According to local historian Jeff Jackson, the 1873 shooting in a Lampasas saloon resulted in the death of four state police officers at the hands of the Horrell family and possibly their gang members during a shootout.
At the time, Lampasas was a wild town and guns were commonplace.
“That shooting is really about gun control, something we still have going on today,” Jackson said.
He explained that the saloon shooting was triggered a few months earlier. At that time Lampasas Sheriff S.T. Denson was shot and injured while attempting to arrest brothers Wash and Mark Short in January 1873.
As a result of pleas from Lampasas city officials, Gov. Edmund J. Davis issued a proclamation prohibiting sidearms in Lampasas County. Jackson said the governor sent state police to town to post the new proclamation in February, but they left soon after.
In March, Jackson said, the adjutant general of the state dispatched another company of state police at the request of town officials to arrest men who continued to carry sidearms.
But the officers had the deck stacked against them.
“These were unpopular state police, because the state used colored officers,” Jackson said. “So soon after the Civil War, I’m sure it was an attempt to get the black man back into the regular population. In all fairness, I think they belonged there, but so close after the Civil War, it was not a popular thing.”
Jackson said the state police officers were also referred to disrespectfully as the Davis Police, named for the governor at the time, who although a Texan, was also known as the “carpet bagger governor.”
It seems the first person the seven officers found in possession of an illegal six-shooter was Bill Bowen, who also happened to be brother-in-law to Merritt Horrell, one of the Horrell brothers.
“They arrested Bill Bowen … and for some reason they were convinced to enter the saloon,” Jackson said.
“My take on it was, you had four state policemen entering the saloon to arrest a larger force,” he said. “These rangers were not very experienced.”
Jackson said what happened next could be told in a variety of ways, but the result was four dead officers and one injured Horrell gang member. Three of the officers died in the saloon and one died later.
“They (the state police) probably did fire the first shot, but … at that point all hell broke loose and no one will know what truly happened in that saloon,” Jackson said.
He said the remaining three officers high-tailed it out of town. It was only weeks later that the state police force was disbanded, to be replaced by the Texas Rangers.
Mart Horrell, one of the brothers wounded in the shootout, was put in Georgetown jail while he recovered. According to Jackson, his wife was allowed to care for him.
“When he was well enough to ride, she got word to his brothers and they rode into Georgetown and broke him out,” Jackson said.
He added that supposedly numerous shots were fired during the breakout, although records are scarce.
The Horrell gang was tried in 1876 for the killings and found not guilty, although a case against Bill Bowen remained on the courtroom books after he became a fugitive from justice.
The brothers resettled in various parts of Lampasas County, but did not stay out of trouble.
Although they escaped prosecution over the shootings, over time all but one of the brothers lost their lives in the Horrell/Higgins feud, which began in 1877 over an accusation of cattle theft. The last two brothers killed, Tom and Mart, were shot in Meridian jail by suspected vigilantes with possible connections to the Higgins clan.
The remaining Horrell, Sam, headed to the Oregon territory with his family, according to a history of the feud.
Jackson said the saloon in the officers’ shooting does not stand today, but would likely have been located near the northwest corner of the courthouse square.
