Wordless Wednesday - 9/30/09

Wild West "bad boy", James Thomas Clements [1843-1897], and first cousin to Wild West gunman, John Wesley Hardin.

"Jim" was my husband's great-great-grandfather.

Jim rode with John Wesley Hardin for quite some time. He was reported to have abused his wife, Annie Caroline Tennille, which resulted in a rather sudden, and unsolved mysterious disappearance of Jim from the hill country of Texas. [His body, nor proof of his murder was ever proven in a court of law. Annie was considered a suspect for a while, as were her brothers. None were indicted.]

John Wesley Hardin also died a gruesome death in 1895, just two years before Jim's disappearance, in El Paso. Sheriff John Selman walked into a saloon and shot him in the back of the head.

Annie lived to the age of 78, dying in 1936 in San Antonio. Her daughter Laura May was my husband's great-grandmother, whom he knew quite well. He listened to stories of the famed gunfighter and her father from the time he was a toddler. Laura May died in 1969.