Charles J. Few, 32, male, was the city marshal of Stamps, Arkansas. On January 10, 1906, he was engaged in the pursuit of a fugitive wanted out of Louisiana. Accounts indicate that Marshal Few first detained a man who denied being the fugitive but claimed he could lead the officer to the wanted individual. Few accompanied the man to a residence in or near town. There, another individual confronted the marshal, assaulted him, and handed the detainee a firearm.
The prisoner then shot Marshal Few, mortally wounding him in the line of duty.
Contemporary memorial records and later compilations place the date of his death as January 10, 1906 and confirm his role as the municipal marshal of Stamps. Burial records list him as Charles J. Few, interred at Cedar Grove Cemetery in Texarkana, Arkansas, aligning with the age noted in law-enforcement remembrances.
Sources describe a violent struggle in which the prisoner who shot Marshal Few was himself shot and killed immediately afterward, ending the immediate threat at the scene. The available reporting does not identify the name of the prisoner or provide a conclusive disposition for the second man who attacked Few and supplied the gun; no follow-up account of that accomplice’s arrest appears in the records reviewed.
More than a century later, public memorial listings continue to mark Few’s death as a line-of-duty killing by gunfire in Stamps, emphasizing the risks local officers faced in small Southern towns at the turn of the twentieth century. These roll calls and memorial pages preserve the essential facts of the case but offer no additional detail about any subsequent prosecution related to the accomplice.
