Plans are under way for the creation of a police museum in Waco to open in late 2012, when the department moves into the former Hillcrest Tower office structure.

Waco Police Sgt. Randy Lanier is part of a team of officers and civilians tapped by Chief Brent Stroman to guide creation of a first-of-its-kind museum for Waco — one that chronicles the special role law enforcement played in the taming of Six Shooter Junction.

A group of young Waco firemen, circa 1875, includes George M. Barnard (1855-1924), who is seated on the right.

Later this month, plans include having a Waco Police Museum domain name registered online and a Facebook page established to generate buzz about the project, he said.

But Lanier already has some people excited about donating or loaning artifacts such as historic badges, vintage whistles or billy clubs. Dallas resident Bob Darwin, for example, has loaned vintage photographs of his ancestor, an early Waco lawman named George M. Barnard.

Barnard, born in 1854 or 1855, according to some records, was the son of Mary Rebecca Ross and George Barnard (1818-83), a pioneer merchant from Connecticut who arrived in Galveston in 1838.

In about 1843, at the request of Sam Houston, the elder Barnard and partner Thomas Torrey planted a trading post on a small tributary of Tehuacana Creek, which later was called Trading House Creek, about eight miles south of the location of present-day Waco.

After his marriage in 1850 to Mary Rebecca Ross (daughter of Texas Ranger captain Shapley P. Ross and sister of Gov. Lawrence Sullivan Ross), George Barnard moved his mercantile operations to Waco Village, where he invested heavily in land.

He sold his business in 1857 to Fox and Jacobs, the town’s first Jewish merchants, and entered semi-retirement. Active in the local company of Texas Rangers, he also was a prolific family man, having been father to 12 children before his death at his home in Waco on March 6, 1883.

The Slave Census of 1860 (the last in U.S. history), noted that George Barnard of McLennan County owned five slaves — a family made up of a 30-year-old male, a 28-year-old female, and their children, ages 9, 6 and 1.

The younger George was still a schoolboy when the 1870 census rolled around, the days of Reconstruction. But by the 1880 census, the 25-year-old’s recorded occupation was as a constable and he was married to Emma J. Barnard (1857-1940).

The 1880s also were a time the young family man explored the world of business. The city directories of the era said he clerked for Tom Padgitt, the saddle-making entrepreneur of Waco, in 1886-87.

The Young Men’s Business League of Waco, the forerunner to today’s Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce, used the “Black Maria” police van to get out the vote in the late 1910s. The officer in the Keystone Kops hat is George M. Barnard.

He had just opened his own new and second-hand furniture store at 623 Austin Avenue when a fire claimed his entire stock in October 1888, according to the Waco Evening News. Fortunately, he was insured against the loss, and took the $900 settlement ($21,500 in today’s dollars) and re-opened a store at the corner of 10th Street and Jefferson Avenue, becoming the proprietor of Waco Installment Co.

At some point in the late 1890s, he got back into leather goods. The 1900 census said the father of nine worked as a saddlery salesman.

But the turn of the 20th century brought Barnard back into law enforcement once again. He was listed as a city policeman in the 1910 census, and a patrolman in the 1920 census. He died on Oct. 29, 1924, in Waco.

tjryan@wacotrib.com

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