Daniel Kendall “Cowboy Dan” Baumgartner

Daniel Kendall "Cowboy Dan" Baumgartner was an American outlaw, public figure, and convict. He was the leader and namesake of the notorious Cowboy Dan Posse and son of famous Confederate general Lamar Baumgartner.

Early Life
Baumgartner was born in Plano, Texas on October 27, 1860, to Lamar Baumgartner and his wife Haidi Baumgartner. When Texas joined the Confederate States of America in 1861, Lamar Baumgartner enlisted, quickly rising to the rank of Three Star General. In 1865, Lamar Baumgartner was home eating dinner with his family when Union troops entered the home and arrested him for war crimes. Daniel would not see his father again.

Cowboy Dan Posse
Main article Cowboy Dan Posse

In the 1870s, Baumgartner moved to Fort Worth, where he joined a gang of street rats. Eventually, the gang grew into a posse, and began committing larger and larger crimes until they were renowned throughout the state of Texas, largely in Austin and San Antonio.

In 1885, the posse broke into Fort Lackman, a United States Department of Defense base near Lubbock, Texas. In addition to firearms, they kidnapped Doctor H. Edward Preston, a noted physicist famous for his work with flying machines. Doctor Preston’s disappearance began the largest manhunt in US Marshal history for Baumgartner, and his posse. Though Cowboy Dan was never found, the remains of Doctor Preston would be discovered in a remote mountain pass in rural Nevada, known as the North Truckee Pass, following a shootout eight years later. Only one arrest was made in connection with this crime; Arn Erich Schultze, a previous member and deserter of the Cowboy Dan posse, served eight years of a twenty year sentence in a federal prison for conspiracy to commit murder, burglary, and assault of a federal officer, before being released on probation. Arn would be found dead less than a month later in his home in Little Jack, Texas.

Whereabouts
Baumgartner was never captured by the US Marshals, but is presumed dead after a train his gang was robbing derailed and plummeted one thousand feet into Porcupine Canyon in San Juan County, Utah, on October 3, 1891.