.41 Colts in Waco

by mcump (Michael Cumpston)

A railroad town located at the confluence of the Brazos and Bosque rivers- its single span suspension bridge was the principal link between east and west. By 1898, it was a nexus for the cattle drives and the cotton trade. Two major universities and a college prompted the Businessmen’s League to proclaim Waco “ The Athens of Texas" (always wondered about what the people in Athens, TX thought about that.) A less formal cognomen, boosted from another Texas City was “Six-shooter Junction.”

Waco, modern and cosmopolitan, had a system of electric streetcars and a telephone exchange. Just north of the central township was the Two-Street Reservation where local men could avoid the catabolic influences of the Solitary Vice in a supervised, legal red light district. To the South stood the self-proclaimed bastion of education and piety, Baylor Baptist University. By common consent, any hint of scandal attached to that golden edifice was quickly squashed and thereby, encouraged to proliferate. So, in the natural course of events, Waco was bounded on the North by open debauchery and on the South by secret depravity. Into this milieu, came William Cowper Brann

A native of Illinois, the self educated family man worked as a reporter for several Texas newspapers emerging as a widely read editorialist and satirist. He had sold his Austin newspaper to William Sidney Porter ( Later O. Henry) who promptly went broke. Brann re-instituted The Iconoclast in Waco- developing a worldwide circulation approaching 100,000. Termed “ a Literary Gatling Gun”, Brann’s fusillades were fine when triggered at the soirees of New York robber barons. –”…. have strutted their brief hour upon the mimic stage disappearing at daybreak like foul night birds or an unclean dream…-a breath blown from the festering lips of half-forgotten harlots…”; -but went over not at all when directed at the local golden calf.

Sometime in 1897, a student- a 14-year-old Brazilian orphan had become the ward of the university president. When she became pregnant by a member of the family, the cover up machinery went into play. The girl was abandoned to the streets and soon disappeared. The Waco Daily Telephone was content to keep the public in the dark but Brann began trumpeting “Baptist Hypocrisy!" across the several continents. There quickly developed a “Baylor Faction” and a “Brann Faction” –with attendant near- mayhem and blame to share on both sides. Brann barely escaped being lynched by a mob of students on the university campus and was pistol- whipped down the street by a mob of Baylor partisans.
Brann had lampooned gunfighters as cowards and fools “..bullets sweetly singing ‘Nearer My God to Thee.’" Nevertheless, he began carrying the .41 Colt.

The holster may have been made by the Padgitt Saddle Shop in Waco.

In 1871, a carpetbagger legislature had enacted a generally prohibition against defensive weapons. It was unlawful to carry a pistol, dirk, dagger, sword, sword cane or bowie knife “on or about one’s person, in his saddle, saddle bags or portfolio” in most parts of the State. A person who had received a threat sufficient to alarm “ a person of ordinary courage” could legally follow Brann’s example and arm himself. So, it came to pass that about 6 o’clock in the evening of April 1, 1898, Brann and a companion walked south from Austin Avenue on South 4th Street. An “Irate Baptist” real estate agent, one Tom E. Davis ran from his office and shot Brann in the back beneath the left shoulder blade. The bullet penetrated the left lung and exited the chest beneath the arm- pit. Brann spun, drew and fired. There followed a fusillade of shots in rapid secession -so close together that a policeman standing nearby could not tell who was doing the shooting. Contemporary accounts indicate that Davis was hit hard by the first shot – the remainder of his shooting done from the prone with little control. One source claims that Brann returned fire with cool resolve hitting Davis with all six rounds. Brann received an additional wound to the foot while Davis had an “ugly pistol wound” over the left nipple and was also hit in the kidneys. Davis was taken to the doorway of a nearby cigar store where he expired hours later. Brann might have survived his primary injury however, the police forced him to walk to the city jail before taking him to his home for medical treatment

W.H Ward, Brann’s companion received a wound to the hand. A visiting musician thought the gunfire was an April Fool prank before a slug imbedded itself in his foot. A streetcar motorman took a bullet to the leg.

Ward provided a res gestae statement as his hand was bandaged. “ I do not know what started the shooting… we walked together when I heard somebody say ‘ You d—n son of a b-‘ and heard a shot. I turned and grabbed hold of the pistol and he fired again shooting me through the hand.”
Davis claimed that Ward and Brann had been following him “deviling” him all day, that Brann shot first after saying “ There sits the coward who will not come out and fight.” By 8:00 PM, a special edition of the Waco Daily Telephone cast doubt upon the declaration of Davis. It was evident that Brann had received the opening shot and was wounded in the back. A Galveston news paper said that Braun had gallantly stood the gaff delivering his shots with cool deliberation.

Brann survived his assailant by about twenty hours. He is buried in Oakwood Cemetery near Baylor University. The monument is the Lamp of Truth above a cameo bust of Brann. Century- old bullet scars are still visible on the marble.

***

. We found a mechanically sound .41 Colt that had been owned by an old Waco family for about a century. Like the Brann revolver, it had the ejector length barrel; the old pattern narrow sights and a set of guttaperchs that showed little wear from handling.
The ammunition on hand came from a batch produced by Winchester-Western decades ago. This was loaded with a hollow - based bullet seated into the case in the modern fashion. We got this from LM Burney Distribution who had commissioned the lot of .41s. Mr. Burney said that Old Western Scrounger had bought most of his stock but that it had taken him a quarter of a century to unload the entire supply. We also had hand loads featuring a 200-grain healed bullet of the original type.
The gun’s present owner, shooting his full diameter hand loads, revolver rested on his camera tripod put four of the five rounds into a 1.5” group at 50 feet. I shot a group with the “modern” factory load. The best four, fired standing – one handed went into a 2.5” group with a stray round impacting the shoot-‘n-see target a couple of inches over the main pattern. While point if impact was a bit low and left, the .41 shot better than many of its contemporaries chambered for more popular and conventional rounds.

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