A MEMORIAL TO THE RANGERS OF THE PAST AND THOSE WHO GAVE THEIR LIFE IN THE LINE OF DUTY.

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Captain Cicero Rufus Perry

Cicero Rufus (Old Rufe) Perry, Texas Ranger, was born in Alabama on August 23, 1822. In 1833 he moved with his parents to Bastrop, then in Washington County. He participated in the siege of Bexar, served from July 1 to October 1, 1836, in Capt. William W. Hill’s company of Texas Rangers, and was involved in an Indian fight on Yegua Creek. He was wounded on February 12, 1839, while serving under John H. Moore. In 1841 he served under Samuel Highsmith and Thomas Green and scouted for Edward Burleson and Mark B. Lewis. He was also a member of the Somervell expedition. He joined John Coffee Hays’s ranger company in 1844 and participated in many of his Indian fights, including the battle of Walker’s Creek. In August 1844 he was severely wounded in a fight with the Comanches on the Nueces River, and he and Christopher Acklin were left for dead by their two companions. With three wounds, Perry walked 120 miles, from near Uvalde to San Antonio, unarmed and without food or water. In 1873 in the battle of Deer Creek he came to the assistance of a party led by Dan W. Roberts. In 1874 Perry was appointed captain of Company D of the Frontier Battalion. Roberts served as his first lieutenant and later as his successor. Perry died at Johnson City on October 7, 1898. Described by John Holland Jenkins as having been “tall, muscular, erect-a perfect specimen of the strong and brave in young manhood,” Perry had black hair and “dark eyes, bright with the fires of intelligence and enthusiasm.” It was said that in his career as a volunteer soldier and Texas Ranger he had sustained twenty wounds from bullet, arrow, and lance.

Jack Coffee Hayes

John Coffee (Jack) Hays, famous Texas Ranger and Mexican War officer, son of Harmon and Elizabeth (Cage) Hays, was born at Little Cedar Lick, Wilson County, Tennessee, on January 28, 1817. His father, of Scots-Irish descent, fought with Andrew Jackson and Sam Houston in the War of 1812. Hays became the prototypical Texas Ranger officer, and he and his cohorts—John S. (Rip) Ford, Ben McCulloch, and Samuel H. Walker established the ranger tradition. Hays was a man of less than average size. He was exceptionally wiry, however, and had almost supernatural powers of endurance in the rugged west Texas terrain. *Hays joined the Texas Rangers in the formative years of their role as citizen soldiers. His rangers gained a reputation as mounted troops with revolvers and individually styled uniforms, who marched and fought with a noticeable lack of military discipline. This rough-and-ready image of an irregular force left its imprint on the chronicles of ranger history.

In the thirteen years that he lived in Texas, Hays mixed a military career with surveying. At an early age he left home, surveyed lands in Mississippi, attended Davidson Academy at Nashville, and decided to cast his lot with the rebels in the Texas In 1836 he traveled to New Orleans and entered Texas at Nacogdoches in time to join the troops under Thomas J. Rusk and bury the remains of victims of the Goliad Houston advised Hays to join a company of rangers under Erastus (Deaf) Smith for service from San Antonio to the Rio Grande, under the orders of Col. Henry W. In this role Hays took part in an engagement with Mexican cavalry near Laredo, assisted in the capture of Juan Sanchez, and rose to the rank of sergeant. After appointment as deputy surveyor of the Bexar District, Hays combined soldiering and surveying for several years. The more he learned about Indian methods of warfare, the better he protected surveying parties against Indian attacks.

“Captain Jack” of the Texas Rangers.

Young Flacco, the Lippan Apache chief who rode as Hays’s closest comrade on his early forays against the Comanche, described him best: “Me and Red Wing aren’t afraid to go to hell together. Captain Jack, he’s too mucho bravo. He’s not afraid to go to hell all by himself.”

In the three-way struggle of Anglo colonists, Hispanic settlers, and Indians, Hays proved to be an able leader and fearless fighter (called “Devil Jack”), who gained the respect of the rank and file of the Texas Rangers. Yet his stature—five feet nine inches—his fair complexion, and his mild manners did not match the looks and actions of the legendary ranger in later popular culture. From 1840 through 1846 Hays, at first a captain, then a major, and his ranger companies, sometimes with Mexican volunteers and such Indian allies as Lipan chief engaged the Comanches and Mexican troops in small skirmishes and major battles. Important military actions took place at Plum Creek, Canon de Ugalde, Bandera Pass, Painted Rock, Enchanted Rock (where Hays made a lone stand that enhanced his reputation as an Indian fighter), Salado (against Mexican soldiers under Adrian Woll), and Walker’s Creek. In these battles Hays and his rangers were usually outnumbered, and their effective use of revolvers revolutionized warfare against Texas Indians.

The Texas Rangers gained a national reputation in the Mexican War. Into Mexico rode Hays’s rangers. Out of Mexico came a mounted irregular body of rangers celebrated in song and story throughout the United States. This transformation in fact and fiction started with the formation of the First Regiment, Texas Mounted under Colonel Hays. Serving with the army of Gen. Zachary Taylor, the rangers marched, scouted, and took part in the attack on Monterrey in 1846. The next year Hays formed another regiment that participated in keeping communication and supply lines open between Veracruz and Mexico City for the troops under the command of Gen. Winfleld Scott. In doing so, Hays’s rangers fought Mexican guerrillas near Veracruz and at such places as Teotihuacan and Sequalteplan. Controversy between the rangers and the Mexican people still lingers, for they robbed and killed each other off the battlefields.

Hays became quite skilled and tracking and fighting Comanche as well as white outlaws of the era. He fought against the Comanche at the battles of Plum Creek in 1840, Enchanted Rock in 1841, and Bandera Pass in 1842. In 1844 at the Battle of Walker Creek, Rangers serving under Hays used the five-shot Patterson model Colt Revolver in action for the first time against the Comanche.

Determined to cash in on the gold rush of 1849, Hays led a wagon train to California. After serving four years as sheriff of San Francisco County, President Franklin Pierce appointed him surveyor general of California in 1853. In this role, he laid out the city of Oakland. In California, Hays acquired a considerable fortune and became politically prominent. He was a delegate to the National Democratic Convention in 1876.

In the years that followed the Mexican War, Hays pioneered trails through the Southwest to California and became a prominent citizen of that state. In 1848 he tried unsuccessfully to find a route between San Antonio and El Paso, and the following year he received an appointment from the federal government as Indian agent for the Gila

River country. In addition, he was elected sheriff of San Francisco County in 1850, appointed United States surveyor general for California in 1853, became one of the founders of the city of Oakland, and ran successful enterprises in real estate and ranching. Though he was neutral during the Civil he was prominent in Democratic politics in California; he was a delegate to the Democratic national convention in 1876. He married Susan Calvert in 1847, and they had three daughters and three sons. Hays died on April 21, 1883, and is buried in California.

Hays made frequent trips back to Texas, but died near Piedmont, California on April 25, 1883. Hays County in South Central Texas, was created in 1848 and named in his honor.

Captain Leander McNelly Special Force.

Leander Harvey McNelly (March 12, 1844-September 4, 1877) was a Confederate officer and Texas Ranger captain. McNelly is best remembered for leading the “Special Force”, a quasi-military branch of the Texas Rangers that operated in South Texas in 1875-76.

MCNELLY, LEANDER H. (1844–1877). Leander H. McNelly, Confederate Army officer and Texas Ranger captain, was born in Virginia in 1844, the son of P. J. and Mary (Downey) McNelly. His family seems to have sojourned briefly in Missouri about 1855 before moving from Virginia to Texas in the fall of 1860. P. J. drove a herd of sheep overland to western Washington County while the rest of his family sailed to Texas. For the next five years Leander herded sheep for a neighbor, T. J. Burton. During Gen. Henry H. Sibley’s New Mexico campaign, McNelly served as a private in Capt. George Washington Campbell’s Company F of Col. Thomas Greenqv’s Fifth Texas Cavalry until he was detached to Sibley’s escort company. In 1863, after taking part in the battle of Galveston, he served as a volunteer aide-de-camp on the staff of General Green, who was then commanding the Texas cavalry brigade of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department. For what Theophilous Noel characterized as “his daring gallantry,” Green promoted McNelly to captain of scouts and on November 25, 1863, recommended him for a captain’s commission. In Green’s southern Louisiana campaign of 1864 McNelly played major roles in the battles of Brashear City and Lafourche Crossing. He was seriously wounded at the battle of Mansfield in April 1864, and command of his company devolved upon his lieutenants, William D. Stone and Thomas T. Pitts, who led the unit with distinction at Pleasant Hill, Blair’s Landing, and Grande Écore (see RED RIVER CAMPAIGN). After recovering from his wound, McNelly returned to his command in May in time to participate in the battle of Yellow Bayou. He was then ordered into the Bayou Lafourche country of southern Louisiana to scout and harass the enemy. On July 1, 1864, after Green’s death at the battle of Blair’s Landing, Louisiana, McNelly was transferred to Gen. John A. Whartonqv’s cavalry corps and on July 6 was ordered with his company east of the Atchafalaya River “to procure and transmit to these Headquarters the latest and definite information of the enemy’s movements in that section.” In 1864 McNelly commanded a scout company on Bayou Grosse Tete west of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In Noel’s words, his company “betook themselves to the swamps and canebrakes where they confined their operations until the enemy commenced their retreat.” Typical of McNelly’s exploits was the capture of 380 men in the Union garrison at Brashear City, Louisiana, by his party of fifteen or twenty scouts. After a period of “hunting up Jayhawkers on the Calcasieu,” McNelly was transferred to Gen. George G. Walkerqv’s cavalry corps and ordered to Washington County, Texas, to arrest deserters.

After the war he turned to farming near Brenham and there married Carey Cheek. They had two children. He later worked for a time in the General Land Office. During the Edmund J. Davis administration, McNelly served as one of the four captains of the State Police from July 1, 1870, until the force was disbanded on April 22, 1873. In February 1871, after arresting four white men for the murder of a freedman in Walker County, McNelly was wounded by friends of the accused. In July 1874 a thirty-man company of volunteer militia from Washington County was mustered into the Texas Rangers as the seventh company of the Frontier Battalion. McNelly was appointed its captain and assigned to duty in DeWitt County, where the Sutton-Taylorqv feud was then raging. After four months of attempting to suppress civil violence there, McNelly reported that the presence of his men had been beneficial but that he was sure fighting would flare again as soon as the troops were withdrawn.

In the spring of 1875 he was commissioned to raise a new company for service in the area between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande known as the Nueces Strip. This area, wrote historian Walter Prescott Webb, “stood out as something special in the way of brigandage, murder, and theft. It had more than its share” of such outlaws as John King Fisher and Juan N. Cortina.qqv Thomas C. Robinson served as McNelly’s first lieutenant, J. W. Guyon as his second lieutenant, and John B. Armstrong as his sergeant. The forty-man company saw two years of active duty, 1875–76. Nineteenth-century ranger historian Wilburn Hill King wrote that the company was “active, vigilant, daring, and successful in dealing with lawless characters” in the border region. But McNelly’s methods were questionable. His men were known to have made a number of extralegal border crossings in violation of Mexican territorial sovereignty, for which he was removed from command of the company and replaced by Jesse Lee Hallqv. After his removal, at the request of DeWitt county judge H. Clay Pleasants, McNelly served as an unofficial ranger during the trials of several leading defendants of the Sutton-Taylor feud in October 1876. Thereafter he retired to his farm at Burton, where he died of tuberculosis on September 4, 1877. He was buried at Burton. Remembered as “a tallish thin man of quiet manner, and with the soft voice of a timid Methodist minister,” McNelly nevertheless was party to many illegal executions and to confessions forced from prisoners by extreme means. To the present day his tactics remain a subject of controversy on the border, where many remember him best for his torture and hanging of prisoners. Nevertheless, citizens of South Texas erected a monument, paid for by public subscription, to his memory.

Early years

Leander H. McNelly was born March 12, 1844 in Brook County, Virginia, to P.J. McNelly and his wife Mary Downey. McNelly suffered from consumption as a child, and in 1860 his family moved to Texas in the hope that the climate would improve his health. In Texas, McNelly helped his family raise sheep and regained his health.

Civil War

On September 13, 1861, McNelly enlisted in the Confederate States Army, joining Company F of the Fifth Regiment of Texas Mounted Volunteers under General Thomas Green. After the Battle of Valverde during the New Mexico campaign, Green named McNelly his aide. Following fighting in the Battle of Galveston, McNelly was sent to Louisiana, where he was given a commission on December 19, 1863. He led 100 guerrilla scouts, and once carried out a spying mission dressed as a woman.

McNelly and his men were tasked with capturing Brashear City, Louisiana, where 800 Union troops were stationed. After dark, McNelly and his 40 troops marched back and forth across a long bridge that led to the city, shouting as if they were speaking to unseen generals and colonels. At dawn, McNelly and his small force rode into the Union camp under a flag of truce and demanded an unconditional surrender. The Union officers believed that the noise they had heard signified a very large Confederate force and surrendered immediately. McNelly was able to take all 800 Union troops prisoner.

In April 1864, McNelly was wounded at the Battle of Mansfield. He took no sick leave or furlough in the entire four years of fighting, however. In the last months of the war he led mounted scouts working near Hempstead, Texas to round up deserters, and his unit was one of the last Confederate Army units to disband. Following the war, McNelly moved to Brenham, where he married and had a son and daughter.

Pencil drawing of McNelly by Jim Ryan. Drawn from Joe Grandee’s painting.

Lawman career

On July 1, 1870, Governor Edmund J. Davis organized a Texas State Police force, naming McNelly one of its four captains. The new police force had an inauspicious start, as its first director promptly ran away with $34,000. Many of the officers were accused of killing prisoners and harassing voters. In his most visible job as part of the State Police, McNelly was assigned to Walker County after a Negro named Sam Jenkins was murdered after telling a grand jury that he had been flogged. McNelly investigated and arrested four men, one of who was immediately released. The other three had been smuggled weapons, and they opened fire as McNelly was returning them to jail. McNelly was wounded, and in a newspaper interview he later castigated the local sheriff for not finding the weapons. McNelly was also unhappy with Davis, who had promptly declare martial law. The State Police force was abolished on April 22, 1873.

The Democratic Party regained control of Texas in 1873, and to combat massive lawlessness, in 1874, the newly elected governor, Richard Coke, created two branches of the Texas Rangers, a Frontier Battalion under the command of major John B. Jones, and a designated Special Force, commanded by McNelly and financed by cattle ranchers. McNelly’s special group had the specific task of bringing order to the Nueces Strip, a hotbed of cattle thievery and banditry, where Juan Cortina, the Mexican military chief for the Rio Grande frontier, was conducting periodic guerrilla operations against the local ranchers.

One of his unit’s first assignments was to travel to DeWitt County and resolve the Sutton-Taylor feud. The feud had begun in March 1874 when a member of the Taylor family killed a member of the Sutton family. McNelly and 40 Rangers arrived in Clinton on August 1 and remained for four months to ensure that Taylor and the witnesses against him lived through the trial. Following that incident, McNelly was ill, and went home to recuperate on his cotton farm near Burton.

Nueces Strip

Coke ordered McNelly to organize a special force and go to Nueces County in April 1875. In two days, McNelly recruited 41 men. He rejected most native Texans who had applied so that they would not have to face the possibility of shooting at their own relatives or friends. The group became very loyal to him, and called themselves the “Little McNellys”.

McNelly’s methods have been questioned throughout the years, and although he recovered many cattle stolen from the Texan Ranches while aggressively dealing with lawlessness on the Mexican border, he also gained a reputation of taking part in many illegal executions and to confessions forced from prisoners by extreme means. McNelly also made himself famous for disobeying direct orders from his superiors on several occasions, and breaking through the Mexican frontier for self-appointed law enforcement purposes. His actions proved to be effective, however, and he was responsible for putting an end to the troubles with Mexican bandits and cattle rustlers along the Rio Grande that were commonplace during the 1850-75 period.

It was in 1875 that McNelly was faced with how to eliminate several Mexican bandit gangs. The first of these was Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, who was a General in the Mexican army during the Mexican-American War. Cortina had for years raided settlements in the Brownsville, Texas area, always retreating back across the Rio Grande River to avoid Texas law enforcement. Cortina was from a wealthy family that owned better than 260,000 acres (1,100 km2) of land in that area, which had once included the location of the town of Brownsville. Cortina commanded a force of in excess of 2,000 armed Mexican outlaws and gunmen.

Further north up river he was faced with a gang led by Juan Flores Salinas. This gang did not have the manpower of the Cortina’s gang, but was nonetheless as ruthless. This gang was headquartered at Camargo, Mexico, directly across the border from the US Cavalry outpost of Ringgold Barracks, near Rio Grande City.

From American outlaws, McNelly’s greatest outlaw rival was Texas gunman King Fisher and his band of outlaws. Although notable as rustlers, Fisher’s band rarely raided US civilian populations, concentrating more on rustling cattle from their Mexican counterparts across the border. This added to tensions among the Mexican population, and gave an excuse to Mexican bandits for their raids into the United States.

McNelly now moved south to end the bandit gangs that had run unchecked over that area for several years. Within one years time, McNelly had completed destroyed both the bandit bands of Cortina and Salinas during repeated actions where McNelly disobeyed orders and took his force across the border into Mexico. King Fisher’s gang dispersed and Fisher went into retirement as a rancher, following a Ranger raid on his ranch during which McNelly arrested Fisher, and the two came to an agreement that his over-border raids would cease. Fisher later became the Sheriff of Uvalde County.

Palo Alto

The first major gunfight between the Rangers, and the Bandits occurred in June 1875. McNelly’s Rangers surprised a group of sixteen Mexican cattle thieves—-and one white man—-driving about 300 head of cattle toward the Rio Grande, toward Juan Cortina, and toward the steamer for Cuba. They were Cortina’s hand-picked men, who had boasted they could cope with any Rangers or vigilantes. Captain McNelly issued his orders. “Don’t shoot to the left or the right. Shoot straight ahead. And don’t shoot till you’ve got your target good in your sights. Don’t walk up on a wounded man. Pay no attention to a white flag. That’s a mean trick bandits use on green hands. Don’t touch a dead man, except to identify him.”

Spying the Rangers, the Mexicans took flight, driving the herd before them at a frenzied pace, until they reached a little island in the middle of the salt marsh. The Mexicans then turned and waited for the Rangers, who were right on their heels, to cross the shallow, muddy lagoon. But McNelly anticipated the ambush and stopped to issue his pep talk, “Boys, across this resaca are some outlaws that claim they’re bigger than the law—bigger than Washington law, bigger than Texas law. This won’t be a standoff or a dogfall. We’ll either win completely, or we’ll lose completely.”

The battle, which has since been called the “Red Raid” or the “Second Battle of the Palo Alto,” waged nearly all day in a succession of single hand-fights which left dead Mexicans and horses covering a swath through the prairie about two miles wide and six miles long. All the Mexican drovers were killed, including the gringo, Jack Ellis, who had beaten and mistreated the shopkeeper’s wife at Nuecestown. Two hundred and sixty-five head of stolen stock were rounded up and eventually returned to their rightful owners in the neighborhood of the King Ranch country. Nine of the fourteen saddles recovered turned out to be the Dick Heyes saddles stolen in the raid on Nuecestown three months earlier.

One Ranger, seventeen-year-old L. Berry Smith, who wanted to be in on the action, also died in the fighting. He was the son of camp cook D. R. Smith and the youngest Ranger ever to die in the line of duty. Smith was apparently too inexperienced to fully appreciate McNelly’s terse orders because he got too close to a wounded Mexican bandit, and the bandit killed the boy before Smith even knew what was happening. Berry Smith was buried in the northwest corner of the Brownsville cemetery on June 16 with full military honors. The funeral was recorded as one of the finest the city had ever seen.

The Las Cuevas War

Leander McNelly’s most infamous exploit, was his invasion of Las Cuevas, Mexico to get back stolen cattle. McNelly and his Rangers entered Mexico 20 November 1875. Under cover of brush and scrub oak, they made their way on foot to General Juan Salinas’ stronghold at the Rincon de Cucharras outpost of the Las Cuevas ranch, which in plain English translates to “the spoon corner.” Later that afternoon, Major A. J. Alexander from Ringgold Barracks arrived with a missive from Colonel Potter at Fort Brown, located on the Rio Grande at Brownville, urging McNelly to retreat. During the gunfight McNelly was shot through both hands.

After a rested night’s sleep, Captain McNelly moved his men directly opposite Camargo on the Texas side of the river. With twelve or thirteen Rangers, not including himself (the accounts differ), and crossed the river in a rowboat in another invasion of Mexico. He marched up the riverbank to the customs house, demanded the cattle, and when the Mexican Captain stalled by politely saying they didn’t do business on Sunday, he promptly took the Mexican Captain prisoner. McNelly then hauled the prisoner to the Texas side and told the captured Mexican leader to get the cattle started within the hour or he would die. Instead of 250 head returning to Texas, more than 400 were crossed back.

Death

McNelly suffered from tuberculosis, and retired in 1876 due to a deteriorating health. He died on September 4 of the following year in Burton, Texas, survived by his wife, Carey Cheek McNelly, and two children.

Texas Ranger John Barclay Armstrong.

John Barclay Armstrong (January 1, 1850 – May 1, 1913) was a Texas Ranger lieutenant and a United States Marshal, usually remembered for his role in the pursuit and capture of the famous gunfighter John Wesley Hardin.

Armstrong was born in McMinnville, Tennessee, son of Dr. John B. Armstrong and Maria Susannah Ready on January 1, 1850. Among notable relatives were his maternal grandfather Charles Ready, a U.S. Representative from Tennessee and his cousin Confederate States Army Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan. After living in Arkansas and Missouri for a short time, Armstrong moved to Austin, Texas in 1871. After a short experience as a lawman, in 1875 he joined the Special Force under Captain Leander H. McNelly, a newly created quasi-military branch of the Texas Rangers that was to operate in southern Texas. His role as McNelly’s second in command and right hand earned him the promotion to sergeant and the nickname “McNelly’s Bulldog”.

With the death of McNelly and the absorption of the Special Force within the Texas Rangers’ Frontier Battalion in 1876, Armstrong was promoted to Lieutenant. He was involved in several notable cases, like the capture of Hardin and the pursuit and killing of noted bank robber Sam Bass.

Armstrong resigned his position at the Rangers in 1881, and was shortly after appointed U.S. Marshal. He established in Willacy County, Texas, where he founded a considerably large ranch. He died at his home in Armstrong, Texas, on May 1, 1913.

Captain James Buchanan Gillett

Born November 4, 1856 – Died June 11, 1937
Served with the Texas Rangers from June1, 1875 to December 26, 1881.
Layed to rest at Marfa Cemetery Marfa, Texas.

GILLETT, JAMES BUCHANAN (1856–1937). James Buchanan Gillett, Texas Ranger, author, and rancher, was born in Austin on November 4, 1856, the son of James S. and Elizabeth (Harper) Gillett. He had two sisters. The children were sent to private schools since there were no public schools in Austin at that time. Jim found them irksome, and in 1868 he quit school for a life in the outdoors. Because of his mother’s ill health, the family moved to Lampasas in 1872. This was cattle country, and in 1873 he left home to work for nearby cattlemen. After his father’s death in April 1874, he left for Menardville (later Menard). There, on June 1, 1875, Gillett joined the Texas Rangersqv, Daniel Webster Roberts’sqv Company D, Frontier Battalion. He spent six years with the rangers on the frontier, including service with companies A, E, and C. This was the bloodiest period of the Texas Indian wars. Gillett fought Kiowa, Comanche, and Lipan Apache indians, as well as cattle thieves and outlaws. He was stationed in El Paso County in 1881, when, accompanied by ranger George Lloyd, he went to Zaragoza, Chihuahua, without extradition papers to capture Eunofrio Baca, who had murdered the newspaper editor A. M. Conklin in Socorro, New Mexico. Gillett grabbed the killer and galloped to the Rio Grande, four miles away, with men from the town chasing and shooting at them. Though Gillett turned Baca over to the sheriff in Socorro, Baca was lynched by a mob. There were international rumblings, and the Mexican government sent a complaint to Washington, but after a short time the furor diminished.

On February 10, 1881, Gillett married Helen Baylor, daughter of Capt. George W. Baylor, his company commander. They had two sons, one of whom, James Harper Gillett, became the first American bullfighter in Mexico (under the name Harper Lee). The marriage ended in divorce. In December 1881 Gillett resigned from the Texas Rangers and was appointed assistant city marshal of El Paso. In June 1882 he was appointed marshal. El Paso at that time was a town of many saloons and gambling houses, a gathering place for outlaws, gunmen, and desperadoes. Gillett, still in his twenties, was known as a man without fear. He reportedly did not swear or drink, but claimed that “no man will ever kill me drunk.” On April 1, 1885, after having clubbed a city councilman with a six-shooter, he left the El Paso marshal’s office and became manager of the Estado Land and Cattle Company. He held this position for almost six years, then resigned to ranch for himself. On May 1, 1889, Gillett married Lou Chastain in San Marcos. They had seven children.

Gillett ranched south of Alpine on the O6 and Altuda ranches. In May 1904 he sold the Altuda, acquired an alfalfa farm near Roswell, New Mexico, and moved his family there. A year later he sold the O6 Ranch. After farming for three years Gillett decided he was not suited for it. He sold the farm in April 1907 and moved his family back to Texas. He bought the Barrell Springs Ranch, made improvements, and began building a herd of registered Hereford cattle, which became well known for quality and brought premium prices. He wrote Six Years with The Texas Rangers (1921); it was republished in 1926 by Yale Press and in 1976 by the University of Nebraska Press. In 1928 it was condensed under the title The Texas Rangers and was used as a textbook in the public schools of seventeen states. Gillett retired at age sixty-seven, leased the ranch, sold his cattle to his son Milton, and moved to Marfa. He was a member of the Alpine Masonic lodge, a thirty-second-degree Scottish Rite Mason, director of the Marfa National Bank, and for many years the president of the Bloys Camp Meeting. He helped organize the West Texas Historical Association, was instrumental in organizing the Highland Hereford Breeders Association, and was a member of the First Christian Church. He died at Temple of heart failure on June 11, 1937, and was buried in the Marfa Cemetery. There is a Texas historical marker at his gravesite.

Ira Aten (September 3, 1862 – August 5, 1953) was a Texas Ranger who was inducted into the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame.

Born in 1862, Aten was among the final generation of Americans who had a chance to come of age on a wilderness frontier. Aten was introduced to the frontier at the age of 13, when his family moved to a farm near the isolated central Texas town of Round Rock. Not long after, he learned about the hard justice of the frontier when his father, a minister, provided the last rites for a mortally wounded outlaw Sam Bass. Aten was determined to survive in a violent world—he honed his skills with a pistol and became a crack shot with a rifle.

At age 20, Aten joined the Texas Rangers, a band of law enforcement officers created during the Texas Revolution of 1835. He had the hazardous job of patrolling the Rio Grande River, where many bands of cattle thieves and other outlaws crossed to hide in Mexico. In May 1884, Aten and six other Rangers spotted two presumed cattle thieves near the Rio Grande. When the Rangers tried to apprehend the men, a gun battle broke out. Several of the Rangers were wounded, one fatally, but Aten was able to injure the two outlaws and take them prisoner. Ira Aten was one of the most famous Texas Rangers that served in Company “D” based at that time in Uvalde, Texas.

Ira was well known for his ideas to prevent fence cutting which plagued the Texas Ranches. Aten was involved in the Fence Cutting War of the mid-1880’s, during the period in which many ranchers were fencing off their property, doing away with open range. In July 1887, Aten was accompanied by future Ranger Hall of Fame member John Hughes in the pursuit of murderer Judd Roberts, with Hughes and Aten killing Roberts in a gunfight. It was Aten who convinced Hughes to join the Rangers. In 1888, late in the Fence Cutting War, Aten placed hidden dynamite charges on certain fence lines, so that when the wire was cut the dynamite would explode. The Adjutant General did not approve and ordered them removed. Although extreme, this greatly reduced the number of fences cut, even after the charges were removed. Aten was also involved in the later Jaybird-Woodpecker War. Promoted to corporal. Aten was reassigned to west central Texas, a region that was no more peaceful.

In 1889, Aten left the Rangers to become sheriff of Fort Ben County, Texas. During six years as a sheriff, he continued to track down outlaws and fight more than a few gun battles. Aten always came out ahead, but eventually he began to yearn for a safer and more peaceful life. In 1895, he left law enforcement to become the superintendent of the Escarbada Division of the giant XIT Ranch. Nine years later, he finally left the wilds of Texas and settled in California with his wife and five children. He lived the remainder of his long life in relative peace and quiet. Before his death former Ranger John Hughes would travel to California to visit with Ira and his family…they were the best of friends and spent several years together as Rangers patrolling the plains of Texas on horseback. He died in 1953, one of the last survivors of a vanished era. Before his death former Ranger John Hughes would travel to California to visit with Ira and his family…they were the best of friends and spent several years together as Rangers patrolling the plains of Texas on horseback. A book We highly recommend was published entitled “Lone Star Man” which is about the live of Texas Ranger Ira Aten.

Captain Frank Jones Company D.

Cause of Death: Gunfire
Date of Incident: Friday, June 30, 1893
Age: 37

T*exas Ranger Captain Jones, Corporal Kirchner, Privates Tucker, Aten and Saunders, and El Paso County Deputy Sheriff Bryant obtained a warrant for the arrest of Jesus-Maria Olguin and his son, Severio, for cattle rustling. The Olguin clan were known outlaws and lived in a no man’s land on Pirate Island which was situated in the middle of the Rio Grande River between Texas and Mexico across from El Paso County. While Mexico claimed jurisdiction over the disputed island, parts of the island were in Texas. The Texas Rangers would later claim they did not realize they were in Mexico until after the gun battle.

The lawmen saw two Mexican riders flee, dismount, and enter some adobe building in the Town of Tres Jacales, Mexico. As Captain Jones and his men approached, gun fire erupted from inside the buildings and from surrounding brush. Jones was wounded in the thigh and fell from his horse. He straightened his leg out and continued firing. Private Tucker came to his assistance, but Jones told the other men to save themselves. Seconds later he was riddled with bullets and died. The vastly outnumbered lawmen returned to Texas to summon assistance. El Paso County Sheriff Simmons went to Juarez, Mexico, to request the return of Captain Jones’ body. Mexican authorities filed a diplomatic protest, but returned his body days later. The Olguins were reportedly wounded, and arrested by Mexican authorities, but they were never prosecuted.

Captain Jones had sent a letter to Ranger officials 6 weeks earlier requesting additional men due to the large number of bandits in the area. He was buried on his father-in-law’s ranch. In 1936, he was reburied in Ysleta, El Paso County, and a state marker was erected. He was 37 years old. He was survived by his wife and two daughters.

Texas Ranger Alonzo Oden Co, “D”

Lon Oden married for the first time in 1889, but the marriage ended shortly thereafter in divorce, and on March 1, 1891, he joined the Texas Rangers. For a time he worked the region surrounding San Antonio, Texas, but then was sent west to serve with Ranger John R. Hughes. Oden and Hughes were dispatched to Shafter, Texas, due to the Carrasco brothers gang, led by Antonio Carrasco, committing armed robberies in order to steal silver being shipped from the silver mines. Assisted by Ranger and undercover agent Ernest St. Leon, the Rangers set up surveillance on a mine where the thieves were expected to strike, based on inside information gained by St. Leon. When the outlaws opened fire after ignoring the command to surrender, the Rangers killed all three men.

Oden then was sent to El Paso, Texas, where he worked for some time, and where he became acquainted with, and friends with Ranger Bass Outlaw. In 1893, when Ranger Captain Frank Jones was ambushed and killed, John Hughes took over as Ranger Captain for that area. Because Jones and his small band of Rangers were mistakenly inside Mexico when the ambush had taken place, there was to be no prosecution of those responsible. However, still working undercover, Ernest St. Leon supplied a list of names of those known to have taken part in the killing to Captain Jones. Accompanied by a company of Rangers, including Oden and led by Hughes, the Rangers tracked down and killed all 18 men on the list, either by shooting them or by hanging them.

Oden had by this time settled in Ysleta, Texas. During this time he took part in several Ranger raids, and over time he and his fellow Rangers working that area drastically reduced the number of robberies and cattle rustling in that region. On April 5, 1894, Bass Outlaw was shot and killed by John Selman in El Paso. Outlaw was not innocent in his own death, a fact which made it all the more difficult to accept for Oden. Outlaw, intoxicated and furious at what he deemed mistreatment by a local judge, had shot and killed Ranger Joe McKidrict inside a brothel. When confronted by Selman, a constable at the time, Outlaw and Selman became involved in a gunfight, leaving Selman wounded, and Outlaw dead. Two years later, on April 5, 1896, lawman and friend to Outlaw, George Scarborough, would shoot and kill Selman in a gunfight over Selman having killed Outlaw.

Lon Oden continued working as a Ranger, and by this time he had developed a considerable reputation due to the numerous and mostly unknown outlaws and cattle rustlers he had either killed in shootouts, arrested, or hanged. He had become involved with widow Annie Laura Hay around 1894. On January 17, 1997, the couple married, and he left the Rangers shortly thereafter to become a rancher and businessman. He started a successful ranch in Marfa, Texas. He died there of an unknown lung ailment on August 11, 1910. In 1936, his daughter Annie Laura Oden Jenson published his diary of his exploits as a Ranger.

Texas Ranger “Lone wolf” Manuel T.Gonzaullas.

Manuel Trazazas “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas (July 4, 1891 – February 13, 1977) was a Texas Rangers captain and a staff member of the Texas government.

Gonzaullas was born in Cádiz, Spain. His parents were naturalized American citizens, visiting Spain by the time of his birth. In 1911 Gonzaullas was appointed a major in the Mexican Army, and in 1915 he became a special agent in the United States Treasury Department. In 1920 he enlisted in the Texas Rangers. For the next thirteen years, he served in the force and was actively involved in fighting the illegal activities that were common at the time, including gambling, liquor smuggling and production, prostitution, etc.

When in January 1933, Miriam Amanda “Ma” Ferguson took office after being elected governor, she proceeded to discharge all serving Rangers, including Gonzaullas. In 1935, the Texas Legislature reformed the public security system and created the Texas Department of Public Safety, consisting of three divisions: the Texas Highway Patrol, the Texas Rangers and the Bureau of Intelligence. Gonzaullas was appointed superintendent of the Bureau, and he played a major role in turning it into one of the best crime laboratories in the United States.

In 1940, Gonzaullas left his position at the Bureau upon his appointment as captain of Company B of the Texas Rangers, thus becoming the first American of Spanish descent to achieve the rank of captain in the force. His work was commended by his superiors and was instrumental in re-establishing the status of the agency after the instability it had gone through in the previous decades. One of his most notable assignments was to Texarkana in 1946, in order to investigate the murders committed by The Phantom Killer, a serial killer.

After his retirement in 1951, Gonzaullas moved to Hollywood and became a technical consultant for radio, television, and motion pictures, in particular the long-running 1950s radio show Tales of the Texas Rangers. He died in Dallas.

Texas Ranger Captain Bill McDonald

William Jesse McDonald was born in Kemper County, Mississippi, September 28, 1852. After the Civil War, Bill, his mother and other relatives moved to Texas, settling on a farm near Henderson in Rusk County. Graduating from Soule’s Commercial College in New Orleans in 1872, he taught penmanship in Henderson until starting a small store at Brown’s Bluff. He later established a grocery at Mineola.

While attempting to succeed as a businessman, McDonald supplemented his living by working as a peace officer. In the 1880s he served as a deputy sheriff in Wood County. After moving to Hardeman County, he served as deputy sheriff, special Ranger, and U. S. Deputy Marshal of the Northern District of Texas and the Southern District of Kansas.

In 1891 McDonald was selected to replace S. A. McMurry as Captain of Company B, Frontier Battalion. He served as a Ranger captain until 1907. Capt. McDonald and his company took part in a number of celebrated cases including the Fitzsimmons-Maher prize fight, the Wichita Falls bank robbery, the Reese-Townsend feud, and the Brownsville Raid of 1906. His handling of the troops of the 25th U.S. Infantry during this last incident made him known as “a man who would charge hell with a bucket of water.” He had a reputation as a gunman that rested upon his his marksmanship, and his ability to use his weapons to intimidate his opponents. McDonald is known as one of the “Four Great Captains.” The others being John H. Rogers, John R. Hughes and John A. Brooks.

In 1905, McDonald served as bodyguard to President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1907, Governor Campbell made him a state revenue agent. He again fulfilled the role of bodyguard in 1912 for a visit by Woodrow Wilson. Later Wilson appointed him U. S. Marshal for the Northern District of Texas.

Bill McDonald died of pneumonia on January 15, 1918 at Wichita Falls. He is buried at Quanah. On his tombstone is carved the following motto: “No man in the wrong can stand up against a fellow that’s in the right and keeps on a-comin’.”

Texas Ranger Captain John R. Hughes

In May 1886 he set out to find a band of men who had stolen horses from his and neighboring ranches, and after trailing them for several months he killed some of the thieves and captured the rest in New Mexico; he returned the horses to his neighbors. This exploit gained the attention of the Texas Rangers. Hughes was persuaded to enlist in the rangers by Ira Aten at Georgetown, sworn in on August 10, 1887, and assigned to Company D, Frontier Battalion, at Uvalde and Camp Wood. He served mainly along the border between Texas and Mexico, and when the Frontier Battalion was abolished in 1900 he was made a captain in command of Company D in the new Ranger Force. He was later appointed Senior Captain, with headquarters in Austin, and on January 31, 1915, having served as a captain and ranger longer than any other man, he retired from the force. Zane Grey’s novel The Lone Star Ranger (1914) is dedicated to Hughes and his Texas Rangers.

Hughes never married. He spent his later years prospecting and traveling by automobile. He became chairman of the board of directors and largest single stockholder of the Citizens Industrial Bank of Austin but maintained his residence in El Paso. In 1940 he was selected the first recipient of the Certificate of Valor, an award inaugurated to call attention to the bravery of peace officers of the nation. Hughes moved to Austin to live with a niece, and on June 3, 1947, at the age of ninety-two, he took his own life. He was buried in the State Cemetery.

Homer Garrison Texas Ranger and Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety

Texas Ranger Homer Garrison, Jr., Texas Ranger chief and director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, son of Homer and Mattie (Milam) Garrison, was born in Kickapoo, Anderson County, Texas, on July 21, 1901, the eldest of nine children. After graduation from Lufkin High School he went to work in the office of his father, who was district clerk in Angelina County. Garrison received his first experience as a law officer at nineteen, when was appointed a deputy sheriff of Angelina County. In 1929 he became a state license and weight inspector for the Texas Highway Department, and he joined the Texas Highway Patrol when it was organized in 1930.

When the Department of Public Safety was founded in August 1935 Garrison became the first assistant director. Among his initial duties was the task of developing a training program for DPS officers. At the request of the governor of New Mexico, he was sent to that state to help organize the New Mexico State Police. During World War II he was offered an appointment by Gen. Douglas MacArthur to reorganize and supervise the Japanese national police system for the War Department, but he declined in deference to his duties as director of the DPS and chief of the Texas Rangers.

Among the many honors bestowed upon him during the nearly thirty years he served as the head of the state law-enforcement agency was the presentation of the sixth Paul Gray Hoffman Award, conferred annually by the Automotive Safety Foundation for distinguished service in highway safety. In 1963 Governor John Connallyqv appointed Garrison director of civil defense and disaster relief for the state of Texas and chairman of the State Defense Council. The same year the governor also named him director of the Governor’s Highway Safety Commission. In May 1966 he was elected chairman of the resolutions committee and a member of the steering committee of the Southern Region Highway Policy Committee of the Council of State Governments; in January 1967 he was named a member of the National Motor Vehicle Safety Advisory Council.

Colonel Garrison became director of the Department of Public Safety and chief of the Texas Rangers in 1938. Under his leadership numerous major programs were developed, and the organization grew to a total of some 3,400 employees. The programs included crime control, police traffic supervision, driver licensing, vehicle inspection, safety responsibility, accident records, safety education, defense and disaster service, and police training.

Garrison married Mary Nell Kilgo on June 1, 1939, and they had one son. Garrison died on May 7, 1968, and was buried in the State Cemetery, Austin. A Texas Ranger museum at Fort Fisher was named for him.

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Texas Ranger Bass Outlaw “Little Wolf” of Company “D” Born in Georgia 1855 or 1859 died in El Paso, Texas 5 April 1894.

Click on Outlaw photo for additional information about his burial site in El Paso.

Click on the cross for actual newspaper article of Outlaws death 1894.

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