09/06/2026
Meet Eli Coyle — my maternal second great-grandfather, and the guy nobody in my family ever talks about.
(Post by attorney Justin Eisele)
Turns out there’s a reason.
In January 1899, Eli was working as a night yardmaster for the Little Rock & Fort Smith railroad when carloads of coal started disappearing off the North Side — a dozen carloads, according to one report. The railroad traced it back to him: the theory was he’d position a coal car at night so buyers could quietly cart it off. He was indicted on three separate counts by the grand jury on January 11.
By then, Eli had already skipped town. He’d left Little Rock back on November 6 and turned up in Shreveport, Louisiana, working first as a night watchman, then as a bartender. He had a wife and child waiting in Atlanta, Texas. Deputy Sheriff Norman Beller tracked him down, arrested him, and brought him back to Little Rock on the “Cannon Ball” train.
He did not go quietly. Sitting in his cell, he told a reporter from The Arkansas Democrat: “They have the wrong man, and I can show why I am right.” He said he came from one of the best families in Texas, that he’d been raised alongside Charlie Culberson (whose father was the Texas governor), and that he had powerful friends coming to defend him. He even claimed he could’ve fled to South America instead of coming back to face the charges.
Bold talk from a man in a jail cell.
And here’s the twist: it worked, or at least — it didn’t matter. The Pulaski County court docket shows that all three indictments against Eli Coyle were eventually dismissed — nolle prosequi, meaning the state chose not to pursue them. No trial. No conviction. Just… dropped.
Not long after, Eli and his family left the country for Mexico, where he lived out the rest of his life.
Was he guilty and got lucky? Did the case fall apart for lack of evidence? Did those “prominent parties” he hinted might get dragged in have something to do with it quietly disappearing? I don’t know. Nobody in the family ever mentioned any of this to me — which, in genealogy, is usually a sign there’s a story worth digging for.
The last two photos show Coyle living and working in Mexico.
After Eli died his wife and daughter moved back to Arkansas. His daughter, who would be my grandfather’s mother, came back to Arkansas fluent in Spanish which apparently wowed and perplexed the locals.
