Cyrus "Nig" Elder was born into slavery and had to watch his mother be sold when he was a child. According to census records he was born in Texas in January 1855. Moving to the Kaw, Osage area with Lee and Dick Russell from Menard,Texas as the camp cook for the cattle ranch sometime after 1866. Elder had a rule that anyone that complained about the food had to cook the next meal. At the end of a long day one of the cattle drivers momentarily forgot himself and stated, " Good grief, these beans are burnt," but quickly recovered with "but that is just the way I like them!"
In 1892 he is living in Elgin, Kansas wher on October 4, 1892 he cooked breakfast for the Dalton gang, that would the next day go to Coffeville, Kansas and try to rob two banks and some of them lose their lives.