Gunfights & Sites in Texas Ranger History

by Mike Cox

  Neither side won a decisive victory in the battle, but losing roughly sixty men in fierce fighting convinced Woll that Texas would not be easily returned to the fold. Soon he withdrew to Mexico.

  Later that fall, in retaliation, a Texas force rode south to cross the Rio Grande into Mexico. The affair proved unsuccessful and an unauthorized sidebar incursion resulted in the capture of scores of men. Following an escape attempt as the prisoners were being marched from Mier to Mexico City, the Mexican military ordered the execution of all who had been recaptured. In a torturous gesture of mercy, the order was changed to execute only every tenth man. The men were forced to draw beans from a jar. In the lottery of death, those who pulled a black bean would die by firing squad. A white bean meant survival.

  Five years later, during the Mexican War, a captain who had survived the so-called Black Bean Episode got permission to go where the executed Texans had been buried and exhumed their remains. The bones were shipped to Galveston and then taken by wagon to La Grange. The remains of the Dawson Massacre victims also were dug up, and both sets of bones were placed in a common grave atop a bluff overlooking the Colorado River in 1848. Now known as Monument Hill, the site is operated as a state park.

  Visit: Present-day San Antonio, north of Rittiman Road and east of Holbrook Road. Historical marker erected in 1936 stands one block north of Rittiman Road on the east side of Holbrook Road. The tomb of the Dawson Massacre victims and those executed at Perote is at Monument Hill and Kreische Brewery State Historic Site just off U.S. 77, south of La Grange.

  MENGER HOTEL

  German immigrant William Menger opened a two-story, fifty-room hotel on February 1, 1859, adjacent to his brewery on Alamo Plaza. Considered the Alamo City’s finest hostelry throughout the nineteenth century, the Menger hosted presidents, generals, cattle kings, actors, famous writers and other notables. Among the guests were many rangers and former rangers, including Captain John S. “Rip” Ford. Near the end of his long, eventful life, Ford was staying at the hotel when artist Frederick Remington interviewed him in 1896 for an article published in Harper’s Weekly, “How the Law Got into the Chaparral.”

  In 1898, future president Theodore Roosevelt recruited some of his Rough Riders in the Menger bar. Some of those volunteer soldiers had earlier served as rangers. During the 1930s, San Antonio–based ranger Zeno Smith briefly shut down the hotel’s bar for serving mint juleps on Sundays. Much expanded and remodeled, the Menger remains in business.

  Visit: 204 Alamo Plaza. For more on the hotel and its history, see mengerhotel.com.

  Rangers were frequent guests at San Antonio’s venerable Menger Hotel, which is still in use. Author’s collection.

  BUCKHORN SALOON

  Working as a bartender and bellhop at the old Southern Hotel, at some point it occurred to seventeen-year-old Albert Friedrich that there might be more money in saloon ownership and management than pouring drinks or carrying luggage. In 1881, he opened the Buckhorn Saloon. Soon discovering that not every cowpoke who hit town had sufficient funds for a cold brew, Friedrich cleverly decided to accept cattle horns and deer antlers in lieu of cash. Before long, he had the walls of the saloon covered with wide longhorn mounts and trophy whitetail deer antlers. The Buckhorn became one of the Alamo City’s first tourist attractions.

  The horns and the saloon are still there. Additionally, since 2006, the Former Texas Rangers Association has had an agreement with the Buckhorn to maintain an eight-thousand-square-foot Ranger museum at the popular downtown destination.

  Visit: 318 East Houston Street.

  JOHN S. “RIP” FORD (1815–1897)

  His nickname, standing for “Rest in Peace,” gives the impression that John Ford had a penchant for deadly violence. But while he never shied from a fight, he was an erudite gentleman who did much more for his adopted state than engage its enemies.

  Born in Tennessee and trained as a doctor, Ford intended to come to Texas to take part in its revolution against Mexico. He reached Texas in the later part of 1836 too late to fight for independence, but as a ranger and Confederate officer, he would make up for it in future years.

  He practiced medicine in San Augustine before deciding to study law. After being admitted to the bar, even with two means of earning a living, he soon ventured into a third profession—newspaper publishing.

  During Sam Houston’s second presidency, Ford served in the Republic of Texas Congress. When annexation to the United States brought on war with Mexico in 1846, Ford served as adjutant in federalized Rangers under Jack Hays. One of his duties included writing letters to the families of those killed in the fighting, and he always included the hopefully comforting words “Rest in Peace” on his correspondence. That’s how he got his nickname.

  In 1858, Governor Hardin Runnels asked him to lead one hundred rangers on a punitive expedition against the Comanches. His command proceeded nearly five hundred miles from Austin to the unsettled vastness of what is now Oklahoma, where the rangers fought and won a major battle with the Indians.

  A year later, Ford commanded a ranger force that had several fights along the border with Juan Cortina, a Mexican most Texans considered a bandit while many of his people viewed him a hero.

  During the Civil War, Ford again led armed Texans into conflict, this time as a Rebel officer. Loath to abandon the Southern cause, he fought federal forces at Palmito Ranch in the Lower Rio Grande Valley in what turned out to be the last battle of the long, bloody war.

  After the war, he reentered politics, first as mayor of Brownsville and then as a state senator in Austin. Ford’s last public service came as superintendent of the Texas State School for the Deaf. Leaving that position in 1883, he began writing his memoir, a document that eventually consisted of 1,300 handwritten pages.

  The old doctor, lawyer, newspaperman, ranger, soldier, politician and historian spent the last fourteen years of his life in San Antonio, where he died on November 3, 1897. His memoir went unpublished until 1963 but is regarded as a significant contribution to what is known of Texas in the 1840s, ’50s and ’60s.

  Visit: Confederate Cemetery (also known as City Cemetery Number 4), East Commerce and New Braunfels Avenue.

  GEORGE WYTHE BAYLOR (1832–1916)

  George W. Baylor was not a man to be crowded.

  Near the end of the Civil War, in a hotel room in Houston, fellow Confederate officer John A. Wharton slapped Baylor and called him a liar. Rather than argue the point, Baylor pulled his revolver and shot Wharton dead. Tried and acquitted, he later said that killing Wharton had remained a “lifelong sorrow.”

  Born at Fort Gibson in present Oklahoma, Baylor came to Texas in 1845. He attended Rutersville College in Fayette County and Baylor University. He later spent some time in the California gold fields and in Parker County until the Civil War, where he distinguished himself fighting for the South.

  His six-year ranger career began in the summer of 1879 with his appointment as lieutenant of the always-busy ranger company in El Paso County. He oversaw the state’s role in the 1881 military campaign against renegade Apache Chief Victoria, earning him the distinction of being the last ranger to take part in an Indian fight.

  Promoted to captain in 1882, Baylor served until budget cuts resulted in the disbanding of his company. He stayed in El Paso several years but eventually moved to San Antonio, where he died on March 17, 1916.

  Visit: Confederate Cemetery, San Antonio.

  CHARLES LILBORN NEVILL (1855–1906)

  His teeth still gripping his favorite pipe, Ranger Charles Neville popped above the swirling water of the Rio Grande in the Big Bend’s Santa Elena Canyon.

  The captain and three of his rangers had been escorting surveyors by boat down the river when the craft hit rough water and crashed into a big rock, dumping the occupants into the cold, white water. Weighted down by a heavy coat, boots, ammunition belts and his six-shooter, Neville sank. Struggling to the surface, he climbed onto a rock, only to fall back in. This time he spit
out the pipe, figuring he was about to die. Somehow, he and the other men all survived.

  Originally from Alabama, Nevill served in the Rangers from 1874 to 1881 and is the lawman who found the wounded Sam Bass near Round Rock in 1878. In January 1882, in addition to almost drowning, Nevill had the distinction of being the first and last ranger captain to encounter hostile Indians while sitting in a rowboat. Floating downriver with the surveying party before his spill, Nevill saw armed Indians on the bank but knew they were too far apart to bother shooting at each other.

  After leaving the rangers, Neville served as Presidio County sheriff (1882–88) before moving to San Antonio. When he died in 1906, he was district clerk of Bexar County.

  Visit: San Antonio City Cemetery No. 6

  R.A. GILLESPIE (1815–1846)

  Robert Addison Gillespie and his two brothers came to Texas from Tennessee hoping, like many others who left the United States for the new Republic of Texas, to make a good living as merchants and land speculators. But neither success in business nor longevity could be taken for granted along a frontier exposed to hostile Indians and a Mexican military hoping to get its lost territory back.

  The brothers Gillespie ran a general store and land business in Matagorda, but within a couple years, they moved up the Colorado River to La Grange. There, in 1840, Gillespie volunteered to ride with John Henry Moore on an expedition against the Comanches. Having had a taste of the ranger life, in September 1840, Gillespie decided to enlist in Captain Jack Hays’s company.

  One of Gillespie’s fellow rangers was Samuel Walker. Together, under Hays, they helped to establish the Ranger legend. Gillespie rose to lieutenant under Hays, and when the Mexican War began, he organized a company and joined Hays’s now-federalized Ranger battalion. Again, he would fight side by side with his friend Walker, at least until March 25, 1846, when he suffered a mortal wound during the Battle of Monterrey.

  Boys, place me behind that ledge…and give me my revolver, I will do some execution on them yet before I die.

  –Gillespie after taking a Mexican bullet in the stomach

  Visit: Odd Fellows Cemetery, northeast corner of North Pine and Paso Hondo Streets. Walker’s request to be buried next to Gillespie was honored, but it took a decade before the remains of the two soldiers could be exhumed in Mexico and returned to San Antonio for re-interment.

  SAMUEL HAMILTON WALKER (1817–1847)

  For three good reasons, his fellow rangers called him “Lucky.” But any gambler knows that whatever the game, sooner or later, the odds turn against you.

  Born in Maryland in 1817, Walker came to Texas in 1842 by way of Florida, where he had fought in the Seminole Indian War. In Texas, he soon took part in the unsuccessful Texas military incursion into Mexico known as the Somervell and Mier Expeditions and, along with other captured soldiers, endured being marched in chains from the border to the infamous, castle-like Perote Prison near Mexico City. His first piece of good luck came in selecting a lifesaving white bean when the prison’s military commander complied with orders to execute every tenth Texan. Later escaping, in late 1843 or early 1844, Walker joined Captain Jack Hays’s ranger Company and served either under Hays or Robert A. Gillespie for most of the next three years.

  In addition to other scraps, he participated in the June 8, 1844 Walker’s Creek Battle, the first time the Rangers are known to have used Colt revolving pistols against Indians. The state-of-the-art weapons carried the day, but during the fierce fight, a Comanche warrior pinned Walker to the ground with his lance. Still, he survived the serious wound, a second big piece of luck.

  Ranger Samuel Walker, who went on to help perfect the Colt six-shooter, barely escaped a Mexican lancer’s blade at the Battle of Resaca de la Palma in 1846. Library of Congress.

  As a ranger captain, Walker and his men guided General Zachary Taylor’s army through South Texas as he marched to war with Mexico in the spring of 1846. In the first major battle, Walker had his horse shot out from under him, and as a Mexican lancer rode hard in his direction with his long-bladed pike lowered, Walker shot and killed him. That proved the third and last time his luck would hold.

  During a break in the hostilities, he returned to Maryland and accepted an invitation to meet with gun designer Samuel Colt to discuss possible improvements to his five-shooter. The battle-hardened ranger had two major suggestions: allow for larger caliber bullets with more powder behind them, and increase the size of the cylinder to accommodate six rounds instead of five. Colt made those changes and named the new weapon the Walker Colt.

  Back in Mexico not long after the fighting resumed and armed with a set of the new Colts, Walker was shot and killed on October 9, 1847, at Huamantla, Mexico, in the last major battle of the war. His dying request was to be buried next to his old friend and fellow ranger Robert A. “Ad” Gillespie.

  Visit: Odd Fellows Cemetery.

  WILLIAM GERARD TOBIN (1833–1884)

  William Gerald Tobin had a lackluster ranger career, but he had an idea that left the nation an enduring gastronomical legacy.

  Born in South Carolina in 1833, at age twenty, Tobin came with his brother to Texas, settling in San Antonio. He first rode as a ranger in 1855, a year later serving as city marshal of the Alamo City. In 1859, he led a ranger company to Brownsville following Juan Cortina’s raid.

  After Confederate service in the Civil War, Tobin turned his attention to what may have been his strongest suit: business. He opened a hotel in the 1870s, but in 1881, Tobin negotiated a contract with the federal government to sell canned chili con carne to the military. He built a processing and canning plant, but in 1884, just as his venture began to take off, he died. Soon after, the chili canning business went bust.

  Not until 1921 did someone finally get around to following up on Tobin’s idea. That was Lyman T. Davis of Corsicana, who started peddling canned chili from the back of a wagon. He named his product after Kaiser Bill, his pet wolf. Wolf Brand Chili remains on the grocery shelf today, but nowhere on the label is any credit given to former ranger William Tobin.

  Visit: City Cemetery Number 1.

  INDIAN FIGHTING TO DUDE RANCHING

  Birds now nest in the narrow rifle ports of the thick-walled stone ranch house that Republic of Texas–era ranger Peter Gallagher built in the 1850s northwest of San Antonio.

  Gallagher left Ireland for America at seventeen. Arriving in New Orleans, he apprenticed as a stonemason. In 1837, he moved to San Antonio. Practicing his new trade, he built a store for William Elliott and then hired on as a clerk. At twenty-nine, he joined the Santa Fe Expedition, an attempt by President Mirabeau B. Lamar to wrest New Mexico from Mexico. The expedition ended in failure with most of its participants, including Gallagher, sent to a Mexican prison. Gallagher served as the expedition’s diarist, and his account remains an important source for historians.

  Back in Texas in 1842, Gallagher enlisted in Jack Hays’s ranger company, spending four years riding with the legendary captain. After his rangering days, he went back to Ireland, married and brought his bride back to Texas.

  In 1850, he began acquiring ranch land north of San Antonio and built a rambling, fortified ranch house that still stands. Prospering as a merchant, real estate investor and rancher, from 1861 to 1864, he served as Bexar County’s chief justice. Extending his reach farther west, he helped develop the town of Fort Stockton in 1877. He died the following year.

  The Gallagher Ranch and its Circle G brand passed to his wife’s nieces and went through another owner before millionaire V.H. McNutt bought it in 1927. His wife, Amy, turned the place into a combination dude and cattle ranch that attracted noted guests ranging from the girls of the Ziegfield Follies to Orson Wells and cowboy writer-artist Will James. Under subsequent ownership, the ranch has continued as an upscale resort and venue for weddings, retreats and corporate training. Some of the scenes from the movie All the Pretty Horses were filmed at the ranch.

  Visit: 19179 State Highway 16 North, Bexar County. A h
istorical marker placed in 1967 stands at the old ranch house.

  SOUTH TEXAS HERITAGE CENTER AT THE WITTE MUSEUM

  This large, newly opened addition to the Alamo City’s venerable Witte focuses on the diverse cultures that shaped South Texas, from the Comanches, the nemesis of the Rangers, to the Spanish, Mexicans, Germans and others, as well as cowboys and outlaws. Also has an exhibit on the carretas, the oxdrawn carts that figured in the Cart War of 1857.

  Visit: 3801 Broadway Street.

  BROOKS COUNTY

  Falfurrias

  A COUNTY’S NAMESAKE

  Brooks County was named for Captain J.A. Brooks, one of the Ranger commanders known as the Four Great Captains.

  Born in Kentucky on November 20, 1855, Brooks moved to Texas around 1876, where he farmed for a time in Collin County. He joined the Rangers in 1883, serving in Company F. He was active in the fence-cutting trouble and suffered a serious wound in the Sabine County shootout with the Conner clan in 1887.

  Moving quickly up the ranks, Brooks gained promotion to lieutenant of Company F in March 1888 and took over as captain a year later. Pick a trouble spot in Texas from the late 1880s to the early 1900s, and Brooks likely was there. He took part in the hunt for Catarino Garza in 1892 and later helped restore law and order in Southeast Texas oil boomtowns.

  Resigning from the Rangers in 1906, Brooks moved to Falfurrias and became active in local and state politics. He served in the Thirty-first and Thirty-second Texas Legislatures. As a member of the house, in 1911, he sponsored the bill that created the county named in his honor. Leaving the legislature, he won election as the first county judge, an office he held until 1939. The old captain died on January 15, 1944, and was buried in Falfurrias.

  Visit: Falfurrias Burial Park on West Travis Street, 0.4 miles west of Business U.S. 281. The Heritage Museum, 515 North St. Marys Street, Falfurrias. The museum has an exhibit featuring Captain Brooks and other South Texas rangers.