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Alexander Anderson McSween
What little is known about Alexander McSween's early life came from an interview his elderly widow had given in 1927.
According to Susanna Ellen Hummer McSween Barber, her beloved "Mac" was born on Prince Edward Island, Canada, in 1843. Of Scottish descent, he may have been a Presbyterian divinity student. He was a Washington University law student in St. Louis circa 1870.
Shortly after opening a law office in Eureka, Kansas, in 1873, McSween married Susanna Ellen Hummer in nearby Atchison, Kansas. Eventually they headed west to Las Vegas, New Mexico.The nearly penniless McSweens arrived in Lincoln on March 3, 1875. Quickly setting up practice as the only lawyer in town, Mac did a brisk business. He quickly attracted the L. G. Murphy & Co., which hired him as its legal counsel.
McSween's practice grew, and he soon asked his sister-in-law's husband, attorney David Shield, and his family to join him.
The House of Murphy and McSween eventually parted ways after the firm had asked him to pursue a cash payout on the late Emil Fritz's $10,000 life insurance policy. Fritz had been L. G. Murphy & Co.'s senior partner.
When the House learned that he had deposited a $7,500 settlement from the embattled policy in McSween's personal account, and that McSween was joining John Tunstall in a rival business venture in Lincoln, the bible-toting Mac was a marked man. Once Tunstall had been shot and killed, it was only a matter of time.
McSween scrambled for five months, outwitting, sidestepping, or eluding his pursuers. In court, he was in his element and could survive. But outside court, in fact from anywhere in Lincoln or vast Lincoln County, the unarmed McSween was a target.
Before he was shot and killed in the backyard of his burning Lincoln home on the night of July 19, 1878, there is the vivid image of him, provided by those who survived the arson and subsequent shootout that left him and four McSween men dead, of a distraught, disconsolate McSween sitting in a chair in his smoke-filling, burning home, his head in his hands, paralyzed by fear, indecision, and inaction. He had underestimated the violence that had descending upon him, and overplayed his hand.
McSween would try to make a break for it, decide against it, and rise awkwardly from behind a protective woodpile just yards from his back door. His white shirt, illuminated by the flames, made him a glaring target. He had shouted out at first that he'd surrender, then again that he wouldn't. All the unfriendly guns erupted at once in reply.
He was buried behind the Tunstall Store, alongside his late partner, several yards east of where his commemorative marker is today.
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