Sheriff Jess Sweeten

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A Special Thanks to:

Jason Larson, Editor Athens Daily Review

Steve Westbrook, The Texas Lawman Magazine

Sheriff Jess Sweeten Hurt in Accidental Explosion of Gun May 17, 1934 Sheriff Jess Sweeten, sustained a painful wound in the right leg early today when a shotgun exploded in his hands as he started to question a man who was asleep in a car on the Tyler highway. The large shot which penetrated his leg was a double naught buck shot, about the size of an English pea. He is resting well and the injury is not believed to be of a serious nature. Sweeten and other officers had approached the car in the belief that the driver was Clyde Barrow. The occupant of the car was sound asleep when the officers reached it, Sweeten’s gun going off just as they reached the car, the shot glancing from the pavement. Flying flakes of concrete sprayed Deputy Sheriff Dallas Cramer, inflicting a number of painful, but minor body-wounds. “Boys, he got me!” Cramer is reported to have said as the concrete flakes struck him. It was several minutes before the excitement subsided. Badly frightened the suspect “bad man” hastened to reveal his identity, giving his residence as Kilgore and his occupation as an oilman. He said that he had simply stopped his car to get some sleep. With Sweeten and Cramer at the time were Deputy Sheriff M. G. Jepson, Cramer and Elton Corley. Follow up to previous article is one from the Palestine Herald Press, dated Thursday – December 16, 1976 Man Was Mistaken For Barrow Dec. !6, 1976 Jack Meeker of 919 Hilltop Drive, retired oil and gas industry veteran, recalls a scary night in the early 1930s when he was mistaken for a brief time for outlaw Clyde Barrow. That happened soon after Jess Sweeten had become the youngest sheriff in Texas in Henderson County. “I was in charge of drilling a well for my brother, the late Julian R. Meeker of Ft. Worth, on school land near the old Cayuga School,” Mr. Meeker recalls. “I had gone to Kilgore in my yellow-wheeled Model-A Ford sedan to get some equipment for the well. Returning on Highway 175, I stopped east of Athens, pulled off the highway, locked my car doors and went to sleep.” He was worn out from long hours and travel on the drilling job. He was awakened by a shotgun blast just outside the locked car door. Sheriff Jess Sweeten and three other deputies, all heavily armed, had surrounded the sleeper. Holding a sawed-off shotgun while trying to get the car door open, Sweeten’s shotgun went off accidentally, some of the pellets wounding the young sheriff in the right foot, Meeker relates. When Sweeten let the others know he had been wounded, Meeker said a senior officer of the four, who cautioned the others to “wait”, saved his life. They got the car doors open and asked, “Where’s the woman?” meaning Bonnie Parker. Meeker finally succeeded in convincing the posse of his true identity. The oilfield equipment he was carrying in the car could have momentarily been mistaken for weapons. “When they told me to drive on, I was so confused and frightened I didn’t know which way to go to Cayuga,” Meeker recalls. A University of Oklahoma graduate with a degree in Business, Meeker became first an oilfield roughneck and later an engineer with a wide-ranging career in oil patches throughout the Southwest and South. His career in the oil industry spanned 43 years, 1926-69, before he retired to live in Palestine. He pioneered or helped pioneer many oilfields. A well he put down in Parker County discovered the Meeker Field that now has spread as a productive gas field into adjacent counties. The pay is 125-foot-thick sandy shale at 4,000 feet nicknamed “pregnant shale” highly susceptible to frac treatment. The gas now brings $2.16 per mcf. From wells in the Long Lake area, Meeker piped gas that supplied among other things, what now is the Glass Containers, Inc., Plant in its early years. When the glass plant shut down around Thanksgiving to renew a kiln, Meeker had to cut down the pressure on the line, resulting in complaints from owners of homes his firm was serving they would say, “We’ve got a turkey in the oven and now we can’t bake it.” Born in Cotton County near Temple, Oklahoma, Jack Meeker recalls his boyhood on the farm. “At age 7, I had six cows to care for. Our pond dried up. I had to drive those cows to and from the town pump for water, then milk ‘em.’ ‘It would start snowing up there in November. I’d leave the warm fireside at night and climb the stairs to bed in a cold room upstairs.’ ‘Meat and sausages were cured in the family smokehouse.” One well Mr. Meeker brought in around Conroe produced $750,000 worth of oil, but much of the time oil brought ridiculously low prices. Meeker doesn’t believe what is said about there being plenty of natural gas left. “I’ve bought a wood-burning Franklin stove for my home. If necessary, we can cook on that,” he says. NOTE: The actual article can be found below. I thought it was good to have both these articles together after being apart for all those years.

Sheriff Jess Sweeten Hurt in Accidental Explosion of Gun

May 17, 1934

Sheriff Jess Sweeten, sustained a painful wound in the right leg early today when a shotgun exploded in his hands as he started to question a man who was asleep in a car on the Tyler highway. The large shot which penetrated his leg was a double naught buck shot, about the size of an English pea. He is resting well and the injury is not believed to be of a serious nature.

Sweeten and other officers had approached the car in the belief that the driver was Clyde Barrow. The occupant of the car was sound asleep when the officers reached it, Sweeten’s gun going off just as they reached the car, the shot glancing from the pavement. Flying flakes of concrete sprayed Deputy Sheriff Dallas Cramer, inflicting a number of painful, but minor body-wounds. “Boys, he got me!” Cramer is reported to have said as the concrete flakes struck him.

It was several minutes before the excitement subsided. Badly frightened the suspect “bad man” hastened to reveal his identity, giving his residence as Kilgore and his occupation as an oilman. He said that he had simply stopped his car to get some sleep.

With Sweeten and Cramer at the time were Deputy Sheriff M. G. Jepson, Cramer and Elton Corley.

Follow up to previous article is one from the Palestine Herald Press, dated Thursday – December 16, 1976

Man Was Mistaken For Barrow

Dec. !6, 1976
Jack Meeker of 919 Hilltop Drive, retired oil and gas industry veteran, recalls a scary night in the early 1930s when he was mistaken for a brief time for outlaw Clyde Barrow.

That happened soon after Jess Sweeten had become the youngest sheriff in Texas in Henderson County.

“I was in charge of drilling a well for my brother, the late Julian R. Meeker of Ft. Worth, on school land near the old Cayuga School,” Mr. Meeker recalls. “I had gone to Kilgore in my yellow-wheeled Model-A Ford sedan to get some equipment for the well. Returning on Highway 175, I stopped east of Athens, pulled off the highway, locked my car doors and went to sleep.”

He was worn out from long hours and travel on the drilling job.

He was awakened by a shotgun blast just outside the locked car door.

Sheriff Jess Sweeten and three other deputies, all heavily armed, had surrounded the sleeper. Holding a sawed-off shotgun while trying to get the car door open, Sweeten’s shotgun went off accidentally, some of the pellets wounding the young sheriff in the right foot, Meeker relates.

When Sweeten let the others know he had been wounded, Meeker said a senior officer of the four, who cautioned the others to “wait”, saved his life. They got the car doors open and asked, “Where’s the woman?” meaning Bonnie Parker. Meeker finally succeeded in convincing the posse of his true identity.

The oilfield equipment he was carrying in the car could have momentarily been mistaken for weapons. “When they told me to drive on, I was so confused and frightened I didn’t know which way to go to Cayuga,” Meeker recalls.

A University of Oklahoma graduate with a degree in Business, Meeker became first an oilfield roughneck and later an engineer with a wide-ranging career in oil patches throughout the Southwest and South. His career in the oil industry spanned 43 years, 1926-69, before he retired to live in Palestine. He pioneered or helped pioneer many oilfields. A well he put down in Parker County discovered the Meeker Field that now has spread as a productive gas field into adjacent counties.

The pay is 125-foot-thick sandy shale at 4,000 feet nicknamed “pregnant shale” highly susceptible to frac treatment. The gas now brings $2.16 per mcf. From wells in the Long Lake area, Meeker piped gas that supplied among other things, what now is the Glass Containers, Inc., Plant in its early years. When the glass plant shut down around Thanksgiving to renew a kiln, Meeker had to cut down the pressure on the line, resulting in complaints from owners of homes his firm was serving they would say, “We’ve got a turkey in the oven and now we can’t bake it.”

Born in Cotton County near Temple, Oklahoma, Jack Meeker recalls his boyhood on the farm. “At age 7, I had six cows to care for. Our pond dried up. I had to drive those cows to and from the town pump for water, then milk ‘em.’ ‘It would start snowing up there in November. I’d leave the warm fireside at night and climb the stairs to bed in a cold room upstairs.’ ‘Meat and sausages were cured in the family smokehouse.”

One well Mr. Meeker brought in around Conroe produced $750,000 worth of oil, but much of the time oil brought ridiculously low prices. Meeker doesn’t believe what is said about there being plenty of natural gas left. “I’ve bought a wood-burning Franklin stove for my home. If necessary, we can cook on that,” he says.

NOTE: The actual article can be found below. I thought it was good to have both these articles together after being apart for all those years.

Jess Sweeten for all the interviews. Rich Flowers, The Athens Daily Review.
Jess Sweeten age 74

LawrenceMelton	Latest page update: made by LawrenceMelton , Jan 19 2011, 6:35 PM EST (about this update About This Update Edited by LawrenceMelton 878 words deleted 1 image deleted view changes - complete history)
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