Oklahoma City, September 9th, 1927. The body of Frank Canton, clothed in the full dress uniform of a United States Army General, was buried. Oklahoma City Freemasons, dressed in the sombre suits and aprons of American tradition, raised their hands to heaven in final honours to their departed brother. Frank Canton was finally resting from a turbulent life.
    Frank Canton had led a life embracing both crime and law-enforcement. No one knows where he was born, or when. His tombstone gives 1849 as his birth date and he claimed Virginia as his birthplace. But even his name was an alias: he was born Joe Horner. All that is known for certain is that Joe Horner was brought by his parents to Texas at an early age and he grew up into a criminal way of life. As a wild young Texan he turned to "mavericking" – the practice of claiming unbranded cattle by putting on your own brand. Then he had a gunfight with black U.S. Army "Buffalo soldiers" – the black 9th and 10th cavalry units were established in 1866; The 9th cavalry were sent to Texas in 1867 to establish law and order. This particular gunfight left at least one soldier dead, but Canton escaped all charges, which fact undoubtedly saved him from hanging for murder.
    Canton then turned to bank robbery, in Commanche, Texas. He was caught, and convicted, but he managed to break out of prison. Then, leading a gang of desperados, he attacked a stagecoach, robbing the passengers. He was identified, caught, and imprisoned for a second time in 1877. Yet two years later he mysteriously disappeared from a chain-gang without any notice appearing in the Press or any record of his escape being registered. It has been suggested that he was aided by prison officials supported by wealthy Texans. Certainly it seems that someone powerful wanted him free.
    It was then, in 1879, that Joe Horner vanished and a cowboy, Frank Canton, appeared in Wyoming. And with the change of name came a change of career. Henceforth he served on the other side: he became a lawman.
    Prison seemed to have taught Canton a different perspective and he now made his friends amongst the powerful cattle barons and their managers. In particular he became known to British-born Moreton Frewen of the Powder River Cattle Company based in the recently surveyed Johnson County of Wyoming.
    The huge spaces, once the unrestricted lands where buffalo freely roamed, were now ‘open range’ owned by the U.S. Government and controlled by armed cowboys employed by wealthy Eastern and Foreign financiers who put hundreds of thousands of cattle in to graze on this huge uninhabited ‘common’. All the Indians who had once lived and roamed there had been taken to reservations in the 1870s. Despite this, the land was not empty: hundreds of poor land-seekers, as well as the criminally inclined, saw an opportunity to prosper. For the cattle barons, both these poor ranchers and the blatant cattle thieves were considered rustlers "stealing" from the baron’s huge profits.
    The first Sheriff of Johnson County, elected in 1881, was one of Frewen’s cowboys but he proved to have poor skills as a lawman. That same year the Wyoming Stock Grower’s Association hired Frank Canton as a range detective for Johnson County. It was obvious that he knew the business. And no one wanted to ask how he also seemed so familiar with rustlers’ operations. The County soon named Canton a Deputy Sheriff and he virtually ran the office until he was elected Sheriff in 1882. The record shows that he pursued the job of a lawman with the same enthusiasm as he had earlier pursued crime: he made life miserable for thieves and murderers in the County – where later Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid hid out. Canton engineered, and presided over, the only legal hanging in Johnson County: he won a solo showdown against a lynch-mob in order to protect an accused murderer but after the suspect was convicted and sentenced to death, Canton designed the gallows and performed the hanging.

Frontier Freemasonry

The main military post in the area was Fort McKinney and it was a large installation for its day. A few miles away the County Seat, the town of Buffalo, was built at a natural stream crossing on the Bozeman Trail. It was a wide-open frontier town with saloons, bordellos, churches, newspapers - and a masonic Lodge: Anchor Lodge, No.7, which had both civilian members from the town and military members from Fort McKinney. This Lodge was founded in 1885 and the leading citizens of Buffalo tended to be Freemasons. As with many communities of the era, the masonic Lodge and churches brought notice that a "real" town was being established, not just a saloon and bordello annex to the large military installation.
    In 1885 Sheriff Frank Canton married and the same year he was first appointed deputy U.S. Marshall. It was during this period that he became a Freemason although the exact date of his initiation is not recorded. As was common in U.S. Frontier masonry, his wife was active in the women’s masonic group, the Order of the Eastern Star. After a long life, she was later to die in a masonic home at Guthrie, Oklahoma.

The Cattle War

Canton declined to run for the office of Sheriff after local juries made up of small ranchers and ‘rustlers’ failed to convict proven cattle thieves. That was part of the fuse which lit off the ‘Johnson County Cattle War’. He was replaced later as Sheriff by Freemason ‘Red’ Angus – who, by all accounts, also had a little cattle larceny in his past.
    The frustration of the cattle barons with the small ranchers had grown and culminated in 1892 with an invasion of about fifty hired gunmen arriving on horseback and wagons from the south. After killing several "rustlers" at a ranch during a protracted gun-battle the invaders headed north to Buffalo intending to take over the city and county governments. Their plan included the killing of some three dozen men. They had strong political connections and felt that they could get away with it, especially, as they noted, dead men couldn’t challenge them. With this invasion was the cattle baron’s hired gun, deputy U.S. Marshal and Freemason, Frank Canton.
    However, the citizens of Buffalo were built of stern stuff. They were not prepared to meekly change allegiance. Led by Freemason, Sheriff “Red” Angus they formed a small army of their own, much larger than that of the invaders. In an offensive move they surprised and besieged the invaders who were resting overnight at a ranch south of Buffalo. One escaped and, drawing upon political connections, brought the U.S. Military out from Fort McKinney. The cavalry arrived and "saved" the invaders by arresting them and taking them to Cheyenne. After several years of legal manoeuvres, during which they were never brought to court, all were released. Canton, having survived the siege, left Wyoming and moved to Oklahoma where he continued to pursue a career as a lawman.
    In Oklahoma Territory, a fellow Freemason, Bruce Miller, had offered proof to Canton that the notorious Dunn brothers had committed murder, killing an itinerant peddler. Canton gave his word as a mason that he would not repeat the story but was given permission to inform the County Prosecutor and Grand Jury investigating the Dunn Brothers. Then someone talked and the Dunn brothers knew they had been betrayed. First, an unknown assassin, firing through a saloon window, killed Bruce Miller. Then Miller’s older brother, his wife, and his young son were all slaughtered in their home. The Dunn brothers continued to walk free. That is, until United States Deputy Marshal Frank Canton caught up with them. Canton outdrew Bill Dunn and shot him between the eyes.
    It was good that he did so: for his assailant - depending on which story the Marshal later told - was wearing a bullet-proof steel vest specially made for what proved his final confrontation with the law.

The Alaskan Gold Rush

In 1898, during the gold-rush, Canton accepted the job as a Deputy U.S. Marshal in the Yukon Territory, Alaska, charged with taming the violence which so often broke out in the mining camps. By all accounts he proved good for the task. Furthermore, he had retained his masonic interests and there are several examples of his continued activity in masonic rites. On one occasion a Freemason had died of typhoid and the Yukon River steamboat put the body ashore where Frank Canton, together with twenty eight other Freemasons, gave the dead man a masonic burial – the first such in the region. At Dawson, Canton helped bury a Pennsylvanian Freemason and sent his belongings back to his family. One of his brothers wrote back in thanks, saying, ‘I am not a mason but shall certainly try to be one as soon as possible’.
    Canton left Alaska in 1899 and returned to Oklahoma. There his career came to a climax. Immediately after the formation of the Oklahoma State government, the first Governor, a political ally of Canton, in 1907, appointed him as the first Adjutant General of the Oklahoma National Guard. Unfortunately, as with the rest of his career, the appointment brought prestige but not much cash. For after his ‘retirement’ he found that had again to turn to chasing criminals for a living.

Milo D. Dailey IV, is Past Master of the South Dakota Lodge of Masonic Research, and is currently Master of the Frontier Army Lodge of Masonic Research, No. 1875, uniquely chartered by both North and South Dakota Grand Lodges