Perilous Trails of Texas

Perilous Trails of Texas PDF Author: John Beamond Dunn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Frontier and pioneer life
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
J.B. (Red) Dunn's "Perilous Trails of Texas" gives us a unique perspective of the lawless 1870s in the Nueces Strip. Dunn was a participant in bloody encounters between Anglo South Texans and Mexican-Americans in the rough times after the Civil War. It was a time when general lawlessness pervaded the land, darkening the days and threatening the nights. Dunn was a Texas Ranger and hard-riding vigilante. In Dunn's time violence was ubiquitous. It was a time of undeclared warfare, a war of random encounter, with raids by bandits from across the border, with hide thieves roaming the cattle ranges and killing at will, followed by the punitive lynchings by minutemen vigilantes who were quick with the rope and the gun and left a trail of dead. In the wake of the most notorious outrages of the era, such as the robbery at Penascal and the Nuecestown Raid, John Dunn was there, armed and in the saddle, pistols ready and rifle loaded and heart full of vengeance

Perilous Trails of Texas

Perilous Trails of Texas PDF Author: John Beamond Dunn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Frontier and pioneer life
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book

Book Description
J.B. (Red) Dunn's "Perilous Trails of Texas" gives us a unique perspective of the lawless 1870s in the Nueces Strip. Dunn was a participant in bloody encounters between Anglo South Texans and Mexican-Americans in the rough times after the Civil War. It was a time when general lawlessness pervaded the land, darkening the days and threatening the nights. Dunn was a Texas Ranger and hard-riding vigilante. In Dunn's time violence was ubiquitous. It was a time of undeclared warfare, a war of random encounter, with raids by bandits from across the border, with hide thieves roaming the cattle ranges and killing at will, followed by the punitive lynchings by minutemen vigilantes who were quick with the rope and the gun and left a trail of dead. In the wake of the most notorious outrages of the era, such as the robbery at Penascal and the Nuecestown Raid, John Dunn was there, armed and in the saddle, pistols ready and rifle loaded and heart full of vengeance

Cult of Glory

Cult of Glory PDF Author: Doug J. Swanson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101979879
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
“Swanson has done a crucial public service by exposing the barbarous side of the Rangers.” —The New York Times Book Review A twenty-first century reckoning with the legendary Texas Rangers that does justice to their heroic moments while also documenting atrocities, brutality, oppression, and corruption The Texas Rangers came to life in 1823, when Texas was still part of Mexico. Nearly 200 years later, the Rangers are still going--one of the most famous of all law enforcement agencies. In Cult of Glory, Doug J. Swanson has written a sweeping account of the Rangers that chronicles their epic, daring escapades while showing how the white and propertied power structures of Texas used them as enforcers, protectors and officially sanctioned killers. Cult of Glory begins with the Rangers' emergence as conquerors of the wild and violent Texas frontier. They fought the fierce Comanches, chased outlaws, and served in the U.S. Army during the Mexican War. As Texas developed, the Rangers were called upon to catch rustlers, tame oil boomtowns, and patrol the perilous Texas-Mexico border. In the 1930s they began their transformation into a professionally trained police force. Countless movies, television shows, and pulp novels have celebrated the Rangers as Wild West supermen. In many cases, they deserve their plaudits. But often the truth has been obliterated. Swanson demonstrates how the Rangers and their supporters have operated a propaganda machine that turned agency disasters and misdeeds into fables of triumph, transformed murderous rampages--including the killing of scores of Mexican civilians--into valorous feats, and elevated scoundrels to sainthood. Cult of Glory sets the record straight. Beginning with the Texas Indian wars, Cult of Glory embraces the great, majestic arc of Lone Star history. It tells of border battles, range disputes, gunslingers, massacres, slavery, political intrigue, race riots, labor strife, and the dangerous lure of celebrity. And it reveals how legends of the American West--the real and the false--are truly made.

Old Texas Trails

Old Texas Trails PDF Author: Jesse Wallace Williams
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Texas
Languages : en
Pages : 508

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Book Description
NOTE: for book to these maps see CCF 434092, call number US/CAN 976.4 E3w.

Kings of Texas

Kings of Texas PDF Author: Don Graham
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
ISBN: 1118039807
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Praise for KINGS OF TEXAS "Kings of Texas is a fresh and very welcome history of the great King Ranch. It's concise but thorough, crisply written, meticulous, and very readable. It should find a wide audience." -Larry McMurtry, author of Sin Killer and the Pulitzer Prize--winning Lonesome Dove "This book is about the King Ranch, but it is about much more than that. A compelling chronicle of war, peace, love, betrayal, birth, and death in the region where the Texas-Mexico border blurs in the haze of the Wild Horse Desert, it is also an intriguing detective story with links to the present-and a first-rate read." -H.W. Brands, author of The Age of Gold and the bestselling Pulitzer Prize finalist The First American

The Feud That Wasn’t

The Feud That Wasn’t PDF Author: James M. Smallwood
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 9781603440172
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Marauding outlaws, or violent rebels still bent on fighting the Civil War? For decades, the so-called “Taylor-Sutton feud” has been seen as a bloody vendetta between two opposing gangs of Texas gunfighters. However, historian James M. Smallwood here shows that what seemed to be random lawlessness can be interpreted as a pattern of rebellion by a loose confederation of desperadoes who found common cause in their hatred of the Reconstruction government in Texas. Between the 1850s and 1880, almost 200 men rode at one time or another with Creed Taylor and his family through a forty-five-county area of Texas, stealing and killing almost at will, despite heated and often violent opposition from pro-Union law enforcement officials, often led by William Sutton. From 1871 until his eventual arrest, notorious outlaw John Wesley Hardin served as enforcer for the Taylors. In 1874 in the streets of Comanche, Texas, on his twenty-first birthday, Hardin and two other members of the Taylor ring gunned down Brown County Deputy Charlie Webb. This cold-blooded killing—one among many—marked the beginning of the end for the Taylor ring, and Hardin eventually went to the penitentiary as a result. The Feud That Wasn’t reinforces the interpretation that Reconstruction was actually just a continuation of the Civil War in another guise, a thesis Smallwood has advanced in other books and articles. He chronicles in vivid detail the cattle rustling, horse thieving, killing sprees, and attacks on law officials perpetrated by the loosely knit Taylor ring, drawing a composite picture of a group of anti-Reconstruction hoodlums who at various times banded together for criminal purposes. Western historians and those interested in gunfighters and lawmen will heartily enjoy this colorful and meticulously researched narrative.

Texas Rangers

Texas Rangers PDF Author: Bob Alexander
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 157441691X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 672

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Book Description
Authors Bob Alexander and Donaly E. Brice grappled with several issues when deciding how to relate a general history of the Texas Rangers. Should emphasis be placed on their frontier defense against Indians, or focus more on their role as guardians of the peace and statewide law enforcers? What about the tumultuous Mexican Revolution period, 1910-1920? And how to deal with myths and legends such as One Riot, One Ranger? Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy is the authors’ answer to these questions, a one-volume history of the Texas Rangers. The authors begin with the earliest Rangers in the pre-Republic years in 1823 and take the story up through the Republic, Mexican War, and Civil War. Then, with the advent of the Frontier Battalion, the authors focus in detail on each company A through F, relating what was happening within each company concurrently. Thereafter, Alexander and Brice tell the famous episodes of the Rangers that forged their legend, and bring the story up through the twentieth century to the present day in the final chapters.

Firearms of the Texas Rangers

Firearms of the Texas Rangers PDF Author: Doug Dukes
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 157441819X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 645

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Book Description
From their founding in the 1820s up to the modern age, the Texas Rangers have shown the ability to adapt and survive. Part of that survival depended on their use of firearms. The evolving technology of these weapons often determined the effectiveness of these early day Rangers. John Coffee “Jack” Hays and Samuel Walker would leave their mark on the Rangers by incorporating new technology which allowed them to alter tactics when confronting their adversaries. The Frontier Battalion was created at about the same time as the Colt Peacemaker and the Winchester 73—these were the guns that “won the West.” Firearms of the Texas Rangers, with more than 180 photographs, tells the history of the Texas Rangers primarily through the use of their firearms. Author Doug Dukes narrates famous episodes in Ranger history, including Jack Hays and the Paterson, the Walker Colt, the McCulloch Colt Revolver (smuggled through the Union blockade during the Civil War), and the Frontier Battalion and their use of the Colt Peacemaker and Winchester and Sharps carbines. Readers will delight in learning of Frank Hamer’s marksmanship with his Colt Single Action Army and his Remington, along with Captain J.W. McCormick and his two .45 Colt pistols, complete with photos. Whether it was a Ranger in 1844 with his Paterson on patrol for Indians north of San Antonio, or a Ranger in 2016 with his LaRue 7.62 rifle working the Rio Grande looking for smugglers and terrorists, the technology may have changed, but the gritty job of the Rangers has not.

Texas Ranger John B. Jones and the Frontier Battalion, 1874-1881

Texas Ranger John B. Jones and the Frontier Battalion, 1874-1881 PDF Author: Rick Miller
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 1574414674
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
For the first time, author Rick Miller presents the story of the Frontier Battalion as seen through the eyes of its commander, John B. Jones, during his administration from 1874 to 1881, relating its history?both good and bad?chronologically, in depth, and in context. Highlighted are repeated budget and funding problems, developing standards of conduct, personalities and their interaction, mission focus and strategies against Indian war parties and outlaws, and coping with politics and bureaucracy. Miller covers all the major activities of the Battalion in the field that created and ultimately enhanced the legend of the Texas Rangers. Jones?s personal life is revealed, as well as his role in shaping the policies and activities of the Frontier Battalion.

Texas Lawmen, 1835-1899

Texas Lawmen, 1835-1899 PDF Author: Clifford R. Caldwell
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 161423633X
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
The tally of Texas lawmen killed during the state’s first sixty-five years of organized law enforcement is truly staggering. From Texas Rangers the likes of Silas Mercer Parker Jr., gunned down at Parker’s Fort in 1836, to Denton County sheriff ’s deputy Floyd Coberly, murdered by an inmate in 1897 after ten days on the job, this collection accounts for all of those unsung heroes. Not merely an attempt to retell a dozen popular peace officer legends, Texas Lawmen, 1835–1899 represents thousands of hours of research conducted over more than a decade. Ron DeLord and Cliff Caldwell have carefully assembled a unique and engaging chronicle of Texas history.

Texas Ranger Tales II

Texas Ranger Tales II PDF Author: Mike Cox
Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
ISBN: 1461625505
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Mike Cox knows as much about the Texas Rangers as anybody on the planet. And in this, his second book on the Rangers, he spins more great tales of these larger-than-life heroes and their sometimes almost unvelievable adventures. These are all new stories, some only told among the Rangers themselves, some told quietly over remote compfires, and others only whispered over elegant dinner tables. Now here they are: more entertaining, informative, and always exciting tales of the grea Texas Rangers.