Who Was the Judge?
The Historical Judge Holden
For well over a decade, I’ve scoured 19th century historical documents—letters, memoirs, land deeds, rolls of the Texas Rangers—for information about the real-life Judge Holden of Texas. Who was this extraordinary, terrifying man? Where did he come from? How did he live and how did he die?
The only historical document that mentions Judge Holden is Samuel Chamberlain’s memoir, My Confession, a purported account of Chamberlain’s service in the Mexican-American War and his time with John Joel Glanton’s gang of scalp-hunters. I find it curious that a hairless, seven-foot serial killer—one who speaks several languages and reads Greek and Latin—could have operated in the American Southwest without being recorded in any document but Chamberlain’s.
And so, several possibilities present themselves:
Chamberlain’s memoir is a fake (more on this in Part Five of this series) and the Judge Holden he wrote about, a fiction.
Judge Holden went by another name—perhaps several.
If the second possibility is the correct one, the true identity of Judge Holden can be unearthed.
In this series, I want to present a few likely suspects. In Part I, I’ll briefly lay out the evidence for the naturalist Charles Wilkins Webber. In Part II, I’ll lay out the evidence for the Belgian mercenary Charles Frederick Henningsen. Part III will focus on scientist and surveyor John Veatch. In the fourth aessay in this series, I’ll return to Webber for a much deeper dive, examining the reasons so many scholars consider him the likeliest candidate. Part V will examine the publication history—and veracity—of Samuel Chamberlain’s memoir.
1. How Came the Learned Man: the Case for Charles Wilkins Webber
A number of scholars have come to believe that Judge Holden was, in fact, novelist and naturalist Charles Wilkins Webber—a friend of John James Audubon.
