| Notes |
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W. T. Block, East Texas historian, writes of Jesse's son, T.D. Yocum:
http://www.wtblock.com/wtblockjr/Yocum.htm; Reprinted from FRONTIER TIMES, January, 1978, p. 10ff
"... Squire (T.D.) Yocum was born in Kentucky around 1796. As a fourteen-year-old, he cut his criminal eyeteeth with his father and brothers in the infamous John A. Murrell gang who robbed travelers along the Natchez Trace in western Mississippi. At first Murrell was reputed to be an Abolitionist who liberated slaves and channeled them along an "underground railroad" to freedom in the North. Actually, his gang kidnapped slaves, later selling them to the sugar cane planters of Louisiana.
"Murrell soon graduated to pillage and murder, but slave-stealing remained a favorite activity of the Yocum brothers, and on one occasion two of them, while returning to Louisiana with stolen horses and slaves, were caught and hanged in East Texas.
"When law enforcement in western Mississippi threatened to encircle them, the Yocums fled first to Bayou Plaquemine Brule, near Churchpoint, Louisiana, then in 1815 to the Neutral Strip of Louisiana, located between the Sabine and Calcasieu Rivers. Until 1821 the Strip knew no law enforcement and military occupation, and hence became a notorious robbers' roost for the outcasts of both Spanish Texas and the State of Louisiana.
"In the Land Office Register of 1824, T. D. Yocum, his father, and two brothers were listed as claiming land grants in the Neutral Strip; and during the 1820s, according to the Colorado "Gazette and Advertiser" of Oct. 31, 1841, Yocum's father was tried several times for murder at Natchitoches, La., and bought acquittal on every occasion with hired witnesses and perjured testimony."
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circa 1810 - 1886 (~ 76 years)
