by Mike Cox
MOUNT BONNELL
The view from Austin’s highest point has always been impressive, but when early resident and future ranger Bigfoot Wallace arrived in 1839, he did not come for the scenery. Stricken with a disease he called the “flux” (probably cholera), he had lost all his hair and did not want his fiancée to see him that way. He camped in a cave at the base of Mount Bonnell (a shelter later collapsed or inundated by Lake Austin) and spent his time hunting and fishing until he recovered and got his hair back. When he returned to the small capital city, he found that his ladylove had fallen for another suitor and eloped. That broke him of women, and he spent the rest of his life single.
Visit: 3800 Mount Bonnell Road. A small city park, at 780 feet above sea level, it still offers the best view in Austin. A historical marker placed in 1969 outlines the landmark’s history, including Wallace’s stay there.
ANGELINA EBERLY STATUE
Six years after Texas won its independence from Mexico, in December 1841, a group of Austin citizens had to fight to keep their town as the capital. In what became known as the Archives War, a party of rangers under orders from President Sam Houston attempted to remove the nation’s archives from the General Land Office in Austin to Washington-on-the-Brazos. The townspeople resisted, with boardinghouse owner Angelina Eberly even firing a cannon at the rangers. Austin Area Statues, Inc. commissioned Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist and artist Pat Oliphant to do a life-size bronze of Eberly (1798–1860) firing the cannon. The public artwork was dedicated in 2004.
Visit: Southwest corner of Sixth and Congress Avenue, where Eberly touched off the cannon. Serious historians point out the absence of any primary or contemporary evidence that Eberly took as proactive a role as legend holds.
HORNSBY FAMILY CEMETERY
The oldest cemetery in Travis County is the final resting place for many members of one of Texas’s pioneer families, the Hornsbys. Among the burials are fifteen former rangers. The cemetery also has monuments honoring four other rangers, who, while not buried there, were part of the Hornsby clan.
Originally from Mississippi, Reuben Hornsby Sr. and his wife, Sarah Morrison Hornsby, came to Texas in 1830 and, by July 1832, had settled in a bend of the river nine miles downstream from future Austin. While the area became known as Hornsby’s Bend, their well-fortified Hornsby cabin was called Hornsby Station.
The elder Hornsby not only served as a ranger and later as a soldier in the Texas Revolution, but he also planted the first corn ever sown in Travis County, sat on the county’s first jury, helped lay out the county’s earliest roads, assisted in the surveying of Austin in 1839 and fathered the first Anglo child born in the county.
In their lives…[the Hornsbys] did much to make Texas history and pave the way for those who followed in the more secure paths of civilization. It is meant that they should lie here in perpetuity, the little forest of their headstone serving as a lasting memorial, not only to their own bones, but to the vivid scenes and stirring times in which they took so large a part.
–Dallas Morning News, 1921
Visit: From Farm to Market Road 969 east of Austin, turn on dirt road at Hornsby Family Cemetery sign. Cemetery is marked “No Trespassing,” but respectful visitors are welcome. For the names of the rangers buried in the historic cemetery, see hornsbybend.com.
Austin Memorial Park Cemetery
FRANK HAMER (1884–1955)
Thanks to one of many shootouts he took part in, particularly the one on May 14, 1934, in which the outlaw couple Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow died in a hail of bullets near Arcadia, Louisiana, Captain Hamer became one of the best known twentieth-century rangers. Hamer first joined the Rangers in 1906 and served off and on until 1931. For a man said to have been in dozens of gunfights and wounded multiple times, sunstroke is what finally claimed his life.
MANNY GAULT (1886–1947)
When Hamer picked the partner he wanted to go after Bonnie and Clyde, he said, “I want Manny Gault.”
Born and raised in Austin, Gault went on the Ranger payroll on January 31, 1931, but he had helped Hamer with bootlegging and gambling cases before then, and the two were friends. He served as a ranger until Miriam “Ma” Ferguson was elected governor in 1933 and resigned before she fired virtually the whole force to replace them with men more in line with the politics of her and her husband, impeached former governor Jim “Pa” Ferguson.
After the two Texans caught up with Bonnie and Clyde in Louisiana, Gault returned to the Rangers and served until his death in 1947.
Visit: 2800 Hancock Drive, Austin.
Oakwood Cemetery
Established in 1839, Oakwood is Austin’s oldest cemetery.
JOHN B. ARMSTRONG (1850–1913)
Ranger Lieutenant Armstrong made up for the merciless ribbing he took from his fellow rangers after accidentally shooting himself in the leg by capturing one of the Old West’s most notorious outlaws.
Born in Tennessee, Armstrong came to Texas at twenty-one by way of Missouri and Arkansas. Settling in Austin in 1871, he enlisted in Captain Leander McNelly’s company on May 20, 1875.
Under the unconventional McNelly, Armstrong participated in several gunfights in South Texas and soon earned promotion to sergeant along with a reputation as a solid lawman. When McNelly resigned due to poor health, Armstrong remained in the company under its new commander, Captain Lee Hall.
When former Dallas police officer John Duncan, operating undercover in John Wesley Hardin’s old stomping grounds in Gonzales County, learned the fugitive lived in Alabama under an assumed name, Armstrong volunteered to bring him back to Texas. Finding that Hardin often took the train to Pensacola, Florida, to gamble, with the cooperation of the railroad and help from local officers, the ranger and Duncan waited until Hardin boarded the train in Pensacola. Following a shootout that left one of Hardin’s cronies dead, the officers succeeded in taking the wanted Texan into custody.
After leaving the Rangers, Armstrong established a ranch in Willacy County in 1882. He died at sixty-three.
Arrested…Hardin…this P.M. He had four men with him. Had some lively shooting. One of their number killed. All the rest captured. Hardin fought desperately.
–Telegram to Adjutant General William Steele from Lieutenant
Armstrong, August 23, 1877
JOHN B. JONES (1834–1881)
He had a common name but was an uncommon man. Slight of stature but smart and battle-tested in the Civil War, as major in command of the Frontier Battalion, soft-spoken John B. Jones successfully presided over the Ranger transition from Indian fighters to state lawmen. Had he failed, arguably, the Rangers would not have survived into the twentieth century.
No desk-bound administrator, Jones spent much of his time in the field, traveling by buggy or horse with an escort company from trouble spot to trouble spot. He took part in the Lost Valley Indian fight in the summer of 1875 and the shootout with outlaw Sam Bass in 1878. No trigger-happy lawman, he intervened in several vicious feuds hoping to negotiate peace.
In addition to the actual fighting he did, the major also sparred with a penurious legislature always eager to spend less money on the Rangers if not to abolish them altogether.
Though a strict disciplinarian who quickly culled bad apples, Jones had the respect of his men. On his watch, the Rangers won their enduring reputation as highly effective professional peace officers.
In 1879, Jones gained promotion to adjutant general, but he continued to have operational control of the Rangers. Only forty-six, he died in Austin on July 19, 1881, of complications following a surgical procedure. Delirious from fever, he died quoting Shakespeare.
Although the force is too small, and the appropriation insufficient to give anything like adequate protection to so large a territory, the people seem to think we have rendered valuable service…and there is a degree of security felt in the frontier counties that has not been experienced for years.
–Major Jones to Adjutant General William Steele<
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WILLIAM STEELE (1820–1885)
A New Yorker who graduated from West Point in 1840, Steele ended up in the Lone Star State because he married a Texas woman. He saw active service in the Confederate military, reaching the rank of brigadier general. When the Frontier Battalion was organized, Governor Richard Coke named Steele adjutant general. That gave him overall authority over the Rangers, though Major John B. Jones coordinated the activities of the force. Steele served until 1879 when succeeded by Jones.
JOHN HARRIS ROGERS (1863–1930)
In his memoir, Trails and Trials of a Texas Ranger, Captain W.W. “Bill” Sterling beatified four rangers as the “Four Great Captains.” One of the quartet the former adjutant general singled out “by virtue of their long, outstanding, and unhampered service” was Captain John H. Rogers.
Born in Guadalupe County on October 19, 1863, he first flirted with farming as a way to make a living. But just shy of his nineteenth birthday, Rogers signed up at Colorado City as a private in Company B, Frontier Battalion, on September 5, 1882.
Less than five years into his Ranger career, Rogers suffered a critical wound in a wild gunfight in Sabine County on April 1, 1887. Rogers recovered, but nearly twelve years later, he was seriously wounded again in another shooting incident in Laredo. By that time, he had been promoted to captain.
A deeply religious man and teetotaler, the captain always carried a Bible.
Evolving from a mounted lawman who began his career in the fading days of the Wild West into a twentieth-century peace officer who could be as comfortable in an automobile as he had been on a horse, Rogers spent most of his adult life enforcing the law. He left the Rangers in 1911, but in 1913, President Woodrow Wilson appointed him U.S. marshal for the western district of Texas. He held that position until 1921, when he hired on with the Railway Express Agency as an investigator and guard. On April 1, 1924, he began a brief stint as Austin’s police chief.
After a short respite from official gun toting, in 1927, Rogers returned to the Rangers. At sixty-four, a time most men are planning retirement, he assumed command of Company C in South Texas.
Three years later, still in the Rangers, he died of an aneurysm on November 11, 1930, at Temple’s Scott and White Hospital following gall bladder surgery.
If Rogers couldn’t preach the fear of the Lord into ’em, he was prepared to shoot the Hell out of them.
–Anonymous, attributed to an old ranger
OSCAR F. PRIDGEN (1854-1944)
Pridgen served as a ranger under Captain Leander McNelly from April 1, 1875, to August 31, 1875. Carved on the base of his tombstone are eight words indicating he died willing to ride for law and order in the hereafter: “Tell them to meet me–A Texas Ranger.”
Visit: The original portion of Oakwood Cemetery is at 1601 Navasota Street. The newer addition is at 1601 Comal Street.
Texas State Cemetery
The beginning of the Texas State Cemetery, the final resting place of thirty rangers and hundreds of other notable figures, traces to one former ranger’s death.
Edward Burleson served the Republic of Texas as a ranger, soldier and statesman. When the one-time vice-president of the republic died on December 26, 1851, in the capital city, he was buried on a tract of land in East Austin donated to the state by House member Andrew Jackson Hamilton. That afforded Burleson one additional distinction—his was the first grave in a cemetery that now holds more than three thousand graves.
Noted sculptress Elisabet Ney did a bronze in 1904 for Civil War general Albert Sidney Johnson’s grave, and six years later, the remains of Stephen F. Austin were relocated to the cemetery. By then, the burial ground was well on its way to being the Arlington of Texas. In the mid-1990s, Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock was the prime mover in a major renovation of the cemetery and construction of a visitor’s center.
Texas State Cemetery in Austin is the final resting place of many noted rangers. Photo by Mike Cox.
Counting Stephen F. Austin, considered the father of the Rangers, twenty-four rangers who served before 1935 are buried in the cemetery along with six who served after 1935. For the names of all the rangers buried there, visit cemetery.state.tx.us.
JOHN LEMON WILBARGER (1829–1850)
Unfortunately for the Wilbarger clan, scalping seemed to run in the family. In August 1833, a four-person surveying party that included Josiah P. Wilbarger encountered an Indian war party near the Colorado River. When an arrow thudded into his body, Wilbarger thought it best to play dead before any additional shafts flew in his direction. The Indians fell for the ruse, and Wilbarger managed to keep quiet while they collected his scalp. Two of his companions were actually dead, and the fourth had escaped. That night, as Wilbarger lay suffering from his wounds, his sister had a dream in which she envisioned not only where he was but also that he was still alive. The next day, searchers found him about where she said he would be. Wilbarger’s son would not be so fortunate. Seventeen years later, on August 20, 1850, a substantial party of Indians attacked twenty-year-old John Lemon Wilbarger and fellow Texas Rangers D.C. “Doc” Sullivan and Alpheus D. Neill near the Rio Grande in Webb County as they returned to Captain John S. “Rip” Ford’s company from leave. The warriors killed and scalped Wilbarger and Sullivan, but Neill escaped to tell the tale. The irony of the story continues. On February 6, 1877, Neill—then a Waco police officer—was shot to death in the line of duty while trying to break up a family disturbance. Wilbarger had been buried in the vicinity, but in 1936 his remains were exhumed and he was reburied in the State Cemetery along with his father.
BEN MCCULLOCH (1811–1862)
Originally from Tennessee, McCulloch adroitly handled artillery during the Battle of San Jacinto. After the revolution, he rode as a ranger with Captain Jack Hays, served in the Republic of Texas Congress, fought in the Mexican War and, on the eve of the Civil War, led a group of volunteers who, without a shot, seized the federal arsenal in San Antonio on February 16, 1861. He was killed in action on March 7, 1862, at the Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, during the Civil War. A historical marker placed on the courthouse grounds in Brady in 1936 commemorates McCulloch as the county’s namesake. A marker erected in 1964 gives more details on McCulloch’s Confederate service. Originally buried in Arkansas, his remains were later reinterred in the State Cemetery.
JOHN R. HUGHES (1855–1947)
Born in 1855 in Cambridge, Illinois, Hughes grew up in Mound City, Kansas. At fifteen, he struck out on his own, spending some time in Indian Territory as a cowboy. After participating in several cattle drives from Texas to the railhead in Kansas, he settled in Texas in 1878, running a horse ranch in Williamson County, northwest of Austin. When rustlers stole sixteen of his best animals in 1886, he trailed them to New Mexico, recovered his stock and killed three of the thieves in a shootout.
Back in Texas, Hughes joined the Rangers on August 10, 1887. Figuring on spending only six to eight months as a state lawman, Hughes turned those months into twenty-seven years.
By the spring of 1890, he had made sergeant. Three years later, when Captain Frank Jones died in a gun battle with Mexican outlaws on the Rio Grande below El Paso, Hughes gained his captaincy.
Despite his success as a ranger, Hughes had never calculated on living to an old age. “For several years,” he said, “I did not expect to live to the age that I am now. I expected to be killed.” In retirement, he returned to ranching and eventually became a bank president.
Hughes was ninety-two before a bullet finally did end his long and rich life—a bullet fired by his own hand. On June 3, 1947, the old ranger’s body, his .45 nearby, was found in a garage behind a relative’s house in Austin, where he had been staying. The captain’s health had been fading, and he did not want to be a burden to his family.
Unfortunately, I have been in several engagements where desperate criminals were killed. I have never lost a battle that I was in personally, and never let a prisoner escape.
–Captain Hughes
STATE CAPITOL
After Texas’s statehood in 1845, the old wood frame Republic of Texas capitol continued in use until a new limestone capitol rose at the head of Congress Avenue in 1853. In addition to the house and senate chambers, that structure included office space for the governor and other state officials.
Prior to 1874, the governor had overall command of the Rangers, though field captains held operational control. The capitol, then, amounted to Ranger headquarters. Periodically, ranger companies camped on the grounds, living in white canvas tents and cooking over fires until they and their horses were needed elsewhere.
When an accidental fire gutted the capitol in the fall of 1881 (destroying, among other things, a small museum’s worth of Indian trophies collected over the years by the rangers), the state soon began construction of the red granite capitol still in use today. From the capitol’s opening in 1887 until the mid-1930s, the adjutant general’s department had its offices there. Rangers were in and out all the time, and old rangers often worked as assistant sergeants at arms for the house and senate.
After 1935, rangers generally only appeared at the capitol to testify before legislative committees or handle occasional security assignments, such as gubernatorial inaugurations or potentially violent or destructive protests.
Life-sized marble statues of Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston, both important figures in Ranger history, stand inside the south foyer of the capitol. The two pieces by sculptress Elizabet Ney were dedicated on January 19, 1903.
A bronze statue by sculptors Terry and Cindy Burleson of a high-booted ranger holding a lever-action rifle was dedicated on the second floor of the capitol on March 1, 1986, during the Texas Sesquicentennial celebration.
