It was more than 130 years ago that Lake County Sheriff’s Deputy Samuel J. Lewis died in a shootout with more than a dozen masked men.

But thanks to the work of a retired deputy in Texas, Lewis is finally getting his due. This week, Lewis was added to Oregon’s law enforcement memorial wall along with two officers killed in the line of duty in 2011.

Lewis’ path to his rightful station on the wall started with Terry Baker, who retired as a chief deputy of the Dallas County (Texas) Sheriff’s Office in 1994. In 1997, he started researching his department’s line-of-duty deaths. And he kept right on going.

“My wife and I began not only researching my department, we went all over Texas,” he said. “From Texarkana to El Paso and from the panhandle to south Texas, we’ve traveled it all.”

Officers killed on the job is a subject close to Baker’s heart. In Dallas County, where Baker served for 39 years, 20 officers have been killed in the line of duty. Baker knew eight of them. One was his partner, another an officer who worked for him.

“That gave me a strong attachment,” he said.

Lewis is not the first out-of-state case Baker has worked on. He’s helped with line-of-duty deaths in Oklahoma as well, and in his open files are another 50 cases in states other than Texas, “from New York all the way to Arizona.”

Baker was reading microfilm back issues of the Galveston Daily News in pursuit of a different case when he stumbled upon a brief article discussing Lewis’ murder in Oregon. The article appeared on March 14, 1882.

The story refers to Lewis as “Sheriff J.F. Lewis” and concludes by noting that “Intense excitement prevails” after the shooting.

The shooting was a result of an 1880s feud that broke out between H.C. Laws and the Calavan family. Laws was the leader of the Bonanza Regulators, a band of settlers who tried to keep newcomers away from the Lake County area and prevent cattle grazing on public land.

The feud apparently escalated until Frank Calavan, 15, was shot and killed near the Oregon-California border on Feb. 13, 1882.

Laws was taken into custody, and at 10 p.m. on March 11, 1882, Lewis was guarding him in Greenman’s Hotel in Linkville, now Klamath Falls. Laws was due for a hearing two days later, and Lewis was accompanied at the hotel by Justice of the Peace William A. Wright.

“From reading all the accounts from back then, they had to have information that someone was going to try to break him out because the deputy and the judge were there at 10 at night,” Lake County Sheriff Phillip McDonald said.

Shootout compared to Gunfight at O.K. Corral

A group of masked men bent on revenge showed up at the hotel and demanded that Laws be handed over to be lynched. Lewis refused.

He shot. The masked men shot back, and Lewis was hit in the leg. The bullet severed his femoral artery, killing him in five minutes. Judge Wright was shot in the arm, and the mob departed without Laws.

“Movies were made like that,” McDonald said.

A description of the events from The Daily Oregonian indicated Lewis shot one of the attackers in the head.

“The lynchers then left, taking with them a wounded man, who is supposed to be shot in the head, as a hat was picked up riddled with shot and a piece of scalp with a tuft of hair attached,” the article reads. “The shot that struck him is supposed to have been fired by Lewis, as a gun was found behind him with one barrel discharged and he had no arms on him.”

The Daily Oregonian article indicates there were no suspects in the shooting.

“There is no clue to the perpetrators of this unlawful and bungling affair.”

No one ever took the blame for Lewis’ murder. After confusion about which state had jurisdiction over Laws, his case was dismissed in California and he fled to Utah and then New Mexico.

Baker said some articles compared the Linkville hotel incident to the historic Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

The original Galveston Daily News article caught Baker’s eye because his son lives in Medford, and the dateline of the piece was nearby Jacksonville. So Baker did some digging and determined that Lewis was not on the national memorial. Then he set it aside for a while to work on other projects.

When Baker returned to his pile of research on Lewis, he turned to the Internet for more information. Eventually he tracked down the small story in The Daily Oregonian, as well as a pile of information from the Harney County Library about the feud that led to the 15-year-old’s death.

Information in hand, Baker contacted Lake County Deputy Charles Pore about his find. Pore started conducting research of his own, in county records.

He hit pay dirt.

Nestled in the bowels of the Lake County Courthouse were big bound books filled with county commissioners’ meeting minutes and records.

“The commissioners had offered a reward of $1,000 for the apprehension and conviction of any or all of the murderers of (Samuel) Lewis,” McDonald said.

Next, the office located Lewis’ probate documents. Lewis’ brother, Evan Lewis, was the executor of the estate, and his father, John Lewis, the beneficiary. His estate consisted of $205 and a horse and saddle.

Jerald Steward, 70, remembers hearing his grandfather tell stories about the Lewis men. Steward’s great-grandfather was Evan Lewis, the deputy’s brother.

Samuel Lewis was a single man who, according to Steward, had come over with his brother from Lane County, likely on foot.

“I heard my grandfather talk about (the shooting) but he never really said all that much,” he said.

The only part of the story he remembers, in fact, was that Lewis had been killed while standing at the top of a flight of stairs, trying to protect someone. And he knew his great-grandfather, Evan Lewis, had named his son after his slain brother. Knowing the full story is important.

“It really made me think that all this time didn’t diminish the act that he did,” Steward said, “and I’m thankful that there was somebody out there who was able to track it down.”

Since Steward discovered the family connection, he’s discovered that Lewis is buried in the IOOF Cemetery in Lakeview, just across the road from Steward’s great-grandfather.

Steward’s not the only one to benefit from Baker’s discovery.

“It was actually very neat to go back and find the records from back then, and to know that this guy, Deputy Lewis, is not forgotten anymore,” McDonald said. “It’s just neat to see the history of the Sheriff’s Office. We still have some history there, and it’s been an honor to be able to bring this forward.”

Eriks Gabliks, the director of the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training, said old line-of-duty deaths are typically found when a police department or other agency is researching itself for an anniversary.

“That’s the reason the memorial exists, to honor all those state, federal, tribal officers who died in the line of duty,” he said.

Added to memorial wall

On Tuesday, a ceremony was held to add Lewis and two other officers killed in the line of duty to the memorial wall.

In addition to Lewis, the memorial wall now includes Eugene Police Officer Chris Kilcullen, who was shot and killed in April 2011 in Springfield during a traffic stop, and Oregon Department of Corrections Officer Buddy Ray Herron, who was fatally stabbed when he stopped to help a stranded motorist in November 2011.

Lewis is the seventh officer from the 1800s to be added to the memorial wall. He joins fellow Lake County Deputy David Sanchez, who was shot and killed in 1979.

Every year, the Lewis family gets together for a reunion on Father’s Day. This year, Steward hopes to bring Pore to the event to tell them more about their long-dead ancestor.

“It’d make it personal,” he said.