[1] The feud lasted almost a decade, and has been called "...the "longest and bloodiest in Texas history..."[2] On April 23, 1866, William P. "Buck" Taylor shot a black reconstruction soldier, Sgt.

[1] Nine months later, on Christmas Eve, Deputy Sutton killed Buck Taylor and an associate, Richard Chisholm, in a Clinton saloon, following an argument regarding the legality of the sale of some horses.

Goliad County Sheriff Andrew Jackson Jacobs, however, was killed in the process by the Peaces brothers, who were Taylor allies.

[9] The following year, in July 1870, Sutton was appointed to the Texas State Police Force, serving under Captain Helm.

[8] On August 26, 1870, the Suttons were allegedly sent to arrest brothers Henry and William Kelly on what some reported to be a trivial charge.

[8] Following his handling of the task, Helm was dismissed from the State Police Force, although he was legally cleared of any wrongdoing.

His son James Creed "Jim" Taylor took his place as head of the family and vowed to be revenged on Sutton.

[8] In early 1872, on-the-run outlaw John Wesley Hardin joined his cousin, Mannen Clements, in neighboring Gonzales County, Texas.

[11] Hardin's main notoriety in the Sutton-Taylor feud occurred two days later, in a July 18, 1873,[12] gunfight in Cuero, Texas.

[2] Hardin played a part in the death later that same day of Morgan's superior, DeWitt County's Sheriff Helm in Albuquerque, Texas.

[14] Afterward, as Hardin and Taylor mounted their horses and prepared to ride away, witnesses claimed they boasted that they "...had accomplished what they had come to do.

[1] On June 1, 1874, two of Hardin's relatives, his cousin Alexander "Ham" Anderson and Anderson's brother-in-law, Alexander Henry Barekman, were gunned down by a Texas Ranger Company ostensibly in retaliation for their involvement with the killing of Sutton, but more likely because of Hardin's recent killing of ex-Texas Ranger and deputy sheriff Charles Webb, on May 26, 1874.

Another member of the Taylor group was George Culver Tennille who was killed in Gonzales County, Texas, on July 8, 1874.

On November 18, 1875, the leader of the Suttons,[1] ex-Cuero, Texas, Town Marshal Reuben Brown was shot and killed by five men in Cuero, along with a black man named Tom Freeman.

[11]: 106  It is not known if Hardin was directly or indirectly involved in the killing of Reuben Brown as he made no further mention of the incident in his life story.