September 16, 2025
Introduction: In this article, James Pylant writes more about the extraordinary life and adventures of a relative on his family tree, Harry Wham. James is an editor at GenealogyMagazine.com and author for JacobusBooks.com, is an award-winning historical true-crime writer, and authorized celebrity biographer.
Editor’s Note: In researching his family tree, James Pylant has uncovered many interesting ancestors and relatives – perhaps none more so than Harry Wham, who had so many adventures that one family member commented his life “reads like fiction – but all so true.” James has written a three-part article to tell the tale of Harry’s life. In yesterday’s Part 1 article, James provided context by filling in details of the family background. In today’s Part 2 article, James writes about the thrills and dangers Harry faced, from fighting the enemy in WWII with underwater demolition, to underwater salvage operations and detective work after the war, searching for buried pirates’ treasure and sunken ships with holds stuffed with gold, advising Hollywood, amusing himself and audiences as a nightclub entertainer, and jumping out of a burning airplane – and surviving! And in next week’s Part 3, we’ll read about the most shocking and dangerous event in Harry’s colorful life.
Born on 6 April 1851, John Chesley Gilbreath was only four when he migrated with the large Gilbreath-Turnbow clan to Texas from his native Arkansas in 1855. They settled in what became Erath County, where he grew to adulthood – a tall man with a steely gaze.
In April 1870, seven days after his 19th birthday, he married his 15-year-old stepsister, Lucy Cathline Barbee. John’s widowed mother, Nancy (Turnbow) Gilbreath, had married Jones Barbee, Lucy’s father, only a month earlier. Lucy disapproved of her father’s remarriage, as it came 14 months after her mother’s death.
As chronicled in my book, Sins of the Pioneers: Crimes and Scandals in a Small Texas Town, John was elected sheriff in 1882 on the campaign promise to end organized crime’s stronghold on Erath County. He kept his promise and served two terms as sheriff. “He was a natural-born detective,” said son Henry, my great-grandfather. “I’ve heard him say he could spot a thief, anytime.”
During his years as sheriff, John and his family moved into the county jail in Stephenville. His mother, Nancy (Turnbow) (Gilbreath) Barbee, died there while visiting him. (1) John died at 43 on 21 September 1894 near Dublin, in Erath County, after falling from a wagon which ran over him, crushing his chest. Seven children survived him, the youngest being six weeks old.
John and Lucy’s oldest son, Tom Gilbreath, served as the sheriff of neighboring Comanche County from 1925 to 1930. As Tom’s wife, Mary, would write, “family history was repeated when his mother came to visit, became ill and died in the sheriff’s quarters in the jail there.” (2)
One of John Chesley Gilbreath’s great-granddaughters, Frances Ellen Gilbreath, was born in 1929 in Dublin. In the 1940s, she moved with her family to Los Angeles, California. Within two years of her 1947 high school graduation, Fran – as we called her – took a job as a stenographer for the Los Angeles Police Department. Hearing witnesses’ sordid stories shocked her, but it became so routine that she learned to listen without reacting.
Fran became a police officer before relocating to Nevada, where she worked as a parole officer in Las Vegas and Reno until retirement. She died at 90 in 2020.
Here are three family photos (left to right): John Chesley Gilbreath (1851-1894), Sheriff of Erath County, Texas; his son, James Thomas Gilbreath (1873-1939), Sheriff of Comanche County, Texas; and John’s great-granddaughter, Frances Ellen Gilbreath (1929-2020), a police officer in Los Angeles County, California.
Fran married Raymond “Ray” Gubser, former chief deputy for the Clark County Sheriff’s Department. He played a pivotal role in merging the sheriff’s office with the police department to form the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. After retiring, Ray opened a detective agency.
I met Fran and Ray only once when they came to Texas to visit my grandmother. I asked them if they knew a larger-than-life character in Sin City named Harry Wham, who was also connected with law enforcement. “Yes,” came the answer, but Fran was surprised when I said Harry was her cousin. Fran and Harry, both Los Angeles transplants to Vegas when their paths crossed, had no idea they were fourth cousins. Fran’s great-great-grandmother, Nancy (Turnbow) Gilbreath, was a sister to Feliciana (Turnbow) Johnson, Harry’s great-great-grandmother.
I discovered our family connection with Harry some years earlier when I heard from his first cousin, Pat Bennett. “We were very close cousins, but our lives were not parallel at all,” said Pat.
Harry was a member of the Underwater Demolition Team, amphibious units created by the U.S. Navy for special missions during World War II. In 1946, while on a salvage mission on the Colorado River, a large sunken boat was discovered on the riverbed. Among the items recovered from the wreck was a woman’s purse with more than $500.
Harry also acted as an advisor for the TV series Sea Hunt and the show’s star, Lloyd Bridges. He owned and operated Whamco, an underwater salvage firm, but there was another side to Harry Wham: entertainer.
On 25 November 1960, newspapers announced that Harry would head an expedition in search of buried pirate treasure on Cocos Island, accompanied by 10 members of Costa Rica’s armed forces.
The treasure – if discovered – would be divided equally between the Costa Rican government and the finder. It was believed to have been hidden by the English pirate Henry Morgan. On December 18, newspapers reported Harry and his entourage returned from the hunt empty-handed but “ready to try again.”
Harry once again made national headlines the following year with a new endeavor: the Sheriff’s Underwater Rescue Force (SURF). Under Harry’s direction, the Vegas-based volunteer organization involved a rigorous six-month training program for the unit’s deputies.
This article reports:
The group’s first murder investigation came last month when the body of a 40-year-old man was found in Lake Mead, his pockets and trouser legs weighted down with rocks.
SURF has aided the investigation greatly by gathering most of the clues which probably would not have been discovered were it not for their diving prowess.
Three years later, Harry was again investigating pirate treasure off the coast of Costa Rica.
In March 1966, Harry had perhaps his most dangerous adventure. He was injured when a plane he was copiloting caught fire as it landed at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. Harry, having broken both legs after jumping from the burning aircraft, won a $140,000 suit against a contractor over the mishap.
In July the following year, Harry led an expedition in search of gold lost in two shipwrecks in the Pacific.
This article reports:
Leonard Bern, Huntington Beach, Calif., and a crew of three first discovered the wreck [of the sailing ship Sacramento] but did not find its hold. Wham, a friend of Bern’s, made several unsuccessful trips to the wreck before discovering gold coins and a 40-pound ingot believed to be of silver. These articles were confiscated at the Mexican border.
The next chapter in Harry Wham’s life would take a shocking turn, a tragedy that played out in bold newspaper headlines.
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Note on the header image: covered wagon. Credit: Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives; Wikimedia Commons.
Related Article:
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(1) Pauline Naylor, “Woman Writes of Frontier Events,” Fort Worth [Texas] Star-Telegram, 16 July 1962, Sect. 1, p. 18.
(2) Ibid.