Archer Fordham (12 December 1881-1970) was an American Bureau of Investigation Agent in the early 20th century.
Biography[]
Archer Fordham was born in 1881 in Blackwater, Texas. In 1899, his mother was injured during the Blackwater massacre. She died on 24 July 1900, and was buried at the cemetery at the Blackwater Church of Holy Ascension. Fordham joined the Bureau of Investigation at some point in or prior to 1907. Still a junior agent by 1911, he was the protégé of senior agent and director Edgar Ross.
In 1907, Fordham and Ross found Micah Bell's corpse on the top of Mount Hagen, and traveled to various locations whilst interviewing citizens, in an attempt to find the killer. They eventually found the ranch at Beecher's Hope, where they spied on John Marston teaching his son Jack how to brush a horse. Convinced that they found the killer, Fordham and Ross nodded to each other and left to plan their next move. In 1911, Fordham and Ross took John Marston's family away from him in order to strong-arm him into hunting down some of his former comrades from the Van der Linde gang. Following the abduction of Abigail and Jack Marston, the two agents were escorted John Marston to the train station in Blackwater. Fordham met John again when he captured and gave them Javier Escuella. Fordham congratulated John for not killing him and Ross gave him the order of going back to Mexico and find, capture or kill Bill Williamson.
Once John arrived in Blackwater, Fordham and Ross directly worked with him to track down his former gang leader and mentor, Dutch van der Linde, who had formed a new gang of disaffected Native Americans. After rescuing their informant, Nastas, from the Wreck of the Serendipity and attempting to prevent Dutch and his gang from robbing the First National Bank of Blackwater, Fordham participated alongside John and Ross in a climactic assault on Van der Linde's camp in Cochinay with the assistance of the US Army. During the assault, Marston cornered Dutch, who chose to commit suicide by throwing himself from a cliff, declaring to John that their time was up, a reference to the federal government's manipulation and the pursuit of outlaws like them. Following Dutch's death, Fordham and Ross met with John one last time at the bottom of the cliff, where the former thanked John for his assistance and told him that he's made his country proud. The agents then parted ways with Marston, informing him that he was free to return to his ranch, where his family was waiting for him.
Fordham was offered a job in Washington DC, Fordham accepted, and he left Blackwater forever. Due to that, Fordham was not present where Ross betrayed John and launched an all-out assault on his ranch to kill him. In 1914, he was informed of Edgar Ross's death in Lake Don Julio, but Fordham didn't follow the same steps as Andrew Milton or Ross, and he simply continued with his work in Washington.
In 1940, Fordham retired from the job, and moved to a beachfront house in Alabama. He died in 1970 at the age of 89 due to natural causes.
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