Harmon Murray (1868 or 1869 – 1891) was an African-American who briefly achieved notoriety in 1890 and 1891 as the reputed leader of a feared criminal gang in northern Florida, and for killing a number of men, including a sheriff and a deputy sheriff, before being killed himself by an acquaintance.
Early life Harmon Murray was born in Long Pond, a community in northern Marion County, Florida, in 1868 or 1869. His parents, Gilbert Murray and Emily James, had been brought to Alachua County from South Carolina in the 1850s as slaves. They were married in 1860. Harmon was their fifth child. He was named after Henry S. Harmon, an African American lawyer and politician in Gainesville.
Emily James' parents were respected citizens in Gainesville, and when Murray was six years old, he went to live with his grandparents so that he could attend the Union Academy there, a school established in 1866 by the Freedmen's Bureau to educate freed slaves. While there, he exhibited behavior that suggests juvenile delinquency. When he was about twelve years old, he left home and reportedly went to Georgia to stay with relatives until 1888, when he was nineteen or twenty years old. It was rumored that he had killed someone near the Satilla River in southeastern Georgia while he lived there.
At the time of Murray's birth, African Americans held political power in Alachua County. They had made up the majority of the population in the county before the Civil War, and immediately after the war cotton farmers, who anticipated a large crop, had recruited African-American workers from Georgia and South Carolina to move to the county and help with the harvest. Reconstruction had initially disenfranchised whites who had supported the Confederacy, and enfranchised African Americans, and thus given them and white Republicans the opportunity to fill political offices. The political position of African Americans in Florida deteriorated after the end of Reconstruction in 1877, and by the time Murray returned to the county in 1888, conservative whites were consolidating their control of state and local politics, and beginning to enact laws intended to suppress and control the African American population.
Horse theft, prison and escape Shortly after returning to Florida, Murray worked on the dairy farm of Hyman Pinkoson, on the west side of Gainesville near Lake Alice. In September 1888, Murray took his employer's horse to ride to Arredondo, a community southwest of Gainesville, to visit his girlfriend. When Pinkoson found both his horse and Murray gone in the morning, he set out to find them, telling people he met that he suspected Murray had stolen his horse. As Murray was passing through Millard's Station (on the Florida Central and Peninsular Railway between Gainesville and Arredondo) on the way to Gainesville the next morning, a storekeeper named Thomas McPherson recognized him. McPherson called on Murray to stop, but Murray ran and McPherson shot and wounded him. Murray was placed in the county jail.
On September 16, 1888, shortly after Murray was jailed, yellow fever struck Gainesville. A quarantine was imposed, but most of the town's 2,500 residents fled. The fall session of the circuit court was not held in Gainesville that year, and Murray remained in jail until he was brought to trial in May 1889, with circuit judge Jesse J. Finley presiding. Found guilty, Murray was sentenced to two years hard labor in the state penitentiary. As was common at the time, he was hired out to work in a turpentine camp near Tampa.
While imprisoned at the turpentine camp, Murray became friendly with Michael Kelly (a white man), Tony Champion, and Alex Henderson, the last two of whom had family ties to Alachua County. Henderson was released in November 1889. Champion escaped from the prison camp in March, 1890. Murray escaped from the camp in June 1890, and soon reunited with Champion in Tampa. Murray and Champion eventually began committing burglaries in Tampa. On learning that the police were looking for them, they left for Alachua County, reaching Gainesville in October. There they found Alex Henderson, who introduced them to his brother Isaac and other members of a gang. Murray and Champion joined the gang. The gang was soon robbing businesses during the day. As the gang carried rifles during the robberies, they became known as the "Winchester rifle brigade". In January 1891 the gang robbed a store, attacking the owner and almost killing him. There was a public uproar, and the sheriff hired L. T. Timmons, a black private detective, to gather information on the gang.
Crime spree Michael Kelly was released from the turpentine camp early in November 1890. By the end of the year, Kelly was in Gainesville and early the next year was connected with the Henderson gang. Beginning around this time, there were a number of burglaries committed throughout Alachua County. Every business in Micanopy was burglarized on the night of January 17. Businesses in Gainesville, Evinston, and Arredondo were also burglarized that month. On the night of February 3, a gang was seen breaking into a store in Waldo, but an armed neighbor chased them off before they could take anything. Later in the week, a gun shop owned by W. H. Bracy in Gainesville was broken into and looted. The burglars set fire to the store, but exploding cartridges woke Bracy, who lived next door, and he was able to put the fire out. Bracy, unsure of the ability of local law enforcement to catch the burglars, also hired the private detective Timmons to find them. One night in the middle of February, a gang threw a brick through a plate glass window of a general merchandise business in Gainesville. A black policeman patrolling the city heard the noise and ran toward the store. The gang fired a couple of shots at the policeman and fled. They shot at a man who spoke to them as they ran by and fired a shotgun and a pistol at a doctor who had stepped out of his house to see what the noise was about. The citizens of the city were upset about the recent events, but little was known about the perpetrators. One witness said that the gang was all black, another witness said it was all white.
L. T. Timmons, the black private detective hired by the sheriff and by Bracy, the gun shop owner, was able to track down Alex Henderson, Murray's former prison camp-mate, on the day after the shootings in Gainesville. Henderson, unhappy about the close call of the previous night, as well as the rapid pace of the gang's burglaries, agreed to give Timmons information about the gang in exchange for ten dollars. Henderson told Timmons that the gang planned that night to attack the general store in Millard's Station belonging to Thomas McPherson, the man who had shot Murray two-and-a-half years before. Timmons then took Henderson to Bracy, who agreed to pay a reward to Henderson if he could lead the rest of the gang into a trap. The sheriff was brought into the plan. Henderson was to bring the other gang members back to a hideout, where the sheriff and a posse would be waiting in hiding. However, the gang did not return directly to the hideout, but went to McPherson's store first. When the gang tried to break into his store, McPherson woke up and armed himself. The would-be burglars retreated, and set McPherson's barn on fire. McPherson was shot while watching his barn burn, and died later in the night. In the confusion after McPherson was shot, Kelly and Champion reportedly were hit by gunfire, but escaped with Murray and returned to Gainesville.
The end of the gang; Champion and Kelly lynched The sheriff's posse was still waiting when the gang returned to their hideout. When challenged by the sheriff, the gang opened fire, wounding Sam Wienges, a former sheriff who was part of the posse. Kelly emptied two pistols at the posse. Champion was wounded in the firefight and captured. Champion admitted to some of the crimes attributed to the gang, but denied participation in others. He said that there was a second gang operating in the area, and that the two gangs sometimes shared a campsite, but were not part of a larger organization.
Kelly was wounded, as well, but he and Murray were able to escape. Kelly was caught the next day near Rochelle, east of Gainesville, and taken by train back to Gainesville. Angered by McPherson's death and reports that former sheriff Wienges might be permanently blinded by his wounds, a mob met the train and threatened to lynch Kelly, but he was successfully transferred to the jail, where he joined Champion. Kelly gave several interviews that afternoon, feeding the stories told about him. As a white man in an otherwise African American gang, Kelly gained much attention after his capture. By his own account, he was Irish, was born in London as Michael Kierens, and had worked as a sailor, traveling as far as Australia and China. A story circulated that his real name was Michael Aries Hurley, that his family were "gentlefolk" in northern Ireland, and that he had been educated in a Jesuit college, destined for the priesthood. He was said to have fought Indians in the U.S. Army, then deserted, to have killed a man in Manitoba with an axe, to have been sent to prison for robbery, and escaped, to have shanghaied sailors in New York, and to have been a church organist in Kentucky. Kelly admitted to committing crimes with the gang, but claimed he had only been with the gang for a couple of weeks. He blamed McPherson's murder on Champion and Murray, but Champion had already admitted that he, Murray, and Kelly had all fired at McPherson. The evening of Kelly's jailing, at around 10:00 PM, a mob of 200 to 300 men forced their way into the jail and took Champion and Kelly. The two men were taken to a live oak grove on the north side of Gainesville and hanged.
Henderson had been in the jail since the night of McPherson's murder, but the lynch mob had not realized that he had been in the gang with Champion, Kelly, and Murray, and had left him when they took Champion and Kelly. Anxiety was high in Gainesville for a while, as it was believed that Champion, Henderson, Kelly. and Murray were part of a larger gang that had committed forty crimes in fourteen counties across northern Florida. A grand jury was convened on February 25 to consider a case against Henderson. As there were no witnesses placing Henderson at McPherson's murder, and no other charges had been brought in consideration of the information Henderson supplied which led to the capture of Champion and Kelly, he was released. The same grand jury found that Champion and Kelly had died at the hands of "unknown persons". Henderson left Gainesville and went to Jacksonville, where, unknown to him, Murray was working for the police department.
A series of murders Near the end of March, Henderson left Jacksonville to visit his mother in High Springs. Less than a week later, he encountered Murray, who shot and killed him. Murray fled to Fernandina, where his sister lived. Murray was soon committing burglaries and robberies in Fernandina and elsewhere on Amelia Island. Law officers chased a black suspect several times, who shot at them on one occasion. Murray taunted the police with a letter in early May, to the effect that he would not be taken alive, and would take the Nassau County sheriff and Fernandina police chief with him.