player, Lottie could win a good percentage of the time," but "that was not enough for a woman who depended on gambling for a living and expected to maintain the standard of elegance she had known from childhood."
San Antonio was a wide-open gambling town, and Lottie was soon hired as a dealer at Frank Thurmond's University Club, receiving a percentage of the winnings. Cowboys lined up, hats in hand, for the privilege of playing the pretty lady.
As a lady of social distinction, Lottie wore the latest fashions and never permitted smoking, drinking or cussing at her table. Mary Poindexter sat behind her on a stool and watched for cheaters or surly losers. Lottie's dress and manners dispelled suspicions of her cheating and she became the highly respected "Angel of San Antonio."
Lottie fell in love with part-Cherokee boss Frank Thurmond and remained loyal to him, dumping her other admirers. During a poker game, Frank and another player got into a fight. Frank killed the man with his Bowie knife which he kept on a string down his back and could easily access just by reaching down his shirt collar. The man's family put a bounty on Frank, who was forced to leave town. It is thought that Frank later taught the Bowie knife hiding place to his friend, Doc Holliday.
Soon Lottie followed looking for him, gambling her way around West Texas in Fort Concho (where she was called "Mystic Maude"), San Angelo, Denison, Fort Worth and Jacksboro, eventually finding Frank working at the Bee Hive in Fort Griffin. Lottie got a job there dealing cards and it was here that she was introduced to Frank's friend, Doc Holliday, who soon became an admiring customer at Lottie's faro table. On one well-recorded occasion, Doc lost $3,000 to the lady.
Doc Holliday was one of the most deadly shootists in the American West.
Over the front batwing doors of the Bee Hive hung this rhyme:
Within this Hive, we are alive;
Good whiskey makes us funny.
Get your horse tied, come inside;
And taste the flavor of our honey.
Legend has it that, during a faro game at the Bee Hive, Doc and Lottie were in the middle of a game when Big Nose Kate Elder, Doc's girlfriend, arrived in a jealous rage. An argument ensued in which both women drew their guns, ready to fire. Doc had to step in and stop the fight.
Cynthia Rose claims that, "according to several historians, Kate and Lottie had heated words one night over Doc. After Kate and Doc had made it known they were a team, Kate began to show her jealousy" and "one evening she accused Lottie of trying to steal his affections. The accusation brought Lottie to her feet:
"Why you low down slinkin' slut!" shouted Lottie. "If I should step in soft cow manure, I would not even clean my boot on that bastard! I'll show you a thing or two!" whereupon she pulled a gun, and Kate also drew a weapon. Doc Holliday placed himself between the two women."
Bearing in mind Lottie's reputation as an elegant lady, and the fact that stories tend to get ever juicier when told by many people over a long period of time, this may not be historically accurate, no matter what the historians say. But one thing is probable -- the two women had serious words over Doc.
At Fort Griffin, Johnny Golden, the jockey-gambler, came back into Lottie's life—but not for long. Although he found his former sweetheart dealing cards at the Bee Hive, next day, he was shot dead on the street behind the saloon. Lottie paid for his burial suit plus $65.00 for a coffin, but did not attend the funeral. Rather she sat in her house with the curtains drawn.
The most famous story about Lottie during her Fort Griffin days is this one, taken from "Doc Holliday" by John Myers:
It was during the time Lottie was dealing faro in the Flats that a couple of tinhorn gamblers, known respectfully as Monte Bill and Smokey Joe, quarreled over a short card game. Each accused the other of cheating, and each was probably right. Each thought he could beat the other to the draw and each was only half right. There were two corpses on the floor when Sheriff Bill Cruger rushed in to take charge. Everybody that could had made tracks, with the exception of the red-headed Lottie, who was coolly counting her chips as the sheriff arrived. When the sheriff said that he couldn't understand why she had remained on the scene, she merely murmured, "But then you have never been a desperate woman."
In several versions of the story, the money on the table that night disappeared and most witnesses believed it ended up in Lottie's purse.
It was said of Lottie that she had class and refinement. A lifelong friend told an interviewer many years later that she "was a fine looker... in manners a typical Southern Lady. She had nothing to do with the common prostitutes... she was not a 'gold digger'." Lottie, "stood apart from the rabble".
After five years, Lottie and Frank left Texas for New Mexico where they finally married. Not long after, Frank for the second time used his Bowie knife to terminate a man. It was self-defense, but it was the turning point for Frank and Lottie. They swore off gambling and settled down in Deming. Frank succeeded in mining and real estate, eventually becoming vice president of the Deming National Bank.
Lottie, under her married name Charlotte Thurmond, became a well respected member of the community. Although she quit dealing, according to legend, in 1892 the original structure of St. Luke's frontier church was financed by $40,000 of winnings from a poker game with Doc Holliday in attendance and hosted by Lottie Deno. And, for a fact, Lottie Deno made one of the altar cloths used by St. Luke's. Respectability was at last hers.
Frank and Lottie were together over 40 years when he passed away in 1908. Lottie lived another 26 years. When she died in 1934, she was buried beside Frank, her headstone set a few inches behind Frank's left shoulder "in the lookout seat."
Epilogue: The character immortalized as the beautiful, redheaded Miss Kitty who ran the Longbranch Saloon in the famous "Gunsmoke" radio and television series, was based on Lottie Deno.
Source: Maggie Van Ostrand, August, 2007
About the Author: Maggie Van Ostrand's articles have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, various magazines; monthly in the Mexican publication, El Ojo Del Lago and www.mexconnect.com, and numerous contributions to Texas Escapes Online Magazine, from which this article was provided.
Return To The Homepage
Return To Other Notable Poindexters
