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| ISBN-13: | 9781574414257 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of North Texas Press |
| Publication date: | 03/15/2003 |
| Series: | Frances B. Vick Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 7 MB |
About the Author
Paul N. Spellman is professor of history and division chair at Wharton Junior College, a native Texan, and an Old 300 descendant. He is the author of Race to Velasco, Forgotten Texas Leader: Hugh McLeod and the Texan Santa Fe Expedition, and Spindletop Boom Days.
Read an Excerpt
Captain John H. Rogers, Texas Ranger
By Paul N. Spellman
University of North Texas Press
Copyright © 2003 Paul N. SpellmanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-57441-425-7
CHAPTER 1
The Guadalupe Homestead
Isaac Samuel Rogers stood straight and tall at the center of the small Bolivar Courthouse assembly room. He pulled at his tight starched collar, the twenty-one-year-old Tennessee farmer uncomfortable in suit and tie on this cold March evening. But the occasion of his wedding kept him resolute, somber, uncomplaining. To his left stood his brother William, like Isaac a farmer in the Hatchie River Valley of Hardeman County, Tennessee. Seated just behind him in the straight- backed hickory chairs were several members of the Elkins family—the elder William, his wife and a cousin or two sat ramrod straight at the edge of their seats. On Isaac's right stood eighteen-year-old Mahala Elkins, soon to be his bride. Woodson Vader, justice of the peace for the Bolivar area and a neighbor and friend of the Rogers clan, intoned the civil ceremony then pronounced the couple husband and wife. Isaac was pleased to loosen his collar for the remaining festivities that Tuesday evening. It was March 18, 1834.
Although both bride and groom were natives to the Hatchie Valley—born and raised long before Hardeman County's 1823 organization—they felt a pull to the west to start their married life together. And so they packed their few belongings, bade farewell to kith and kin, and headed for the newly opened Chickasaw Country.
Forty-five miles to the west and just south of Bolivar lay the Old Chickasaw Trail making its way from Mississippi into Tennessee, skirting the Tennessee River Valley. The Nonconnah River, a tributary that ran north-south nearly to the state line, displayed a welcoming valley of rolling hills and rich farm land. Families from both states were moving in even as the American Indian Nation was removed.
Isaac and Mahala Rogers settled there in the fall of 1834 on a small homestead that straddled the two states. Their first child Michael was born the following spring and quickly followed by James, Martin Van Buren (named for the current president in 1839), Richard, and John Harris. Their fifth son, Pleasant William Miles, was born in 1844 and the last child, and only daughter, Leonora, arrived in 1850 just weeks after the census taker had come by the farming community. Because of the proximity of the farm to the two states, five of the children claimed Shelby County, Tennessee, as their birthplace, while Richard and Leonora claimed De Soto Township, Marshall County, Mississippi as theirs. The census taker in June of 1850 placed the homestead in Mississippi.
In 1836 the first school was begun in that area and named Rock Springs. Four years later, amid the clutter of mercantile trading posts, the first of several churches was organized not too far from Pigeon Roost Road. The makings of a real community were in place by the mid-1840s.
But even as the farming community grew, the American West opened again after the War with Mexico and the stunning discovery of gold way off in California, and Isaac Rogers contemplated another move for his large family. The gold fields were no place to raise a family, although there were riches to be had there, and the Great Plains remained something of a mystery to all but the bravest who crossed it in search of wealth. But reports continued to laud Texas, now the twenty- eighth state of the Union, as a Paradise itself.
In the fall of 1856, after a decade on the fringe of the Chickasaw Trail, Isaac decided to move the homestead southwest across the Red River. His adult sons Michael and James made different decisions—Michael would accompany his family while twenty-year-old James stayed behind on the family's farm.
And so it was that Isaac Rogers purchased a humble 162 acre homestead in Guadalupe County, Texas, in the fall of 1856 and moved his family there. Guadalupe County and its county seat of Seguin already had a long history in the Southwest stretching back to the Spanish and Mexican days, a center for unrest during the Texas Revolution in 1835–1836, and now a prospering community of farms and ranches. The Guadalupe River, though unpredictable and even vicious in the spring and fall rainy seasons, nonetheless had provided fertile soil for thousands of years, dug out beautiful valleys among the softly rolling hills, and left natural springs and unusually dependable—for Texas—creeks every few miles.
In 1838 Mathew "Old Paint" Caldwell and thirty-three other Texas Rangers, fresh from their exploits during the Revolution, surveyed several leagues of land in Guadalupe County as payment for their military service. They organized the first community of Walnut Springs, which was soon renamed Seguin after the legendary Tejano war hero, and began clearing land. As Robert Hall wrote of the experience later, "We clubbed together and bought land from old Joe Martin and laid out the town. Although I lived a ways from there, twelve miles from Gonzales, I helped clear about a half league of land some nine miles east of Seguin. I was what they called a chain carrier, clearing the scrub trees and brush. Got into it with an old doe," he recalled, "and took a shot at her but just grazed her on one leg. She didn't clear out, just limped around and watched us while we worked. They called her 'Hall's old doe' for as long as she and I was around."
In the early 1850s the Robert Hall league was subdivided and sold off in small parcels. Thomas and Margaret Halsel bought a homestead at the headwaters of Jacob Darst's creek several miles north of the Guadalupe, adjacent to the W. W. Arrington Tract. On November 7, 1856, they signed a contract selling their land to Isaac Samuel Rogers for $810. The first semblance of a market road between Seguin to the west and Luling to the east tracked along less than a mile north of the Rogers property, with Darst Creek and a deep ravine outlining the eastern boundary.
The Rogers family soon expanded and divided, as the boys married and some bought property of their own. Richard married Josephine "Birdie" Adams in 1861, and Pleasant married neighbor Mary Amanda Harris on January 5, 1863, under the serious eye of Deacon Frederick Butler, an itinerant Methodist Episcopal pastor. Martin married Peneca Davidson one year later. Richard and Martin bought land along the banks of the Guadalupe and moved their families there in the early 1860s.
The first grandchild of Isaac and Mahala was a girl, Valverde, born in June of 1862, daughter of Richard and Birdie and named after a just-waged Civil War victory by the Confederates in New Mexico. The next grandchild was John Harris Rogers, the subject of this story, born October 19, 1863, just nine-and-a-half months after Pleasant and Mary's wedding day, and named after Pleasant's older brother.
Isaac lived to enjoy the delights of several of his grandchildren, but he died on November 1, 1867, fifty-four years of age and having lost three sons to the vagaries of war; his wife Mahala died that same year. Twenty-three-year-old Pleasant Rogers became the administrator of his parents' estate along with neighbor C. M. Garity, filing in the county court on November 25—noting there was no will—and declaring the assets and debts of the estate on December 12 and again on January 28, 1868. The court records state that the "sole heirs" of the Rogers probate would be Martin, Pleasant, Leonora, and Valverde (still a minor at age five and currently under the guardianship of her mother and Frank M. Pearce, whom Birdie wed after Richard's death.)
The court declared an auction to be held in order to pay off the debts that amounted to some $850. The first auction date of February 15, 1868, was moved to March 20. On that day, at the home of Martin Rogers on Nash Creek, friends and neighbors arrived throughout the afternoon to bid on the few cattle, horses, furniture, and farming tools from Isaac's estate. The auction was successful enough to pay off the debts while preserving the land itself for the family, and the estate sales record was filed on March 30.
John Harris Rogers was barely four when his grandfather died. His mother's clan had long since become more than just neighbors of Isaac Rogers; they had become family as well.
Also from Tennessee, John Wesley Harris was born November 27, 1809, in Wilson County just east of Nashville and on the south banks of the mighty Cumberland River. One of their neighbors was the Adamses from Virginia. On December 8, 1832, eighteen-year-old Laura Adams married John W. Harris. Their family grew quickly, with Frank Wesley born in the early autumn of 1833, John Wesley on May 11, 1834, and Jane Elizabeth on June 12, 1836. Three more children rounded out the Harris family—William (1839), Laura Adams (1841) and Mary Amanda on February 6, 1845.
Shortly after Mary Amanda's sixth birthday, the family made their move to Texas along with so many others who formed caravans and left "G.T.T." signs swinging on gates and doors and storefronts. On December 12, 1851, John Harris signed a deed for land on the old Joseph Kent claim in Guadalupe County. This acreage lay along Mill Creek about seven miles east of Seguin. Neighbors included the expansive family of Asa Sowell, his brothers and sons and their kin.
In 1855 Jane Elizabeth Harris married Nathaniel Benton, already a storied Texan whose adventures from Mexico to California had gained him a reputation as one of the foremost frontiersmen of his era. Jane bore "Cap'n Nat" Benton three children over the next five years. J. Wesley Harris married Emarita Swift on January 20, 1860, and eleven months later his sister Laura married Guadalupe County resident John Eckols on November 26. With Frank and Mary Amanda following suit, John—a "grand old Tennessee gentleman" - and Laura Harris proudly watched over in-laws and a brood of grandchildren for the next two decades. The Harris and Rogers kids grew up together and went off to local country schools together. They worked the fields every spring, summer, and fall, rode and swam, and got into mischief together. They befriended other children in that farming community, including the many Sowells, the Noltes, Dunns, and Colemans.
But most of that third generation had not been born when the Civil War broke the country wide open in 1861. Instead, it was their fathers who packed off to fight for the Confederacy, and their mothers who prayed and fretted and anxiously awaited their return or the tragic news that might come to their doorsteps.
The year 1860 brought with it an acceleration toward secession by most of the slave-holding states across the American South, and Texas was no exception. The election of "the Black Republican" Abraham Lincoln to the presidency signaled a final political challenge met on December 20 by the official vote of secession by South Carolina, the first of eleven who would form the Confederate State of America. Texas called its secession convention in February, 1861, and overwhelmingly the delegates—biased already to the inevitable outcome—voted to leave the Union. By March, the election of Jefferson Davis to the Confederacy's presidency and Lincoln's installation in Washington, D.C. left only the when and where, not if, of civil war. That came early in the morning of April 12, 1861, when the Charleston guns began their bombardment of Fort Sumter.
In Guadalupe County, Texas, the fever for secession was prevalent across the eastern part of the county and into the city of Seguin itself. The local castle of the mystery-cloaked Knights of the Golden Circle, led by John Wright, spoke clearly for war and would be the first to "join up." To the west, however, the large and growing contingent of German immigrants—748 were counted in the 1860 census—fought the idea of secession. Some had been in Texas for two decades and were not interested in leaving a Union they had worked so hard to get to from Europe. J. F. McKee, a leading Unionist voice in the county, gathered sympathizers to his side in a futile attempt to sway the vote. It was never to be—the local county tally for secession was a persuasive if far from surprising 314 to twenty-two, the German voters obviously discouraged from showing up at the polls. The Rogers and Harris, Nolte and Sowell clans cast their lots with the Confederacy.
Enlistment officers began to make their way through Seguin even before the first shots of the war were fired. Tom Green was there, and Peter Cavanaugh Woods from San Marcos. William P. Hardeman recruited men from the area, and locals such as Nat Benton, Ben and Henry McCulloch, and J. Wesley Harris quickly accepted officer assignments and began to recruit from the farmlands of the Guadalupe. Philip Noland Luckett rode up from Corpus Christi calling for men to come to designated camps in Austin and San Antonio, and as early as May the would-be soldiers began to arrive. The fever for war was pitched.
Nat Benton organized a company of men in June, 1861, and they assembled on the Guadalupe courthouse lawn on the morning of June 28, a huge crowd of family and well-wishers cheering in a large circle around them. Several young women modestly presented a company battle flag and a Confederate flag to Benton, who accepted it graciously and with a brief speech. John Wesley Harris stood there in the company that had named itself "The Knights of Guadalupe," and so also Richard Rogers, John Eckols, and Peneca's brother, William Davidson. Pleasant Rogers, only sixteen and too young to enlist, cheered at the edge of the crowd with the rest of his family.
But Benton's company was soon discharged without ever leaving the county. Nat's wife Jane became seriously ill that same month forcing her husband to stay by her bedside. Despite medical and loving attention, Jane Benton passed away on August 5, and the bereaved widower lost interest in a distant war.
Meanwhile other recruiting continued in and around Seguin. Company A of the Fourth Texas Cavalry recruited in the area, and Asa and James Sowell and Martin Rogers were three who enlisted under William Hardeman on August 8, 1861. They marched off to war in the fall of 1861, and over the winter found themselves part of Henry Hopkins Sibley's Brigade and on the front lines of the Confederacy's New Mexico Campaign. In February, 1862, the Fourth Texas crossed the Rio Grande near Union-held Fort Craig, skirted the bastion across a rough desert trail, and met the Yankees at the Val Verde river crossing. The battle was intense and the Confederates managed to drive the Union forces back to the fort. It was an important victory for the South, although perhaps no more than a broad skirmish, and brought much-needed good news back home. Martin's letter to his family may have been what prompted his brother Richard to name his first daughter, born that June, Valverde. Creeks, a town, and a county in Texas still bear that Civil War name.
The victory quickly vanished under the uneven leadership of General Sibley and a devastating defeat at Glorieta Pass in April, and the Confederate forces limped home. Months later the 4th Texas was back in action, this time in Southern Louisiana attempting to hold against an aggressive Union naval blockade and invasion of the Delta. On April 14, 1863, along the coastal St. Mary's Parish, the Confederates fought two battles outside of the town of Franklin, Louisiana. The Texas soldiers pushed hard against the Union forces at Irish Bend and hours later set up along a rail fence near Nerson's Woods. As the Union attacked the Confederates blistered the field and won the day. During the battle, however, a rifle ball glanced off one of the rails and struck Martin Rogers with such force that he was thrown to the ground badly wounded. It was the end of the war for Martin and he was discharged and sent home by June.
On November 25, 1861, seventeen-year-old Pleasant Rogers signed up with Company E of the newly formed Third Texas Infantry under Colonel Philip Luckett. Augustus Buchel was lieutenant colonel and Charles A. Schreiner of Kerrville was the ordnance sergeant. It may be that Pleasant lied about his age to get in, but get in he did and marched off to war. Luckett's Regiment of 648 soldiers landed at Fort Brown in the Rio Grande Valley over the winter. For whatever reasons—climate or drilling or army rations—young Pleasant became ill and spent most of March and April in a sick bed at Fort Brown. Still without seeing any action, he was then discharged on July 12 presumably when his correct age was discovered.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Captain John H. Rogers, Texas Ranger by Paul N. Spellman. Copyright © 2003 Paul N. Spellman. Excerpted by permission of University of North Texas Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
List of Illustrations,Acknowledgments,
Introduction,
One: The Guadalupe Homestead,
Two: Colorado City Ranger,
Three: The Fence Cutter Wars,
Four: The Conner Fight,
Five: Captain of the Rangers,
Six: The El Paso Prizefight,
Seven: Streets of Laredo,
Eight: Getting Gregorio,
Nine: Hill Loftis & the Sand Dunes Incident,
Ten: "The Lord Giveth; the Lord Taketh Away",
Eleven: End of this Trail,
Twelve: Deputy U. S. Marshal,
Thirteen: U. S. Marshal, Western District,
Fourteen: The Canales Investigation,
Fifteen: Austin Chief of Police,
Sixteen: End of the Trail,
The Ranger's Prayer,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,