Gunfights & Sites in Texas Ranger History

by Mike Cox

  There shall be a corps of rangers under the command of a major.

  –Ordinance Establishing a Provisional Government,

  “Of the Military,” Article 9

  Visit: San Felipe State Historic Site is six miles east of Sealy and forty-five miles west of Houston at 15945 Farm to Market 1458, north of Interstate10. The site is on the left, just past Park Road 38 on the Brazos River.

  BRAZORIA COUNTY

  Angleton

  STEPHEN F. AUSTIN STATUE

  Considered the Father of Texas, colonizer Stephen F. Austin stands as a giant figure in Texas history. And since 2009, a concrete and steel statue of him holding a fifty-two-foot-long rifle has stood nearly eight stories tall (seventy-six feet) to remind passing motorists and visitors of his significance to the state. Not only did he bring Anglo settlement to Texas in 1821, two years later, he proposed hiring ten rangers “for the common defense” of his fledgling colony—the traditionally accepted origin of the Texas Rangers.

  Visit: U.S. 288 just south of State Highway 35. A visitors’ center has interpretive exhibits. Brazoria County Historical Museum, 200 East Cedar Street.

  BRAZOS COUNTY

  College Station

  SUL ROSS STATUE

  Since its dediction on May 4, 1919, the bronze statue of former Texas Ranger Lawrence Sullivan Ross has stood watch in front of the copper-domed administration building overlooking the Academic Plaza on the campus of Texas A&M University. Designed by world-famous Italian sculptor Pompeo Coppini, the statue stands eight feet tall on a Texas granite base. Known by students as “Sully,” Ross rode as a ranger captain before the Civil War and served as governor before becoming president of what was then Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1891. Much revered by students and faculty, he held the post until his death in 1898. The old ranger likely saved the institution from closure due to financial problems. Ross also is credited as being the driving force behind the storied A&M spirit, one that stresses core values like leadership. For decades, students hoping for good luck on their exams have left a penny on the base of the statue.

  Visit: A&M’s visitors’ center offers guided, self-guided and virtual tours of the sprawling campus, including one of its historic sites and statuary. For more information, see http://visit.tamu.edu/visitor-center/.

  CHAMBERS COUNTY

  Anahuac

  THREE-LEGGED WILLIE

  His parents named him Robert McAlpin Williamson, but in Texas lore, he is far better known simply as Three-Legged Willie.

  He came by that handle due to a childhood disease that left his lower right leg permanently bent back at the knee. The wooden leg he wore made it look like he had an extra lower limb. While that was how he got his nickname, the thirty-one-year-old Georgian who came to Texas in 1826 to practice law (he also published several newspapers) earned his reputation as a hard-drinking fighter, jurist and lawmaker. He also played an important part in the development of the Rangers.

  In the fall of 1835, the San Felipe–based General Council, Texas’s revolution-minded quasi-government, elected Williamson as major in charge of the newly created “corps of rangers.” This formalized the Rangers as an arm of Texas government, though at that point, Texas remained a rebellious Mexican state.

  At the coastal town of Anahuac in 1832, Williamson became a strong independence advocate following a contentious dispute with the commander of the Mexican garrison there, Fort Anahuac. After the revolution, Williamson served in East Texas as a district judge (which made him a member of the republic’s supreme court) and lawmaker during the days of the republic and early statehood.

  During Williamson’s time as a judge, an annoyed petitioner approached the bench with bowie knife drawn. “This is the law in Shelby County,” the man said. The former ranger pulled a long-barreled pistol. “And this is the constitution that overrides your law,” he ruled.

  Williamson died in 1859 and was buried in Wharton. In 1930, his remains were relocated to the State Cemetery in Austin.

  Visit: A historical marker chronicling Williamson’s life stands at Fort Anahuac Park, 1704 South Main Street. A granite historical marker placed in 1936 briefly summarizes the history of the old fort and its role in the looming Texas Revolution. Wallisville Heritage Park, Exit 807 on Interstate 10, Wallisville.

  FORT BEND COUNTY

  Richmond

  ERASTUS “DEAF” SMITH (1787–1837)

  In capturing a Mexican courier with dispatches that gave Sam Houston insight into General Santa Anna’s movements, New Yorker turned Texan Deaf Smith’s efforts clearly helped the fight go Texas’s way at the Battle of San Jacinto.

  In addition to the intelligence he gathered, Smith and his fellow scouts destroyed the Vince’s Bayou Bridge to prevent the Mexican army from retreating. His actions earned him Houston’s praise and a lasting place in Texas history, but not until the early twenty-first century did historians understand that Smith should be considered a Texas Ranger, not simply a skilled military scout.

  Once Texas’s independence had been ensured, Smith resigned from the army. But in the winter of 1836, when the newly created Texas Congress called for a mounted force to protect the republic’s southwestern frontier, Smith organized a ranger company at San Antonio. One of the twenty-two men he recruited, a young surveyor originally from Tennessee, would become the most famous of the early Rangers—John Coffee Hays.

  On February 21, 1837, Smith got orders to move his company toward Laredo. Though the old border city lay on the north side of the Rio Grande, for all practical purposes, it had remained in Mexican control. Their mission: Assert Texas’s sovereignty.

  Four days later, Smith’s rangers joined cavalrymen under Lieutenant Colonel Juan Seguin to assist in providing a military funeral for the slain Alamo defenders, whose bone fragments and ashes had been collected and placed in a black coffin.

  Leaving San Antonio on the first anniversary of the fall of the Alamo, the rangers rode south for ten days before encountering a small party of Mexicans. When the riders saw the rangers, they wheeled their horses and galloped to Laredo to report the approaching Texans. The following day, March 17, the rangers and a contingent of Mexican cavalry fought a pitched battle seven miles east of town. With ten Mexican soldiers killed and an equal number wounded, the rest of the cavalrymen retreated. Only two rangers sustained wounds in the fight.

  Realizing Laredo held too many Mexican troops for his company to venture farther, Smith led his men back to San Antonio. That summer, he resigned his ranger commission and moved to Richmond. He died there at fifty on November 30.

  Visit: Smith is buried in Morton Cemetery, Richmond. A monument erected by the state in 1931 stands at the corner of Houston and Sixth Streets.

  JAYBIRD-WOODPECKER FEUD

  The bird sitting atop the high stone obelisk appears real at first glance. But a closer look reveals that the avian form is just as lifeless as the men whose names are carved on the base of what stands not so much as a monument to bravery but as one to political passion, misplaced southern pride and just plain orneriness.

  Contrary to the “one ranger, one riot” myth, rangers did not always succeed in preventing violence. But sometimes they got shot up trying. Sent to Richmond in the summer of 1889 to avert bloodshed, in the end, the state lawmen could only dodge bullets and wire for help as near anarchy broke out one hot, humid evening.

  What’s known as the Jaybird-Woodpecker feud essentially reflected the enmity between two political factions and the pre–Civil War belief that African Americans could still be excluded from participating in democracy. White Democrats called themselves Jaybirds; the Republicans, many of them African American, were known as the Woodpeckers.

  Politics had first turned bloody with the August 2, 1888 murder of Jaybird leader J.M. Shamblin. Matters worsened with the fatal shooting of Jaybird Ned Gibson by Woodpecker tax assessor Kyle Terry in nearby Wharton County on June 21, 1889. Not only had two Jaybirds been killed, the Woodpecker faction also won
the election and continuing political control of Fort Bend County.

  Adjutant General Wilbur King dispatched seven rangers under Captain Frank Jones to Richmond on June 28. As rangers had done before, Jones met with both sides to urge restraint. Satisfied he had succeeded in preventing further trouble, the captain left on July 10. But just in case, he left behind Sergeant Ira Aten and three men.

  Aten and his men began regularly patrolling the town, assuming the state’s show of force would defuse the situation. The peace held until shortly before 6:00 p.m. on August 16, when Aten heard gunshots. Quickly mounting his horse, he galloped downtown.

  Gunmen fired from the upstairs windows of the Isaac McFarlane House in Richmond during the climactic battle of the Jaybird-Woodpecker feud in 1889. Library of Congress.

  The sergeant approached the leader of each side fruitlessly exhorting them to stop shooting, but the twenty-seven-year-old sergeant knew better than to resort to force. Outgunned, Aten raced out of the line of fire along with two other rangers.

  The battle raged for twenty minutes, an eternity in gunplay. Afterward, an innocent young African American girl lay dead from a stray bullet. Also dead were Woodpeckers Jake Blakely and Sheriff J.T. Garvey. Jaybird boss and saloon owner Henry “Red Hot” Frost suffered a grave wound and later died.

  Another casualty was Ranger Frank Schmidt. An inert rifle round had unsaddled him, and a second slug traveling at full velocity tore into his leg. He never fully recovered and died of complications on June 17, 1893.

  The human toll took most of the momentum out of the feud, but the killing did not end until January 21, 1890, when Kyle Terry, facing trial for Ned Gibson’s murder, was gunned down by Ned’s brother Volney Gibson inside the Galveston County Courthouse.

  I said, “Boys, this is not our fight, save yourselves!”…I just run my horse right across the street, the only opening there was, made him jump that sidewalk, getting out of the shooting line. When I got there, I looked behind and [Schmidt]…was shot down in the street.

  –Ranger Sergeant Ira Aten

  Jaybird monument erected in Richmond in 1896 to commemorate the bloody Jaybird-Woodpecker feud that claimed one ranger’s life. Photo by Mike Cox.

  Visit: The Isaac McFarlane House, from which several Jaybirds on the second floor fired numerous shots, still stands at 410 Jackson Street. A historical marker erected in 1985 gives its history. The courthouse the Woodpeckers defended stood at Third and Morton. It was razed in 1908 and a new courthouse built several blocks away. The square remained a park until 1940, when the Richmond City Hall covered part of it. Adjacent to city hall is the Jaybird monument, dedicated on March 18, 1896. Fort Bend County Museum, 500 Houston Street, Richmond.

  GALVESTON COUNTY

  Galveston

  HARMONY HALL

  Not everything that transpired at Harmony Hall could be called harmonious. Inside the hall on February 25, 1901, African American boxer Jack Jackson faced older, more experienced (and white) Joe Choynski, who knocked him out in the third round. But prize fighting was illegal in Texas, and rangers promptly arrested both pugilists. In jail, Choynski taught Jackson a few moves. A grand jury declined to indict the two boxers, but both received not-so-cordial invitations to leave the island immediately. The young dockworker, son of former slaves, went on to become heavyweight champion of the world and the most noted African American boxer prior to Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay).

  Visit: The hall, built in 1880, was destroyed by fire in 1928 and replaced the following year with Harmony Hall Masonic Lodge, 2128 Church Street.

  LABOR TROUBLE AND VICE CRACKDOWN

  When a dockworkers’ strike that started in March 1920 threatened to seriously disrupt commerce, Governor William P. Hobby declared martial law on the Galveston waterfront and sent in one thousand National Guard troops to prevent violence.

  Realizing that the ready availability of alcohol (no matter national Prohibition law) aggravated the situation, on July 15, the governor expanded his martial law order, suspending the police chief and all his officers. At the same time, the general commanding the state troops announced that “all gambling and immoral houses must be closed, and the illegal manufacture, sale and importation of intoxicating liquor must be stopped.”

  In mid-September, after meeting with Galveston officials and civic leaders not pleased with the ongoing military control of their city, the governor agreed to end martial law and let rangers handle local law enforcement. Soon, ranger captain Joe B. Brooks became the acting police chief, and two dozen mounted rangers patrolled the streets.

  By December, with the strike broken and considerable progress made in at least temporarily shutting down all the attractions that had always made the island city popular with seamen and visiting conventioneers, the rangers returned to their regular stations. The state lawmen made more than 1,500 arrests, but as soon as they left, Galveston’s bars, brothels and gambling casinos resumed operation as the island city enjoyed its heyday as Texas’s flat Monte Carlo.

  Visit: Galveston’s four-story Italian Palazzo–style city hall, built in 1914–16 at 823 Twenty-fifth Street, remains in use. In 1920, rangers headquartered at the police department there. The jail used then has long since been razed. Galveston County Museum, Galveston County Courthouse, Galveston County Historical Museum, Shearn Moody Plaza Building, Twenty-fifth and Strand, Suite 4157.

  GREGG COUNTY

  Gladewater

  KILLING OF RANGER DAN L. MCDUFFIE

  Ranger Dan L. McDuffie happened to be at the police station on the night of July 7, 1931, when a report came in about a man staggering around downtown firing a rifle. McDuffie rode along with police chief W.A. Dial, saying he believed he could talk the man into giving up his gun. With the forty-eight-year-old ranger riding shotgun and two policemen in the back seat, the officers sped to the scene. As they drove up, the man fired a .30-30 at Dial. Missing Dial, the round shattered the windshield, hit the car’s steering column and ricocheted into the ranger’s leg, piercing his femoral artery. At that, the chief leaned from the car and emptied his .30-30 into the shooter, a former jailer he had fired for improper treatment of female prisoners and chronic drunkenness. Dial rushed the wounded ranger toward the hospital in Longview, but he exsanguinated before they got there.

  Trying to help a law enforcement colleague, Ranger Dan McDuffie was gunned down in booming Gladewater in 1931. Photo by Mike Cox.

  McDuffie would be the last ranger to die at the hands of a gunman for the next forty-seven years.

  It must be remembered with pride that Ranger Dan McDuffie lost his life because he did not want to kill his adversary, which he could have easily done without being injured himself…This is in direct refutation of the charge that enemies of the Texas Rangers…make in saying that the Rangers will kill at the slightest provocation.

  –Adjutant General W.W. “Bill” Sterling, Annual Report, 1931

  Visit: On July 7, 1967, the thirty-sixth anniversary of McDuffie’s murder, a historical marker was unveiled at his grave in Reed Hill Cemetery in New Boston. A red granite memorial honoring the slain ranger was dedicated in Gladewater in the summer of 1998 outside Gladewater’s East Texas Museum, 116 West Pacific Avenue.

  Longview

  DALTON GANG ROBS AGAIN

  While no rangers were in town when outlaw Bill Dalton and his gang hit the First National Bank on May 23, 1894, Captain Bill McDonald and some of his men later stood guard to discourage the openly discussed lynching of one of the perpetrators.

  Dalton and his associates “withdrew” $2,000 from the bank, but before they could make their getaway, lead started flying. In a twenty-minute exchange of gunfire with numerous townspeople, gang member Jim Wallace died along with two citizens. The rest of the outlaws made it out of town. The killing of two innocent men and the wounding of two others, not to mention the uninsured loss from the bank, so outraged the populace that just for good measure they strung the dead outlaw from a telephone pole. Two weeks later, in Ardmore,
Oklahoma, someone recognized a bank note Dalton tried to pass. A posse went after him, and he died in a gunfight.

  Three years passed before anyone faced prosecution for the robbery. Arrested in Kimble County for cattle theft after a shootout with county lawmen, Jim Nite stood trial in Longview in 1897 for his part in the caper. That’s when rangers had to make sure no one tried to adjudicate the case extralegally before the defendant made it to the courthouse. With the state lawmen present, no one interfered and justice ran its course, such as it was. Nite got twenty years, but Governor Oscar B. Colquitt later pardoned him. Still not rehabilitated, he later died in a gunfight in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

  Defendant says that the citizens of Gregg County are so eager to have him tried here that he cannot get any compurgators to sign an application for a change of venue with him, and he here now makes oath to the foregoing and asks this Court to change the venue of this case of its own motion.

  –From motion filed by Jim Nite, December 27, 1897. Motion denied.

  Visit: The bank stood at 200 North Fredonia Street. A historical marker on the Fredonia Street side of Citizens National Bank marks the site. The courthouse where Nite saw trial was razed in the early 1930s to make room for the current building. The jail the rangers guarded is also gone. Gregg County Museum, 214 North Fredonia Street, Longview.

  Kilgore

  THE BLACK GIANT

  The discovery of the wildly prolific East Texas oil field—called the Black Giant—temporarily suspended the Great Depression in this part of the state in 1931. Rangers converged on the derrick-studded boomtown of Kilgore to tame crime and later to enforce oil production conservation measures.

  Ranger Manuel T. “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas spent two weeks pretending to be an oil field denizen to learn who was who in the town’s underworld. Then he reappeared in his customary cowboy hat, well-starched clothes and shiny boots—and matching pistols on each hip—to lead other rangers in arresting three hundred criminals of various stripes.