Gunfights & Sites in Texas Ranger History

by Mike Cox

  Born in Kentucky, Caldwell came to Texas in 1831 by way of Missouri as part of Green DeWitt’s colony. He rode from Gonzales to Bastrop (then called Mina) to gather armed volunteers to keep the Mexican military from reclaiming a small cannon kept at Gonzales for Indian defense, a confrontation in October 1835 that saw the first shots of the Texas Revolution. On March 2, 1836, he was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. After the revolution, he served as captain of an active ranger company that operated out of Gonzales and in 1839 a company based in Seguin, a town he helped found.

  As a ranger, Caldwell made the difference in the 1840 Battle of Plum Creek. Commanding two hundred men, he also contributed to the Texas victory in the Battle of Salado in Bexar County during Mexico’s 1842 attempt to reestablish control of its lost state.

  He died later that year of complications from wounds received in that fight and his earlier imprisonment following the ill-fated Santa Fe Expedition. A 1930 historical marker stands near his grave, and two other markers on the Caldwell County courthouse square in Lockhart honor his memory.

  Old Paint Caldwell was equal to a thousand men. As soon as the bullets began to whistle, he seemed to grow taller and look grander.

  –Fellow Ranger Robert Hall, Life of Robert Hall

  Visit: Gonzales City Cemetery, North College at Clay Street.

  OLD JAIL MUSEUM

  Built in 1887, the old Gonzales County Jail held many ranger prisoners over the years before a new lockup replaced it in 1975. In addition to cells, the three-story brick jail housed the sheriff’s department, a residence for the sheriff and his family or jailer. The hoosegow also had a built-in gallows, where three men dropped through the trap on their way to eternity from 1891 to 1921 before the state took responsibility for capital punishment beginning in 1923.

  Sheriff Richard Glover, his wife and six children lived in the jail on June 14, 1901, when the sheriff led a posse in search of Gregorio Cortez, who two days before had shot and killed the sheriff of Karnes County. In the shootout that broke out when they found Cortez, Glover died. The incident happened on the ranch of Henry J. Schnabel, who also was killed, probably by a stray bullet from one of the posse members.

  Cortez was held in the Gonzales jail during his trial for Sheriff Glover’s murder in 1904. Convicted and sentenced to life in prison, he was transferred from Gonzales to Huntsville on New Year’s Day 1905. He was later pardoned.

  Visit: 414 St. Lawrence Street. The jail is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

  HIDALGO COUNTY

  Edinburg

  MILLIONAIRE RANGER

  Investigating the theft of several head of cattle on the El Sauz Division of the King Ranch, ranger sergeant Anderson Yancy Baker, two privates and a ranch hand rode up on a man branding a calf. Seeing the rangers, the rustler dropped his red-hot running iron—a cow thief’s prime tool—and pulled one of the two six-shooters he wore.

  Baker’s horse reacted to the pistol shot by rearing, and a bullet that otherwise would have torn into the ranger’s chest went into the horse’s left eye. As the dead animal collapsed, Baker fired his rifle and hit the gunman in his forehead. Checking the body, the ranger recognized the dead man as Ramon de la Cerda of Brownsville. He came from a large family and had a lot of friends.

  What normally would have been an open and shut case of a cattle thief caught in the act and killed while resisting arrest, the May 16, 1902 shooting set off what one ranger later described as “a virtual state of war between the Rangers and the border bravos.”

  On September 9, someone ambushed and killed Ranger Emmett Roebuck as he returned to camp from Brownsville. Soon, rangers had Alfredo de la Cerda, the late Ramon’s younger brother, and four other suspects jailed for the ranger’s murder. Anticipating public outrage at the killing of the ranger, Captain J.A. Brooks took special measures to prevent the fifteen-year-old from being lynched. The prisoner went unmolested, at least until he made bail.

  Not quite a month later, Sergeant Baker ran into young Alfredo outside a grocery store. The ranger later said he thought Alfredo had been reaching for a weapon and he had to defend himself. Others said Baker simply executed him. The sergeant was tried for murder in both deaths and acquitted.

  Baker stayed in the Rangers another couple years and then joined the U.S. Customs Service. Leaving federal employment in 1908, he entered politics, gaining election as treasurer of Hidalgo County. In 1912, Baker successfully ran for sheriff, an office he held for the rest of his life.

  Meanwhile, as one newspaper reported, “He began to build an agriculture and real estate fortune from lands he acquired inexpensively.” People called him the “millionaire ranger.” The political power Baker wielded is reflected in statistics connected to his funeral: six thousand mourners showed up, and it took seven trucks to deliver all the flowers sent to his family.

  Visit: Baker is buried at Hillcrest Memorial Park, 1701 East Richardson Road, in Edinburg. As sheriff, Baker first managed a two-story jail built in 1909 and opened the following year. The lockup, which had a built-in gallows, remained in use until 1922. The old jail still stands, since 1970 a part of the Museum of South Texas History at 200 North Closner Boulevard, Edinburg.

  JIM WELLS COUNTY

  Alice

  BATTLE WITH COMANCHES

  In the 1850s, Mexican War veteran John S. “Rip” Ford emerged as the state’s new Jack Hays, who by this time had permanently moved to California. Ford recruited a ranger company in Austin in the summer of 1849 and established a camp forty miles east of Laredo.

  Rangers and Comanches fought each other hard for more than half a century. Library of Congress.

  The following May, scouting toward newly established Fort Merrill in present Live Oak County to pick up newer weapons for his men, Ford and forty rangers had two fights with Comanches, the first on May 12 and the second, and bloodiest, on May 29 in present Jim Wells County. In that running battle, rangers killed four warriors, wounded seven and took one prisoner. Ranger William Gillespie, cousin of Captain R.A. Gillespie took an arrow in one of his lungs and later died. During the fight, Ford shot and wounded Chief Otto Cuero, with Ranger David Steele finishing the headman off with a 125-yard rifle shot. The ranger collected the chief’s weapons, headdress and other regalia and sent them to Governor Peter H. Bell, a former ranger. A historical marker was placed near the site in 1969.

  “Damn them, they’ve shot my horse.”

  “Oh, is that all?”

  “No, they’ve shot me too.”

  –Exchange between the wounded Sergeant David M. Level and

  Captain Ford, as recorded in Ford’s memoir, Rip Ford’s Texas

  Visit: Marker is 14.4 miles north of Alice on U.S. 281. South Texas Museum, 66 South Wright Street, Alice.

  KARNES COUNTY

  Karnes City

  OLD HELENA AND THE CART WAR

  When armed Anglos in 1857 began waylaying Mexican carteros along the road from San Antonio to the port of Indianola, a branch of the famous Chihuahua Trail, Governor E.M. Pease called for a ranger company to end the violence. Born of racial prejudice and market competition, the series of robberies and killings came to be called the Cart War.

  Founded in 1852 by Thomas Ruckman and named for his wife, Helen, Helena figured prominently in the short-lived “war.” The community died in 1886 when another form of transportation, the railroad, bypassed the town. In 1894, the county seat was moved to Karnes City, and Helena became a ghost town. Two historical markers erected in 1967 tell the story.

  Visit: Six miles north of Karnes City at the junction of State Highway 80 and Farm to Market 81 at the old courthouse. Built in 1873 and used until the county seat moved, the old Karnes County courthouse houses the Karnes County Museum.

  WILLIAM T. “BRACK” MORRIS (1860–1901)

  On June 12, 1901, Sheriff William T. “Brack” Morris, who had served in 1882 as a ranger in Company D, rode out of town to question Romaldo Cortez about a stolen horse. Faulty
English-Spanish translation devolved into a gunfight. Morris shot and wounded Romaldo, and his brother Gregorio shot and killed Morris. The shooting marked the beginning of an epic pursuit by possemen and rangers that ended in Cortez’s capture while making him an enduring South Texas folk figure. To prevent his being lynched, rangers under Captain J.H. Rogers took Cortez to the Bexar County Jail in San Antonio.

  Visit: The former ranger is buried in the city cemetery at Runge, sixteen miles from Karnes City. Built in 1894, the jail where Morris lived continued in use until 1957 but was then razed.

  KLEBERG COUNTY

  Kingsville

  KING RANCH

  Ranger history is entwined with the history of the storied King Ranch like the strands of a finely woven rawhide quirt. Little known is that Richard King—the man who gave the ranch its name—had a partner when he first began acquiring land along Santa Gertrudis Creek.

  Headquarters of the King Ranch, where rangers were always welcome. Author’s collection.

  King’s partner was Gideon K. “Legs” Lewis, a ranger. Unfortunately for Lewis, he had an eye for the ladies, and it cost him what would become a ranching empire. When a Corpus Christi doctor discovered the ranger’s ongoing affair with his wife, the physician prescribed a couple of loads of buckshot for Lewis. And the good doctor did nothing to treat his “patient” when he went down.

  The bachelor ranger having no heirs, his share of what would become the largest ranch in the world sold at auction on the courthouse steps in Corpus Christi. King’s bid came in highest.

  By the 1870s, King had even more land. When Captain Leander McNelly and his rangers arrived in 1875, King so appreciated the presence of state lawmen that he presented them better horses and rifles. Always welcome guests on the ranch, the rangers greatly lessened King’s loss of livestock.

  BATTLE AT NORIAS STATION

  Forty years had passed since George Durham, the old McNelly ranger who then managed the El Sauz Division of the giant King Ranch, had battled Mexican outlaws in South Texas. But in the summer of 1915, word reached ranch general manager Caesar Kleberg that a large party of well-armed Mexican Seditonistas planned an attack on the ranch’s sub-headquarters at Norias Station.

  Kleberg wired for help, and a force of U.S. soldiers and customs inspectors, plus rangers and local officers, hurried by train to the ranch. Led by ranger captain Henry Lee Ransom, on August 8, the rangers began scouring the brush for the raiders, while a handful of men remained at Norias, a stop on the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad.

  Riding under a blood-red flag, the raiders somehow slipped past the rangers and charged Norias about sundown. Though substantially outnumbered, the officers, soldiers and ranch hands repulsed the first attack, but both sides continued to pot shoot at each other from behind cover. Finally, the Mexicans made a second charge. But when one of the defenders shot the leader of the raiders out of his saddle, the attack lost its momentum and the attackers disappeared into the thick mesquite.

  About an hour after the last shot had been fired, the rangers returned to Norias to find they had missed out on the action. Five to ten of the bandits lay dead, with the wife of one ranch employee also dead. Rangers skirmished with some of the raiders four days later, killing one, but the main body escaped.

  Visit: Norias is in Kenedy County, thirty-two miles south of Sarita on U.S. 77 and twenty-two miles north of Raymondville. The King Ranch headquarters and visitors’ center is six miles from Kingsville at 2205 State Highway 141 West. For years, access to the ranch was by invitation only, but its now-corporate ownership has opened the ranch to paying visitors through general and specialized tours. King Ranch Museum, 405 North Sixth Street, Kingsville.

  MATAGORDA COUNTY

  Matagorda

  A KNIFE IN THE NECK

  Brothers Abner and Robert H. Kuykendall came to Texas with Stephen F. Austin in 1821. Arguably, Abner (circa 1777–1834) deserves recognition as Texas’s first ranger captain. As captain in charge of the Austin colony’s militia, Kuykendall fought Indians and served as a lawman. At San Felipe in June 1834, one Joseph Clayton got on a bad drunk, and Kuykendall went to either settle him down or arrest him. But Clayton did not like that idea and stabbed Kuykendall in the neck. The blade broke off in the wound, and Kuykendall died the following month.

  In murdering the captain, Clayton gained his own historical footnote. Tried for the killing and quickly convicted, he had the dubious honor of being the first Anglo legally hanged in Texas.

  Visit: Captain Kuykendall was buried in Matagorda, but his grave has been lost. His younger brother Robert Hardin Kuykendall, also for all practical purposes a ranger, had died in 1831 of complications from a wound he suffered fighting Indians. His grave at Matagorda also has been lost, though a simple marker in the old Matagorda Cemetery gives his name and years of birth and death. Matagorda County Museum, 2100 Avenue F, Bay City.

  MAVERICK COUNTY

  Eagle Pass

  OLD MAVERICK COUNTY COURTHOUSE

  A frontier Ranger equivalent of a CSI-style whodunit began with a body bobbing in the Rio Grande and ended with a hanging in the old Maverick County courthouse.

  Within a few days in February 1889, the bodies of three women and one man were pulled from the river above Eagle Pass. After killing them, someone had tied heavy rocks to their bodies and thrown them in the river. What the slayer had not counted on was that the decomposition process would cause the corpses to float to the surface. Soon, Rangers took on the case, and their detective work solved the quadruple homicide.

  Pioneer forensic work on the part of Ranger Sergeant Ira Aten and Private John R. Hughes, including the nation’s first known use of dental records to confirm the identity of a dead person, led to the eventual indictment of Richard H. “Dick” Duncan. When the case went to trial in December 1889, evidence showed that the San Saba man had killed four members of a Central Texas family on their way to Mexico after he bought their San Saba County farm. A jury found the defendant guilty, and after the case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, the conviction was upheld. Duncan was hanged in the county jail, then part of the courthouse, on September 18, 1891.

  Built in 1884–85, the two-story brick and stone courthouse where the trial and execution occurred continued in use until 1979, when Maverick County officials moved to a new facility. After standing vacant for years, the old courthouse, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was restored in 2005. It’s now home to the local public library. A historical marker mentioning the case was dedicated in 1971.

  Visit: Jefferson and Quarry Streets in downtown Eagle Pass. Fort Duncan Museum, 310 Bliss Drive.

  NUECES COUNTY

  Corpus Christi

  NUECESTOWN RAID: A TURNING POINT

  On May 26, 1875, Mexican bandits attacked a farm near Nuecestown, taking prisoners and stealing livestock. Then they rode to the small community and attacked and burned the store of Thomas and Mary Noakes. The bandits shot and seriously wounded a store customer, but the Noakes family escaped injury. The real significance of the raid was that it caused state officials to raise a Ranger force under Captain Leander H. McNelly and send it to South Texas. That went a long way toward reestablishing law and order south of the Nueces River as well as the Ranger mystique.

  Visit: 11800 Upriver Road.

  W.W. STERLING (1891–1960)

  “Bill” Sterling is the only ranger to have risen from private to state adjutant general. Born in Bell County, Sterling entered Texas A&M at seventeen and got two years of college in before leaving to work on ranches in South Texas. During the bandit troubles brought on by the Mexican Revolution, he served along the border as a scout for the U.S. Army and as a ranger. After World War I, during which he held a second lieutenant’s commission, he worked as a Webb County deputy sheriff in the oil boomtown of Miranda City.

  In 1927, Governor Dan Moody made Sterling a ranger captain. He worked the border and participated in the cleanup of various oil boomtowns before
Governor Ross Sterling (no relation) appointed him adjutant general. He held that post until the election of Governor Miriam Ferguson, when he resigned.

  After serving as a colonel in World War II, Sterling managed the large Driscoll Ranch in South Texas. Late in life, he wrote Trials and Trails of a Texas Ranger, a well-received memoir. He died in Corpus Christi on April 26, 1960.

  Visit: Seaside Memorial Park Cemetery, 4357 Ocean Drive. A historical marker placed in 1969 stands near the grave.

  REFUGIO COUNTY

  Bayside

  HORSE MARINES

  Rangers generally perform their duties on dry land, which makes what happened on Copano Bay in the late spring of 1836 one of the more unusual events in the force’s long history.

  On May 29, 1836, Captain Isaac Watts Burton, commanding a twenty-man ranger company, received orders to conduct a scout in present Refugio County. Four days later, Burton learned a suspicious vessel had appeared in the bay off Copano, a port founded by Spain in 1785.

  Reaching Copano late in the day, the rangers hid their horses in the brush and made a cold camp to avoid detection. The next morning, June 3, Burton saw a two-masted schooner riding at anchor in the bay. It flew no flag, an ominous sign. Using a spyglass, one of the rangers could make out its name: Watchman.

  Not satisfied that the vessel really had an American crew, Burton sent two of his men, unarmed, to signal the ship as if they needed help. When the vessel ran up the Stars and Stripes, Burton told the rangers not to respond. After a while, the captain of the schooner took down the U.S. flag and raised a Mexican flag, revealing what Burton had suspected all along. At that, the rangers frantically waved their arms, pleading for assistance. Obeying the unwritten law of all mariners, the captain and four sailors rowed ashore, thinking to assist kinsmen.