Today we have a guest post by John Bullard.
Texas, all in all, has had a history of almost unbelievable bloodshed . – Robert E. Howard.
The city of Waco has recently become more known for being the center of home renovators and decorators than violence, unless you happen to be a member of a motorcycle street gang that meets up with a rival gang at a restaurant. But it used to be one of Texas’ wildest cities. Robert E. Howard wrote of many incidents that occurred there in his letters to his fellow authors, H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth. In one of his earliest letters to Lovecraft, Howard relates the story of a dramatic gunfight that occurred in broad daylight on the city’s streets involving two types of folks not normally associated with violence, let alone gun duels in the streets. The incident Howard relates happened between the County Judge, George B. Gerald, and a Newspaper Editor and his fellow pressman-brother, James Harris and William Harris, on the busy streets of Waco, in 1897.
Howard gets the name of Judge Gerald wrong, but writes up a mostly true account of the event:
“But for cold steel nerve no man ever surpassed that showed by old Judge Jarrell in his street-fight with the Harris boys in Waco. The Judge was an intellectual old man, but very radical in his views, a Civil War veteran and a gentleman of the old school. The Harris boys were newspapermen and they caught him in a cross-fire. J.W. Harris was standing in the door of his newspaper building firing, while across the street diagonally his brother J.F. Harris had his stand. Judge Jarrell walked swiftly yet deliberately across the street toward J.W. Harris, holding his fire. Something about that steady advance shook J.W.’s nerve and his shots went wild. J.F.[sic], after missing repeatedly, came running across the street, firing as he came. At less than twenty feet a bullet shattered Jarrell’s arm and the Judge fired for the first time, killing J.W. Harris. Then the Judge turned to meet the remaining brother who rushed in and attempted to grapple. Another man somehow ran between them and all three went down in a heap; and there the Judge, as cool as steel, reached his pistol-arm over the man between them and blew out J.F.[sic] Harris’ brains. Two shots and two killings! He lost his arm but his foes lost their lives.
“The Judge was a close friend of Brann, the Iconoclast, who was keeping Texas in an uproar, and this shooting occurred not long before Brann and Davis shot each other to death on the streets of Waco.”(Lovecraft, ca. October 1930)
Origins of the Duel
Judge George B. Gerald had been a Colonel in the Confederate army where he had lost the use of his left arm from wounds. He became the County Judge for McLennan County, Texas, where Waco is situated, and later the postmaster for Waco. He owned a newspaper, The Daily Advance, in Waco, which may have put him at odds with James Harris, the Editor of the Waco Times-Herald. Gerald sold the paper in 1888.1
Judge Gerald became good friends with William Cowper Brann, mentioned by Howard at the end of his account as having died in another gunfight on the streets of Waco after the Gerald-Harris fight. Brann was the editor of a periodical, The Iconoclast, that was very liberal and loved to tweak the noses of the prevailing opinions in Waco and Texas, if you couldn’t tell by its name. In 1897, Brann wrote a piece criticizing Baylor University as “that great storm center of misinformation” and accused Baylor of only turning out “ministers and Magdalenes”. The Baylor students were not amused. Several of the more enthusiastic students tracked Brann down, kidnapped him, severely beat him, and nearly killed him.2
Judge Gerald, age 62, who also appears to have enjoyed thumbing his nose at the Establishment as much as Brann, wrote a piece defending Brann that he sent in to James Harris, age 34, to run in the Times-Herald. Harris refused to run it, and refused to return the writing to the Judge when he came and asked for it back. The two men got into a heated argument, and soon, three fists started flying (remember, Gerald had lost the use of his left arm in the Civil War). Due to Harris not being a follower of the Marquess of Queensbury school, and insisting on using both of his fists to the Judge’s one, Gerald lost the fight but kept his grudge against Harris. Judge Gerald then created a handbill accusing James Harris of being “a liar, coward and cur” and demanding the satisfaction of a duel with James Harris, which Gerald freely distributed throughout Waco. Harris, surprisingly having some small sense of honor, accepted the challenge, and the date was set.3
The Big Gundown
Historical Marker Commemorating the Gerald-Harris Shooting. Photo by Gregory Walker.
On November 19, 1897, at the intersection of Austin and 4th Street in downtown Waco, Judge Gerald and editor James Harris were to show up with revolvers. James Harris, again showing his noted sense of honesty and fair-play, had also brought his brother and fellow newsman, William Harris with him, and had William stand across from where the duel would take place to catch the Judge in a cross-fire with William’s own revolver. Judge Gerald arrived on the scene, and he and James took their positions facing each other in the street. James fired first, missing Gerald several times. When the Judge finally returned fire, he hit James, dropping him dead. William had started firing at Judge Gerald, again showing the Harris brother’s praiseworthy sense of honor, and holding true to their tremendous good fortune, he struck Gerald in his crippled left arm, which, unfortunately for William, wasn’t the one holding the Judge’s gun. A policeman, apparently enjoying the show, then decided it was time to end the fight, and tackled William and tried to disarm him. According to witnesses, and picture this if you will, while William and the policeman were wrestling for control of William’s .45 revolver, Judge Gerald, staggered and bleeding from a severe wound to his unlucky (or lucky for the Judge as it apparently had been a magnet for bullets aimed at the Judge’s person several times now) left arm, slowly walks over to the two men, where he calmly shoots William in the head. The Judge is then taken to his home where his left arm is finally removed, it having finished serving its purpose of attracting and catching bullets.4 According to the online site, Waco History Project, Judge Gerald wanted some information when he awakened from the operation:
Emerging from the chloroform, the Judge’s first words were “I know I killed Bill, what about Jim?” A witness assured him that J. W. was also deceased.
“Where did I hit him?”
“You got him right in the Adam’s apple.”
“I was aiming at the son of a b—-’s collar button!”
Well done, Judge, well done.
Aftermath
Historical Marker Commemorating the Brann-Davis Shooting. Photo by Gregory Walker.
Judge Gerald recovered from his operation, beat the murder raps for the Harris boys, and resumed his life. William Brann, however, continued to offend the people of Waco, who also continually tried to remove him from their midst. Brann, having received more death threats, borrowed Judge Gerald’s lucky revolver from the fight for protection. On the ironic day of April 1, 1898, Brann was out on the streets of Waco, a half-block away from the scene of the Gerald-Harris fight5, when another aggrieved Baylorite, Capt. Tom Davis, shot Brann in the back. Brann, mortally wounded, pulled the lucky revolver and shot and also mortally wounded his murderer, giving as good as he got. Judge Gerald lived on, eventually becoming editor of Brann’s The Iconoclast, and passed away in 1914, when he died from uremia.6
Special Note Of Credit Where Credit is Due
I was going through my edition of Collected Letters Vol. 2, looking specifically for another topic Howard had written about to write an article on, when I came across this section in the Lovecraft letter, and thought it would be a great little story to write about. I completed my article and sent it in to Keith for publishing. As I continued looking through the book for my original topic, I remembered that there is an on-going thread on the “Swords of REH” website (“An Unborn Empire” – Robert E. Howard’s Texas | The Swords of Robert E. Howard (proboards.com) ) created and run by REH Scholar Will Oliver that looks at various items of Texana that Howard wrote about to his pen-pals that I had just learned about a couple of months ago. I figured I better go and see if Will had written anything about the Gerald-Harris gunfight. Sure enough, he had mentioned it in a brief post back on Mar. 5, 2020, in relation to the Brann-Davis shooting, and had provided the URL for Damon Sasser’s old archived site, “REH: Two-Gun Raconteur”, where Damon had written up a great article of the Brann shooting and the Gerald-Harris fight back in 2011. I’ve decided to go ahead and publish my version of the shootings to get the information back out on a more easily accessed site, and also point interested parties to go to the archived site for Damon’s version. And, if you haven’t checked out the Swords of REH site, please do so. Especially look at Will’s great thread for more information on the items of Texas history Howard told his non-Texas friends in his letters.
NOTES
- From the Waco History Project: Moments in Time: “Geralds’ Theatrics” article.
- From “A Tale of Two Iconclasts” article.
- Waco History Project: “Geralds’ Theatrics” article.
- Ibid.
- Brann-Davis Shooting Marker, Texas Historical Markers site.
- Waco History Project: “Geralds’ Theatrics” article.
SOURCES
Letter
To H.P. Lovecraft, ca. October 1930
Texts
Roehm, R. (Ed.) (2007), The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard Volume Two: 1930-1932, REHFP
Websites
A Tale of Two Iconoclasts: When Whiskey and Ink and Blood Flowed | Hometown by Handlebar . Accessed June 20, 2021.
Brann-David Shooting – Texas Historical Markers (weebly.com) . “Brann-David [sic] Shooting (April 1, 1898)”. Accessed June 20, 2021.
Gerald-Harris Shooting – Texas Historical Markers (weebly.com) . “Gerald-Harris Shooting (November 19, 1897)”. Accessed June 20, 2021.
Oliver, Will. “An Unborn Empire”, Mar. 5, 2020, “An Unborn Empire” – Robert E. Howard’s Texas | The Swords of Robert E. Howard (proboards.com) . Accessed June 20, 2021.
Sasser, Damon. “Murdered by Baptists”, REH: Two-Gun Raconteur, Aug. 1, 2011, REH: Two-Gun Raconteur » Blog Archive » “Murdered by Baptists” — Death of an Iconoclast . Accessed June 21, 2021.
Waco History Project: Moments in Time . “Geralds’ Theatrics – Florence Gerald and Judge G.B. Gerald”. Accessed June 20, 2021.
John Bullard is a retired attorney who lives in Texas, and has updated The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard for The Robert E Howard Foundation Press, which will soon be available for purchase. He became a life-long Howard fan upon reading his first Howard story in an anthology of horror stories in 1974. While working on the Letters, he started seeing the subject matter of this post and has written it up for the education and edification of other Howard-ophiles. John is currently working on several projects for The Robert E. Howard Foundation Press.
