"Milam Gun Fight in 1886 May Have Left Innocent Man Dead" by Jeanne Williams.Temple Daily Telegram:

Milam Gun Fight in 1886 May Have Left Innocent Man Dead

by Jeanne Williams - Temple Daily Telegram

August 22, 2011

SAN GABRIEL — Old West fiction glamorizes quick-draw battles between the hero lawman

and his outlaw nemesis.

One such gunfight occurred in Milam County in 1886 that not only left dueling parties

at a San Gabriel store dead, but the victim of the lawman’s bullet reportedly was

mistaken for a cattle rustler with a similar name.

News of the tragic gunplay was told across Texas and ran in newspapers from Dallas to

New York, where headlines proclaimed that a Milam County constable had died in the

clash when the lawman attempted to arrest a cattle thief from Falls County.

The Galveston Daily News reported in its Feb. 27, 1886, edition that Constable Frances

Yewing Norman was killed at 10 a.m. at Clarke’s Store in western Milam County.

The ominous news story reported that Norman was serving an arrest warrant to Walter

Lane who had failed to appear in a Falls County court to face a cattle theft charge.

“Accompanied by Constable P. Stevens and Don Campbell, Mr. Norman went to Clarke’s

store to make some inquiries about Lane and took the storekeeper out leaving Stevens

and Campbell in the store. While Mr. Norman and the storekeeper were engaged in

conservation, Lane rode up armed with two six shooters.”

Norman attempted to arrest him, and he and Lane fired their pistols at the same time,

resulting in the death of both. The newspaper praised Norman as a hero and described

Lane as “a hard citizen.”

Milam County pioneer Sam Locklin wrote in his memoirs that Norman walked up and caught

Lane’s horse by the bridal and told him to consider himself under arrest.

“Both of them pulled their guns and shot at the same time,” Locklin noted. “Lane shot

Norman in the heart and Norman shot Lane in the mouth and the bullet went out at the

back of Lane’s head and he fell dead off his horse.”

Norman was carried into the store, where his last words were to ask that Lane be shot

down.

“We lost one of the best officers that we ever had in our beat. He was not only a good

officer but a fine man besides he was always jolly and the same man at all time,”

Locklin recalled.

In newspaper accounts, Norman was lauded as “an excellent officer, fearless and devoted

to duty. He had been constable since 1878. He leaves a wife and four little children.

The citizens of Milam County mourn the loss of a gallant officer, killed in the

fearless discharge of duty.”

When the gunsmoke cleared, however, one family claimed that outlaw “Walter” Lane was

still alive and at large. Left behind were the bereaved survivors of “Walker” Lane, an

innocent victim of a mistaken law officer.

In a posting on RootsWeb Ancestry in 2003, a descendant of the “innocent victim”

charged that their great-grandfather died as the result of a mistaken identity and they

proclaimed his innocence. Family members 117 years later charged that Norman “wasn’t

even an official officer, but was planning to run for office soon, and was, hence, a

show-off and killed the wrong man.”

The warrant sought a red-headed outlaw, and “my great-grandfather was a jet black-

headed man, and as I have stated, his name is Walker Lane, not Walter,” the web post

said.

According to family sources, Walker Lane was nowhere near the site of the cattle theft,

and was in a different county, isolated because of a flood. The writer on RootsWeb

Ancestry said that Walker Lane was cleared 50 years later, as chronicled by his

grieving mother, eyewitness accounts, an “official re-telling” of the shooting that

appeared 50 years later, testimony from the cattle owner and a court inquiry.

The RootsWeb posting also said that “Mr. Norman saw my great grandfather riding into

town, rushed up to him and grabbed the reins of his horse without ever telling him why

he was doing this, drew his gun on my great grandfather.”

Walker Lane “instantly drew his gun in self defense and they fired simultaneously,

killing each other instantly. This was a tragic case of two names sounding identical,

yet being entirely different.”

The writer also introduced the possibility that Norman was unable to read the warrant

and recognize the difference in names “if he ever even knew my great-grandfather’s real

name, which I doubt was why this tragedy occurred.”

The Lane family “has been God-fearing people for generations, but like most Texans back

then they knew how to protect themselves and their families.”

Lane’s mother hired an attorney who successfully cleared her son’s name, but “my

grandmother and her three brothers and sisters had to grow up without their father who

was cut down at the age of 28 because of this so-called constable showing off to get

elected constable in any future election.”

The book, “Texas Lawmen, 1835-1899: The Good and The Bad,” by Clifford Caldwell and

Ronald Delord recounts Norman’s death in a quick draw gunfight. The book gives a few

details of Norman’s tragic encounter with a suspected outlaw, his birthday on June 14,

1846, and the day he died Feb. 27, 1886, leaving behind a wife and four small children.

Norman was laid to rest in the Lilac Cemetery, a well-kept remote country graveyard at

the intersection of FM 487 three miles west of Sharp.

jwilliams@tdtnews.com

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Temple Daily Telegram.
All credit for this article goes to
Jeanne Williams and the Temple Daily Telegram