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.