Written in Blood: The History of Fort Worth's Fallen Lawmen, Volume 1, 1861-1909

CHAPTER 4 Deputy Marshal William T. Wise (October 2, 1884)

72 CHAPTER฀4 Deputy฀Marshal฀฀ William฀T.฀Wise October 2, 1884 Tis done, a noble soul is sent To the land of Heavenly Glory; A brave detective low is laid By hands all red and gory.1 Five years passed before another local officer died in the line of duty. Once again the case involved a question of jurisdiction: What business does a Fort Worth deputy marshal have joining a Mississippi manhunt? That deputy marshal was William Wise who became the first Fort Worth or Tarrant County officer to die while performing his duties in another state. His death in Mississippi on October 2, 1884, rippled through the ranks of lawmen back home impacting the careers of legendary Fort Worth officers T. I. Courtright and William Rea. Courtright’s tenure as city marshal had ended in 1879, and the voters rejected him when he made one more run in 1881, but he was still part of the close-knit law enforcement fraternity. In October 1884 Marshal Rea tapped him to be acting marshal while Rea went to Mississippi to help track down William Wise’s murderer . Courtright’s temporary appointment received the council’s blessing at the same October 7 meeting where the council granted Rea a two-week leave of absence to go to Mississippi. He was on an eastbound train the next morning.2 73 DEPUTY MARSHAL WILLIAM T. WISE Why the city marshal of Fort Worth felt obliged to join a Mississippi manhunt and why city fathers gave him permission is one of the more curious stories in the history of Fort Worth law enforcement. Rea wanted to catch Wise’s killer for personal as much as professional reasons. The Deputy’s widow was the Marshal’s favorite niece, Dora James, and he was not going to sit by idly while the killer was free. Law enforcement in those days was often a family affair (see the Earps), making it important to know who the outlaws and the in-laws were. William Terry Wise was born November 2, 1861, in Johnson County, Texas, where his parents had moved from South Carolina. By the time he was eighteen, young Bill was living on his own in Johnson County engaged in farming. The nearest “big city” was Fort Worth. On December 21, 1882, he married eighteen-yearold Dora James of Tarrant County, born Dora Alice Boydston on November 24, 1863. Despite her youth, Dora was already a widow when they wed, having married J. T. James in 1879. James was killed before they had been married even a year, whereupon she returned to her family until marrying Wise. William and Dora had a daughter on August 11, 1884. whom they named William Virgia after her father, calling her “Willie.” She would be not even two months old when her father was killed and Dora was widowed for the second time in her young life.3 William Wise may have been a rookie cop, but he was not just any rookie. He was the Fort Worth Police Department’s (FWPD’s) first plainclothes detective, which was not an official rank at the time but a position created just for him by Marshal Rea, his wife’s uncle. The family connection explains how young Bill was able to make the jump from farming to law enforcement and start out as the secondin -command in the Fort Worth Police Department. The only description we have of Deputy Wise comes from the fanciful “Ballad of Dock [sic] Bishop,” a ditty composed in 1886 to memorialize not the victim but the man who did the dirty deed! The ballad describes Wise in almost effeminate terms, as having “soft, brown, shining eyes, [with] gold brown hair o’er-lying.” We are told nothing about his height or build, only that his face showed “daring courage,” which was sufficient to redeem him as a man’s man.4 74 CHAPTER 4 The rookie had a lot of responsibility resting on his shoulders. For whatever reason he did it, Bill Rea was breaking new ground when he created the position of detective. There is no record that he consulted the city council first, but as a company man Rea would probably have run it past the council’s three-man police committee. As a growing city, Fort Worth needed something more than another cop walking another beat. More to the point, his nephew needed a...