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STEPHENVILLE (March 20, 2015) — Tarleton State University Professor Dr. T. Lindsay Baker delivered the annual Guy Caldwell Western Heritage Lecture at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene on Jan. 30.
The event marked the 10th anniversary of the series, which began in 2006 to promote and preserve the western legacy of Hardin-Simmons University, the Abilene area and West Texas.
Baker, who holds the W.K. Gordon Endowed Chair in Texas History at Tarleton, spoke on the 1927 Stanton frame-up. This criminal incident is one of several examined in his recent book, Gangster Tour of Texas, published by the Texas A&M University Press. In the historic event criminals murdered two men in the West Texas town of Stanton to use their bodies in an unsuccessful effort to receive a reward for foiling a bank burglary.
The Caldwell Western Heritage Lecture Series is named in honor of Guy Caldwell, a graduate of Hardin-Simmons University, who later became one of its staunchest supporters. During the 1930s, he and others organized a “Dollar-a-Month” donations program that helped keep the school open during the most difficult years of the Great Depression.
Baker teaches history at Tarleton and directs its W.K. Gordon Center for Industrial History of Texas at the Thurber ghost town on Interstate 20 between Fort Worth and Abilene. He has written more than 20 books on the history of Texas and the American West. Currently, his Tarleton students are undertaking a historic resources survey in downtown Stephenville.
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