John Wesley Hardin, gunslinger, he killed 30






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First killing                 Second killing             Killed seven           For snoring             He is wounded    
Killed Jack Helm       Killed Bill Sutton         He is captured       Killed in a saloon


JOHN WESLEY HARDIN 1853-1895

  Old West outlaw and gunslinger John Wesley Hardin, named after a founder of the Methodist Church, was born May 26, 1853, in Bonham, Fannin County, Texas.

  Rumored to be so mean he once shot a man for snoring, Hardin was shot to death in El Paso on August 19, 1895, by a man he had hired to kill someone else.

  Hardin by some accounts was the most notorious outlaw of the Old West.  He was reported to have killed over 30 men, including the one for snoring, in only 10 years of his career of crime, from age 15 to age 25.

  John's father, James G. Hardin, was a circuit-riding Methodist preacher, lawyer, and schoolteacher.  His mother was Elizabeth Cartwright Dixon Hardin.

  J. G. Hardin moved the family often during Hardin's childhood.   They settled in Moscow, Polk County in 1855, then moved in 1859 to Sumpter, Trinity County, where J. G. Hardin taught school.  In 1861, J. G. Hardin passed the bar and moved the family to Livingston, Polk County, Texas where he taught school and practiced law.

  In 1865, after the war, the family returned to Sumpter.   At age fourteen, John stabbed a schoolmate.     In 1868 at age fifteen, he shot a black man to death in Polk County.

  In 1869, Hardin's father sent him away from the area to teach school in Pisga, Navarro County, where other relatives lived.   But John Wesley Hardin left school after one term to take up more lucrative pursuits.

   Texas was ruled by the military according to congressional Reconstruction policies, and Hardin believed that he would not receive a fair trial for the 1868 murder.      While fleeing from the law following that murder, he killed at least one, and possibly four Union soldiers who were attempting to apprehend him.    He claimed that relatives and neighbors helped him bury the bodies and hide the evidence.

  The days of Reconstruction following the Civil War were tough days for local residents and Confederate veterans.   Corrupt politicians and police who were backed by the United States army were disrespectful of southern women and Confederate veterans.   Hardin, according to his own autobiography, put a few such men in their place while sending a few others home to the Lord.

  Although his actions seem outlandish by today's standards, the Southern locals were much appreciative to see the Reconstruction vagabonds punished, even while not agreeing with Hardin's methods.

  Hardin was wanted for various deeds, but the area settlers would provide support for him, possibly because they saw him as an influence in fighting carpetbaggers and other Yankee miscreants who were suppressing the local populace.

  In 1873, Reconstruction had ended in Texas with the election of Richard Coke over radical Republican E. J. Davis.   As soon as the former Confederates were returned to power, the populace was eager to see an end to the violence and lawlessness which had been rampant since the end of the war.

   Coke re-established the Texas Rangers in 1874, in part to reinforce local law enforcement in their ineffectual fight against cattle thieves, gangs, and feudists.   He created a Special Force whose first duty was to end the Sutton-Taylor feud.

  Hardin developed his skills in gambling and became enamored of horse racing.   In December 1869, he killed Jim Bradly in a fight after a card game.   His life subsequently became a pattern of saloons, gambling, fights, and killing.

  Hardin lived in Gonzales at different times when he was not on the run from the law.   In 1871 he visited his relatives, the Clements, in Gonzales County.   His first cousins, Mannen, Joe, and Gip Clements convinced him to go with them on a cattle drive to Abilene, Kansas.


  Hardin used his gun often on this drive on the Chisholm Trail in 1871.  He killed seven to ten men.   Among his victims were an Indian who shot at him with a bow and arrow, and five Mexicans with whom he had argued for crowding his herd.

  In rough-and ready Abilene, he killed three more.   Hardin fraternized and sparred with Wild Bill Hickok and Ben Thompson.

  When his cousin Mannen Clements was jailed for the killing of two of Clements' cowboys, Hardin made arrangements with Hickok for Mannen to escape.   Later in his hotel Hardin killed a man for snoring, and fled Abilene, fearing arrest by Hickok.  Some say that the snoring man was in the adjacent room, and the greatly irritated Hardin simply fired through the wall.

  Back in Texas, following a run-in with the State Police in Gonzales County, Hardin "settled down" for a short period.   He married a local girl, 14-year-old Jane Bowen, on February 29, 1872.  Jane was fully aware of Hardin's way of life, and remained totally loyal to him to the end.  Hardin was frequently apart from Jane, often to avoid the law.  She died in 1892.

  Hardin soon resumed his murder spree, killing four more times before surrendering to the Cherokee County sheriff in September 1872.  However, he broke out of jail after a couple of weeks.

  In August 1872, Hardin was wounded by Phil A. Sublett, who had lost money to Hardin in a Trinity City saloon.

  Hardin tried to hide out while he recovered from his wound, but finally gave himself up when his whereabouts were discovered.  Along with an indictment for assaulting Sublett, Hardin had several other indictments outstanding when he was arrested.  He was sent to Gonzales County at the request of Sheriff W. E. Jones who held warrants against him.

  Hardin broke out of the Gonzales County jail with the help of Mannen Clements.

  In April 1873, he killed J. B. Morgan in a Cuero barroom, one of the two killings for which he would ultimately be convicted.   The same year, he became embroiled in the Sutton-Taylor feud as a leader of the Taylor faction.  Hardin was related by marriage to the Taylors.   The opposing Taylor and Sutton factions both relied on the loyalty of kin.

  Hardin and Jim Taylor killed the powerful and ruthless Sutton supporter, Jack Helm, in Wilson County.  Helm was a former State Police Captain who led the fight against the anti-Reconstruction forces of Jim Taylor in the Sutton-Taylor Feud.  Hardin had become a supporter of Taylor's from 1873 to 1874.

As reported in July 1873 by the newspaper in Albuquerque, Wilson County, Texas:
     "Jack Helm, the leader of the Sutton faction in the Sutton-Taylor feud, and his buddies spotted Hardin and Jim Taylor in the blacksmith shop, and they approached the two.   Hardin simply shot Helm in the chest, and Jim Taylor emptied his pistol into Helm's head."

    "According to the first family of Taylors, from whom the feud took its name, the real beginning of the feud was the killing of Buck Taylor and Dick Chisholm at Clinton in DeWitt County on Christmas Eve 1868.
    In connection with the sale of some horses, Buck charged Sutton with dishonesty and the shooting resulted.     The feud tended to resolve itself into a struggle between the Taylor party and Edmund J. Davis's State Police.
   Capt. Jack Helm, backed by Jim Cox, Joe Tumlinson, William Sutton, and the might of the Union officials, came into sharp conflict with the strong­minded Southerners of the region.   Ostensibly in pursuit of horse and cattle thieves, the State Police terrorized a large portion of Southeast Texas. On August 23, 1869, a posse laid an ambush that resulted in the death of Hays Taylor.

    The worst outrage was the assassination of Henry and William Kelly, sons-in-law of Pitkin Taylor, on August 26, 1870. The Kellys were arrested on a trivial charge, taken a few miles from home, and shot down, while Mrs. Henry Kelly watched from hiding.

    Helm was dismissed from the force when other examples of his misconduct came to light, but he continued to serve as sheriff of DeWitt County. After Helm's demotion from the State Police, Sutton began to be recognized as the leader of the party.

    Typical of the methods used in carrying on the feud was the shooting of Pitkin Taylor in the summer of 1872. A party of Sutton sympathizers lured him from his house one night by ringing a cow bell in his corn field.   Pitkin, an old man, was shot and severely wounded. He died six months later. At his funeral his son, Jim Taylor, and several of their relatives resolved to revenge his death.

    Their first attempt was made on April 1, 1873, when they caught Sutton in a saloon in Cuero, fired through the door, and wounded him. They ambushed him again in June, but he escaped without injury.

    In June or July they waylaid and killed Jim Cox and another member of the Sutton group.     A little later Jim Taylor and John Wesley Hardin killed Jack Helm in a blacksmith shop in Wilson County.
    The day after Helm's death a strong force of Taylors moved on Joe Tumlinson's stronghold near Yorktown.     After a brief siege the sheriff and a posse appeared and talked both parties into signing a truce, but the peace lasted only until December, when Wiley Pridgen, a Taylor sympathizer, was killed at Thomaston.     Enraged by this murder, the Taylors attacked the Sutton faction, besieged them in Cuero for a day and night, and were besieged in turn when Tumlinson appeared with a larger band of Suttons.
    By this time the county was in terrible confusion. Persons who wished to live in the area had to take sides. There was constant pursuing and lying in wait, and deaths were frequent.
    Sutton moved to Victoria in an adjoining county and finally determined to leave the country. Some say he was going away for good; others believe he was merely following a herd of cattle to a northern market.
   He had boarded a steamer at Indianola on March 11, 1874, when Jim and Bill Taylor rode up to the dock and killed him and his friend Gabriel Slaughter.
    The Suttons got even by lynching three Taylors.     Kute Tuggle, Jim White, and Scrap Taylor were among a group of cowboys who had engaged to take a herd up the trail for John Wesley Hardin.    At Hamilton they were arrested, charged with cattle theft, and brought back to Clinton.    On the night of June 20, 1874, they were taken out of the courthouse and hanged, though they were probably innocent of any wrongdoing.
    Capt. Leander H. McNelly and the Texas Rangers were called in. They tried unsuccessfully for several months to break up the feud. "

In March of 1874, Hardin and his older brother Joseph aided Billy and Jim Taylor in their assassination of the leader of the Sutton faction, Bill Sutton, as he boarded a boat in Indianola on his way to New Orleans.

After Bill Sutton's murder, Hardin put together another cattle drive and journeyed to Comanche to say goodbye to his family.  On May 26, 1874 he was celebrating his winnings from a horse race, drinking at the Comanche saloons, when he met up with deputy sheriff Charles Webb from neighboring Brown County.  Webb was killed and the crowd turned against Hardin and his companions.  Hardin escaped but his father, his brother Joseph, and other kinsmen were arrested.

Joseph Hardin and two cousins were taken from jail at night and lynched.   Vowing to avenge his brother's death, Hardin left Texas and fled to Florida, followed later by his wife and daughter.

During that flight, he killed at least one, and perhaps as many as five more victims.   Under the name of J. H. Swain he relocated in Florida among his wife's relatives.   He later moved his family to other Bowen relatives in Pollard, Alabama, across the Florida state line.

On February 6, 1873, Hardin's first child Mary Elizabeth "Mollie" was born in Texas.   John Wesley Hardin, Jr. was born August 3, 1875, and a daughter, Callie, (later renamed "Jane Martina" and called "Jennie") was born July 15, 1877, both in Florida.  Jane Bowen Hardin died in 1892.

In 1877, John B. Armstrong, a Second Lieutenant in the Texas Rangers Special Force, requested that he be commissioned to find and arrest the fugitive Hardin.  A Dallas detective, Jack Duncan, was hired to live undercover among Jane Bowen Hardin's relatives in Gonzales County, in order to learn where Hardin was.

Jane's brother, Brown Bowen, also a fugitive hiding in Alabama, betrayed their whereabouts when he wrote his father and told him that his sister Jane sends her love.

Armstrong and Duncan went to Pensacola Junction in Florida .   They made arrangements with the sheriff to arrest Hardin on the train as he was returning back to Alabama, on August 23, 1877.  They overpowered Hardin, and transported him back to Texas.

At age 25, on September 28, 1878, Hardin under heavy guard was sentenced in Comanche County to twenty-five years for the murder of Charles Webb, the Brown County deputy.

Hardin made several unsuccessful attempts to escape the prison in Huntsville, and was harshly punished each time.

Hardin eventually settled into prison life, joined the Debating Society, attended Sunday School, and studied law.  He was released February 17, 1894, and pardoned on March 16, 1894, and was admitted to the Texas Bar soon after his release.     Hardin opened a law practice in Gonzales.

                            From the Kenedy Texas newspaper of June 8, 1894    - - -
"John Wesley Hardin, once the most noted desperado in the state, was for several days this and last week on a visit to relatives.   He was accompanied by his daughter.    Mr. Hardin is as polite and affable a man as one would like to meet, and says he has had enough of the old wild life and that he proposes to act as a good citizen of the country from this time forward.    Every good person wishes him well in his efforts to lead an exemplary life, and as he is yet a young man - only 41 years old - he has enough time to make up for past mistakes and shortcomings.    He returned to Gonzales, his present home, on Monday."

Hardin became embroiled in a controversy in the election of a Sheriff, and thus moved to Junction, where his brother Jeff lived.  He opened a law office in Junction, and married 15-year-old Callie Lewis.
A relative, Jim Miller, asked Hardin to come to Pecos to give legal assistance in his feud with Sheriff Bud Frazer.

Hardin drifted to El Paso.   He set up a law office, but he soon let his practice slide.  He frequented saloons, gambled, drank to excess, and got into fights.  He had an argument with one John Selman on August 19, 1895.

As Hardin threw dice at the bar of the Acme Saloon, Selman shot him in the back of the head.     Hardin was dead at age 42.


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