In the last half of the last decade of the 19th century, two deputy US Marshals were killed and two others were wounded in a gunfight with moonshiner Harve Bruce in the mountain country north of Russellville, Arkansas. The location varies between accounts from ten miles south of Witts Springs to Bullfrog Valley, sixteen miles further south and east. One telling has it in Van Buren County where Harve Bruce and his family had lived just over the county line from northeast Pope County since 1871, first in Archey Valley Township and then, in the early 90s, on a 160-acre land grant in Wheeler township.
Wherever the true location was, the shootout occurred in the remote near-wilderness of the mountains and hollows of the Ozarks of Arkansas.
Below are four versions of the events from 125 years or so ago.
Deputy US Marshalls Benjamin F. Taylor od Searcy County and Joseph Dodson of Stone County.
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The Wichita Daily Eagle (Kansas)
August 31, 1897
Moonshiners Fired First
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Terrible Execution Done Among a Possee of Deputies in Arkansas.
Little Rock, Ark, Aug. 30—Two deputy United States marshals are dead, two are seriously wounded and two more are missing as a result of an attack upon a posse of officers by a gang of desperate moonshiners in Pope county yesterday. The dead are B.F Taylor of Searcy county and Joe Dodson of Stone county. The wounded are the Renfro Brothers. The names of the missing men are not given, but they are supposed to be deputies of Searcy county. Taylor, one of the murdered men, was 58 years of age and the wealthiest man in Searcy county. Dodson was a well known deputy and had been a terror to moonshiners for years.
The six officers were on a moonshine raid when the terrible affair occurred. They had approached to within thirty yards of an illicit distillery, when they were fired on from ambush. Taylor and Dodson fell at the first fire, dead in their tracks. The shooting occurred thirty-five miles from Russellville, at a point ten miles south of Witt Springs. The locality is in the mountains and has been a favorite rendezvous for counterfeiters and moonshiners. The news of the terrible tragedy was brought to Russellville this morning by Dr. Pack, who came after the coroner. The men who did the shooting are supposed to be a gang of moonshiners led by Horace Bruce and John Church, two of the most desperate characters in that part of the state.
William Harvey ‘Harve’ Bruce
It was self-defense
from an article by Piney Page
Jake Gargous lived in the area north of Hector.
According to Jake, Harve (Bruce) was a bootlegger. On one occasion he had taken a wagon load of whiskey to Clinton, AR. and was peddling it in the outskirts of town. He was approached by a man claiming to be a deputy sheriff. He wanted to search Harve’s wagon. Harve requested he show his credentials but the man ignored him, moved towards the wagon and began the search. Not wishing to kill the man Harve shot him in the leg. He went home and took to the woods.
On a Sunday morning Harve was visiting some friends who were operating a still. The mash was worked in homemade wooden boxes rather than barrels.
Harve was sitting on a fence built to keep the hogs out. As it became light, some men came in shooting. At that time Dr. Arnold Henry’s grandfather was sheriff. He was a strong sympathizer with all old soldiers, including Harve Bruce. The revenuers who had attacked the men at the still had avoided the sheriff since they suspected where his sympathy would be. The revenuers did find other Russellville men to go along.
Their moving in on Harve Bruce and his friends was without warning according to Jake. Harve rolled off the fence, jumped behind a mash box, and grabbed his Winchester. With the first two shots he killed two men. Another attacker was behind a tree with his elbow sticking out. Harve put a bullet in the elbow. Another man was lying on his stomach with a hip exposed. Harve put a bullet in the hip. A young Russellville man trying to run away was shot in the shoulder. The battle was over.
Harve stayed hid out in the woods. After a couple of months he sent word to Silas Henry, sheriff, that he would surrender to him in Atkins. He had killed two men and shot others but due to the circumstances of the raid he pleaded self-defense.
He served a year in the pen. When he got out he reported to the sheriff’s office to let him know he was back home. He was advised to stay away from moonshining and bootlegging but he did not heed the advice.
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A couple of years later, after Silas was out of office, a deputy went into the mountains to bring Harve in for making moonshine. When asked his wife did not know where he was.
He was under an overhang working at his still when the deputy approached. Harve’s daughter was assisting him with the work. The deputy came up and said he wanted to talk. The deputy said, “If you don’t go with me, I’ll take your daughter.”
Harve replied, “You bother my daughter and I’ll kill you.” That ended the conference.
Arkansas Penitentiary
The Conway Log Cabin
21 Aug 1900
While in Little Rock Thursday J.E. Little, Dr. Foster Richardson and J.W. Underhill were the guests at supper of Col. Bud McConnell, superintendent of the State Penitentiary. He showed us the new State Capitol building which is making rapid progress. We were informed that the work which has been done at the established prices for such work would amount to $85,000 and there is yet remaining $15,000 of the $50,000 appropriated by the last legislature.
The walls and buildings of the old penitentiary are being torn down as the work on the new penitentiary, southeast of the city, progresses. We did not go to see the new penitentiary.
One of the most noted characters in the penitentiary is Harve Bruce. He was sent up from Pope County for the killing of two deputy marshals and wounding two others. He has a very short term, only six months. He is a typical old mountaineer and moonshine distiller. He is 65 or 70 years old and before his imprisonment began, he wore long flowing whiskers, which made him look about as we imagine Moses did about the time he delivered the law of the “Children of Israel.” these whiskers were cut off when he began his term of service.
When asked if he killed those marshals he said, “well, I was the only one that did any shooting on that side and when it was over two were dead and two others wounded.” He regretted that he had to do it, but said he would have to do it again under the same circumstances.
On the morning of the killing, six deputy marshals crept up under the cover of a bluff when upon the top of the bluff to within one hundred yards of where old man Bruce sat with a neighbor on a fence. The neighbor said “look at those men.”
Old man Bruce stood up and looked in the direction indicated. The marshals began shooting without saying a word, so he says. The neighbor fled. Bruce’s Winchester was several yards from him and towards the marshals, he ran and got it and began shooting at them. He said the bullets whizzed around him when they get too close to whiz. If any of you was in the war you know bullets don’t whiz when they get too close.
Old man Bruce was in the Confederate Army. One of the bullets glanced Bruce’s ankle making a blood blister. He shot two of the marshals down and it was afterwards found that they had been killed. He wounded two others and two escaped uninjured.
After his trial and sentence he was turned loose on his own recognizance to arrange his business and then to go to the penitentiary.
One evening about one month ago Bud McConnell, superintendent of the state penitentiary, was notified that a man at the office wanted to see him. He found old man Harve Bruce there ready to begin his term of service.
He is now one of the guards on the wall. The superintendent told him he thought that as he could use a Winchester so dexterously on marshals he would make a good guard.
He impresses one that he would keep his promises if possible. It is said that when disputes arose between his neighbors they generally left the matter to old Harve Bruce.
The mountaineer hates the marshals and the government that try to prevent him from doing with his corn as he pleases. He thinks that he has as much right to make whisky out of it as bread.
Old man Bruce explained that their corn was worth only 30 cents per bushel. When they made it into whiskey the slop was worth as much as the corn to feed the hogs and they could get $2.00 per gallon for the whiskey. This was about the only way, he explained, of getting any money up there in the mountains. He said that he would not distill any more whiskey as he wanted to live in peace now.
The Moonshiner Who Got Away with Murder
…and escaped the hangman’s noose
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Another version of the story tells things differently. An article in True West magazine had it that “William Harvey ‘Harve’ Bruce would kill two deputy U.S. marshals and put hot lead into two posse members, while the other two scattered like quail into the wild and uncut Boston Mountains.”
According to True West,
Bruce was visiting, or so he claimed, friends who were operating a still in Bullfrog Valley, Pope County, Arkansas. “Everyone knows where the Bull Frog Valley is…. That is where the genuine wild-catter [moonshiner] blooms and flourishes as prolific as morning glories on the back porch of a farm house,” reported The Mountain Wave newspaper in Searcy County.
The article went on to briefly mention the Bullfrog Valley Gang, “one of the most dangerous organizations of counterfeiters that has operated in the United States in recent years” had been “wiped out.” “Bullfrog Valley was indeed a hotbed of criminal activity.”
True West’s somewhat dramatic description of the main event is similar to other accounts:
Bruce was sitting on a fence, talking to his friend, when he spotted a number of men mounted on horses headed his way. Bruce claimed the men opened fire without warning when they approached the camp. He grabbed his rifle and returned fire.
His first shot killed Capt. Benjamin F. Taylor, and his second shot killed Joseph Dodson, both deputy U.S. marshals. Taylor, of Searcy County, was a wealthy 57-year-old farmer who had served time as a senator in Arkansas before embarking on his career as a deputy in 1895. The 28-year-old Dodson, of Stone County, had a reputation for busting moonshine operations throughout the region.
Still under attack, Bruce spotted another man, whose elbow was exposed from behind a tree. One shot put him out of action as he howled and fell to the ground. Bruce’s next shot seriously wounded one man crawling on his belly by putting the round into his hip.
Three men allegedly running the moonshine still were captured a few weeks later. They were Turner Skidmore, James Alva Church and Dave Millsaps. All were charged with murder and illicit distilling.
By this account, Bruce evaded capture for a year. Captain Taylor’s family offered a reward on Bruce, $550, dead or alive. Other rewards raised the amount to $1000. Captured when he arrived home after an extended absence, family lore claims that the neighbors who caught him had conspired with Bruce to turn him in with the reward money going to his legal fees.
In 1898, Bruce, Church, and Skidmore, convicted of illicit distilling, were sentenced to three years at Leavenworth. Millsaps was acquitted. Bruce’s prison file was flagged, “Must not be Paroled. Notify sheriff in Little Rock, Ark., 2 mo’s prior to discharge; by order of warden.”
In July 1899, Bruce, Church, and Skidmore were released to the custody of the state of Arkansas to stand trial for the murders of Tayor and Dodson.
At the Fort Smith trial, Bruce said, “I did all the shooting under the mistaken idea that my life was in danger.” He claimed the posse didn’t identify themselves as lawmen nor state their attentions. He said he thought he was being attacked by a rival gang of moonshiners. Since Bruce’s friend had fled, Bruce was the only one returning the posse’s fire.
Everyone was acquitted except Bruce, who had pled self-defense. The wounded posse members who survived were not called to testify. In those times, many resented the government’s stance on moonshine. A jury of Bruce’s peers convicted him of involuntary manslaughter. He was sentenced to six months.
Read more in the article in True West magazine.