Dallas, TX
972-260-9334

Pat Garrett – Noted Law Officer

From Proud Heritage, Vol. 1 by DCPA, not currently in print.

Before he was nineteen, Pat Garrett left his parents home early in 1869 and settled for several years in Lancaster, Texas. Patrick Floyd Garrett was born June 5, 1850 in Chambers County, Alabama. He was of Scotch-Irish ancestry. Later his family moved to near Haynesville, Louisiana. He was restless and left home because he wanted to go west and herd cattle.

While riding through the Lancaster and Wilmer communities he met the Lowrey boys, sons of James B. Lowrey near Wilmer, Texas. He obtained a job with the Lowrey family on their 2300 acre farmland. He learned to ride, rope and shoot with Dudley and Nick Lowrey and Seth. It was a mutual friendship and he was quickly accepted by the Lowrey family. James B. Lowrey had a daughter named “Ida”, and in time he asked her to marry him. She did not accept his proposal since she considered him more like a brother. He left Lancaster a short time thereafter and went to New Mexico Territory, arriving at Fort Sumner in the Fall of 1878. He married a local senorita in a small village of Anton Chico, New Mexico in January 1881.

At this writing he had one living son, Jarvis Garrett who lived in New Mexico. In a letter to Flora and John Hurst’s daughter, Helen Hurst, he wrote her January 18, 1983: “There is no doubt but what he (Pat) had an abiding and deep love and affection for the Lowrey family since he named his first born “Ida” and his first son “Dudley”. N.O. (Nick) Lowrey born August 25, 1850, was the same age as Pat Garrett, born June 5, 1850. James B. Lowrey was the father of N. 0. Lowrey. N. 0. Lowrey was the father of Flora (Lowrey) Hurst, Flora was the mother of Helen Hurst.

In 1880, Pat Garrett ran for sheriff in New Mexico and was elected. That’s when he found that Billy the Kid (Wm. H. Bonney, notorious young outlaw) had killed the leader of a posse out to capture him. He kept after Billy and finally on the night of July 14, in a home on the grounds of Fort Sumner, about midnight, when Billy appeared in a doorway, Garrett fired two shots, the first of which killed him. The rest is history.

Pat didn’t run for sheriff again but instead returned to his cattle business and for a period became a Texas Ranger, as well as collector of customs at El Paso. Jarvis, his youngest son was born in El Paso. On Feburary 9, 1908, on a road near his ranch, in the Organ Mountains, he was shot and killed by an unknown assassin.

Note: More detailed information may be found about Pat Garrett in Lowrey and Allied Families and Hurst and Allied Families by John Simeon Hurst, Jr. These books are on file at the Dallas Public Library as well as other local and public libraries around the state.

By Helen Hurst, Lancaster