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William J.
McGrew might have been a hero, but unfortunately he turned out to be a
scalawag. Born in 1844 in either Claiborne or Copiah County,
Mississippi, his roots were Old Alabama, but his destiny was an early
grave in unholy ground in
Texas.
He joined the Porter’s Guards, Co. H of
the 4th
Texas
Infantry C.S.A., at the beginning of the Civil War in Montgomery,
Texas, but
was discharged in 1861 as being disabled. He was only seventeen at
the time. He returned home to Montgomery in Montgomery County,
Texas, to
eventually become a lieutenant of the home guard, Co. K, 20th
Texas
Regiment, basically assigned to duty in
Texas and
the
Indian Territory.
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Texas
Confederate Troops, appeared in Harper's Weekly, June, 1861,
courtesy Library of Congress.
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Remaining
in the Porter’s Guards of Hood’s famous
Texas
Brigade were the Cartwright brothers of Montgomery’s Bear Bend.
Unfortunately, E. W. “Ras” Cartwright became the first casualty of the
company. As the group was being shipped to the Virginia battlefields, the
train stopped at Holly Springs, Mississippi. “Ras,” six feet six,
borrowed a sword and was impersonating an officer in order to impress the
Southern belles gathered on the platform. Evidently, he was enjoying
himself so much that he was the last man to leap aboard the moving train. Somehow the sword caused him to trip and fall beneath the train, severing
both legs and resulting in his death. The Cartwrights’ bad fortune
continued when brother James G. W. Cartwright was killed in the
bloody Wilderness Campaign in Virginia, and brother Lemuel, the eldest,
was wounded and lost an arm in the last major conflict before Appomattox.
Their unit was devastated, and of the 143 men of Porter’s Guards, Hood’s
Texas
Brigade, only nine remained to surrender with Lee in April of 1865.
However, the survivors of the Cartwright family would soon cross paths
with the McGrew-Oliver clan.
Following
the war in 1867, William J. McGrew/McGraw was appointed county attorney
during Reconstruction. His reputation among town folks was “a
Republican appointee by day, a KKK by night, and a horse thief in
between,” according to Montgomery County Historical Society’s Choir
Invisible. Added to his list of misdeeds were the actions of John P.
and Robert O. Oliver, his younger half brothers, teenagers who maddened
the town folks by riding their horses into business establishments,
shooting up the town, robbing and stealing.
These boys
had inherited a terrible legacy. Their father and William
McGrew’s stepfather, Egbert O. “Eg” Oliver, had been shot down
in 1853 in old Montgomery when the boys were small children. From the Autauga Citizen, Prattville, Autauga County, Alabama,
issue of Thursday, Oct. 20, 1853:
“Death of an Outlaw: The Galveston
Civilian has a letter dated Montgomery,
Texas,
October 1st, in which the writer says: A sad occurrence took
place in our (town) between seven and eight o’clock. A man, well
known in this section of the country, if not in others, named Eg Oliver,
was shot from his horse on the public square. He had been arrested by the
sheriff of which was for an assault with intent to kill a fellow named
Lang in this county. It being the greatest charge on which the sheriff was
authorizer to arrest him, he brought him to our town and delivered him to
our sheriff, who committed him to jail in default of bail. About a week
before court began here he broke out, and was then supposed left. But
during court he was seen several times in this vicinity, and one night
went to the house of our sheriff and called him up, but would not let him
approach near enough to arrest him. Yesterday, while most of our citizens
were at dinner, he rode into the square, galloped about it, and then rode
off again, in defiance to all. He was pursued by the sheriff and several
citizens but eluded the pursuit, and last night just at dark came into
town again, threatening, as I am informed, to burn the jail. In attempting
to arrest him for the purpose of recommitting him, he refused to
surrender, and while in the act, as was supposed from his action (it was
dark) of shooting upon those gathered around him, he was shot down, fell
from his horse and died immediately. Who committed the deed, can never be
known, as there was several shots fired at the same time. Thus perished a
man, who, by his reckless and lawless course of life has been a horror to
some, and respected by but few. May the memory of his many errors be
buried with him. He has left a wife and two small children who have been
compelled to flee from him, and seek protection under the roof of
strangers.”
To make
matters worse, William’s real father had been an
outlaw
in his own right. William “Red Bill” McGrew and his cousin William
“Black Bill” McGrew, in their early twenties, had killed two teenage boys
in Sumter County, Alabama in 1835. In May, Alabama Governor John Gayle put
out an $800 bounty for their apprehension. From the Commercial Register
of Mobile:
“Wanted - A Proclamation - On or about the
first day of April of the present year [1835], William McGrew and William
P. McGrew, in the county of Sumter [Alabama] murdered a couple of boys in
the foulest manner, and under the most shocking and aggravated
circumstances. The oldest of the lads was 16 or 17 years of age, and his
little brother about 11 or 12. Their name was Kemp. They were peaceably at
work, earning a subsistence for the indigent family to which they
belonged, having given no offence or provocation whatsoever, when they
were cruelly shot down at the same time, in a very wantonness of
deliberate and cold blooded murder.”
Notices of the reward appeared in Mobile, New Orleans, and even in
Texas. Soon
another reward of three thousand dollars was raised by the citizens of
Sumter and Marengo. Published in Mobile, New Orleans and in the
Brazoria, Texas
Republican 24 October 1835 was this descriptions of culprits:
“William P. McGrew (“Black Bill”) is about
twenty four years of age, hair a little dark, fair skin and blue eyes;
mild, and retiring look when sober; six feet high. William McGrew, (“Red
Bill”) the cousin of the other, is about 21 years old, red hair, fair
skin, eyes between gray and blue, six feet high, down look and forbidding
countenance. Both addicted to intemperance.”
“Black Bill” McGrew fled to
Texas, to a
place “about 125 miles from Nacogdoches” where bounty hunters from Alabama
“ handed a letter, perhaps from some authority in
Texas, to a
man there by the name of Bowie with the expectation of getting his
assistance in the taking of McGrew; but he being the friend of McGrew
showed him the letter. The party in pursuit of McGrew immediately
became alarmed and fled,” according to the Voice of Sumter paper,
Nov. 6, 1837. Eventually McGrew was betrayed by a man posing as a
friend and turned over to the three bounty hunters. He was returned to
Alabama where he escaped from the Mobile jail and was subsequently
recaptured by the sheriff in Little Rock,
Arkansas. As he was being returned to
Alabama, he created such a commotion on board the steamboat trying to
escape that the Captain was obliged to put him and the sheriff off at
Vicksburg. He was then shackled and the sheriff and a contingent of
men delivered him for trial in Sumter County. Tried for murder, he
received a $500 fine and one year for manslaughter since evidence proved
the Kemp boys had readied guns in an ambush position. In addition,
the Kemp boys’ mother, who was the only eyewitness, told at least three
different stories to different people, and did not fare well under
cross-examination. Yet within the year, “Black Bill” died from his prison
experience.
Continued
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