The Young County Jail

The Marlow brothers' story starts with an arrest. U.S. deputy marshals took four of them in Texas in August 1888 on suspicion of horse theft. In January 1889, as the prisoners were being moved, a mob attacked the party at Graham. Alfred and Llewellyn Marlow were killed; George and Charles, chained to their dead brothers, held the mob off, and men on both sides died. Papers called it a lynching attempt, and the surviving brothers were later cleared. A town in Oklahoma, Marlow, is named for the family, and the brothers' fight survives in song, poems and film.

What the plaque says

The Young County Jail (1878-1921) This jail was built with two stories in 1878. The jailer lived downstairs, and above were two cells--one with a steel cage for maximum security. There were many dramatic jailbreaks, with lives lost on both sides of the law. In 1881, killer Jack Post, the only man legally hanged in this county, rode from the jail astride his coffin. The five Marlow brothers broke out in 1888, causing a major shootout and manhunt. The property was phased out as a jail in 1921, and saw many changes in use and appearance before being bought by Kelley B. King in 1975. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Post Office Museum and Art Center — steps away
  Graham's 1936 Art Moderne post office, with a New Deal mural by Alexandre Hogue inside, now the free museum of Young County in the town where the Texas cattle raisers first organized.
• Fort Belknap — 9.3 mi
  The 1851 northern anchor of the first Texas frontier forts, on the Brazos below Newcastle, a Butterfield stop and the post beside the Brazos Reservation until its people were driven out in 1859.
• Fort Richardson State Park and Historic Site — 27 mi
  The northernmost post of the Texas frontier line, outside Jacksboro, where a stone hospital and six other buildings stand from 1867 and a later Guard unit became the Lost Battalion.

More markers nearby

• Standpipe Mountain — steps away
• Site of Third County Courthouse — steps away
• First National Bank in Graham — steps away
• An 1890 Bank Building — steps away