Gunfights & Sites in Texas Ranger History

by Mike Cox

  Clark jailed another ten men for rustling in early February. Out on bail, they fled the county, which they weren’t supposed to do. Soon the sheriff had five of them back in the Mason County lockup.

  Meanwhile, on February 15, someone found a seventeen-year-old “American” shot to death. A note pinned on his coat observed, “He would not stop rustling.” Three days later, a group of concerned citizens forcibly removed the five alleged cow thieves from jail and took them to a large oak tree on the south side of town.

  Substantially outgunned, Sheriff Clark and ranger lieutenant Dan Roberts could only watch and lamely say, in effect, “Please don’t do that,” as the vigilantes strung up four of the men and shot the fifth. At least the officers cut down one of the men in time to save him.

  In March, the anti-rustling crowd even threatened to lynch rancher Tom Gamel for declining to participate in the mass hanging the month before. Clearly, the flame of law and order had flickered out in Mason County. Equally as plain, the ranking ranger in charge—Roberts—did not see the extra-legal adjudication of cattle thieves as a threat to social order.

  The killing continued.

  On May 13, suspected rustler Tim Williamson died of sudden onset lead poisoning as deputy sheriff John Worley escorted him to the county seat for a bond hearing. That summer, a man hunting stray cattle on Gamel’s ranch found death instead. Not three weeks later, the sheriff and his volunteer force killed a suspected rustler and wounded another man in a shootout at a rural general store.

  Four days after that in-the-name-of-the-law killing, on August 10, former ranger Scott Cooley killed and scalped deputy Worley. The man killed while in Worley’s custody had been a friend of Cooley’s.

  On September 28, four additional Hoo-Doo murders later, Major John B. Jones—determined to end the violence—led a large contingent of rangers into Mason County. But the following day, while the rangers vigorously scouted elsewhere, Cooley and pal John Ringo (later famously known as Johnny Ringo) shot and killed Mason County hide inspector Dan Hoerster in front of the Mason House Hotel.

  With two county officials already dead, Sheriff Clark concluded the time had come to pursue other career opportunities and vacated both his office and Texas.

  One more payback murder happened in Llano County, and that summer, Cooley died under curious circumstances in Blanco County, possibly of poisoning.

  Thirteen men had died violently, and a fourteenth had died young under highly suspicious circumstances. Only one person was convicted in any of the deaths, and he spent only a short time in prison before paroled.

  Any hope of widespread prosecution in connection with the feud went up in smoke when the Mason County courthouse burned in 1877. Metaphorically, the intentionally set fire ended the feud, though hard feelings between certain Hill Country families smoldered for years.

  Visit: Mason Square Museum, 130 Fort McKavett Street. The museum has a permanent Hoo-Doo War exhibit. The rock-lined well Worley was digging when Scott Cooley killed him is near Westmoreland Street and Avenue F, Mason. A historical plaque marks the site. Dating to 1870, the two-story Mason House at 100 Live Oak Street was Mason’s earliest hotel, serving as a stage stop on the San Antonio to El Paso route. Ranger lieutenant Roberts was staying there when mob action broke out on the nearby courthouse square. Scott Cooley and John Ringo breakfasted there before killing hide inspector Hoerster. After the hotel closed, the owner converted the building into rental units.

  Former ranger Scott Cooley killed a Mason County sheriff’s deputy while the hapless lawman was digging this well. Photo by Mike Cox.

  MASON COUNTY JAIL

  Built in 1894, the two-story stone lockup has held many a ranger’s prisoner. The first sheriff to live on the ground floor of the new jail was noted former ranger P.C. Baird, who served as Mason County’s top lawman from 1888 to 1896 and again from 1912 to 1916. As a ranger corporal in charge of a three-man detail, Baird took part in a fierce gun battle with fence cutters at the Green Lake Ranch in Edwards County. The old jail is still in use.

  Visit: 122 Westmoreland Street, just south of the courthouse.

  MCLENNAN COUNTY

  Waco

  FORT FISHER

  In 1837, rangers under Captain Thomas H. Barron made their way up the Brazos River to a longtime Waco Indian campground. Clearing a wagon road as they went, it took the company three weeks to get from the Falls of the Brazos to the recently vacated Indian village. The rangers built a few crude cabins near a spring on the river, but less than a month later, a courier arrived with orders for the company to return to the falls. Hardly a true fortification, the rangers nevertheless named the place Fort Fisher in honor of Secretary of War William S. Fisher. Rangers would return to the fort at various times for brief periods, but only its name would last.

  We built some shanties for barracks…but only remained there three weeks, when an order came…for us to return to the falls, as we were too far out to do good service.

  –Ranger George B. Erath

  FIRST STREET CEMETERY

  Waco’s first public burial ground dates to 1852—only five years after the town’s founding—when the local Masonic lodge purchased an acre south of the Brazos River near the site of old Fort Fisher.

  THOMAS HUDSON BARRON (1796–1874)

  Virginia-born Thomas Barron, whose ranger company established Fort Fisher, must have liked what he saw when he first beheld the mid-Brazos River. In 1847, a decade later, he homesteaded 340 acres there and built Waco’s first residence. Later, he served as McLennan County tax assessor-collector. He died on February 2, 1874 at his daughter’s home in what is now Bruceville-Eddy and was buried there. In 1976, the former ranger’s remains were moved to First Street Cemetery in the city he founded. A historical marker stands near his grave.

  Visit: The cemetery, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is part of Fort Fisher Park, adjacent to the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum at 100 Texas Ranger Trail, Waco.

  OAKWOOD CEMETERY

  Established in 1878, the cemetery is the final resting place of two noted former rangers, including one who went on to be governor.

  GEORGE BERNARD ERATH (1813–1891)

  A well-educated gentleman from Vienna, Erath came to the United States from Austria in 1832, settling in Texas eight months later. A surveyor, when he joined John H. Moore’s ranger company in 1835, he soon demonstrated he could be as accurate looking down the barrel of a rifle as he was sighting a transit. When the Texas Revolution began, he served in the regular military, participating in the Battle of San Jacinto. After Texas won its independence from Mexico, he enlisted in a ranger company led by Captain William H. Hill. In 1837, he was among the rangers who established Fort Fisher.

  Erath platted the towns of Caldwell, Waco and Stephenville. As a member of the Republic of Texas Congress and later the state legislature, he always argued for what he thought best for Texas. In 1858, he successfully stewarded the legislature’s authorization of a one-hundred-man ranger company commanded by John S. “Rip” Ford.

  When the Civil War broke out, Erath stood ready to fight for Texas again. In 1864, with the rank of major, he commanded a regiment in the Second Frontier District. With men enlisted from Brown and Coryell Counties, Erath’s rangers conducted regular patrols to keep hostile Indians from preying on the settlements while most of the state’s able-bodied men were away at war.

  The former ranger’s final contribution was to posterity. In 1886, he dictated his life story to his daughter. Though not widely published until 1956, his memoir stands as one of the best sources on the early-day rangers and the struggle for Texas independence. He died on May 13, 1891.

  There is no page too bright for Major Erath’s name. He is a subject for the sculptor, and a proper hero for the song. He has written his memoirs, and when the public is allowed to read his story, told in his own strong, but simple language, light will be thrown upon many a page now darkened by error. Major Erath…was a soldier, a scholar, a g
entleman and a good citizen.

  –Waco Day, May 1891

  SUL ROSS (1838–1898)

  The second of three Texas governors who served as rangers early in their lives, Ross led the ranger company that found Cynthia Ann Parker in 1860. By then, twenty-four years after her capture by Indians in the attack on Fort Parker, it was too late for the young mother of three Indian children to readjust to her former culture. But the incident helped boost Ross’s career. Ross’s success as a Civil War general helped even more, and after serving as McLennan County sheriff from 1873 to 1875, followed by four terms in the state senate, he was elected governor and held office from 1887 to 1891. After leaving Austin, he became president of what is now Texas A&M University and led the institution until his death in 1898.

  Visit: Oakwood Cemetery, 2124 South Fifth Street.

  TEXAS RANGER HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM

  The story of the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum goes back to 1964, when DPS Director Colonel Homer Garrison accepted an offer from the Waco Chamber of Commerce to construct a building that would serve both as a headquarters for ranger Company F and a museum.

  Four years later, on October 25, 1968, dignitaries gathered for the dedication of the new Ranger office and museum—Fort Fisher returned. All six ranger captains and many of their men attended, but the man who had pushed hard for the facility wasn’t there. Colonel Garrison, whose title usually also included the designation “Chief of the Texas Rangers,” had died on May 7. But he had been present on December 12, 1967, to participate in the groundbreaking for the new museum.

  The name of the complex, which sits on thirty-two acres donated by the City of Waco on the south bank of the Brazos River adjacent to downtown, was later changed from Fort Fisher to the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum.

  A statue of a flag-carrying mounted ranger in front of the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco. Photo by Mike Cox.

  Since it opened, the museum has continued to grow by all measures—physical size, the extent of its artifacts and archives and the number of visitors it sees each year.

  RANGERS IN BRONZE

  Two works of Ranger-related public art stand outside the museum. The first is a bronze by Glen Rose artist Robert Summers of noted ranger and surveyor George B. Erath, placed in 1976. The second, a larger-than-life bronze by San Antonio artist Don Day of an early-day horseback ranger bearing the Texas flag was placed in 2008 to mark the fortieth anniversary of the museum. Inside the museum is a third piece, a life-size ranger statue, Old Ranger, also by Summers.

  Visit: Exit 335B off Interstate 35 in downtown Waco on the south side of the Brazos River.

  Riesel

  MARVIN “RED” BURTON (1885–1970)

  “Red” Burton toughened up as a construction worker before joining the Waco Police Department in 1917, but facing up to a riotous mob of hooded Ku Klux Klan members is what proved to a governor that Burton had what it took to be a ranger.

  Burton left the Waco police in 1919 and hired on as a McLennan County sheriff’s deputy. His defining moment came in October 1921, when the KKK staged a parade in Lorena, south of Waco. Neither the sheriff nor Burton cared about the march—that was the secret organization’s free-speech right no matter their onerous stances—but the sheriff had insisted that its leaders identify themselves so he would know who to look for in case of trouble. In the mêlée that soon followed, a Klan member shot the sheriff (he survived), and Burton got roughed up. In the process, however, Burton shot and wounded several hooded men.

  Nine days later, in Waco, KKK members turned out en masse again, vowing to lynch Burton. Armed with his pistol, a sawed-off shotgun and guts, the deputy succeeded in almost singlehandedly backing down the mob. That incident and the officer’s efforts to break up bootlegging operations during Prohibition caught the eye of another Wacoan—Governor Pat Neff.

  The governor appointed Burton to the Rangers in 1922, and the McLennan County native served with distinction for eleven years. Burton furthered his no-nonsense reputation as an oil boomtown tamer. One of the high points in his career came when he worked to clear two African American men accused of a series of rapes and murders in McLennan County. When the real killer was convicted, Burton prevented his lynching. On the day in 1923 set for the man’s lawful execution—the last legal hanging before the state took over the function—Burton helped with crowd control.

  After leaving the Rangers in 1933, he went back to the Waco Police Department first as chief of detectives and later as police chief. He retired in 1951.

  Those men think they want to kill me but they don’t…because they realize that…some of them will be killed.

  –Red Burton, October 10, 1921

  Visit: Burton is buried in Riesel Cemetery, one mile north of Riesel on the west side of Texas 6 (North Memorial Street).

  MILLS COUNTY

  Goldthwaite

  RANGERS SAVE TWO STOLEN CHILDREN

  Early rangers often saddled up to deal with something that had already happened, but sometimes they went looking for trouble.

  On October 21, 1858, scouting in what is now Mills County, ten rangers from San Saba County under Lieutenant D.C. Cowan discovered numerous unshod pony tracks. The trail led to a settler’s cabin near a crossing of Pecan Bayou, but the rangers found no one home. Continuing on the trail, the company discovered a wrecked wagon and the arrow-studded, scalped bodies of a woman, a teenage girl and an infant. About 150 yards from those three bodies, the rangers found the scalped corpse of a man.

  Neighbors identified the victims as Moses and Lydia Jackson and two of their children. They also said that two of the Jackson’s children, Joshua and Rebecca, were missing, apparently captured by the Indians who had killed the rest of their family. After burying the Jacksons, the rangers and armed civilian volunteers began following the Indians.

  Eight days later, some 140 miles to the west near present Sweetwater, the rangers found two sets of small footprints. Dismounting to search the area, two of the rangers discovered the Jackson children hiding in the brush. They had managed to escape their captors but likely would have died of exposure, thirst or starvation if the rangers had not found them when they did. Rather than continuing their pursuit of the Indians, as Cowan reported, he decided that “humanity dictated the Children should be brought in.”

  In addition to saving two young lives, the lieutenant and his men had demonstrated the importance of rangers being in the field on regular patrols, not solely when the need arose. The incident proved to be another step in the evolution of the Rangers into a standing force. A historical marker telling the massacre story was dedicated in 1998.

  Visit: West of Goldthwaite 14.2 miles on FM 547. Mills County Historical Museum, 1119 Fisher Street, Goldthwaite. Old Mills County Jail Museum, 1003 Fisher Street. Built in 1888, the jail remained in use until 1950.

  TRAVIS COUNTY

  Austin

  RESCUE OF SARAH HIBBINS’S CHILD

  In January 1836, a company of rangers led by John J. Tumlinson made camp about ten miles below future Austin while on their way to build one of a series of blockhouse forts intended to protect the settlements from Indians.

  As the men readied their supper, a bleeding, nearly nude woman staggered into the light of their campfire. Comanches had killed her husband and brother and taken her prisoner along with her three-year-old son and baby. When the infant started crying, the Indians had killed it. She had managed to escape her captors, leaving her little boy with them.

  After hearing her story, Tumlinson and his men left immediately to find the Indians and rescue the child.

  On the morning of January 20, in present Travis County, twenty rangers caught up with the Comanches. The rangers killed two of the Indians before the rest fled, leaving their young captive behind. Two rangers suffered minor wounds.

  Not an eye was dry. She [Mrs. Hibbins] called us brothers, and every other endearing name…She hugged her child to her bosom as if fearful that she would again lo
se him. And—but tis useless to say more.

  –John J. Tumlinson Jr. (His father had been killed by Indians

  thirteen years before.)

  Visit: From what is now Guadalupe County, where the Indians had killed Mrs. Hibbins’s husband and brother, the Comanches crossed the Colorado River and likely worked their way north along Shoal Creek in present Austin. Somewhere along the creek (some say at a feature called Split Rock Waterhole) is where Mrs. Hibbins escaped. Where the rangers fought the Indians was never marked, and the exact location is unknown.

  FORT COLEMAN

  In late September 1836, a company of rangers under Robert M. Coleman constructed a log fort between Walnut Creek and the Colorado River, a post variously known as Fort Colorado, Coleman’s Fort or Fort Coleman. A blockhouse and several cabins surrounded by a sturdy stockade, the fort remained active through the fall of 1838.

  By that time, Coleman was gone from the Rangers. President Houston had ordered him dismissed and arrested for the brutal punishment meted out to a drunk ranger. A lieutenant, not Coleman, had ordered the ranger tied to a post (he had passed out and strangled), but the president held Coleman responsible.

  The fort that Coleman established vanished over time, but in 1936, the state placed a granite historical marker at the site, long since surrounded by the city of Austin.

  I have selected the most beautiful site I ever saw for the purpose. It is immediately under the foot of the mountains. The eminence is never the less commanding, and…suited to the object in view.

  –Coleman to Sterling Robertson, October 16, 1836

  Visit: East Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, west of Russet Hill Drive, on the right when driving east.