by Mike Cox
Visit: North of Junction 1.5 miles on US 377/83. On private property, the live oak still stands.
CREED TAYLOR DIDN’T MIND TAKING CHANCES
When Creed Taylor (1820–1906) built a two-story, native stone ranch house here around 1869–71—for a long time considered one of the finest structures anywhere west of San Antonio—he had settled deep in Indian country well beyond the frontier. But placing himself at risk never seemed to bother Taylor. He had fought in the Texas Revolution, first in the 1835 Battle of Gonzales and then in the Battle of Concepción, followed by the Siege of Bexar. After Texas became a republic, he joined the Rangers, fighting in the Battle of Plum Creek. In 1841, he served under Captain Jack Hays in the Battle of Salado and later in the Mexican War.
When the original house burned in 1926, twenty years after Taylor’s death, rancher Dillard Stapp rebuilt it. But thirty years later, it, too, was destroyed by fire.
Visit: Nineteen miles east of Junction on Farm to Market Road 479 to private road just west of the James River, about a half-mile off the roadway on private property. Taylor is buried in the cemetery off Farm to Market Road 479, a mile past the Noxville School. Kimble County Historical Museum, 101 North Fourth Street, Junction.
MENARD COUNTY
OLD JAIL
After Menard County’s organization in 1871, a two-story limestone structure built by Patrick H. Mires served as a combination jail, courthouse and retail establishment. A general store occupied the front part of the first floor, with the lockup in the back. Upstairs, accessible only by an outside stairway, was a courtroom. Rangers and other lawmen had to escort prisoners up the stairs to the courtroom, where a trapdoor and ladder served as the only entrance to the jail below. Prisoners reluctant to climb down sometimes descended headfirst into the one-room hoosegow.
A larger, freestanding jail constructed in 1886 served until 1931. It was razed, but the first jail, later home to Emil Toepperwein’s Harness and Saddle Shop, still stands.
Visit: 101 East San Saba Street, Menard. Private town house.
THE SHOW DIDN’T GO ON
Out looking for a stray beef to feed their company, Rangers Scott Cooley and Wiliam B. Traweek quickly lost their appetites when they ran into a party of Comanches. The two rangers exchanged shots with the Indians before galloping back to camp for help. Led by newly commissioned Lieutenant Daniel Webster Roberts, the rangers caught up with the Indians about fifteen miles south of Menard and, in a running fight, chased them into present Kimble County. The rangers killed five warriors, including their headman, and captured one.
The November 21, 1874 fight would be just another brush with Comanches in Ranger annals had it not been for the prisoner, Little Bull. The rangers took him to Austin and booked him in the Travis County Jail. Then, Cooley, on his own, arranged with the owner of an opera house to put the Indian on public display—for a fee. The show went on, but only until the ranger commander found out about it and ordered the overly entrepreneurial ranger to cancel the event. Little Bull later died of disease at the state prison.
SCABTOWN SHOOTOUT
It bore an inelegant name, but Scabtown was not an inappropriate way to refer to the collection of saloons, gambling dens and bawdyhouses across the San Saba River from Fort McKavett.
On New Year’s Eve, 1877, five rangers under Lieutenant N.O. Reynolds made camp near the post. If the rangers did anything special to celebrate the coming of a new year, they did so in camp. But the squad’s African American cook and teamster walked over to Miller’s Dance Hall in Scabtown to kick up their heels.
They found the dance hall crowded with drunk ex–Buffalo Soldiers and other African Americans, some of them not having much use for those of their race who worked for white Texas Rangers. Owner Charles Miller, with help from some of his customers, disarmed the two state men, roughed them up and tossed them out.
When the pair sheepishly returned to camp to report what had happened, Reynolds and his men went to the dance hall to retrieve the state-issued firearms. As Mrs. Ida Miller cooperatively handed one of the handguns to the rangers, one of the inebriated celebrants grabbed it and snapped off a shot at Ranger Tim McCarty. The round missed, but when the ranger shot back, as was later reported, shooting “became general on both sides.”
Ranger McCarty fell with a bullet in his chest, and soon Miller, his young daughter and two customers lay dead. The ranger died the next day. The Menard County sheriff investigated the incident, and a coroner’s jury soon ruled that the four African Americans “came to their death while resisting officers in the discharge of their duties.”
The army abandoned Fort McKavett in 1883, and Scabtown’s denizens left for greener pastures.
Visit: Fort McKavett State Historic Site, 7066 Farm to Market Road 864. Take U.S. 190 west from Menard seventeen miles and then head south on Farm to Market 864 for six miles. Ranger McCarty’s grave has been lost.
FRONTIER “PHOTO OP”
Rangers under Captain Dan Roberts maintained a camp in Menard County in 1878, and other rangers returned periodically over the years. While no trace of their tent and brush arbor camp survives, a series of six photos taken at the camp by pioneer San Angelo photographer McArthur Cullen Ragsdale gives modern viewers insight into what life in the field was like for frontier state lawmen. The photographs were first published in Mrs. Lou Robert’s 1928 book, A Woman’s Reminisces of Six Years in Camp with the Texas Rangers.
Visit: Local historians believe the rangers camped at various times at six or seven different sites in the county. One, known as Ranger Springs, is six miles west of Menard on private property. Another camp, likely the one used by Captain Roberts’s men, lay two to three miles east of town on the San Saba River. None of the sites have been marked.
MITCHELL COUNTY
Colorado City
ATTACK ON COMANCHERIA
In the deepest Ranger penetration of Comancheria during the Republic of Texas period, on October 24, 1840, John Henry Moore led 90 men, mostly from his home county of Fayette, and 17 friendly Lipan Apaches to a Comanche village on the eastern bank of the upper Colorado River in present Mitchell County. This was more than 250 miles from Austin, where the expedition began. The rangers killed an estimated 140 Indians and captured 34, mostly women and children. In the process, they recovered five hundred stolen horses and other property. Two rangers suffered wounds in the fight, but no men were killed in the one-sided engagement.
Visit: A 1936 historical marker in Ruddick Park at Houston and Sixth Streets in Colorado City notes that the fight occurred “in this vicinity.” The exact location is unknown.
GUNFIGHT AT THE NIP AND TUCK
When the Texas and Pacific Railroad progressed across the upper Colorado River, a town called Colorado City sprang up, and Company B rangers established a camp at Hackberry Springs. The nearest rail connection for much of West Texas and the largest city between Fort Worth and El Paso, within two years, Colorado City had five thousand inhabitants. Using a dugout for an office, rangers collected pistols from visitors and held their “artillery” until they left town.
One of those rangers was Dick Ware, but with the organization of Mitchell County, he quit and successfully ran for sheriff. He defeated W.P. Patterson, a rancher with an interest in Colorado City’s newspaper. Described as a man of “fine intellect, great will power and good literary talent,” Patterson’s great willpower did occasionally weaken when it came to whiskey.
On the night of May 17, 1882, rangers heard gunfire at the Nip and Tuck Saloon. Rushing to the scene, three rangers saw Patterson, noticeably drunk, and suspected him as the shooter. Asked to hand over his pistol for inspection, he resisted and fired at one of the rangers. The shot missed, but Patterson got no second chance. Ranger Jeff Milton dropped him dead with one bullet. Adrenaline surging, another ranger put a second bullet in Patterson after he fell.
Patterson had many friends, and Milton ended up having to level his Winchester at bystanders to hold back a potential lynch m
ob. The rangers surrendered themselves to Sheriff Ware, their former colleague. All later got indicted for murder, but when the case came to trial in Abilene in November 1883, a jury acquitted them. By that time, after three years’ service, Milton had left the Rangers.
Visit: The Nip and Tuck Saloon stood at First and Elm Streets. When former ranger Milton died in Arizona in 1947, in accordance with his wishes, they scattered his ashes on the Old Town movie set at Tucson.
Saddle used by Ranger Jeff Milton, whose ashes were scattered on a western movie set outside Tucson. Photo courtesy Russell Cushman.
R.C. “DICK” WARE (1851–1902)
Dick Ware, born in Georgia, joined the Rangers in 1878. That summer, he took part in the famous gunfight with outlaw Sam Bass and two of his fellow felons in Round Rock. Ware did not kill Bass, as some have written, but he did kill gangmember Seaborn Barnes.
Leaving the force to run for Mitchell County sheriff, Ware served until 1892. After that, he got appointed U.S. marshal for the western district of Texas, a job he held from 1893 to 1897.
Following his law enforcement career, Ware focused on ranching and business. Never married, he died in Fort Worth but was taken back to Colorado City for burial. A 1967 historical marker stands near his grave.
Visit: Colorado City Cemetery, Chestnut Street. Heart of West Texas Museum, 340 East Third Street.
MIDLAND COUNTY
Midland
WILLIAM B. ANGLIN (CIRCA 1850–1879)
The Comanches had been relegated to a reservation in Oklahoma, but trouble broke out again in the summer of 1879 when the federal government granted Chief Black Hawk permission to hunt buffalo in Texas.
Armed with rifles and ammunition graciously furnished by the United States, the chief and twenty-five warriors reverted to his people’s old ways and instead began hunting something more precious to them than bison—Texas horseflesh.
A troop of cavalry from Fort Concho began searching for the renegades, but it was a squad from ranger captain June Peak’s Company A that found the Indians in present Martin County. Clashing near a reed-lined playa lake that gave the Indians excellent cover, Ranger William Anglin got his horse shot out from under him. Disentangling himself, he managed one pistol shot before another rifle volley killed him. Outnumbered and having already lost one man and two horses, the rangers rode for reinforcements. When cavalry troopers and two rangers returned several days later, they found Anglin’s body, wrapped it in a saddle blanket and buried him where he had fallen. Pony tracks led away from the lake in the direction of Oklahoma.
Anglin, the young Virginian who had served his adopted state for three years, proved to be the last ranger killed by Indians in Texas. The deadly skirmish marked the final fight between the Rangers and their foe of more than half a century.
No one knows where Ranger W.B. Anglin is buried, but this marker in Midland’s Fairview Cemetery commemorates his death in a fight with Comanches. Photo by Mike Cox.
Visit: A 1967 historical marker just inside the entrance of Midland’s Fairview Cemetery, Noble and North Pecos Streets, commemorates the incident. But Anglin’s unmarked grave has never been located. The battle is believed to have occurred on the Mabee Ranch in present Martin County, just north of Midland.
Haley Memorial Library and Research Center, 1805 West Indiana Avenue. Houses voluminous library and research papers of noted Texas historian J. Evetts Haley, including transcripts or audio files of his interviews with old-time rangers and material related to ranger Jeff Milton.
NOLAN COUNTY
Sweetwater
A BULLET FOR RANGER WARREN
Coke County rancher Thomas L. Odom, tired of fence cutters wreaking havoc on his ninety-thousand-acre spread, retained a private detective from Louisiana to ferret out the “nippers,” as they were called. The bayou country operative in turn hired forty-two-year-old Ben C. Warren to infiltrate the cutters. Warren did his job well, developing information that led to numerous arrest warrants.
When Captain George W. Baylor rounded up the defendants, it displeased them to see that the man they had taken into their confidence now rode as a ranger private.
Ranger Warren, in Sweetwater to testify in the fence-cutting cases, sat talking with Odom near a wood stove in the lobby of the Central Hotel on the night of February 10, 1885, when someone fired a shot through the window. The bullet grazed Odom but hit the ranger full in the face. The state had just lost its star witness.
Nolan County deputies arrested two of the indicted fence cutters for the murder, but neither was ever convicted.
Visit: Long since razed, the frame Central Hotel was built as Sweetwater boomed following the arrival of the railroad in 1881. The old Nolan County Courthouse were the fence cutter trial was held survives only on a mural in downtown Sweetwater. Ranger Warren was buried at the Fort Chadbourne Cemetery near Odom’s ranch in present Coke County.
A mural in Sweetwater depicting the old Nolan County Courthouse, where Ranger Ben Warren would have testified if he hadn’t been permanently impeached as a state’s witness by a bullet. Photo by Mike Cox.
PECOS COUNTY
Fort Stockton
WHO SHOT THE SHERIFF?
Sheriff A.J. Royal was not popular, either among his constituents or the rangers who dealt with him. When he sought reelection in 1894, feelings ran so strong that five rangers came to town to assure honest, violence-free voting. The balloting proceeded without problems, but on November 21, 1894, two weeks after the incumbent lost the election and with three rangers still in town, someone shotgunned the lame duck sheriff as he sat at his courthouse desk. Officers never figured out who did it.
Folklore has it a group of civic leaders drew straws to determine who would kill the former sheriff. Some even speculated the Killer Angel wore a ranger’s badge.
[A.J. Royal was] a very overbearing and dangerous man when under the influence of liquor…Almost the entire County seems to be against the sheriff.
–Sergeant Carl Kirchner to Adjutant General W.H. Mabry,
August 10, 1894
Visit: The killing occurred inside the sheriff’s office in the Pecos County courthouse, 400 South Nelson Street, Fort Stockton. Built in 1883, the three-story building, extensively remodeled in later years, remains in use.
GEORGE A. “Bud” FRAZER WAS A SLOW LEARNER
One of the wilder two-man feuds (as opposed to families and political factions pitted against one another) in Texas history unfolded in Reeves and Pecos Counties in the late 1890s.
The two adversaries were former ranger George Alexander Frazer, who at sixteen had served under Captain George W. Baylor at Ysleta and Jim “Deacon” Miller, a devout Methodist who neither smoked nor drank but who apparently believed he possessed divine exemption from the sixth commandment, the one about not killing people.
A Fort Stockton native, Frazer served two terms as Reeves County sheriff from 1890 to 1894. During that time, Miller worked for him as a deputy. But rather than bonding in a mutual dedication to law and order, for a variety of reasons, they came to loathe each other. On April 12, 1894, six months after getting voted out of office, Frazer confronted Miller in Pecos. Correctly calling him out as a cow thief and murderer, Frazer shot Miller in the arm and then put a well-grouped pattern in Miller’s chest. When his enemy went down, Frazer assumed him dead and walked off. Unknown to Frazer, Deacon wore metal body armor under his shirt. The .45 slugs had bruised him badly, but he healed.
Encountering Miller a second time eight months later, Frazer shot him in the arm and leg and put a couple rounds about where his heart should have been beating its last. Apparently, no one had bothered to tell Frazer that Miller wore body armor. Frazer fled.
On September 13, 1896, Miller found Frazer in a Toyah saloon and settled the score with his favorite weapon, a double-barreled shotgun. Miller may or may not have been wearing his bulletproof vest, but his former boss had no such protection.
A jury acquitted Miller, but in consideration of his nume
rous other killings (a dozen at least), a lynch mob permanently adjudicated his case in Ada, Oklahoma, in 1909.
Visit: Frazer is buried in East Hill Cemetery, one mile south of Fort Stockton. Take U.S. 285 to Parkview and then a half mile east.
DUDLEY BARKER (1874–1952)
Dudley Barker never walked down a sidewalk, only in the middle of the street. And he always sat with his back to a wall.
Born near Round Rock, Barker joined the Rangers on July 1, 1896, and served under Captain Bill McDonald. He established his reputation as a tough lawman when rangers came to San Saba to mitigate a violent feud, but after marrying a local girl, he took up ranching—at least for a while.
Turning back to law enforcement, in 1904, Barker became sheriff of Pecos County. In 1912, in a single gunfight in Fort Stockton, he shot and killed five Mexican Americans. Other justified homicides occurred as well. After losing a bid for a twelfth term in 1926, he and his wife moved to Alpine. In his fifties, he worked as a ranger again from 1928 to 1933 and also as a state game warden. When not wearing a badge, he did everything from tending bar to selling real estate. He lived a long life and died of natural causes, likely because he never let his guard down.
Visit: As sheriff, the former ranger and his family lived in the old Pecos County Jail across from the courthouse. Barker is buried in Alpine’s Elm Grove Cemetery. Annie Riggs Museum, 301 South Main Street. Historic Fort Stockton Museum, Barracks Number 1, Old Fort Stockton.
PRESIDIO COUNTY
BRITE RANCH
Former ranger Sam Neill sat enjoying a cup of coffee about 7:30 a.m. that morning on the Lucas Brite Ranch when he happened to look outside and saw roughly forty horsemen with rifles charging toward the ranch house.