Grabow Riot - Leather Britches Smith

Leather Britches Smith

The man known as Charles Smith, AKA Leather Britches, wore a pistol on each hip and carried a rifle everywhere he went. A man of dubious character, reportedly brought in as a "hired gun" by Arthur L. Emerson, then president of the Timber Workers. He was considered by some to be a hero and benefactor of timber workers.

The legend of Leather Britches varies. He was thought by some to be a good man, until he drank, when a different side of him would emerge. Rill (Loftin) Grantham stated that Leather Britches saved the man that was to become her husband from hanging shortly after the Grabow Riot. Many just avoided him and some stories tend to portray him in less than nice way.

Read more about this topic:  Grabow Riot

Famous quotes containing the words leather and/or smith:

    Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to men of God, and that the acting of the part of someone better than oneself may actually commit one to a course of behaviour perceptibly less evil than what would be normal and natural in an avowed cynic.
    Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)

    Tasting of the sweet damp woods and of the rain one inch above the meadow:

    It was like feasting upon air.
    —William Jay Smith (b. 1918)