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    Huntsville Penitentiary
    Huntsville Penitentiary
    Huntsville Penitentiary
    Ebook182 pages57 minutes

    Huntsville Penitentiary

    By Theresa Jach and Jim Willett

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    The state of Texas, home to one of the largest prison systems in the country, opened its first penitentiary in 1849. The Walls Unit in Huntsville was the genesis of a prison system that became the home of notorious convicts and the focus of much debate about incarceration and the death penalty in the United States. The Walls Unit housed gunslinger John Wesley Hardin, members of the Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker gang, and infamous drug cartel leader Fred Carrasco. Built using convict labor, the Walls Unit was heralded as a modern approach to incarceration in Texas. The prison dominated the landscape of the town of Huntsville when it was built and remains central to that community today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateJul 1, 2013
    ISBN9781439643570
    Huntsville Penitentiary
    Author

    Theresa Jach

    With a PhD in US history, Prof. Theresa R. Jach has done extensive research and writing on Texas prisons. Mining the vast collection of photographs from the Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville, the Texas State Archives and Libraries, the Thomason Room archives at Sam Houston State University, and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Professor Jach has gathered a collection of images that tells the story of the Walls Unit and its employees, families, and prisoners. Jim Willett, the director of the Texas Prison Museum, served as warden at the Walls Unit at the time of his retirement. He worked for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for 30 years.

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      Book preview

      Huntsville Penitentiary - Theresa Jach

      project.

      INTRODUCTION

      The State of Texas opened its first prison in 1849 in Huntsville, located in Walker County, about 70 miles north of Houston. A three-member board appointed by Gov. George Wood chose this location. When built, this new penitentiary was to serve as an alternative to more barbaric practices of capital and corporal punishment for crimes. Penitentiary advocates hoped these facilities would rehabilitate offenders, making them productive members of society, while at the same time protecting citizens from danger. This first step foreshadowed the development of one of the largest prison systems in the world. Construction on the first building began on August 15, 1848, under the supervision of architect Abner Hugh Cook. While the main cell block was being built, a temporary wooden jail was constructed on the property to house the first convicts. Once the main building was complete, Cook was to utilize convict labor to complete the prison and the surrounding wall required by the legislature. The legislature also mandated the inclusion of a sturdy surrounding wall to enclose the prison building and grounds. The prison would soon earn the nickname the Walls for the brick structure enclosing the cell blocks and courtyard. The first prisoner, convicted cattle thief William Sansom of Fayette County, arrived in October 1849. By January 1850, there were three inmates at the Huntsville Prison. The second to arrive, convicted murderer Stephen Terry of Jefferson County, has the dubious distinction of being the first inmate shot and killed by guards while trying to escape; he had been in Huntsville for less than a year. The first female inmate, Elizabeth Huffman, served a one-year sentence, beginning in 1854, for killing her newborn infant.

      The number of inmates remained small before the Civil War, when only white men were routinely subject to punishment by the state. For example, in January 1855 there were 75 inmates at the prison. Although there were relatively few inmates, Texas politicians were determined to create a self-sustaining prison that would not burden taxpayers. In 1853, Gov. Peter Bell requested a $35,000 appropriation to build a textile mill at the facility. Producing cotton and wool cloth, the prison earned a profit selling rough material for slave clothing. During the Civil War, the prison textile mill also generated a significant profit with the production of cloth for Confederate uniforms. Following the war, the inmate population in Texas grew dramatically, altering the system and leading to new efforts to find more income from convicts. While Huntsville continued to operate various moneymaking enterprises, the bulk of the prison system’s income came in the form of convict leasing. This system, which was in place until 1914, saw thousands of prisoners leased to privately owned cotton and sugar plantations. The majority of leased convicts were African American. Some white convicts were leased to railroad companies. As the state moved away from the brutal lease system, they began purchasing farms on which to put convicts to work. These farms served as the basis for a prison system that spread across that state and now encompasses nearly 50 prison units (not including various facilities operated by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, such as transfer facilities, psychiatric facilities, or prerelease facilities). Huntsville remains as the hub of the system today. Ephram Stephenson designed the current incarnation of the prison. Work on remodeling much of the prison began in 1934, and Stephenson oversaw the building of an arena for the prison rodeo and the redbrick wall that surrounds the facility today (the old sandstone brick wall was covered over with a redbrick facade). He also designed the new redbrick administration building.

      Huntsville has housed many notorious criminals. Infamous gunslinger and convicted murderer John Wesley Hardin arrived at the Walls in 1878. There were also numerous escapes and attempted escapes. The most noted occurred in 1934 when three inmates escaped from death row in Huntsville. Among them was a member of the Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow gang, Floyd Hamilton. In 1935, Raymond Hamilton (Floyd’s brother) and Joe Palmer, two other Barrow gang members, were executed via the Huntsville electric for the murder of a prison guard during an escape attempt at the Eastham Prison farm. Jazz musician Jack Purvis spent time in Huntsville in the 1930s as well. In 1974, a failed escape attempt by drug kingpin Fred Carrasco led to the longest siege in US prison history. In 1998, Karla Faye Tucker, who was convicted of a gruesome pickaxe murder in 1984, became the first woman executed in Texas since 1863. Serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, after having his death sentence commuted to life in prison, died of heart failure in Huntsville in 2001.

      Since 1923, the state’s execution chamber has been located at the Huntsville Unit. Before 1923, hanging was the method of execution utilized in Texas, and these executions were carried out in the jurisdiction where the crime was committed. After 1923, all executions

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