Six-Shooters and Shifting Sands: The Wild West Life of Texas Ranger Captain Frank Jones

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Many well-read students, historians, and loyal aficionados of Texas Ranger lore know the name of Texas Ranger Captain Frank Jones (1856-1893), who died on the Texas-Mexico border in a shootout with Mexican rustlers. In Six-Shooters and Shifting Sands, Bob Alexander has now penned the first full-length biography of this important nineteenth-century Texas Ranger. At an early age Frank Jones, a native Texan, would become a Frontier Battalion era Ranger. His enlistment with the Rangers coincided with their transition from Indian fighters to lawmen. While serving in the Frontier Battalion officers' corps of Company D, Frank Jones supervised three of the four “great” captains of that era: J.A. Brooks, John H. Rogers, and John R. Hughes. Besides Austin Ira Aten and his younger brothers Calvin Grant Aten and Edwin Dunlap Aten, Captain Jones also managed law enforcement activities of numerous other noteworthy Rangers, such as Philip Cuney "P.C." Baird, Benjamin Dennis Lindsey, Bazzell Lamar "Baz" Outlaw, J. Walter Durbin, Jim King, Frank Schmid, and Charley Fusselman, to name just a few. Frank Jones’ law enforcing life was anything but boring. Not only would he find himself dodging bullets and returning fire, but those Rangers under his supervision would also experience gunplay. …
Date: March 2015
Creator: Alexander, Bob
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

Still the Arena of Civil War: Violence and Turmoil in Reconstruction Texas, 1865/1874

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Following the Civil War, the United States was fully engaged in a bloody conflict with ex-Confederates, conservative Democrats, and members of organized terrorist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, for control of the southern states. Texas became one of the earliest battleground states in the War of Reconstruction. Throughout this era, white Texans claimed that Radical Republicans in Congress were attempting to dominate their state through “Negro-Carpetbag-Scalawag rule.” In response to these perceived threats, whites initiated a violent guerilla war that was designed to limit support for the Republican Party. They targeted loyal Unionists throughout the South, especially African Americans who represented the largest block of Republican voters in the region. Was the Reconstruction era in the Lone Star State simply a continuation of the Civil War? Evidence presented by sixteen contributors in this new anthology, edited by Kenneth W. Howell, argues that this indeed was the case. Topics include the role of the Freedmen’s Bureau and the occupying army, focusing on both sides of the violence. Several contributors analyze the origins of the Ku Klux Klan and its operations in Texas, how the Texas State Police attempted to quell the violence, and Tejano adjustment to Reconstruction. Other chapters …
Date: March 15, 2012
Creator: Howell, Kenneth W.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

Bad Company and Burnt Powder: Justice and Injustice in the Old Southwest

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Bad Company and Burnt Powder is a collection of twelve stories of when things turned "Western" in the nineteenth-century Southwest. Each chapter deals with a different character or episode in the Wild West involving various lawmen, Texas Rangers, outlaws, feudists, vigilantes, lawyers, and judges. Covered herein are the stories of Cal Aten, John Hittson, the Millican boys, Gid Taylor and Jim and Tom Murphy, Alf Rushing, Bob Meldrum and Noah Wilkerson, P. C. Baird, Gus Chenowth, Jim Dunaway, John Kinney, Elbert Hanks and Boyd White, and Eddie Aten. Within these pages the reader will meet a nineteen-year-old Texas Ranger figuratively dying to shoot his gun. He does get to shoot at people, but soon realizes what he thought was a bargain exacted a steep price. Another tale is of an old-school cowman who shut down illicit traffic in stolen livestock that had existed for years on the Llano Estacado. He was tough, salty, and had no quarter for cow-thieves or sympathy for any mealy-mouthed politicians. He cleaned house, maybe not too nicely, but unarguably successful he was. Then there is the tale of an accomplished and unbeaten fugitive, well known and identified for murder of a Texas peace officer. But …
Date: July 2014
Creator: Alexander, Bob
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

Obstinate Heroism: The Confederate Surrenders After Appomattox

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Book describes the three surrenders by Confederate armies that occurred after Robert E. Lee surrendered to U.S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865. They included Joseph Johnston's to William Tecumseh Sherman; Richard Taylor's to Edward Canby; and the dissolution of the Trans-Mississippi Department under Edmund Kirby-Smith.
Date: March 2020
Creator: Ramold, Steven J.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy

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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.
Date: July 2017
Creator: Alexander, Bob & Brice, Donaly E.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

No More Silence: an Oral History of the Assassination of President Kennedy

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No More Silence is the first oral history of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, from eyewitness accounts through the police reactions, investigations, and aftermath. Based on in-depth interviews conducted in Dallas, it features narratives of forty-nine key eyewitnesses, police officers, deputy sheriffs, and government officials. Here—in many cases for the first time—participants are allowed to speak for themselves without interpretation, editing, or rewording to fit some preconceived speculation. Unlike the testimony given in the Warren Commission volumes, the contributors openly state their opinions regarding conspiracy and cover-ups. Of particular interest are the fascinating stories from the Dallas Police Department—few of the policemen have come forward with their stories until now. No More Silence humanizes those involved in the events in Dallas in 1963 and includes photographs of the participants around the time of the assassination and as they appear today. Was there a conspiracy in the assassination of President Kennedy? No More Silence gives readers the best perspective yet on the subject, allowing them to sift through the evidence and draw their own conclusions. "Sneed accomplishes what has never been done before, which is to tell the story of the four days from the Dallas point of view …
Date: February 15, 2002
Creator: Sneed, Larry A.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

The Ranger Ideal Volume 2: Texas Rangers in the Hall of Fame, 1874-1930

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Established in Waco in 1968, the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum honors the iconic Texas Rangers, a service that has existed, in one form or another, since 1823. They have become legendary symbols of Texas and the American West. In The Ranger Ideal Volume 2: Texas Rangers in the Hall of Fame, 1874-1930, Darren L. Ivey presents the twelve inductees who served Texas in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Ivey begins with John B. Jones, who directed his Rangers from state troops to professional lawmen; then covers Leander H. McNelly, John B. Armstrong, James B. Gillett, Jesse Lee Hall, George W. Baylor, Bryan Marsh, and Ira Aten—the men who were responsible for some of the Rangers’ most legendary feats. Ivey concludes with James A. Brooks, William J. McDonald, John R. Hughes, and John H. Rogers, the “Four Great Captains” who guided the Texas Rangers into the twentieth century. The Ranger Ideal presents the true stories of these intrepid men who fought to tame a land with gallantry, grit, and guns.
Date: October 2018
Creator: Ivey, Darren L.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library