#TBT: The legendary Sally Skull was gun-slinging, foul-mouthed Texas horse trader

Sally Skull acted as she pleased, and not to feminine conventions of the time: She cussed, she wore pants, she rode astride, and she handled both pistols and rifles with deadly aim.

Frankly, I'm shocked there hasn't been a movie or HBO series based on her life.

Born Sarah Jane Newman in 1817, Sally came to Texas with her parents, Rachel Rabb and Joseph Newman, as part of Stephen F. Austin's first colony. When she was 16 years old she married Jesse Robinson, the first of her five husbands. They lived in Gonzalez and had a son and a daughter, but in October 1843 Robinson divorced Sally, who by that time was living in Colorado County. Eleven days after the divorce papers were filed, she married George H. Scull, source of the last name she eventually became known for, if spelled slightly different. In 1849, Sally said Scull was dead.

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John S. "Rip" Ford saw Skull when he attended Henry Kinney's Lone Star Fair in Corpus Christi in May 1852. She was known already as a crack shot by then, and a 1937 article on Skull in the Caller-Times said she not only was deadly accurate with both pistol and rifle, but could shoot with both her right and left hand. Ford wrote in his memoirs of the 1852 encounter.

"The last incident attracting the writer's attentions occurred while he was at Kinney's Tank and wending his way homeward. He heard the report of a pistol, and raising his eyes he saw a man falling to the ground and a woman not far from him in the act of lowering a six-shooter. She was a noted character named Sally Skull. She was famed as a rough fighter and prudent men did not willingly provoke her into a row. It was understood that she was justifiable in what she did on this occasion, having acted in self-defense."

By this time Skull ran a successful ranch near Banquete, working primarily as a horse trader. She made frequent trips into Mexico, mainly employing Mexican workers on her ranch, and sold them as far as New Orleans. In October 1852 she married a man named John Doyle, and used the name Sarah Doyle when paying taxes on her land. But most still knew her as "Old Sally Skull." Doyle eventually disappeared, and in 1855 Sally married again, this time to Isaiah Wadkins. She divorced Wadkins three years later.

The Caller-Times' first publisher, Eli Merriman, grew up near Banquete and recalled Sally Skull visiting his family. "She had the eye of a hawk with staring eyes,” wrote Merriman. “While she may have had her faults, she was jolly and joking with her friends. She came to our house bringing some of the finest butter ever made, large yellow balls of butter packed way down in a stone jar.”

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In 1860, Skull married husband No. 5, Christoff Horsdorff, who was 18 years her junior and went by the nickname Horse Trough. During the Civil War, Skull ran wagon trains down the Cotton Road, selling shipments of cotton in Mexico. Murphy Givens wrote of her dealings during that time, "Fortunes could be made at the back door of the Confederacy. Cotton selling for a few cents a pound in East Texas sold for 50 cents or a dollar a pound at Matamoros, paid in gold. On her trips, she would visit her daughter Nancy Robinson at Blanconia in Bee County and her son Alfred Robinson at his ranch north of San Patricio."

The last known record for Sally Skull was a perjury indictment in Goliad District Court in May 1866 (she was acquitted). After that, she disappeared, and the rumor was that Horse Trough had killed her for her gold and buried her in a shallow grave. But there was no reliable evidence to point to whatever happened to the legendary woman.

Allison Ehrlich writes about things to do in South Texas and has a weekly Throwback Thursday column on local history. Support local coverage like this by checking out our subscription options and special offers at Caller.com/subscribe