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Written in Blood
The History of Fort Worth's Fallen Lawmen Volume I 1861â"1909
By Richard F. Selcer, Kevin S. Foster University of North Texas Press
Copyright © 2010 Richard F. Selcer and Kevin S. Foster
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-57441-349-6
CHAPTER 1
SHERIFF JOHN B. YORK
August 24, 1861
Felled by "an assassin"?
Tarrant County's first sheriff was Francis Jourdan (sometimes Anglicized to "Jordan"), elected in the first countywide elections on August 5, 1850. Since the little community of Fort Worth would not get its first town marshal for another twenty-three years, the sheriff shouldered all the responsibility for local law enforcement. Jourdan was just a part-time lawman, which was normal in those days. He was a farmer first and peace officer second, spending more time on his homestead near Johnson's Station than at the county seat in Birdville. His two-year term passed without incident, and he gladly turned the office over to his successor in 1852.
That successor was twenty-seven-year-old John York, who before being elected sheriff worked as a farmhand for Jourdan. York was a big man who could manhandle a heavy moldboard plow through the tough prairie sod or wrestle bales of hay onto a wagon singlehandedly. He was Tarrant County's second sheriff. Actually, he was more anointed than elected because no one else wanted the job. His tenure could have been as unremarkable as Jourdan's had he not been the first local peace officer to die in the line of duty.
John B. York was born May 13, 1825, in Tennessee, birthplace of many nineteenth-century Texans, but he did not come directly to Texas from the Volunteer State. His family was part of a vast tide of Americans looking for the promised land, first in Illinois, then Missouri, before finding their way to north Texas. He married Julia Ann Gilmore, daughter of Seaborne Gilmore, on January 26, 1846, in Springfield, Illinois. The capital of Illinois was a small burg of fewer than two thousand people at the time, with three churches, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Episcopal. Abraham Lincoln was soon to become its most famous resident, but the Yorks and Gilmores did not stay around that long. They were off to Missouri. Then in June 1848 they came by covered wagon to north Texas to stake a claim on a parcel of land in the Peters Colony, three miles north of the Trinity. The two families built their cabins on adjacent homesteads, each comprising a 640-acre "headright" that represented more than one man could work profitably. To make ends meet, York hired himself out as a farmhand to Francis Jourdan. Soon after John and Julia arrived in Texas, they started a family, and that family grew steadily in the years that followed.
John York's family history is vague due to an absence of official records and family papers. Even the records and papers that exist conflict on some important points. Strong oral tradition says that Julia gave birth to their first child, a boy, a few months after they arrived in Tarrant County. They named him William only to see him die of unknown causes, a sad start to their new life in Texas. They buried him in a small plot of ground near their homestead, which later became known as the Mitchell-Gilmore Cemetery. A second son was born in 1850 to whom they also gave the name William, a legacy baby so to speak. Through 1856, Julia produced a new child every other year—Antonia in 1852, Oliver in 1854, Texana in 1856—then a sixth child, John B., Jr., came in 1860. Julia was pregnant with the couple's seventh child in the summer of 1861.
The Yorks and Gilmores were among a handful of families already in the area when Major Ripley Arnold and elements of the Second Dragoons came to the confluence of the West and Clear forks of the Trinity River in the summer of 1849 to establish an outpost. The presence of the troops at that location brought a measure of security to the isolated frontier, bringing others to the area.
Running for sheriff in 1852 was not an impulsive decision by John York. He had already shown an affinity for law enforcement by getting elected the county's first constable in 1850. The fact that he ran for public office and won, just four years after arriving in the area, shows not only that he had political ambitions but that he was popular with his neighbors. It did not hurt that he was well connected thanks to his father-in-law, Seaborne Gilmore, elected as the county's first judge in August 1850.
Sheriff York was even-handed and conscientious in performance of his duties. His imposing bulk gave him a natural advantage over smaller men. He did not throw his weight around, but neither did he shy away from using force when necessary. As a rule, he kept the old Colt army revolver he wore in its holster. Being sheriff was more politicking and paperwork than peacekeeping. He was re-elected to another two-year term in 1854 before losing his third race to William Bonaparte Tucker in 1856. Like the Yorks and Gilmores, the Tuckers were one of the First Families of Fort Worth, so there was no shame in losing to Bill Tucker. The Tucker name later adorned several landmarks in the city.
York's duties kept him close to Fort Worth most of the time. The empty western reaches of the county did not need much law enforcement because there was just one road and only a few isolated homesteads between Fort Worth and the Tarrant-Parker County boundary. Fort Worth was far off the "outlaw trail" and too far east of Comanche territory to need a real gunman or an Indian fighter in the position. John York was a regular guy who happened to wear a badge. When he left office in 1856 he was still well regarded. The new sheriff, Bill Tucker, treated the job as a steppingstone to bigger things, and after one term got himself appointed clerk to the district court and subsequently won election as a county judge.
Bill Tucker's swift political rise opened the door for York to reclaim the sheriff's office in 1858. Following his third term, Tarrant County voters were not so much disappointed with his performance as they were ready for change again. In 1860 they chose William O. Yantes over York, but despite being a two-time loser, events conspired to put him back in office a fourth time. In the spring of 1861 the Civil War erupted, and Yantes traded in his badge for a musket and a butternut-colored uniform to serve in the Confederate army. York did not join the first wave of volunteers from Tarrant County, and the decision seemed to be a shrewd political move at the time. His experience and family connections got him appointed by the county court to finish out Yantes' term. At the time he was killed that summer, therefore, he was just the interim sheriff until the next elections came around, and with more of the county's men going off to fight all the time, it is unlikely he would have faced much of a challenge for another full term.
Not much is known about what Sheriff York did during his seven years in office. Perhaps his most notable accomplishment was overseeing construction of the first county jail in 1856, a rough-hewn, one-room log cabin that resembled the guardhouse used by the army when Fort Worth was an actual fort. It was still in use twenty years later. We also know he joined thirty-seven other citizens in 1859 to post a $10,000 bond so that construction could commence on a proper courthouse befitting Fort Worth's status as the county seat. The signatories pledged to build the courthouse without raising taxes.
Over and above being public-minded, Sheriff York had personal reasons for wanting to see the courthouse built. At the time, his office was in a cramped, two- room building on the public square (formerly the parade ground of the fort) that housed all county offices. At least the filthy, malodorous calaboose was detached. Unfortunately, York never got to move into the new courthouse because the Civil War interrupted construction, and he died before it was completed.
York was killed in a confrontation with Archibald Young Fowler in the summer of 1861 that caused Fowler's death, too. It was no "affair of honor," and it is even arguable whether York's death was "in the line of duty" under the circumstances. In fact, everything about the affair is arguable. There are two completely different versions of what happened in a classic case of "he said-she said," except that the "he" and "she" are the descendants of the York-Gilmore and Fowler-Peak families and their supporters. Writing years later, old-timers could not even agree on the basic details of the story: not the date or the cause of the confrontation or where it occurred or the weapons used, or even who killed whom! York-Gilmore partisans refer to the "tragic killing" of John York; Fowler-Peak partisans refer to the "murder" of Archibald Fowler. About the only thing the two sides agree on is that both men died that day. Modern historians have only muddied the water by accepting uncritically either the Fort Worth (York-Gilmore) version or the Dallas (Fowler-Peak) version.
The other principal in the affair was Archibald Young Fowler, Jr., referred to in the records as simply A. Y. Fowler. He was born in Laurence County, South Carolina, on January 8, 1825, and spent his formative years there before heading for the western frontier in search of the American Dream after his father died in 1840. That search eventually landed him in Texas where he read for the law and hung out his shingle in Austin for a few years before relocating to Dallas. Arch Fowler had become "A. Y. Fowler, Esq." by this time, and he began a rapid ascent up the social ladder.
It did not hurt his standing that on April 27, 1859, he married Juliette Peak, daughter of one of the most prominent families in the town. He was thirty-four years old at the time and she was nineteen. Her father, Jefferson Peak, was a Mexican War veteran and successful merchant in Kentucky when he brought his family down to Texas in 1855 to take advantage of the booming frontier economy. He was also a pillar in the Disciples of Christ church who considered Dallas a field ripe for evangelism. There is no indication that Arch Fowler was one of his converts, however. Juliette had eleven siblings, including one brother, Dr. Carroll Peak who preceded her to Fort Worth by six years, and another, Junius Peak, who would become legendary as a Dallas lawman and Texas Ranger. Fair Juliette must have been quite a looker because in May 1858 she was crowned Dallas' first "May Queen." Her girlhood was brief, however, because two years later she was married to Arch, living on the wild frontier in Fort Worth, and pregnant with their first child. But her heart remained in Dallas. She never felt comfortable in Fort Worth because it was so rough and violent. Like Julia York, Juliette Fowler suffered the tragedy of losing a child early in her marriage. Arch and Juliette's daughter, Ada, born in February 1860, died nine months later of unknown cause, but by the summer of 1861 Juliette was pregnant with their second child.
Arch Fowler was an excellent lawyer and a real go-getter. The lure of opportunity pulled him westward to Fort Worth where there were fewer lawyers and land aplenty for the homesteader or the speculator. Fowler fell into the second category. When legal business was slow through his law office, he kept busy as a self-styled "general land agent." The combination supported the couple, allowing them to buy a nice house on the corner of Fifth and Rusk. They also had family in Fort Worth. Arch had a brother and sister-in-law (names unknown), and Juliette's brother, Carroll Peak, was the town's physician and helped introduce the newcomers around. Arch was content in Fort Worth but did not turn his back on Dallas. He and his brother-in-law were the local agents for the Dallas Herald, and he regularly advertised his law practice in the Dallas newspapers after relocating to Fort Worth.
In Fort Worth, Fowler found a place perfectly suited to his temperament. Mrs. William Crawford, a Yankee transplant who was his contemporary, described it as a town where "men went about wearing pistols and bowie knives openly, and it was a common thing to hear of a man being shot without any notice being taken of it by the authorities." He fit in because he carried a very large chip on his narrow shoulders, probably related to his slight stature. We know he was not a big man because contemporary accounts speak of him being physically manhandled by opponents even before he tangled with Sheriff York. Being on the losing end of such encounters did not inspire any propensity for turning the other cheek, any more than joining the churchgoing Peak family. On the contrary, Fowler had a notoriously short fuse and a disposition that was not improved by a fondness for liquor. He was a pugnacious, hard-drinking lawyer as likely to be a defendant as defense counsel. He was to the legal profession what Doc Holliday was to dentistry. Still, his fellow citizens did not consider him a menace. On the contrary, he was a community leader who moved in the same circles as Fort Worth founding fathers Ephraim M. Daggett, J. C. Terrell, and John Peter Smith. Indeed, Smith started his own legal career by "reading law" under Fowler and after proving himself to his mentor they became partners. Fowler must have been a good mentor because Smith became one of the best title lawyers in Texas, yet when he wrote his "Own Story" in 1901, Smith did not even mention Fowler as an influence in his life. In 1861, they shared an office on or near the public square. There were six other lawyers in the small community of about 500, but the town was growing so there was plenty of work for all. Fowler followed the big-city practice of having business cards printed up and passing them out liberally. He was also a Freemason in Lodge no. 148, transferring his membership over from Dallas.
There is no indication that Fowler owned slaves, but he definitely supported the institution. He was a Southerner through and through, and although a lawyer in good standing in the community, he was not above a little vigilantism when it came to dealing with Yankee-lovers and abolitionists. On the night of July 16–17, 1860, he was one of the "regulators" who strung up William H. Crawford, a recently arrived homesteader from Maine accused of being an abolitionist and "an agent of the underground railroad." Fowler subsequently admitted to a newspaper reporter that he had been a member of a "committee" that spied on Crawford to gather evidence on his abolitionist activities, and while not admitting his own participation in the lynching, Fowler swore an affidavit that another pillar of the local community, Charles Turner, had not been present that night, which he could only have done if he had been involved himself. He also sat on the coroner's jury afterwards that refused to call it a lynching. The sheriff at the time was John York. There is no indication of York's feelings about slavery or about the sectional crisis, but he did not enlist to fight for the Confederacy after Fort Sumter, and as the first defender of law and order in Tarrant County, he could not have approved of vigilante justice.
In the fall of 1860 when the secession crisis came to a boil, Fowler served with other prominent local men on a "Resolutions Committee" that drew up a statement denouncing pro-Union Governor Sam Houston and supporting secession. When Texas seceded from the Union three months later, Fowler helped rally local opinion behind the nascent Confederacy. Still, he was not part of the first wave of eager enlistees who signed up to fight.
How Arch Fowler got crossways with Sheriff York is part of the mystery. Both men were solid citizens in their community. Fowler was no more violent than other men except when he was drinking; then he became combative, but that did not make him a killer. He was one of those men Mrs. Crawford spoke about who went around armed with a bowie knife, which even on the frontier was not normally considered a tool of the legal profession. (But it was not unknown either. Flamboyant California lawyer David S. Terry also carried a bowie knife in addition to his briefcase, and used it to stab a member of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee in 1856.) Fowler's habit coupled with his notoriously bad temper caused fellow citizens to give him a wide berth, although he was never known to have pulled the weapon on either his clients or opponents prior to August 1861. By the same token, Sheriff York is not known to have pulled his Colt revolver before that tragic day.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Written in Blood by Richard F. Selcer, Kevin S. Foster. Copyright © 2010 Richard F. Selcer and Kevin S. Foster. Excerpted by permission of University of North Texas Press.
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