Career
Born in Pineville, Bell County, Kentucky, Wilburn came to prominence as a National Guard officer after serving two enlistments in the United States Army Infantry in the 1890s. In 1906, then Lieutenant Wilburn attracted attention by capturing a notorious fugitive criminal. He led a National Guard detachment into Virginia on horseback to hunt Frank Ball, who had escaped from the penitentiary where he was serving a life sentence.
The pursuit ended in a shootout at Rufus Ball’s farm.
Ball was captured and one of his men killed. “was a thrilling chapter in the criminal history of the Virginia Mountains,” said the local press
In 1907 and 1908, a vigilante group known as The Night Riders terrorized the "Black Patch" region of Kentucky and Tennessee. In 1908, the New York Times reported, “There now exists in the State of Kentucky a condition of affairs without parallel in the history of the world." Wilburn was sent with his soldiers to end the violence.
In the spring of 1908, now living in Sturgis, Union County, Kentucky, Wilburn made a series of arrests of Night Rider leaders and protected numerous key informers.
The arrests broke the power of the Night Riders and effectively ended the Black Patch War. Lieutenant Wilburn was rewarded with a promotion to captain. The battle against the American Tobacco Company continued, but now in the courts.
On May 9, 1911 the United States Supreme Court ruled that the American Tobacco Company was in fact an illegal monopoly and violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Acting of 1890.
5. 221 United States. 106 (1911). After the Black Patch Tobacco Wars, Wilburn met his future bride, Lula Wren, in a dramatic scene on the train station platform in Springfield, Tennessee.
He worked as a coal miner in Union County and later was a postmaster in Muhlenberg County. He died in January 1927 age 52 of peritonitis following a "fall on rough ground".
Wilburn came from a military family.
Reuben Wilburn enlisted in the Union Army at the age of sixty.
