Dick Turpin Dick Turpin Richard Turpin (bapt. 21 September 1705 – 7 April 1739) was an English highwayman whose exploits were romanticised following his execution in York for horse theft. Turpin may have followed his father's trade as a butcher early in his life but, by the early 1730s, he had joined a gang of deer thieves and, later, became a poacher, burglar, horse thief and killer. He is also known for a fictional overnight ride from London to York on his horse Black Bess, a story that was made famous by the Victorian novelist William Harrison Ainsworth almost 100 years after
John Crittenden Duval Texas judge. The men's father, William Pope Duval, was a long-time Territorial Governor of Florida. John Crittenden Duval John Crittenden Duval (1816–1897) was an American writer of Texas literature. He has been noted as being the first Texas man of letters and was dubbed the "Father of Texas Literature" by J. Frank Dobie. His "Early Times in Texas" was initially published serially in 1867 in "Burke's Weekly" (Macon, Georgia) and was finally published in book form in 1892. The story, which became a Texas classic, recounted Duval's escape from the Goliad Massacre, in which his own brother Burr H. Duval