The Sutton-Taylor Feud: The Deadliest Blood Feud in Texas

6. Treaties of Peace

137 chapter six Treaties of Peace “The matter of dispute between the two contending parties … was … amicably settled without injury or bloodshed …” —Cuero Weekly Star, January 3, 1874 J uly of 1873 was deadly for the followers of William E. Sutton, as Cox, Christman, and Helm all fell before the guns of the Taylor party. Clearly, John Wesley Hardin’s expertise in planning and executing ambushes had produced positive results. Historian Robert C. Sutton Jr. believed that it was at this point that a “pattern of pre-meditation” emerged, which is borne out by the dates: Sutton was ambushed in early April; Hardin then met with the Taylors at Mustang Motte where they agreed to “a war of extermination.” Sutton suggests that perhaps Hardin’s cousins, the Clements brothers, “asked him down.…”1 ThemeetingatMustangMottewasperhapsagathering to plan strategy. It was as safe there, if not safer, than any of the homes of the Taylors. Perhaps the Taylors did import Hardin, contacting him directly or through his cousins to join them. Or possibly Hardin simply decided that by joining the Taylors he had better protection against lawmen anxious to earn the significant reward. Assuming that Hardin planned the deadly work of eliminating Sutton’s men, then the next logical target—other than William E. Sutton himself—was Capt. Joseph Tumlinson. Captain Joe’s first 138 The Sutton-Taylor Feud wife, Johanna Taylor, had died sometime during the 1830s; if she had survived would Captain Joe have been a Taylor ally? But she died leaving Joe a widower, with no children. Joseph Tumlinson was married a second time to Elizabeth Newman in 1840; this union produced three children. Their daughter Ann Elizabeth married DeWitt County Justice of the Peace L. B. Wright; their son John J. “Peg-Leg” married Isabelle Cresap whose husband participated in the feud; their daughter Martha E., commonly called “Matt,” married feudist William W. Wells. To complicate the family matters even more during the feud, Captain Joe’s first wife Johanna was a sister of William Riley Taylor who had married Elizabeth Tumlinson, Captain Joe’s sister. In 1870 Captain Joe claimed $4000 in real estate and $5000 in personal estate in DeWitt County. He was fifty-nine years old and gave his occupation as “Stock Raiser.”2 After years of fighting Indians and Mexicans, Tumlinson now fought Anglos, essentially the Taylors. Ranger-correspondent Pidge wrote of Captain Joe and his involvement in the last Indian fight in DeWitt County in 1844. He continued that after that “he has been fighting whites ever since, …” 3 Feudist Joseph Tumlinson, like Bill Sutton, Henry Ragland, and Jim Cox, had also been a member of the State Police, but was dismissed in April 1871 for refusing to obey orders.4 Hardin and Jim Taylor, now co-leaders of the Taylor forces, determined to attack Joe Tumlinson and as many of his associates as possible, all in one dramatic engagement. It probably was Hardin’s idea as he had exhibited his ability to plan and execute a successful ambush; but setting up an ambush on some lonely country road to kill an enemy had proved generally unsatisfactory, as too many variables entered into that type of killing. The plan, at least on paper (if the feudists had drawn up a plan on paper) was simple: surround the Tumlinson house, set it aflame, then shoot all those attempting to escape. The pair gathered men of like spirit: Brown Treaties of Peace 139 Bowen, George C. Tennille, the four Clements brothers, Ed Glover, Joshua “Bud“ Dowlearn, Alf Day and his brother Jack Hays Day, John Milam Taylor, and E. A. Kelly, brother of the murdered Kelly brothers, and an unknown number of Three feudists in the early 1870s. From left: Ed. J. Glover, James C. Taylor and Ed Harris. Photo made at Powder Horn, Calhoun County. Courtesy E. J. Thormaehlen. 140 The Sutton-Taylor Feud others. Hardin had a justifiable reason to end the career of Captain Joe other than his desire for a good fight, at least in his mind. He had learned that a short time before, Tumlinson and some fifty of his men had gone to the Clements home place in Gonzales County looking for him, no doubt intending to end his effectiveness as a leader of the Taylors—permanently . Mrs. Hardin no doubt informed her husband of the ill treatment administered her, with perhaps some embellishment . This may have...