A Tragic Affair in Old Montgomery, Texas

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Ironically, his name “William” had once been an honorable one, passed down from “Black Bill’s” father, William McGrew, Territorial Representative, Colonel and commandant of the 15^th Regiment Militia, Clarke County, Alabama, and a hero of the Creek War, killed by Indians at Bashi Creek in Alabama in 1813.  “Bill” was only two years old when his father was ambushed, and his mother Nancy Hainsworth McGrew Phillips did not maintain such an honorable family reputation.  In the Voice of Sumter, August 9, 1836, she was denounced by Regulators, as a “Jezebel”  for harboring mixed Indians and borderers among her clan, and for aiding and abetting the Kemp-McGrew feud.  The article by Louis C. Gaines called for her to be driven from the country, but she said she would “die on the grit.” Evidently, she did choose to return to Texas.  She had been listed in the failed Wavell’s colony in Texas in 1830, causing her to remain in Alabama, but 1850 she was in Leon County, Texas, whether by choice or force is unknown.

Because the people of the town did not want to bury the outlaws in their existing cemetery, they were buried outside the consecrated ground in an area simply called the "New Cemetery."   The first to be buried here, McGrew is the only one who has a marker, but his half brothers, the Olivers, are said to be buried beside him.  Photo courtesy Sue Moore

Ironically, the Cartwrights and McGrews knew each other back in old Washington County, Alabama. Thomas Peter Cartwright, the patriarch of the family, had served on juries with the McGrews. He was a Methodist minister, and he and his wife Elizabeth Shaw, had eleven children, all were born there. Old John McGrew and his sons John Flood McGrew and Colonel William McGrew were judges and representatives of that area to the Mississippi Territorial Legislature. Flood McGrew had been appointed by President John Adams as a member of the Territorial Council of five men who served as a virtual Senate of the Mississippi Territory. So the families certainly knew each other. When they moved to Texas, the Cartwrights also became influential in county government, with old Peter Cartwright becoming a Justice of the Peace in 1836 and Samuel Cartwright becoming sheriff of Montgomery County.   For an unknown reason, Samuel resigned in 1866.  Records do not show how or when William J. McGrew became the county attorney, but records indicate he was in office in 1867.

About this time, according to Robin Montgomery’s History of Montgomery County, Jesse James had camped at McGraw’s crossing of the San Jacinto River for a few weeks. When the gang departed, they left behind Charles “Tex” Brown, a Yankee sympathizer, with whom Jesse had grown weary.   “Tex,” also believed to be a murderer and deserter from Wheeler’s Cavalry, then fell in with the McGrew-Oliver clan. He was described by J. W. DeForest in Harper’s Weekly, December, 1868, as “Twenty-three or twenty-five years of age, of medium height, slender, sinewy, and agile, with a dark complexion, piercing black eyes, and a jaw disfigured by a pistol shot, and an expression of brutal ferocity.”

What caused the shootout in late December of 1868 is not recorded in the county records, but  two old citizens of Montgomery County, Mrs. W.C. Cameron and Mr. Buck Martin  recounted the following, according to Narcissa Boulware of the Montgomery County Times:

“When they (the gang) stole a fine horse from the Cartwrights and came into town to rob the stores and head out on ‘a scout’ for Mexico, a mob was formed at Bear Bend where the Gaffords, Cartwrights and others who came in after the men, lived.” According to Montgomery’s History, “Finally the citizenry had had enough, and led by the old family of Cartwrights from Bear Bend, they engaged in a bloody shootout with the outlaws in Montgomery which ranged over several blocks. At the end of the battle, all four desperadoes were dead and placed on Mrs. Oliver’s porch.”  Sadly, Cameron and Martin, recounted the deaths of one of the boys, “Bob Oliver the youngest, was scarcely 16 years old at the time. When the shooting started, he ran to Mrs. Chilton’s house. The mob followed, promised not to shoot him if he would come out. Someone killed him with a Bowie knife. He ran back into the house before he died. Here he died under a bed. The blood stains can still be seen on the floor.”

Another citizen and local judge, Nathaniel Hart Davis, recorded the bloody event on page 33 of his journal, “McGrew-Oliver Killing of Dec. 28, 1868  - On the 28^th of December in the forenoon four men , Wm McGrew Esq. County Atty. for the last two years and his two half-brothers, John and Bob Oliver of this town and “Charles Brown” of Cokesbury, S. Carolina alias “Texas Brown” of whom an account is given in Harper’s Monthly of Decr. 1868 were shot to death here (Montgomery) by some ten to 20 or thereabouts, men of this town and vicinity. If the people or society can be said to act in necessary self defense in the destruction of lawless desperados then I am of the option that this was such a case- a few others hereabouts may be nearly as bad as they-or some of them-one, May, made a narrow escape.  McGrew for a young man was a moral disgrace to the legal profession as we as to the office he filled. I did not recommend him to the Police Court - the appointing tribunal.  After I started for Miss. and Tenn. in Jany., I learned that he was in the crowd that took the Negro at court and that he and others had disguised themselves in the Post Office that night.  On my return I found quite a change for the better in Montgomery. It is now rather an orderly quite place. And the general expression is that much good was done in the killing of Dec. 28.  There may be some, for reasons best known to themselves who regret the death of McGrew. One white single female to whom he paid marked attention both before and since his marriage, manifests a fondness for his memory and a sorrow at his loss and continues to talk long after with a silly sentimentality-so says gossip. I heard not talk but believe it true - Miss E.A.”

The desperadoes were not buried in the consecrated ground of the old cemetery, but rather outside the gates in what would become Montgomery’s New Cemetery. There is a CSA marker on Lt. William McGrew/McGraw’s grave, but his young stepbrothers, buried near him lie unmarked. The only good thing said of William McGrew was recorded in the Houston Times, picked up by the Texas News, dateline January 23, 1869, “Tragic affair at Montgomery County. Death of William McGraw, county attorney. Mr. Brown of San Antonio and two brothers named Oliver.... William McGraw was in no way connected with the difficulty. He was trying to prevent the parties from using their pistols.”

By Sue Moore, January 2005

William McGrew's grave marker in Montgoermy's New Cemetery, photo courtesy Photo Robert L. "Dan" McGrew.

Thanks Sue for a great article.

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There is no Sunday west of St. Louis – and no God west of Fort Smith.

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