Texans Choose Sides In Epic Reconstruction Feud

The town marshal was dealing a friendly game of monte on Nov. 18, 1875, when five armed strangers walked through the swinging doors of the Cuero saloon and blew the lawman clean out of his chair.

The town marshal was dealing a friendly game of monte on Nov. 18, 1875, when five armed strangers walked through the swinging doors of the Cuero saloon and blew the lawman clean out of his chair.

The Sutton-Taylor Feud, an epic private war with a cast of dozens, claimed another life. The fact that the victim had never laid eyes on his executioners was not that unusual since strangers had the advantage of getting up-close and personal on their target.

The chaotic consequences of the Civil War bred indiscriminate violence throughout the Lone Star State. Federal soldiers and the state police, living symbols of the hated Reconstruction occupation, were considered fair game by most Texans.

The galling disrespect of two feisty teenagers, Hays and Doboy Taylor, caused a thin-skinned Yankee officer to order their arrest. When the smoke cleared, several troopers lay dead, and the brothers were wanted men.

Hays and Doboy were still on the loose in March 1868, when Billy Sutton, a native of Clinton, led a posse in pursuit of accused horse thieves Charley Taylor and James Sharpe. After Taylor went down fighting at the climax of chase, his companion gave up only to be shot on the spot.

Meanwhile, professional gunfighter Jack Helm was hired to bring in the fugitive Taylor boys. Hays was slain on Aug. 23, 1869 at the family ranch in Karnes County, but Doboy disappeared without a trace.

The resourceful youth eluded the manhunt but could not escape an early grave. Doboy pulled a pistol two years later to cancel a business deal but was killed with his own gun by a fast-thinking ex-partner.

The Sutton-Taylor affair reached the boiling point on Christmas Eve 1868. Buck Taylor and a sidekick wandered into Clinton, a fatal mistake even during the holidays, and were promptly dispatched by Billy Sutton and his hometown cronies.

The Reconstruction legislature created the powerful state police in 1870, and the first to enlist were Jack Helm and Billy Sutton. Their personal vendetta turned into a public confrontation between legally ordained peace officers and the embattled Taylor clan.

With his shiny new badge and a crew of unscrupulous underlings, Sutton appeared at the home of the Kellys, in-laws of the Taylors. William and Henry Kelly obligingly went along with the uniformed state cops for questioning but instead were murdered in cold blood a few miles down the road.

The next victim was elderly Pitkin Taylor, the family patriarch ambushed in his cornfield. Drunk with power as well as whiskey, Billy Sutton disrupted the funeral for the old man cursing the mourners and challenging them to take their revenge.

But the Taylors wisely refused to take the bait. They steered clear of Sutton and his henchmen patiently waiting for the day their tormentors no longer had the law on their side.

As the curtain finally came down on Reconstruction, the legislature disbanded the state police in the spring of 1873. With the legal rug pulled out from under Sutton and Helm, a new generation of Taylors avenged the bloodshed of the past five years.

Masquerading as an ordinary blacksmith, Jack Helm figured no one would think to look for him in the Wilson County village of Albuquerque.  Jim Taylor and a 20 year old cousin named John Wesley Hardin track down Helm less than three months later, and the locals went back to shoeing their own horses.

Accompanied by his brother Bill, Jim Taylor caught up with Billy Sutton in March 1874 at Indianola, where he had booked passage on the next ship out of the Texas port. Two bullets changed his plans and destination.

Sutton partisans retaliated by lynching three Taylors, who had been detained at Clinton on false charges of cattle rustling. There seemed to be no end in sight to the killing as guerilla warfare enveloped several counties and forced innocent bystanders to pick sides.

Cuero marshal Rube Brown, the new leader of the anti-Taylor faction, arrested Bill Taylor for the Sutton murder. During his September 1875 trial, a hurricane roared through Indianola and in the confusion the defendant escaped.

Two months later, a Taylor quintet broke up Marshal Brown’s card game. Then in December 1875 came the final fatalities of the granddaddy of all Texas feuds.

Friends swore Jim Taylor and a couple of companions rode into Clinton to give themselves up, while foes insisted their real purpose was to burn down the courthouse. Whatever the motive, the trio perished in a hail of hot lead.

Bill Taylor was captured in West Texas in 1877 and returned to Indianola for his storm-interrupted trial. The jury decided Billy Sutton had it coming and voted for acquittal.

Although the feud was officially over, Bill Taylor knew the Sutton crowd would not accept a cease-fire until he was six feet under. Wandering north to Oklahoma, he tried his hand at law enforcement. Imagine his surprise a few weeks later when a saddle tramp beat him to the draw!

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