Pistol Pete - The Man Behind the Mascot
He was born Francis Boardman Eaton, but many know him only as “Pistol Pete.”
He had 11 notches on his gun for the 11 men he killed.
In the late 1860s, an 8-year-old Eaton witnessed six men, who had fought for the Confederacy, kill his father, who had fought for the Union.
Mose Beaman, an Eaton family friend and also a Union veteran, told Eaton: “My boy, may an old man’s curse rest upon you, if you do not try to avenge your father!”
Shortly after his father’s death, Eaton got his first revolver, a belt and a holster .
Beaman taught Eaton how to shoot and make bullets.
In 1875, when Eaton was 15, he learned where one of his father’s killers, Shannon Campsey, was.
He then visited Fort Gibson to improve his shooting skills to ensure he would be ready to face Campsey.
He was given the nickname “Pistol Pete” after impressing the fort’s commanding officer, Col. Copinger.
Eaton, at 16, rode his horse to Shannon Campsey’s house and shot him twice before Campsey even spoke a word.
Campsey was the first person Eaton killed, and the next three men he killed also helped kill his father.
He didn’t kill John Ferber, one of the men who killed his father, for Ferber was killed in a poker game.
At Ferber’s funeral, Eaton met a Deputy U.S. Marshal looking for the same men.
The marshal offered Eaton a Deputy U.S. Marshal’s commission.
At 17, Eaton was a marshal for Judge Isaac C. Parker, “the hanging judge.”
When he was 20, still working as a marshal, he heard where Wyley Campsey, the last of his father’s killers, was.
He went into a bar in Albuquerque, N.M, and immediately realized that the bartender was Wyley Campsey.
Eaton shot and killed him and also Campsey’s two bodyguards but not before one of the bodyguards shot Eaton in the leg and left arm.
This wasn’t his first time to be shot — in 1881, Eaton was shot in the chest.
A cross on a necklace he was wearing deflected the bullet.
The first girl he ever kissed, Jennie, had given him the cross.
Jennie got pneumonia and died before he got the chance to thank her, but he buried the cross at the head of her grave.
He married Orpha Miller, of Guthrie, on Aug. 21, 1893.
Eaton described her as “one of the best and most beautiful women that God ever put on this earth.”
Miller died seven years later of what doctors thought was an abscess on her lung.
They had two children together, Ethel and Faye.
He married Anna Sillix on Dec. 31, 1902, and they had eight children.
He never talked to his family about killing the men who killed his father.
His mother didn’t approve of him searching for his father’s killers, saying: “Leave them to God. He will punish them.”
He once decided that he wasn’t going to kill a man because he had begun to feel that as a marshal, he was “just sort of a hired killer” and he was tired of it.
His lifelong best friend was Rolla Goodnight, whom he met in 1882 when Goodnight was “a tall rangy boy with sandy hair and honest blue-gray eyes.”
He danced with Belle Starr, a famous sharpshooter.
He lost his gun, a Winchester, to her after he bet it in a horse race between his horse, Old Tex, and her horse.
A rattlesnake bit him while he was working as a U.S. Deputy Marshal.
He never went anywhere without his pistols and slept with them under his pillow until the day he died.
He carried his gun loaded because he said, “I’d rather have pockets full of rocks than an empty gun.”
He could throw a coin to the ground, and before the coin hit the ground, shoot it.
He always wore cowboy apparel.
He wore a size 10 1/2 boot and was always wearing his custom-made knee-high cowboy boots.
He chewed tobacco and smoked a tobacco pipe.
A man in Perkins would make moonshine whiskey for Eaton and carry a jug of it through the town of Perkins.
Eaton kept the jug on his front porch, and no one usually messed with it — except for the time Frank Eaton Jr. got into it and was “too sick to die.”
He did curse but always colorfully.
Eaton said he was born Oct. 26, 1860, but many have questioned whether this was his actual date of birth.
Diron L. Ahlquist, a member of Oklahombres Inc., the Association for Lawman and Outlaw History of Oklahoma, has been researching Eaton’s history for the past five years.
After researching, he said his research doesn’t disprove Eaton’s stories but it doesn’t support them either.
Eaton’s family mentioned he was one to exaggerate sometimes.
Eaton wasn’t always searching for outlaws and enjoyed time with his family.
He had a soft side.
He was an early-riser.
He always had a garden.
He was a good hugger.
He would never turn down an invitation to a parade, regardless of location, especially if the person inviting him would pick him up.
He was outgoing.
He wasn’t much of a chef in the kitchen but could cook over an open fire.
He was a terrible driver and once, while driving around a corner near his home, tipped over his Model T Ford with Frank Eaton Jr. inside.
He rode in an airplane with Lee Shannon, of Stillwater, and jokingly told Shannon that if he did stunts with the airplane Eaton would show him a few stunts on the ground.
He loved to travel but never left the country.
He would cheer for the University of Oklahoma but only when the Sooners weren’t playing OSU.
He was a joker but when his wife Anna told him to stop he knew he should listen.
He loved pie, regardless of whether it was cherry, coconut cream, chocolate or apple.
He was Republican and told Lee Kirk, a Payne County commissioner, that Kirk was the only Democrat for whom he would vote.
He was self-educated.
Sillix taught him how to play the fiddle.
He was right-handed.
He wrote poetry, including a poem to his son Frank Eaton Jr. and a poem to his youngest daughter, Elizabeth Wise.
He often wrote for the Perkins Journal.
He had read the Bible and could quote it.
He was treasurer for the Perkins First Baptist Church.
He could speak a variety of American Indian dialects.
He gave all his grandchildren American Indian names.
He helped build the first bridge across the Cimarron River near Perkins.
He was a blacksmith in Perkins.
He made all of his grandchildren full-sized bows and arrows.
He didn’t play sports but he liked to watch his sons play football.
He was a good swimmer.
He enjoyed sleeping in his hammock in the yard.
Frank Eaton Jr. came home one night and accidentally hit the hammock, father inside, knocking his dad into a nearby pond.
He was generous.
He never met a stranger.
A visitor was not allowed to leave Eaton’s home unless he had given him or her something.
That tradition still exists with his family.
He died April 8, 1958, at his home in Perkins.
Because of poor record-keeping in the late 1800s and early 1900s, whether he embellished or told factual accounts may never be known.
Regardless of the validity of his story, Eaton reminds many of a feeling.
When OSU students throw their hands in the air in the shape of pistols for the first time, they’ll feel it.
When strangers at an OSU sporting event or other occasion hook arms to sing the Alma Mater, they’ll feel it.
When a sea of people wearing orange fill OSU for what’s called “America’s Greatest Homecoming,” they’ll feel it, too.
What students and alumni alike feel is what the real Pistol Pete always felt.
Frank Eaton was always proud to be a Cowboy.
Sources: Karen Rutledge, Frank Eaton’s granddaughter; Frank Eaton, Jr., the last surviving child of Frank Eaton; Pistol Pete, Veteran of the Old West by Frank Eaton; Diron L. Ahlquist, a member of Oklahombres Inc., the Association for Lawman and Outlaw History of Oklahoma.
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