Famous Skaggs: "Brother Skaggs" the Gambler

A few years ago I wrote a post about two Skaggs brothers from Western Kentucky who made a living gambling along with other pursuits.  One of the brothers, E. H., was evidently quite famous and wealthy from Faro gambling.  From the book Sucker’s Progress: An Informal History of Gambling in America by Herbert Asbury:

His name was Elijah Skaggs, but he was better known as "Brother Skaggs, the preaching Faro dealer" because of his costume, which never varied throughout his professional life regardless of climate or weather - frock coat and trousers of black broadcloth, black silk vest, white shirt with high-standing collar, white cravat of the choker type wound several times around his scrawny neck, black stove-pipe hat and black patent-leather gaiters.

E. H Skaggs was evidently the most successful Faro gambler in United States history, reputed to have been a millionaire prior to the Civil War.  E. H. learned the techniques and tricks of Faro dealers in Nashville in the 1840s.  Though he was a good Faro dealer himself, E. H. made his fortune by applying the franchise business model to gambling.  He hired and trained dozens of dealers who fanned out across the West dealing Faro on riverboats, in saloons and gambling halls.  Apparently, he set up his brother E. M.'s operation in Sacramento, California dealing Faro to the miner '49ers of the Gold Rush.  Asbury writes:

Each team was under the supervision of one of Skaggs' brothers, cousins or nephews, of whom he seems to have had a great store.  They acted as cappers and ropers-in and looked after the finances, and the dealers and case-keepers did the rest.  Brother Skaggs paid all expenses, furnished money for the bank, and gave each team 25% of its profits.

Asbury:

At one time Brother Skaggs had no fewer than a hundred of these chain-store gamblers scattered about the country.  Among other professionals they were known as "Skaggs' patent-dealers," and their names were synonymous with "all sorts of fraud and dishonesty at the gaming table."  For almost twenty years Skaggs' patent-dealers prospered exceedingly, and the money rolled like an avalanche into the pockets of the Master in New Orleans.

E. H. diversified much of his fortune into other business ventures.  Asbury:

...he speculated successfully in mules, cotton and bank-stocks, financed gambling houses in New Orleans, and, in the middle eighteen-forties, bought two hundred slaves and a cotton plantation in Louisiana.  He also turned a receptive ear to anyone with an idea for increasing the chances of the bank at Faro, and advanced money for experiments, the inventor agreeing to give him the exclusive use of the device or trick for one year before putting it on the market.  Skaggs thus assisted in the development of many of the crooked dealing boxes which appeared in the 1830s and 1840s.

Asbury claims E. H. was a millionaire by the late 1850s:

During the late 1850s Brother Skaggs reached his goal - he was worth a million dollars.  In 1858 or 1859 he liquidated his chain-store business, discharged his patent-dealers, and left gambling to its fate.

Joe Bob Briggs wrote for UPI in 2002:

In 1859 he retired, a millionaire many times over, and used his fortune to buy a southern plantation. Alas, the only time he used his money for something other than gambling turned out to be the biggest gamble of all. It was the wrong business to be in, and the wrong part of the country. The Civil War wiped him out, not least because he'd invested $3 million in Confederate bonds.

He died in 1870, a drunkard, in Texas. (Where else?)

Well, we know that his reputed 1870 death was "fake news," E. H. died in Texas in 1890.  There was a lot of "fake news" written about E. H. in the history books, probably due to news reporters of the time getting information from sources that had lost a lot of money at the Faro tables.  Several writers claim that E. H. grew up in poverty, but we know that wasn't true.  Born in 1818, the 1820 census showed his father, Abraham Skaggs, owned his own farm and two slaves, an indication of at least upper-middle-class status at the time.  We also know from the 1830 and 1840 census that E. H. lived at his father's home in Warren County, Kentucky during that period, so he wasn't yet gambling on Mississippi riverboats or New Orleans casinos during the 1830s like some authors have written.  One thing we know from the 1840 census though is that one person in Abraham Skaggs' household was making a living in the "manufacturing or trading" category, likely E. H.'s budding gambling career was considered "trading."

He may have been wiped out by the Civil War, but there is evidence that E. H. was back in business with his brother E. M. in California in 1866, likely at the El Dorado gambling hall in Sacramento.  A third brother, Abram, was murdered in Missouri by bushwackers in 1863 looking for a stash of money that Abram was reputed to have on his farm.  A fourth brother, James Madison Skaggs, a Louisiana Confederate veteran, was also in Sacramento after the Civil War.  A fifth brother, Henry Clay Skaggs, a Union artillery veteran, was a rancher in Caldwell County, Texas...where E. H. hung his hat during the 1870s.  Life is complicated.