Old Time Lawmen

Based on an article from: May 5, 2003  Las Vegas Review-Journal  Scott Sonner

RENO -- More than a century after their deaths, the names of four Nevada lawmen killed in the line of duty will be added to a police memorial, including a deputy killed in an 1880 gunbattle over a poker game at a Tuscarora saloon.

The belated entries are:

• William B. Weaver, 36, an Elko County deputy sheriff killed in 1880 in a six-shooter battle after a fight over a poker game at the Delta Saloon in the mining town of Tuscarora.
Weaver was shot and killed by William Hammond while trying to settle an argument over "four bits" in a poker game. The Elko Daily Independent described his death Aug. 2, 1880, under the headline, "A Tuscarora Tragedy."

"Hammond immediately sprang upon a billiard table and swearing that no damned officer could arrest him, drew his pistol, discharging it at Weaver," who returned fire, the newspaper said. "The firing continued until both six-shooters were emptied" and both men died.
 

• Humphrey Symons, 35, a Gold Hill police officer who in 1879 was the first Nevada lawman known to have been killed while responding to a domestic dispute.
Symons, a native of Cornwall, England, worked as a police officer in neighboring Gold Hill. He "was foully murdered last evening while in the discharge of his duty," the Gold Hill Evening News reported July 22, 1879.

Symons heard a desperate domestic fracas going on inside of a house, "and upon entering was shot down by (John) Pritchard, who, after the victim lay upon the floor, shot him through the head again and again in the malicious vindictiveness of his drunken soul. He even gloated afterwards in jail over the effectiveness of his butchery." Pritchard was convicted of murder and hanged Jan. 16, 1880

• William J. Kelley, 35, a Lander County deputy sheriff "stabbed through the heart" by a woman in Austin in 1876 in a mysterious attack that the local newspaper described as "a very complicated case."

Kelley was killed in Austin after he separated two women who had fought earlier that day at a horse track. After the sound of a gunshot, Kelley was found in front of a saloon "on the ground in a pool of blood and upon investigation it was ascertained that he had been stabbed through the heart," the Reese River Revelle of Austin reported Aug. 7, 1876.

One of the women claimed to have been shot at by Kelley, and a jury meeting the next day concluded that she had stabbed Kelley, although it's not clear what became of her. "This seems to be a very complicated case and we find it impossible to get all the facts," the Revelle said.

• Alex R. Coryell, 59, a Virginia City police officer who had a heart attack after fighting with a drunken miner in 1891.Coryell, 59, died after he arrested and fought with a miner who "had made himself obnoxious in several downtown saloons," the Evening Chronicle of Virginia City reported June 25, 1891.

Coryell was "an openhearted, honest and upright citizen and as brave as they make them," the paper said.

In 2001, Adams and others found his unmarked grave in Virginia City and dedicated a monument there.

All four will be honored based on research by amateur history buffs Frank Adams and Steve Frady. Adams, a retired detective, and Frady, a former journalist and firefighter who is chief spokesman for the city of Reno, comb old newspapers for such accounts.

A law enforcement veteran of 30 years, Adams worked the past 20 as an investigator for the Nevada Department of Public Safety where he heard stories that piqued his interest about the history of the Nevada State Police, which existed from 1908 through 1949. Adams lives in Mesquite. Frady has focused much of his attention on the Virginia City area.

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