'Showdown' recalls bloody Tucker-Parnell feud in El Dorado

The Tucker-Parnell feud of 1902-05 in El Dorado featured the following: knife fights, bomb threats, an attempted poisoning and a saloon called the Minkeye. A wild shootout in the town square between lawmen led by the grandfather of future Gov. Jim Guy Tucker and three members of a leading local family prompted a state militia to implement martial law.

The bad blood in this Hatfield-McCoy tale ran so strong that, nearly 20 years later, Tucker's father, who had unwittingly hitched a ride with some Parnell girls in Little Rock, immediately got back out in the pouring rain rather than risk reigniting the feud.

"The hard feelings about it went on for a very very long time," Tucker says. "Folks killed in multiple fights. It was a serious matter."

So perhaps it's understandable that some were less than enthusiastic when El Dorado resident Richard Mason returned from a trip to Tombstone, Ariz., in the late 1990s looking to re-enact his hometown's historic gunfight.

"People said, 'Don't bring up such dirty laundry,'" Mason says. "'We've been trying to forget that for a hundred years.'"

"The Showdown at Sunset" celebrates its 19th anniversary at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, the first of three re-enactments this summer. Actors will re-create the epic Oct. 9, 1902 gunbattle in front of the Union County Courthouse in which three men died and several more were wounded. It precedes a performance by country singer William Michael Morgan that kicks off the town's summer concert series.

Area historian Diane Alderson says to understand the source of the feud, it helps to get a feel for turn-of-the-century El Dorado. "The big influx of people came in 1870-90, so it was raw," she says.

It was the aftermath of Reconstruction, and law and order was tenuous. Civil War raids on homes and property contributed to land definition difficulties. Economic activity was booming; banks, stores and saloons went up. People jockeying for advantage settled personal conflicts with violence.

It all started on Sept. 17, 1902. A young Texarkana man arrived in town to marry a local woman. Her boss, a photographer named Bob Mullens, insisted the woman was engaged to him. The two scuffled, and the young man fled. He engaged the protection of City Marshal Guy B. Tucker, married his beloved and skipped town on the train back to Texarkana. While attempting to intervene, Mullens was arrested by a constable close to Tucker.

The next day, Mullens, who had been released on bail, confronted the constable and was shot and killed. That's when the real trouble started.

Mullens had been a close friend of Marshall Parnell and his eight sons, wealthy planters who had recently started two businesses, including a feed store, in downtown El Dorado. Tucker, the marshal, had recently ordered the Parnells to remove a loading dock from a busy sidewalk. They concluded that Mullens' death was another slight.

"That kind of lit the fuse," Mason says. "And late one afternoon, they walked up and called each other out. No one knows who fired the first shot."

On Oct. 9, Tucker, the constable and another man found themselves facing three Parnell brothers in front of the courthouse in downtown El Dorado.

Over the next 30 seconds, mayhem erupted. The constable and two Parnell brothers died, while a third was stabbed. Tucker was shot six times, but somehow survived. The shootout made the front page of the Arkansas Gazette, and Gov. Jefferson Davis called out the state militia and declared martial law.

The next August, in 1903, a jug of whiskey arrived at the courthouse addressed to Tucker. A local official tried it and became violently ill, according to one newspaper from the time; it was determined to be poisoned with strychnine. A few days later in the courthouse square Tucker came across John Parnell, who had recently criticized Tucker and the justice system in the local paper. During the confrontation, Tucker shot and killed Parnell, triggering a trial and more unrest. The governor, responding to rumors of descending mobs and bomb threats, once again called out the state militia.

Tucker resigned as marshal in 1905, then opened the Minkeye saloon in nearby Champagnolle. One day, he and his young son, James Guy Tucker, were ambushed by Parnell allies while riding on horses back from El Dorado with mail. The former marshal lost his left arm and decided he'd had enough of Union County. He moved to Little Rock and got into politics.

It's unclear just how many how many lives the Tucker-Parnell feud cost. Five are documented; some estimates suggest as many as 40 were killed over the years.

So why hasn't this cross between the shootout at the OK Corral and the Hatfield-McCoy feud yet been made into a movie? Well, they're trying. Alderson says a professional screenwriter has completed a script.

"We'll get the movie done one day," she says. "Everything takes time and money, doesn't it?"

Weekend on 06/23/2016