WALLER COUNTY.

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FEUDS AND CRIMINALITIES.

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AN INSIGHT INTO THE SPIRIT OF OUTLAWRY.

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Do the Officers and People Co-operate?

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Hempstead — Its Commercial Position.

[Special Correspondence of the News.]

Hempstead, Oct. 28. — I asked a shrewd, practical man of Hempstead what was wrong in Waller county, anyhow.

"Go," said he, "and ask somebody that don't live here and is not afraid to speak."  And with that his eyes were little rolling worlds of meaning.

Even if there were no bible, we would know that the natural condition of man is one of sin — license of thought and act, aversion to restraint.  Experience is our authority.  Where there is no education and high moral standard, men are animals.  The fact that men, reared to think and act by law and morality, will degenerate if relieved from any cause, of these restraints, is cumulative evidence (with all due respect for the bible) that the fall of man is a fact.  Cain heard the crushing in of Abel's skull under the blow of a heavy club with the same satisfied lust for blood than Dan Morris felt when he walked up to Tom Loggins's buckshotted, stiffening body and lacerated its heart with a pistol ball; or that the three Logginses felt when they put three loads in Reuben Morris (a man honored and loved all over Waller); or that Kirby felt when he ended years of thirsty broodings for revenge by killing with careful certainty, and publicly, the killer of his father; or that the unknown man or men felt when he or they destroyed from the face of the earth, soul and body, the eight Lynch children.  Civil law says a man is a thief; criminal law that he is a savage.  Is it remarkable then, if such a definition of man is correct, that you find thieves and savages where the law is not applied?  Though the crime record of Waller county is startling in extent and violence, yet the county is not in a state of lawlessness.  The trouble is not there.  But what do six murders, two or more suspicioned murders, a budget of stock theft cases, and no convictions mean?  Have the officers of law kept their oaths?  Do the qualified jurymen come right and swear protection to the blood of their blood, to their earnings, under the law and the facts in their court-house?  If they are degenerated below respect of law, consistency says, and the last human instinct appeals to them to stop furnishing material for savages; to stop building up worldly goods, the food for prey, that accumulate as slow as sediment of the sweat from accompanying labor.  A long line of criminalities stain the name of Waller, and yet a gallows was never erected in the county.  Hang a man, whether guilty or not, just for a warning, for a moral lesson, is it asked?  But if you have no guilt in all your crime, Waller is at once the most innocent and most bloody county in Texas.  It is not intended to say that if people of Waller county did not have a full supply of common sense they would never know what the object of the Criminal Code is.  But does it not seem, from the records, that every man here is a law unto himself?  Else why does a man load a shot-gun with fifteen balls and deliberately shoot the life out of another man who has threatened the shooter's life, instead of having the disturber of peace put under bond for good behavior? A co-operation of officers and people under the law is the only way to prove that law is wanted.  What do the written court records of crime show for Waller county — its law, prospects, sentiment, intention, present condition, destiny?

I am told by a good citizen that the present grand jury is the first conscientious, working one in two years.  See what that body has the laudable temerity to say in its report under date of October 18, 1879:

Extract: "While we have much to be thankful for in the improved moral condition of our county, there remains yet great room for further advancement to a more elevated plane.  To accomplish this, a duty devolves upon the citizens at large, from which they can not shrink with any hope of its attainment.  This duty rests with those who, as petit jurors, have the last verdict upon crime."

Extract: "We find our officers efficient, with some exceptions, prominent among whom we have to mention constable W. H. Burwell, against whom there is much evidence of incompetency and willful neglect, and we recommend his discharge.  It is our opinion that the municipal officers of the city of Hempstead have been partial in the discharge of their duties in matter of making arrests."  The men who have thus aroused themselves to the emergency — and their names are E. P. Alsbury, W. C. Compton, D. J. Parker, Wm. Thornton, I. A. Clemmons, J. D. Mitchell, J. C. Bishop, W. M. Bennett, E. P. Kemper, G. W. Fuller, R. R. McDade — do not hesitate to say in their report: "We have found few, if any, bills which will not stand the test of a trial.

OUTLAWRY — THREATS AND COUNTER THREATS.

During the war, John Steele, once a well-known faro dealer at Houston, latterly a farmer of Waller county, shot and killed Col. J. E. Kirby, Sr., of this county.  Kirby's boys swore vengeance.  John Steele went armed for them.  When the factions met eyes reddened with hatred, and their hands rested in their hip pockets as naturally as a baby on its mother's breast.  Sunday, May 4, 1879, J. E. Kirby, Jr., shot Steele three times in the presence of deputy sheriff Campbell, Mr. Levin, Mr. Cannon and others coming from the church Steele also had attended.  Kirby's plea is self-defense.  He claims that Steele made a motion to draw a pistol at the time of the killing.

A year ago the savage mode of warfare that gave the colonists more fear than the British, crept into the hearts of men yet unknown, and they killed and burned eight children of Geo. W. Lynch.  He was wounded, but still lives.  His house was burned.  His home comforts razed from the earth.  It is charged here that the affair was never investigated by the officers of the law.  Mystery still surrounds the case.  It is said Lynch knew too much about stock thieving.  Not a single indictment has ever been found in the Lynch horror, that racked the state with its blood-freezing atrocity.  Lynch was secretary of a band to regulate cattle-thieving.  He wanted to correct some little crookedness in his own clan, and was attacked in his house for it.  The theory is that the children were put out of the way because they would identify the attacking party.  It is hinted that Lynch shot himself and killed his children.  But no earthly reason is assigned for so crazy an act.  Besides, he was shot but twice, once through the collar-bone and once through the center of the breast, on line with the collar bone.  Both shots entered from the front.  He wore a long beard.  It was not singed, nor was his shirt burned, as would have been the case if he had shot himself.

Ed Young is indicted for killing Finklea, and is under obligation in the sum of $5000 to stand his trial.

Bob Crawford is indicted on the same charge.

The bottom of the Loggins-Morris family feud has never been reached satisfactorily.  Theories to suit each side are illogically and, in some cases, absurdly spun out.  Uncle Dan Loggins, the feud pacificator, the man to whom I was referred as a truth-teller though the heavens fall, claims that "Tom Loggins just hated Dan Morris at first sight."  At Tom's invitation Dan came to take supper with him one night.  Dan and Mrs. Loggins chatted together and talked with the young Logginses while waiting for Tom's return from town.  Dan and Mrs. L. went out of the room on the gallery and were laughing and talking in the moonlight when a cap snapped sharply, and Dan looked around to find Tom pointing a pistol at his head.  Dan retired rapidly up the road.  Tom went to the fence and killed Dan's horse hitched there.  From that date he swore he would kill Dan on sight.  He told old uncle Daniel Loggins he would do it, and told others.  Tom said Dan took liberties with his wife.  Dan denied it.  Mrs. Loggins denied it.  After Tom was killed, and on the trial of Dan, pressure was brought to bear on Mrs. Tom Loggins by her husband's friend to make her say Dan outraged her feelings.  She swore on the stand on Davis's trial that his "treatment of her was what any gentleman would use toward any lady."  Tom was a jealous man, and we are left to infer he harbored unfounded suspicions.  Dan left his farm and business and lived twenty months in a new occupation at Englewood, Robertson county.  He returned to finally wind up his affairs and leave for good.  As he came into town he saw Tom Loggins and Nat Alston riding out, and killed Tom with a shot-gun he carried.  All the testimony goes to show Tom would precipitate a fight if he met Dan.  The latter, against the advice of Reuben Morris, his brother, returned to the arena and got the first shot.  First blood in the feud.  Reuben Loggins, father of Tom, told Daniel Loggins and others that Reuben Morris "put Dan up to" killing Tom, and said "Reuben must die.  And on the 9th of July, '79 a volley of buckshot from three guns from an ambuscade lodged in him.  He fell out of his buggy dead.  The testimony in the examining court was voluminous, and resulted in the binding over for trial of Reuben Loggins, his son Williford and nephew Henry.  In August last judge Spencer Ford, of the ninth district, heard the case on habeas corpus at Bellville and denied bail.  Evidence against the Logginses is mainly circumstantial.  Measurement of their tracks, fitting of paper rent in a paper bag of shot, purchase of shot like that found in the body, and wrapping of shot in bag above mentioned, their mysterious movements with guns toward and from the scene of the killing, the presence there of dogs known to follow Reuben Loggins only — thse are some of the links the prosecution have welded into a chain of evidence.  Filman Loggins, (is his name Tilman?) a colored boy on Reuben Loggins's farm abutting the road at the ambuscade, is the only witness that saw anything very important.  He saw the trio go and return with guns.  He says they called him to the house, and that Reuben Loggins asked him if the saw anything; if he did to be cautious and keep it to himself.  Cross-examined, he said he was told something more he "could not let out."  He said he was threatened with death if he told what knew in court.  Tilman is a valuable man for the state, and is undoubtedly the next in line of promotion as a target for the Morris-Loggins shooting match.  If Tilman is threatened with death, he is not alone in misery.  Col. Griffin, of Boone and Griffin, prosecuting the Logginses, is warned by Reuben Loggins that he prosecutes at pain of death if the latter gains his liberty.  The colonel belongs to the class of men who do their whole duty and gather strength with opposition — a cultivated gentleman of Georgia birth, of good legal attainments, and a resident of New Orleans long enough to finish his education in the art of self preservation, he stands steadfast.  He paid Phil Sheridan nearly $2000 for opinions Sheridan deemed grounds for arrest and farcial (sic) a trial.  He will prosecute professionally — not persecute — with the same independence.

Seth Shepard got a change of venue in the Loggins cases to Austin county.  It is agreed that he has gained nothing in the change.  What he has avoided in the prejudice against his clients will be reasonably offset by the blue-stocking severity of Austin county Germans.  Chance threw in his way, however, unmistakable proof of the predominance of public feeling against the Logginses.  Thursday night of last week the Dan Morris case went to the jury, and in the morning they stood ten for acquittal.  The same morning the Loggins case was called.  A sentiment that would acquit Morris would convict Loggins.  Both men did their shooting from an ambuscade; the first was seen to do his shooting, the second said he would do his and failed (according to testimony) to cover his tracks to and from his hiding place.  The question of their guilt is with the courts; if guilty, they are equally so.

WALLER COUNTY — HEMPSTEAD.

The seven hundred or more square miles of Waller county offer inducements to settlers that are comparatively unknown.  The county has 80 miles front on the famous Brazos river.  This land is rich beyond calculation.  There are about 1800 voters in the county and room for three times that number.  The lands available for farmers are still offered at fair figures.  Improved lands bring $10 per acre.  Upland prairie is usually poor, but holds its value as stock range.  People looking this way to settle can find the land; what they want is a reasonable amount of law.  Let the spirit of reform in principle encompass the people, and the vacant sandy loam of this region will, with proper advertisement, rise in the market.  Apropos of this subject, the Hempstead Daily Courier of October 22, wisely says: "Let the farmers organize a system by which they can secure immigrants and reap some profits from their uncultivated lands, instead of incurring the expense of paying taxes for them."  Again: "If there ever has been as much as a hundred dollars expended to make known abroad the character of her soil, the healthfulness of our climate, and the regularity and certainty of our seasons, we are not apprised of the fact.  Few of our merchants expend anything to invite trade to the city, although she is on every hand confronted by ambitious rivals, who take the trade legitimately belonging to her.  A large portion of the trade of that rich section, Wallace's prairie, might be secured to her, if the proper efforts were made to obtain it."

Hempstead is the county seat, with its new court-house — handsome and roomy — its five or six churches, its 2500 hundred people, its eighteen brick stores and as many frame, its pretty residences and orchards, is a place of no secondary importance in a commercial point of view.  The trade of Waller and contiguous counties belongs, most of it, to Hempstead, and much of it is coming here.  Once a cotton factory stood here, but went by the board on account of internal dissensions and lack of trade recognition.  One hundred thousand dollars worth of machinery sold for a tenth that sum.  Manufacturing interests are now represented in a small cotton seed oil factory.

"Waller County - Feuds & Criminalities." The Galveston Daily News, Saturday, October 25, 1879, p 2, col. 3-4.

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