Gunfights & Sites in Texas Ranger History

by Mike Cox

  Gazette, August 23, 1873

  Visit: No historical marker commemorates this fight, and the exact location is unknown. Deer Creek, which empties into the Colorado River, extends only a few miles. State Highway 71 (the old road to Fredericksburg) crosses the creek, and the battle likely occurred in this vicinity.

  Holland Springs

  After the Mexican War, with Texas’s status as the twenty-eighth state no longer contested, the U.S. military intended to establish a string of forts across the western frontier to keep hostile Indians in check. But until federal troops returned from Mexico, only the rangers stood between Texas and its enemies.

  Ranger captain Henry Eustace McCulloch, newly returned from service in Mexico under Jack Hays, established a camp near a spring on Hamilton Creek in December 1847 about three miles south of present Burnet. The rangers built twenty log cabins, each housing six rangers. Known as McCulloch’s Station, the camp also had six cabins for men with families.

  Samuel Holland, who happened to visit the camp and decided the area would be a fine place to settle, bought the land in 1848. The rangers moved on in early 1849 when the federal troops arrived, but Holland stayed, the first settler of future Burnet County. U.S. dragoons briefly occupied the old ranger camp, but the garrison soon moved north to a more favorable location on Hamilton Creek which soon became Fort Croghan.

  Visit: Fort Croghan Museum, 703 Buchanan Drive (State Highway 29) in Burnet. A historical marker placed in 1936 tells the story of the old army post. Several restored fort buildings are located behind the museum. Another marker dating from 1968 stands near the old ranger campsite at the intersection of County Road 340 and an unpaved road, three miles south of Burnet.

  Longhorn Cavern

  Discovered in the mid-1850s, Longhorn Cavern has a cultural history as rich as its geology and prehistory.

  Supposedly, Indians used the cave’s largest chamber as a council room. During the Civil War, miners collected bat guano from the cave for use in making gunpowder. Later, Texas Rangers checking the cave are said to have found a young girl held captive by Indians. The 1878 ranger shootout with outlaw Sam Bass in Round Rock gave rise to a story that before his death Bass stashed some of his loot in the cave. None of the ranger-related stories have been substantiated, but since the temperature inside is a constant sixty-five degrees, visiting the cave has always been a fun way to beat the summer heat or winter cold. During the Depression, Civilian Conservation Corps workers removed sediment from the cave, strung electric lights and made other improvements before it opened as Longhorn Cavern State Park in 1938.

  Visit: Twelve miles southwest of Burnet on U.S. 281, take Park Road 4 to the park.

  CALDWELL COUNTY

  Lockhart

  BATTLE OF PLUM CREEK

  Some six hundred Comanches raided deep into Texas in the summer of 1840, cutting a bloody swath all the way to the coastal village of Linnville on Lavaca Bay. Killing twenty-three Texans in the August 8 raid, the Indians destroyed the town so thoroughly no one ever felt inclined to rebuild it.

  Three days later, a hastily organized force of two hundred men under General Felix Huston—regular soldiers and rangers—found the Comanches near Plum Creek in present Caldwell County, thirty miles southeast of the new capital at Austin. With their captives and plunder, the Indians rode northwest to their home range—Comancheria. Realizing they outnumbered the Texans, the Comanches arrayed themselves in a long line and prepared to attack. Content to await the charge, Huston ordered his men to dismount—an old-school military tactic.

  But ranger captain Matthew “Old Paint” Caldwell, an experienced Indian fighter, knew better. Men afoot had little chance against horsemen, especially Comanches. Then the Indians started picking off the horses of Huston’s dismounted regulars, also wounding some of the men. The skirmishing continued roughly a half-hour before a Texas rifle bullet dropped a chief from his horse.

  “Now, General, is your time to charge them!” Caldwell implored. “They are whipped!”

  Not waiting for permission, Caldwell and his rangers spurred their horses and galloped toward the Comanches “howling like wolves,” as Ranger Robert Hall remembered. Holding their fire until they closed with the Indians, the rangers shot at least fifteen warriors from their ponies, putting the others to flight. In a running battle covering fifteen miles, eighty Indians died. The Texans lost only two men.

  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.

  –Ranger Robert Hall, participant

  Visit: No firm fix on the location is known. Lockhart State Park is believed to lie within the battle area, but archaeological surveys have produced no conclusive evidence. A historical marker in Lion’s Park, 403 South Colorado Street just off U.S. 183 in Lockhart, commemorates the incident. Caldwell County Museum, 314 East Market Street.

  COLORADO COUNTY

  Columbus

  STEPHEN F. AUSTIN’S RANGERS

  In 1906, ranger captain Bill McDonald went to Colorado County to calm down one of Texas’s many blood feuds. Eight decades later, a modern Texas Ranger captain adroitly extricated himself from the middle of another kind of feud: historians arguing over where to place a historical marker outlining the origin of the Rangers.

  The war of words began in the spring of 1986 when James G. and Mary E. Hopkins of Colorado County put together the research and footed the bill for an aluminum marker to be placed on the courthouse square in Columbus.

  After the Texas Historical Commission approved the marker, folks in nearby Austin County took umbrage. The way they saw it, the new marker gave the impression that the Rangers had originated in Colorado County. They believed it rightfully should stand at San Felipe, twenty-five miles from Columbus. No matter page-one newspaper coverage of the brief controversy, Columbus kept the marker.

  Where to put this historical marker on the origin of the Rangers sparked a modern-day battle…Columbus won. Photo by Mike Cox.

  I dare say you can make a case for both towns. Don’t get the Rangers in the middle of it, because we don’t know.

  –Company A captain Dan North, in the Houston Chronicle

  Visit: Courthouse square, 400 Spring Street.

  TUMLINSON FAMILY

  A photograph of Joseph Tumlinson (1811–1874) shows a full-faced, balding man with a bushy black mustache. His light eyes appear somewhat astigmatic, but that uncorrected condition did not impact his shooting abilities.

  Tumlinson came to Texas from Tennessee with his parents and siblings to live in Stephen F. Austin’s new colony in present Colorado County. When Indians killed his father, John Jackson Tumlinson, on July 6, 1823, in present Guadalupe County, twelve-year-old Tumlinson and his elder brother John J. Tumlinson Jr. joined the rangers who tracked down and killed the warriors responsible.

  In the fall of 1835, Joseph signed on to serve with ranger captain Robert M. Coleman. He later participated in the Battle of San Jacinto and rode with several other ranger companies. His brothers John and Peter also were rangers. During Reconstruction, Joseph spent ten months in the uniformed Texas State Police. Despite his law enforcement job, Tumlinson became a leader of the William Sutton faction in the violent Sutton-Taylor feud. He died in 1874 and was buried on his ranch near Yorktown in DeWitt County.

  Fourteen other Tumlinson family members, related either by blood or marriage, served as rangers from 1859 to 1921.

  A marker commemorating the long connection of the Tumlinsons to the Texas Rangers was erected in Columbus in 1999.

  Visit: South side of courthouse. Alley Log Cabin Museum, 1224 Spring Street. Built in 1836 by Abraham Alley, one of Austin’s original colonists and an acquaintance of the Tumlinsons.

  JAMES WILLIAM GUYNN (1840–1882)

  The flat granite stone over Guynn’s grave only preserves his name and dates of birth and death, but there is more to his story. He fought for the South during the Civil War and served in the summer of 1875
as a ranger lieutenant under Captain Leander McNelly. In addition to his law enforcement duties, he wrote a letter to the Colorado Citizen, his hometown newspaper, describing McNelly’s activities. Following his state service, he had two run-ins with the law, one for stabbing someone. Years before conservation laws made it illegal to hunt whitetail during in the summer, he was accidentally shot while deer hunting with friends on June 27, 1882, and died five days later.

  We are expecting to have a fight with raiders soon, or as soon as they set foot on Texas soil.

  –Guynn to Colorado Citizen, July 25, 1875

  Visit: Odd Fellows Rest Cemetery, Columbus.

  COMAL COUNTY

  New Braunfels

  A RANGER LENDS A HAND

  Sixty-six days crowded below deck in a ship bound from Germany to the Republic of Texas had been hard enough and their trek inland from Galveston arduous, but in the spring of 1844, a group of European immigrants found themselves stranded in San Antonio—many of them sick, all hungry and desperate.

  The men, women and children awaited the man who had arranged their journey to a new life, Frenchman Henri Castro. Few spoke English; none had money for food and shelter. Though paid to protect the frontier from Indians or invading Mexicans, seeing this, Ranger Johann Jacob Rahm took it upon himself to deal with a humanitarian crisis.

  The Swiss-born ranger convinced Captain Jack Hays to arrange for food, medical care and other assistance for the immigrants until Castro arrived to escort them to their colony on the Medina River. Rahm even kicked in some money himself and found jobs for some of the immigrants.

  That kindness impressed another newly arrived European, Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels, who had recently come to Texas to oversee a German immigration enterprise. The prince presented both rangers engraved weapons (a combination rifle-shotgun for Hays and a shotgun for Rahm) in appreciation.

  Rahm had immigrated to Texas from Europe around 1834. He fought in the revolution and later joined the 1841 Santa Fe Expedition, an ill-conceived military action that landed him and most of the participants in a Mexican prison. After his release, the thirty-seven-year-old enlisted in Hays’s San Antonio–based ranger company. Serving variously from 1843 to 1844, he took part in the famous Battle of Walker Creek, the first time rangers used Colt revolvers against Comanches.

  As a ranger, Rahm first saw a series of seven prolific springs known as Los Fantanos—the fountains—on the Comal River. In 1845, when Rahm described the springs and the lush area around them to Prince Carl, the German nobleman purchased sight unseen 1,265 acres that became New Braunfels. The former ranger led the prince and several others to the area, helping cut a four-mile trail to the springs.

  Again beholden, the prince deeded four and a half acres to Rahm, who opened Rahm’s Butchery between what are now San Antonio and Coll Streets. Likely Rahm would have enjoyed a long and prosperous life had he not been overly fond of distilled spirits.

  In October 1845, drunk and argumentative, Rahm fired a couple pistol shots at one of the German settlers. Whether he intended to harm the man or merely make a point is unknown, but the man took the shooting as a threat and killed Rahm.

  Those who survive owe their recovery solely to the untiring care of a soldier in Colonel Hays’s company.

  –Prince Solm, A New Land Beckoned

  Visit: Rahm’s burial place is not known, though likely in Comal or Bexar County. Sophienburg Museum and Archives, 401 Coll Street, New Braunfels.

  FALLS COUNTY

  THE SEARCH FOR JAMES CORYELL

  In the spring of 1837, two ranger companies operated out of a post called Fort Milam, a log stockade near the Falls of the Brazos. Either on May 11 or 27 (records are unclear), Ranger James Coryell and four colleagues came across a beehive near Perry’s Creek in present Falls County. Stopping to enjoy a sweet bit of nature’s bounty, the rangers raided the hive. As they enjoyed their snack and talked, a dozen hostile Caddo slipped up.

  For some reason, only three of the rangers had taken their rifles with them, and one was unloaded. Coryell grabbed one of the loaded firearms and got a shot off at the Indians about the time three of them fired at him. As he fell gravely wounded, two of the outnumbered, out-gunned rangers fled for their lives. A third stood his ground and raised one of the other rifles, but it misfired. Meanwhile, the Indians fell on Coryell and scalped him. Seeing that, the last ranger made his escape.

  The forty-year-old Coryell, who had survived an earlier Indian fight in present McCulloch County along with future Alamo hero James Bowie, was buried in the vicinity. Over time, the location was forgotten.

  In February 2011, after reviewing an oral history concerning a onetime slave community in Falls County, Texas Historical Commission archaeologists and a team from the Smithsonian Institution exhumed remains from a solitary, rock-covered grave near Bull Hill Cemetery not far from where the Indian attack is believed to have occurred. An assortment of human bones went to a laboratory in Pennsylvania for DNA sample extraction. At the same time, a descendant of Coryell living in Missouri provided a DNA sample for comparison. Test results proved inconclusive, but circumstantial evidence indicates the remains are those of the long lost ranger.

  When [Ranger Ezra] Webb ran in [at the quarters of ranger captain Barron] with great haste and fright, and breathless…he fell…past speaking…After a little time, he was able to whisper, “Indians! Poor Coryell!”

  Visit: Bull Hill Cemetery is near the small community of Rosebud in Falls County. The committee that determines Texas State Cemetery burial eligibility has approved the reinterment of Coryell’s remains there, though in mid-2015, the ranger’s bones remained in the custody of the Texas State Historic Commission Archeology Division in Austin.

  FAYETTE COUNTY

  La Grange

  JOHN HENRY MOORE (1800–1880)

  Young John Henry Moore had no use for Latin. Rather than continue his studies of that oldest of the Romantic languages, at eighteen, Moore ran away from college in his native Tennessee and struck out for the Spanish province of Texas.

  That happened in 1818, three years before Stephen F. Austin began his colonization efforts just as Mexico wrested control of the province from the Crown. By that time, Moore had returned to Tennessee. But the young man who disliked Latin liked what he had seen on his first trip, and when Austin founded his colony in 1821, Moore came back to Texas. This time he stayed, one of what came to be called the Old Three Hundred.

  Moore did not get the publicity that propelled his younger fellow Tennessean Jack Hays to fame, but few early rangers (like many of these men, he was not always referred to as a ranger) spent as much time pursuing and fighting Indians as Moore. He did not prevail in every engagement, but he never hesitated to saddle up for Texas.

  Settling in what would become Fayette County, in 1828, Moore built a twin blockhouse. Soon known as Moore’s Fort, it was the beginning of La Grange, which was founded in 1831.

  Like most of Austin’s colonists, Moore farmed and started a family, but from 1834 to 1842, he took part in five different Indian campaigns. In addition, he led militia-like companies in actions against Mexico four times.

  SITE OF TWIN BLOCKHOUSE

  The state placed a historical marker at the site of Moore’s fortified home during the Texas Centennial in 1936. The structure, the oldest in Fayette County, was later moved to Round Top.

  Visit: The marker stands at 385 North Main in La Grange. The restored Moore’s Fort is at Village Green, a collection of historic Fayette County structures between Bauer Rummel Road and West Wantke Street in Round Top off State Highway 237, sixteen miles northeast of La Grange. Moore’s 1838 house stood until 2011, when it was burned in a drought-enhanced wildfire. A historical marker placed in 1936 still stands at the site. A granite historical marker placed near Moore’s final resting place in 1936 incorrectly has his date of death as 1877. Take U.S. Highway 77 from La Grange one mile northwest to Farm to Market Road 2145, turn right and continue five miles to the Oak M
eadow Ranch. The cemetery is in a field 200 yards north of the Moore house site.

  This fortified residence built by ranger leader John H. Moore was the first structure in La Grange. Photo courtesy Gary McKee.

  WARREN FRENCH LYONS (1825–1870)

  Comanches attacked the Fayette County homestead of New York-born James Lyons early on October 15, 1835. They killed him and kidnapped his youngest son, twelve-year-old Warren French Lyons. For the next decade, Lyons lived with the Indians and, as often happened, adapted to their culture.

  Several Fayette County men who knew the Lyons family happened to be in Fredericksburg in 1847 when they recognized Warren among a group of Indians who had come to town to trade with the German settlers. The men talked Lyons into returning to La Grange with them. The young man had a hard time readjusting, but he married in the summer of 1848 and settled into family life. Still, he only slept on his porch, never inside.

  Three years later, he volunteered to serve as a guide and Comanche interpreter for the Texas Rangers. He rode with Lieutenant Edward Burleson, son of the man who served as vice-president under Republic of Texas president Mirabeau B. Lamar. On January 27, 1851, the rangers tangled with Indians on the San Antonio–Laredo Road just south of the Nueces River. Though outnumbered, Burleson’s men killed four Comanches and wounded most of the others. In the process, the Indians killed one ranger and left another with a wound that proved fatal. Only Lyons escaped unscathed.

  Lyons and his wife later moved to Johnson County, where he died on August 11, 1870. Mrs. Lyons remained in the county and died there a year later. Neither grave has ever been located. Other members of the Lyons family, however, are buried in the Lyons family plot in the Schulenburg City Cemetery. One of the graves is that of Indian victim James Lyons, though a tombstone placed over it in 1931 incorrectly says its Warren’s grave.