John Wesley Hardin was born in 1853 near Bonham, Texas, the son of a Methodist preacher and a mother he would later describe in his autobiography as a highly cultured woman devoted to philanthropy. His family moved frequently across Central Texas as his father conducted preaching tours, eventually settling in Trinity County in 1859. Texas was on the verge of joining the Confederacy, and the violent upheaval of the Civil War and Reconstruction shaped the world in which Hardin grew up. In 1867, while attending his father’s school, fifteen-year-old Hardin had a violent encounter with another student, Charles Slaughter.
Slaughter accused Hardin of writing graffiti on the school wall and insulting a female classmate. Hardin denied it and blamed Slaughter instead. The argument escalated until Slaughter attacked Hardin with a knife, and Hardin defended himself by stabbing Slaughter so severely that the boy nearly died. Hardin narrowly avoided expulsion, but the incident foreshadowed a life marked by sudden violence.
In November 1868, Hardin entered a wrestling match with a former slave of his uncle’s named Major Holshousen. The next day, Holshousen ambushed Hardin, shouting and brandishing a stick. Hardin claimed he defended himself by shooting Holshousen five times with a pistol. Holshousen died three days later, and two other men were injured in the exchange.
Fearing his son would not receive a fair trial in Union-occupied Texas, since the victim was a freedman, Hardin’s father ordered him into hiding. According to Hardin’s own account, authorities eventually tracked him down, and three Union soldiers were sent to arrest him. Warned of their approach by his brother Joseph, Hardin chose to confront them and killed all three. Knowing he could not return home, Hardin took up with an outlaw named Frank Polk in Navarro County.
During their travels, Polk killed a man named Tom Brady, and soldiers from Corsicana pursued the pair. Hardin escaped while Polk was captured and imprisoned. In the meantime, Hardin briefly taught school in the area, and he later claimed to have won a bottle of whiskey by shooting a man in the eye. He also testified that he and his cousin Simp Dixon each killed a soldier in a confrontation, and that he killed a Black man in Leon County.
On January 5, 1870, in Towash, Hill County, Hardin was playing cards with Benjamin Bradley. Hardin won nearly every hand, which enraged Bradley, who threatened him. That night, Bradley found Hardin and fired a shot but missed. Hardin then shot Bradley dead with both pistols.
Witnesses described Hardin’s unusual quick-draw technique: his holster was sewn into his vest, and his pistol pointed inward through his chest. Hardin admitted to killing two men in Hill County, once catching two members of a fifteen-man posse sent after him, taking their weapons, and ordering them to wait for him at a designated spot. More killings followed. On January 20, Hardin killed another man following an argument at a circus in Limestone County.
Days later, in Coy, Texas, he shot dead a pimp who demanded money from him and a prostitute he was with. In January 1871, Hardin was arrested and charged with the murder of a Waco police chief named John Hoffman. Hardin denied the crime, but he was held in a wooden jail in Marshall while awaiting transfer to Waco for trial. While imprisoned, he bought a revolver from another inmate.
Texas State Police Captain Edward T. Stakes and a man named Jim Smalley were assigned to escort him to Waco. According to Hardin, they tied him to a saddleless horse for the journey. While the party camped along the way, Stakes went to buy hay, leaving the seventeen-year-old prisoner alone with Smalley.
Hardin testified that Smalley began taunting him and hitting him with the butt of his pistol. Hardin shot Smalley and fled on horseback, crying. He claimed he was later captured by three men named Smith, Jones, and Davis in Bell County, but that he killed all three with their own guns after they became drunk and careless. On July 4, 1871, a trail owner named William Corin was killed on the Cottonwood Trail south of Abilene by an unnamed Mexican man fleeing south.
The Mexican was then killed by two cowboys in Sedgwick County, Kansas. Hardin later admitted to being involved in the fatal shooting of the Mexican. In Abilene, Kansas, Hardin encountered the legendary lawman Wild Bill Hickok. The Bull’s Head Tavern, founded by former attorney Ben Thompson and gambler Phil Coe, advertised its business with a painted bull that included exaggerated anatomy.
Residents complained, and Sheriff Hickok ordered the painting changed. When Thompson and Coe refused, Hickok altered it himself. Thompson, angered, tried to provoke Hardin into killing Hickok by shouting at him that Hickok was a “damn Yankee” and urging Texans to shoot him. Hardin, who seemed to respect Hickok, replied that if Hickok needed killing, Thompson should do it himself.
Later that night, Hardin confronted Hickok, who told him carrying a gun in town was illegal and ordered him to hand it over. To Hickok’s surprise, Hardin bent down, picked up his revolvers from their holsters, and extended them butt-first toward the sheriff. Then he quickly swept them back up into his arms, and suddenly Hickok was staring into the muzzles of Hardin’s guns. Both men backed off, and Hickok advised Hardin to avoid trouble while in Abilene.
Hardin met Hickok again in August while driving cattle, and this time Hickok allowed him to carry his pistol in town, a privilege he granted no one else. Hardin was fascinated by the famous gunman and enjoyed being seen in his company. He later alleged that Hickok arranged the jail escape of Hardin’s cousin Mannen Clements, who had been jailed for the murder of two cowboys. In early 1872, Hardin settled in Gonzales County, where he married Jane Bowen and befriended her brother.
Through his cousins, he became connected with the Taylor family, which was locked in a bloody feud with the Sutton family. On August 7, 1872, at the Gattis Saloon in Trinity, Texas, Hardin was shot by Phil Sublett, whom he had beaten in a poker game. Sublett fired a shotgun, hitting Hardin in the kidney twice. For a time, it seemed Hardin might die.
While recuperating, Hardin decided to reform and surrender himself to Sheriff Reagan of Cherokee County for his past crimes. But when he learned how many murder charges Reagan planned to bring against him, he changed his mind. In November 1872, Hardin escaped from the Gonzales County Jail after a relative smuggled him a saw to cut through the bars of his cell window. Despite being protected by six guards, he got away, and a reward of one hundred dollars was offered for his capture.
In May 1873, two men, Jim Cox and Jake Chrisman, were killed by the Taylors at Tumlinson Creek. Hardin was recovering from a gunshot wound at the time, and he neither confirmed nor denied reports that he had commanded the attack. He simply said he had no time for such matters, as it was not his responsibility. Hardin’s most notorious actions during the Sutton-Taylor feud involved the murder of two lawyers believed to be allied with the Sutton family.
On July 18, 1873, in Cuero, Texas, Hardin killed Deputy Sheriff J. B. Morgan, who worked under Sheriff Jack Helm, a former Texas State Police captain leading the Sutton forces. Later that day, Hardin shot Helm dead in the town square of Albuquerque, Texas.
In June 1873, while on the run, Hardin helped his brother-in-law Joshua Bowen escape from the Gonzales County Jail. He was also involved in the murder of Thomas Holderman during this period. In 1878, Hardin was put on trial for the murder of a man named Webb and was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. He entered Huntsville prison on June 5 of that year.
A year later, Hardin and fifty other inmates were caught trying to tunnel into the prison armory. Despite several escape attempts, he remained in prison until 1892, when he was found guilty of manslaughter for the earlier shooting death of J. B. Morgan and given an additional two-year sentence.
While incarcerated, Hardin wrote an autobiography in which he claimed responsibility for multiple murders, though there is little evidence to corroborate most of these claims. After serving seventeen years of his sentence, he was released on February 17, 1894, at the age of forty. He returned to Gonzales, where he was pardoned on March 16 of that year. Remarkably, on July 21, he passed the state bar exam and obtained a license to practice law.
According to a 1900 newspaper article, Hardin committed negligent homicide shortly after his release by betting five dollars that he could, with his first shot, knock a Mexican man off a box of soap. He won the bet, but the man died from the fall rather than from the bullet. In August 1895, John Selman Jr. , a lawyer in El Paso, arrested widow M’Rose, a part-time prostitute and acquaintance of Hardin’s, for swinging a gun in public.
Hardin confronted Selman Jr. about the arrest, and some claimed he struck him with a pistol during the argument. On the afternoon of August 19, 1895, Selman’s father, John Selman Sr. , approached Hardin, and the two exchanged harsh words.
That night, Hardin went to the Acme Saloon in El Paso to play dice. His last words were “four sixes to beat. ” Just before midnight, Selman Sr. entered the saloon and shot Hardin in the head from behind, killing him instantly.
He fired three more shots at Hardin’s body as it lay on the floor. Hardin was buried the next day at Concordia Cemetery in El Paso. Selman Sr. was arrested for murder and testified that he had acted in self-defense, claiming he saw Hardin reaching for his pistol as he entered the saloon.
A jury deadlocked, and Selman Sr. was released on bail pending a retrial. Before that retrial could take place, Selman Sr. was killed in a gunfight with United States Marshal George Scarborough on April 6, 1896, following an argument after a card game.
John Wesley Hardin’s death at the hands of John Selman Sr. closed the life of a man who had terrorized Texas for more than two decades. His story, from schoolboy stabbing to prison autobiographer to licensed attorney gunned down in an El Paso saloon, reflects the violent and unpredictable nature of the Old West, where a man could begin as an outlaw and end as a lawyer, only to die at the point of a gun.