Gypsy Heart
Gold Member
Wondering if someone searched the homesite of Leon Pounds,they might find some of the hidden loot....
Washington Parish even had its own Jesse James. His name was Eugene Bunch. He was a schoolteacher whose avocation was train-robbing. Those who knew Bunch remember him as a soft-spoken man with a large black mustache, blue eyes, and the manners of an educated gentleman. Except for the two months when he taught children who came from far and wide on foot or horseback, he followed sporadically the more lucrative profession of holding up trains. His double life was a secret well kept, and he was the terror of crews and passengers on trains between the deep South and the North.
Ostensibly for the purpose of living near the school at Lee's Creek, the quiet-mannered schoolteacher stayed much of the time at the home of one Leon Pounds at Walnut Bluff on the Pearl River. Actually, the Pounds' home was one of his more convenient hideouts. He could slip across Pearl River on the ferry at Poole's Bluff, or in his own dugout, and be back before daylight after gathering his loot.
During the winter of 1892, the stage was set for one of Bunch's big hauls. A southbound train on the New Orleans Northeastern Railroad with several passengers and a shipment of currency bound for New Orleans was scheduled to stop near McNeil, Mississippi, at a certain hour. When it did, Bunch was there, alone, to climb aboard. The armed mail and express agents were relieved of their pistols and as many sacks of money as Bunch could conveniently carry away. The crew and passengers were then lined up outside for the holdup. As this fabulous schoolteacher-train robber went through their pockets, he unwittingly dropped a scrap of paper which a passenger hastily pressed into the mud with his heel. Bunch slipped away into the darkness toward the Pearl River swamplands, but his identity at last had been revealed. On the paper he had dropped was written the time of arrival of the train at McNeil and the names of Bunch and Leon Pounds. As he took inventory of the loot in his hideout, Bunch became aware of the missing slip of paper. Taking no chances, he fled to a more remote hideout.
In a few days, notices offering a $3,000 reward for Bunch, dead or alive, were posted in the towns of northern Louisiana and Mississippi. The $3,000 was too tempting an offer for one of Bunch's accomplices, Colonel Hapgood, who shot the schoolteaching bandit in the back as he slept on a bed of pine needles in Muster Ground Swamp. Thus ended Bunch's spectacular career, in the damp darkness of a December night in 1892.
Washington Parish even had its own Jesse James. His name was Eugene Bunch. He was a schoolteacher whose avocation was train-robbing. Those who knew Bunch remember him as a soft-spoken man with a large black mustache, blue eyes, and the manners of an educated gentleman. Except for the two months when he taught children who came from far and wide on foot or horseback, he followed sporadically the more lucrative profession of holding up trains. His double life was a secret well kept, and he was the terror of crews and passengers on trains between the deep South and the North.
Ostensibly for the purpose of living near the school at Lee's Creek, the quiet-mannered schoolteacher stayed much of the time at the home of one Leon Pounds at Walnut Bluff on the Pearl River. Actually, the Pounds' home was one of his more convenient hideouts. He could slip across Pearl River on the ferry at Poole's Bluff, or in his own dugout, and be back before daylight after gathering his loot.
During the winter of 1892, the stage was set for one of Bunch's big hauls. A southbound train on the New Orleans Northeastern Railroad with several passengers and a shipment of currency bound for New Orleans was scheduled to stop near McNeil, Mississippi, at a certain hour. When it did, Bunch was there, alone, to climb aboard. The armed mail and express agents were relieved of their pistols and as many sacks of money as Bunch could conveniently carry away. The crew and passengers were then lined up outside for the holdup. As this fabulous schoolteacher-train robber went through their pockets, he unwittingly dropped a scrap of paper which a passenger hastily pressed into the mud with his heel. Bunch slipped away into the darkness toward the Pearl River swamplands, but his identity at last had been revealed. On the paper he had dropped was written the time of arrival of the train at McNeil and the names of Bunch and Leon Pounds. As he took inventory of the loot in his hideout, Bunch became aware of the missing slip of paper. Taking no chances, he fled to a more remote hideout.
In a few days, notices offering a $3,000 reward for Bunch, dead or alive, were posted in the towns of northern Louisiana and Mississippi. The $3,000 was too tempting an offer for one of Bunch's accomplices, Colonel Hapgood, who shot the schoolteaching bandit in the back as he slept on a bed of pine needles in Muster Ground Swamp. Thus ended Bunch's spectacular career, in the damp darkness of a December night in 1892.
Found a little more info on Bunch.
