Ben Krebs, originally from Switzerland, had come to the United States in 1850. By 1857, he had moved to North Texas, where he took a job working for the Overland Mail Company. The Overland Mail Company operated the Butterfield Overland Mail Line which ran from Tipton and St. Louis, Missouri, to San Francisco, California. Krebs worked as a stage driver and helped run the mail station in Young County, Texas, that bears his name, Krebs’s Station. During the Civil War, the mail company ceased operations in Texas and Krebs moved to Montague County, where he married Eliza “Rhoda” Taylor Savage, the widow of Wiley Savage who had died in 1864.
For an in-depth look at this compelling murder mystery, read Murder in Montague: Frontier Justice and Retribution in Texas, published by University of Oklahoma Press, and available on our secure online webstore. The book is also available at University of Oklahoma Press and Amazon.
