AUSTIN, Texas — Dave Garland is a prominent media broker and long-time broadcaster with a passion for Texas history. He attributes some of his love for history to his grandmother, Alice McKee Garland, who would tell him stories about the famous people she knew when she was younger.
Among the famous was a man named Robert Love, said to be destined to become the Governor of Texas after winning the statewide election for the job of state comptroller in 1901.
Love was also Dave Garland’s “second great uncle,” as is described on a genealogy site, and it was the stories of his Great Uncle Robert that fascinated Garland.
“He was head of the Texas Sheriff’s Association and was a former U.S. Marshal. People thought highly of him,” Garland said.
Indeed, Robert Love was a popular and distinguished-looking man with a large mustache who had won a contested statewide election for the job of Texas Comptroller, a job that took him to the State Capitol building in Austin where he and his clerks had a first-floor office.
But Love would only serve two years after his life was cut short by a former coworker. He became the only elected official in Texas to die at the hands of an assassin inside the Capitol.
It happened in 1903. The man who shot him? W.G. Hill.
“Hill had been a clerk for Love,” Garland said. “My great uncle fired him in 1901 as soon as he assumed the office of comptroller.”
Garland said that Hill nursed a grudge against Love, and one summer day in June 1903, Hill entered Love’s office at the State Capitol, handed him a one-page letter and then shot him as he read the letter.
“Another clerk heard the shots fired and pursued Hill who had run away,” Garland said. “There was a scuffle and Hill either shot himself or the gun accidentally discharged.”
Hill died.
The comptroller's office is no longer in the Capitol building, but the sign over the door remains.
Although the story of Robert Love’s death has faded with time, the story about his supposed-ghost lives on. It's said that a strange man dressed in old clothing has been seen wandering the capitol hallways late at night and that when he’s followed, he suddenly disappears in some dark corridor. Some say it’s the ghost of Robert Love.
Garland said he doubts the ghost story, but he remains committed to making sure that his Great Uncle Robert is never forgotten.