Brann-Davis Shootings

William Cowper Brann left home at thirteen and never returned to school. His first Iconoclast, launched in Austin in 1891, failed, and in 1894 he sold the name to William Sydney Porter, later O. Henry. Revived in Waco in February 1895, it reached about 98,000 copies by 1897, and the Handbook calls it the only magazine of its type published west of the Mississippi. That entry also says his scorn fell on Baptists, Episcopalians, women and the British, and with the greatest harshness on Black Texans. The paper that made him famous carried that contempt to its readers.

What the plaque says

Brann-Davis Shootings The city of Waco in the 1890s divided into two armed camps over the caustic criticisms of William Cowper Brann (1855-1898) in his magazine, "The Iconoclast". A gifted writer, Brann attacked many organizations, especially Baptists and Baylor University. This controversy sparked a duel in 1897 between Judge George Bruce Gerald and James W. Harris. A Baylor partisan, Tom E. Davis, met Brann here, within a half block of the earlier fight, and shot him with a Colt .45 revolver. Brann returned the fire. Both men died the following day from their wounds. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dr Pepper Museum — steps away
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.
• Waco Suspension Bridge — 0.3 mi
  A Brazos crossing opened in January 1870 as the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi, tolled until 1889, closed to vehicles in 1971 and now walked.
• Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum — 0.7 mi
  The official state repository of Texas Ranger memorabilia, opened in 1968 in Fort Fisher Park on the Brazos, named for a Ranger post of 1837 whose site no one has located.
• Armstrong Browning Library — 1.1 mi
  A three-story Italian Renaissance library on the Baylor campus built to hold A. J. Armstrong's Browning collection, dedicated in December 1951 and now, by its own account, the world's largest of Browning material.

More markers nearby

• Gerald-Harris Shooting — steps away
• The Waco Tornado — steps away
• McLennan County Medical Society — steps away
• Waco — steps away