Talk:John Wesley Hardin/Archive 1

negativity
wow, this article has been heavily edited since i last looked at it. it's not at all objective. some might disagree with john wesley's actions, but he was widely considered as a folk hero in his time and for quite a while afterward. what's with all the cheesy negative descriptions? 'cowardly', 'Cat burglar style, the craven Hardin', 'Not the least bit honorable', 'may have felt an early need to compensate for his diminutive stature with violence', and more - jeez, this is supposed to be an encylopedia article, not some random internet activist's soapbox for their own morality. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.30.115.236 (talk) 13:55, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

References to the movie "Maverick" starring Mel Gibson
This whole section which I just removed is simply a plot synopsis of a scene starring Mel Gibson in the 1994 movie "Maverick." Keep it out:

While making his way to Kansas, Hardin had a notable confrontation with a poker player by the name of Bret Maverick. The two had played together in a poker game in a saloon at Crystal River with a number of other players - notably, thief Annabelle Bransford and a ne'er-do-well only known as Angel - before a confrontation broke out. After losing a hand to Maverick's three-of-a-kind, Hardin commented that he didn't "think the hand should count". After some small talk between the two, Maverick was stunned to learn that his opponent was the famed Johnny Hardin. There was more tension, eventually leading up to some quick-talking and gunslinging showmanship from Maverick. Finally the two agreed that they should "just play cards", in accordance with a raise-of-hands by the players of who wanted or didn't want to see someone shot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.116.170.6 (talk) 18:53, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

How did his life as a fugitive begin?
I believe it was when he was still living with his parents. If I recall correctly, from a biography I read when I was in middle school, Hardin's run from the law began after he was confronted by a black state policeman (not a Texas Ranger, but the widely hated Reconstruction-era state police force imposed on Texas by the federal government or the Reconstructionist state legislature). Hardin took offense at what he believed an insulting tone and shot the officer dead with one of two cap-and-ball revolvers he carried.


 * William P. Longley also claimed to have killed a TSP in 1868-however the Texas State Police only existed from 1870 to 1873! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)

His marriage to Jane Bowen?
I was surprised this info wasn't in the article since Jane Bowen figures prominetly in some of the stories about Hardin. Here's one citation:

>> Spouse: Jane BOWEN b. 1857  d.  6 Nov 1892 Married: 29 Feb 1872 in Riddlesville, Gonzales Co, TX << from Heritage Lisapollison 13:08, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Him getting access to a Colt .45. in 1870?
I seriously doubt the validity of this information since the it was not until 1873 that Colt actually introduced a .45 pistol in the form of the Colt Model P or Peacemaker. It was more likely to have been a Colt Army model of 1860 - in .44 cal or a Colt Navy 1851 model in .36 or even one of a shedload of Colt copies. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.72.164.103 (talk) 07:29, 18 April 2007 (UTC).
 * If I recall correctly, in his autobiography he says he used something in .44 cal.
 * Agreed, this wouldn't be possible. Pirate Dan 14:26, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Hardin used M1860 .44 Colt armies and it is known he had a pair taken from him in 1877. When he was arrested in 1896 he had a .41 Colt Thunderer. When he died he was carrying a Smith and Wesson .44-40. Wayne (talk) 19:54, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
 * He was killed in 1895; how could he be arrested in 1896? Pirate Dan (talk) 14:31, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Misprint. He was arrested on May 6th 1895 for "unlawfully carrying a pistol", fined $25 and had the gun confiscated. The gun was the Thunderer which was a present given him only a few weeks earlier. Wayne (talk) 16:58, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Objectivity, sources?
From the start this article is completely subjective and dramatizes as well as uses colorful words to describe what is supposed to be historical fact. Hardin was a very bad dude, but how about letting the reader surmise it without the storytelling and metaphors used in this article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.249.156.227 (talk) 08:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Photo
Er...is that Hardin? It looks like it might actually be Belle Stars boyfriend Blue Duck. Wayne (talk) 19:58, 12 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Blue Duck photo can be found here [] {reference only}

Diagnosis removed, Subjective objection removed
This article contains subjective conclusions. It also contains information that is presented as fact, but are judgments based on historical accounts and cultural legend. The first sentence of this article reads "John Wesley Hardin (May 26, 1853—August 19, 1895) was a Sociopath, outlaw and gunfighter of the American Old West." Since the first edition of the [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)] was published in 1952, The Sociopath diagnosis did not yet exist. In the latest revision of the DSM, the Sociopath diagnosis was eliminated and replaced with "Anti Social Personality Disorder" which uses updated diagnosis criteria. The original statement was inaccurate because it's based on speculation rather than fact. It would be factual to state that based on his participation in documented events, his behavior was consistent with the personality disorder commonly referred to as a "sociopath". Diagnosing a pre DSM individual using anything but documented behaviors becomes at best anecdotal.For this reason I have edited out the word "Sociopath".

In the section entitled "Abilene", the following sentence appeared; "The "Bull's Head Tavern", in Abilene, Kansas, was established by gambler/gunman Ben Thompson with businessman and gambler Phil Coe. These two gamblers painted a picture of a rather vulgar bull with a large erect penis as an advertisement for their establishment." This has been changed to "The "Bull's Head Tavern", in Abilene, Kansas, was established by gambler/gunman Ben Thompson with businessman and gambler Phil Coe. These two gamblers painted a picture of a bull with a large erect penis as an advertisement for their establishment." The latter sentence is less of a statement of personal feelings, and more an unbiased recounting of fact.

Whether or not one agrees with the original two assertions, they remain subjective conclusions. Mateus Denigris (talk) 00:24, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Tone
I have tried to clean up the tone of this a little, removing some of the hyperbole and "historial novel" language but there is still more to do, hence the tone tag. I also removed the unreferenced tag as the article clearly has references. – ukexpat (talk) 17:50, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Revisions to "Unconfirmed claims"
Someone, IP 134.53.145.157, and most recently IP 134.53.145.203, have made revisions, which I reverted, saying in my edit summary that no reason was given nor was one apparent and clarity problems resulted. I will now elaborate: the description of Hardin's claims to have killed men named Jim Smolly and Green Paramour was deleted, but an almost immediately following passing reference, "After killing Smalley [sic] and Paramour..." is, without the other, quite perplexing to the reader. I am going to revert again, and ask this anonymous editor to either defend his edits here or leave them out of the article. --Ted Watson (talk) 22:48, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

ODMP reply: "Hardin told that tale in his autobiography. It cannot be documented and the official Adjutant General Report and newspaper accounts do not recorded any such deaths. I am working with Mr. Donaly Brice at the Texas State Archives on each of approximately 12-13 TSP deaths. If Hardin had killed 3 state police or special policemen it would have made the newspapers and officials reports such as the deaths of 4 SP in Lampasas in 1873. The tale has been repeated in many books..." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.53.145.146 (talk) 14:49, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
 * In regard to Hardin's claim he killed 3 "State Policemen" in Bell County Texas:


 * In regard to how many Lawmen Hardin personally killed-see ODMP memorial for Green Paramore at [] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.53.145.146 (talk) 14:53, 24 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The material under discussion is in the section "Hardin and unconfirmed claims," meaning the fact that it is unsupported and unlikely to be true is given in the article; it, and everything else in that section, is nevertheless notable because Hardin himself made the claim. Furthermore, the above does not deal at all with the coherence problem resulting from the edit. I therefore find this to be no defense of the edit whatsoever. --Ted Watson (talk) 21:00, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You have done it again, reinserting the Wikilink to the ODMP disambig. page instead of the intended article (which someone else has fixed). More significantly, you keep leaving the article mentioning "the Paramour killing" as if it has been previously described, but have deleted that description. I am going to correct that and hereby ask you to please quit doing what you have been doing. --Ted Watson (talk) 21:05, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

"Letter from..." references
I notice that at a handful of points there are parenthetical asides, "Letter from [some particular institution]." This reeks of original research rather than the sort of sources that Wiki-regs require. Any other thoughts? Or defenses? --Ted Watson (talk) 21:40, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Death shot
I came across this tid-bit in a discussion group:
 * John Spelman later killed Hardin in a saloon with a shot to the head. Some witnesses said Selman shot Hardin from across the room, striking Hardin in the eye and exiting the back of his head. Other witnesses said Spelman walked up and shot Hardin in the back of the head with the bullet exiting through the eye. At the trial, the jury found Selman not guilty, saying, "If he shot Hardin in the eye that was good shooting, if he shot Hardin in the back of the head, that was good judgement."

Does this mean that Spelman's shooting of Hardin really was disputed by witnesses? And if so, is the supposed quote from the jury for real? | Loadmaster (talk) 20:09, 7 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Two facts:
 * The killer's name was Selman.
 * He never received a not guilty verdict, but was on the verge of being retried when he himself was shot down in an El Paso street.
 * That discussion group's members do not know what they are talking about. --Ted Watson (talk) 22:40, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

"Waylaid"→"way laid"
In a boxed-off quote from Hardin himself (BTW, implicitly attributed to his autobiography but not actually sourced) in the section "Early life," IP 96.18.179.11 just changed the word "waylaid" to "way laid." However, what matters here is not the proper usage, but the way it appears in the source. If what's there is not the right way, then we should have a "[sic]" alongside it. Does anybody know which way it actually appears? And how about a proper citation while we're at it, huh? --Ted Watson (talk) 22:17, 8 March 2009 (UTC)


 * In Hardin's autobiography he does spell it "waylaid" as one word - which is absolutely correct usage according to Webster's. The entry has been properly changed back to reflect the grammatically sound version that Hardin wrote.  Pirate Dan (talk) 13:30, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Wrong photo?
The following was posted to the Reference Desk today:
 * I believe that your pic of John wesley hardin is a pic of the outlaw blue duck. Please respond

ON you go. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:41, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
 * What's the final word on this? Is it Blue Duck or Hardin?  Perry Hotter (talk) 12:38, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

John Selman
The article refers to both John Selman, Jr and John Selman, Sr. but fails to identify which killed Hardin and which was subsequently killed. Elucidation? --UnicornTapestry (talk) 06:02, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Mage shooting
The article says something like, "under the law of the day, it could be claimed as a clear case of self-defense". If this means that the author believes that the shooting was a clear case of self-defense, I think we need to know more about these differences in law, between the law of the day and modern law, that make it so clear cut. This would be far from clear cut uder modern law; Hardin was on a horse, armed with a gun, and shot a man who was on foot and armed only with a large stick. Establishing self-defense under these circumstances would be very difficult. Additionally, there appears to be some discrepancies between Hardin's description of the events, and the way historians believed the shooting occurred. We need more information before concluding that it was "clear-cut".

I forget the precise wording of the article, but I would propose changing it to say something like, "rather than argung that he shot Mage in self-defense, Hardin chose to flee the area, believing he could not recieve a fair trial." Or something along those lines. LewisNiet (talk) 05:01, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

It would be speculation to say 'believing he could not receive a fair trial". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.97.145.2 (talk) 21:40, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Not really. He wrote something to that effect in his autobiography. GenQuest (talk) 00:59, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Taylor-Sutton Feud
I changed the line that says Gonzales County is in southeast Texas because I live in southeast Texas. Southeast Texas is the Beaumont-Port Arthur-Orange-Vidor-Silsbee-Woodville-Jasper-Winnie area. Gonzales is actually in south central Texas. Perry Hotter (talk) 01:50, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Plural of Negro
I changed "Negro's," in an instance where it clearly was not the possesive, to "Negroes." The word isn't used much anymore and perhaps "Negros" would be better but the version with the apostrophe is illiterate. 65.79.173.135 (talk) 18:27, 8 March 2011 (UTC)Will in New Haven65.79.173.135 (talk) 18:27, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

General Style and MoS
The article, citations, embedded links, editor comments and tone are, once again, getting off-subject, jumbled, skewed, and badly in need of copyedit. I have recently tried to clean this up, but can't keep up with the heavy editing. (Any any help out there?) Therefore, I slapped Citation style and MOS tags on it for starters. -GenQuest (talk) 16:02, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Guys, I'm trying to help remove the 6 (!!!SIX!!!) tags from the top of this article but every time I revisit my edits I see that someone has decided to re-introduce crazy into the paragraph that I just worked on. Can you guys go abuse another article for the next little while please? --Hutcher (talk) 04:08, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I tried just to copy edit it, for starts, a few months back, but serial re-editing makes this article almost impossible to keep up with. Is there a way to freeze-out new editing until the re-write is done? Seems to me I saw a tag or a procedure for that once upon a time. I've been trying to get back to it since, but my real job keeps getting in the way. ;-/  GenQuest (talk) 00:28, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

First Killing
"According to Hardin, the following day, the blackman hid by a path and attacked him as he rode past." How on Earth are we supposed to interpret the term "the blackman?" Last I checked, 1868 had come and gone.o0drogue0o 23:18, 24 November 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by O0drogue0o (talk • contribs)
 * So edit it. ;-p  GenQuest (talk) 00:45, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

movie and book
In the extras part of the DVD The Shootist it's said that the novel which inspired the movie was loosely based on Hardin. Not sure if that should be added to the article or not, but if anyone needs any info from the DVD for refs or anything, let me know. — Ched : ?  23:22, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Discrepancy re: death
I note a discrepancy regarding the death of Hardin in a recent article. I don't know whether this or the article is correct or whether this can be reconciled with the article. --Rpclod (talk) 01:00, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Discrepancy: JWH describes being killed instantly?
"His autobiography reports that Hardin had two .41 Colt pistols on him when he was killed.[8]:142"

Maybe they're talking about someone else's autobiography and accidentally put footnote [8]? Or there's an adendum written by an editor contained in Hardin's autobiography. All I know is that Hardin did not write about what he was carrying on his person at his time of death. Can we clarify this? Mark in Iowa (talk) 05:20, 3 March 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mark in Iowa (talk • contribs) 09:28, 26 January 2014 (UTC)


 * His autobiography was published several years after his death. The information was probably in the forward,  however, I can't find my copy right now,  but there were others involved in the publishing of the book.  GenQuest  "Talk to Me" 06:06, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Kosse Killing
The Late author Charles Atkins in his book on gunfighters claimed the name of the Kosse Texas Victim was Alan Comstock. Regretfully he didn't provide a reference as to where he found this information.

Summary of Hardin Life at Outlaw Wiki http://outlaw.wikia.com/wiki/John_Wesley_Hardin

Wives
The article states there was an effort to move Hardin's body "to be interred next to the grave of Hardin's first wife", but the article mentions only one marriage: to the 15-year-old. The only other mention of a wife is "Hardin's parents and wife were taken into protective custody"; where did that wife come from? Were there others? --Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 01:42, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

This is just not true, at least as of 04 Feb 2016. There are two wives, Jane Bowen being his first wife, and who died when he was in prison. Eratosignis (talk) 04:32, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Verbatim addition of source materials
The article, about JWH, does not need, nor does it warrant, word-for-word inclusion of police documents regarding a non-controversial statement of fact. There is no dispute regarding the veracity of Hardin's first killing of another (Maje). The inclusion of a primary source document quoted word-for-word in the body of the article is both un-necessary and a violation of the Undue weight guidelines. The article is about Hardin, not all his claimed killings. –Regards, GenQuest  "Talk to Me" 15:33, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Pisgah, Texas – WP:INTDABLINK
GenQuest and I had a short go-around over the link to Pisgah. As I understand how this is supposed to work, this page should have a (disambiguation) link, so it appears as a blue link, and the destination dab page can have a red link, with a blue link on the line to support it. This makes it clear that there is an intended link from article space to a dab page (links to dab pages that are not clearly intended are brought to the attention of lab project editors). I didn't do it correctly the first time, but I think the current state is consistent with WP: INTDABLINK.

(Now if I can only remember to spell Pisgah correctly.)  &#8212;jmcgnh  (talk) (contribs)  19:14, 22 July 2016 (UTC)