Wilson County Biographies

John Reagan Baker

John Reagan Baker, Republic of Texas soldier, son of Peter and Margaret Laura (Reagan) Baker, was born near Blue Springs, Green County, Tennessee, on August 6, 1809. He made a trip to Texas in 1836. In 1839 he returned to Texas and became a member of the Texan auxiliary corps of the Federalista army encamped at Fort Lipantitlán. He followed Ewen Cameron through the campaign, was in the battle of October 23, 1840, at Ojo de Agua, near Saltillo, and cut his way back to Texas with his comrades. When the corps was disbanded, he went to Refugio County and settled in Aransas City. He was elected sheriff of Refugio County on February 1, 1841, and organized a company of minutemen, of which he was captain, although he retained membership and became a first lieutenant in Cameron's Rangers.

In March 1842 he went with Cameron's company to San Antonio on the occasion of the Rafael Vásquez raid, served with the company on the Nueces when Antonio Canales was repulsed on June 6, 1842, and distinguished himself in hand-to-hand fighting at the battle of Salado Creek on September 18, 1842. As a member of the Somervell and Mier expeditions he commanded a spy company and was one of the leaders of the break at Salado on February 11, 1843, when he was wounded. Unable to escape, he was put in the hospital, and there avoided the Black Bean Episode, but he was held in Perote Prison until September 16, 1844.

Baker returned to Refugio County and established a mercantile business at Saluria, on Matagorda Island. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he organized a home-guard company and was elected its captain. After the war he lived in Goliad County for a while, then moved to Indianola and again entered the mercantile business. In 1876 he moved to Wilson County, to a ranch near Stockdale, where he died on January 19, 1904.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Thomas J. Green, Journal of the Texian Expedition Against Mier (New York: Harper, 1845; rpt., Austin: Steck, 1935). Hobart Huson, Refugio: A Comprehensive History of Refugio County from Aboriginal Times to 1953 (2 vols., Woodsboro, Texas: Rooke Foundation, 1953, 1955). William P. Stapp, The Prisoners of Perote: A Journal (Philadelphia: Zieber, 1845).

Connally, John Bowden

John Bowden Connally, Jr., thirty-eighth governor of the state of Texas, was born on a farm near Floresville, Texas, on February 27, 1917, one of eight children of John Bowden and Lela (Wright) Connally, Sr. He attended Harlandale High School in San Antonio, graduated from Floresville High School, and entered the University of Texas in 1933. He was elected president of the UT Student Association for 1938-39 and received his law degree from the UT law school in 1941. Connally passed the state bar examination in 1938 and began his career in government and politics in 1939 as secretary (legislative assistant) to Representative Lyndon B. Johnson, Connally's "mentor, friend and benefactor." It was the beginning of a close personal relationship that was storied but often stormy, and lasted until Johnson's death in 1973. Connally met Idanell (Nellie) Brill of Austin at UT and they were married on December 21, 1940. They had four children. Their eldest, Kathleen, eloped in 1958 at age sixteen and the same year died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Connally was commissioned in the United States Naval Reserve in 1941. As a fighter director aboard aircraft carriers, he went through nine major air-sea battles in the Pacific Theater. Aboard the USS Essex he endured fifty-two consecutive hours of Japanese kamikaze attacks in April 1945. He attained the rank of lieutenant commander and came home a hero. After returning to civilian life, Connally headed an investors' group of war veterans that owned and operated Austin radio station KVET (1946-49). He also joined an influential Austin law firm and during this period served as campaign manager in LBJ's 1946 reelection to Congress and successful 1948 Senate race. He then served as LBJ's aide until 1951, when he became Sid W. Richardson's legal counsel, a position he held until Richardson's death in 1959. Connally earned a reputation both as "Lyndon's boy" and as a "political mastermind" and expert strategist. His political credo was "Fight hard and rough, but when the battle is over, forget and dismiss." Connally managed five of LBJ's major political campaigns, including reelection to the United States House of Representatives in 1946, the 1941 and 1948 races for the United States Senate, the unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960, and the election to the presidency in 1964. In LBJ's pivotal 1948 Senate race against former governor Coke R. Stevenson, Connally, as LBJ's campaign manager, was publicly linked to the suspicious late report of 200 votes in Box 13 from Jim Wells County, which had provided LBJ's eighty-seven-vote margin of victory. Connally denied any tie to vote fraud, but acknowledged that he had learned a lesson in managing LBJ's unsuccessful 1941 race for the Senate, when Johnson's seemingly decisive 5,000-vote lead had been whittled away by late election returns from East Texas. LBJ lost the 1941 race by 1,311 votes. In 1948 Connally instructed South Texas campaign operatives to understate their early returns in the vote canvassing because, he claimed, "we had been bitten once. It would not happen again."

Connally also ably assisted in various political turf skirmishes, including fights to control the state Democratic party. In these he was a field operative or grass-roots political ally of both LBJ and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, who considered themselves leaders of the state party's "moderate conservative wing." One major struggle for party control was fought in 1952-56 against the "right-wing Shivercrats," led by Governor Allan Shivers, who bolted in 1952 and led a "Democrats for Eisenhower" move that helped the Republican presidential candidate carry Texas. A second, and longer-running, feud that extended through Connally's tenure as governor was with liberal senator Ralph Yarbrough. Divisions between liberal and conservative-moderate Democrats became a personal feud between Lyndon Johnson and Yarbrough, and Connally found himself embroiled in the feud because of his close ties to Johnson.

Connally served as secretary of the navy in 1961 in the cabinet of Democrat President John F. Kennedy. He won his first political race as a candidate for governor the next year. He was tall, handsome, personable, and articulate; his speech reflected his debate, drama, and declamation training in high school and college. He was also well-schooled in politics and government and had profited from his experience as Sid Richardson's legal counsel. Connally entered the race against a large field of candidates, including Governor Price Daniel, Sr., who was seeking a fourth term. A poll showed that Connally had only 4 percent of the votes at the outset. But in addition to wealthy backers such as the oilman Richardson, he had a strong grass-roots network of politically astute supporters. Connally won a 1962 runoff by 26,000 votes. The next year he survived serious gunshot wounds inflicted in the Kennedy assassination. He speculated that both he and JFK might have been the assassin's targets. He was reelected by a 3-to-1 vote margin in 1964 and won a third term in 1966 with 72 percent of the vote.

Connally had grown up on his family's South Texas cotton farm in the hard-scrabble status of "a barefoot boy of mule-plowed furrows." His accomplishments as governor "epitomized the big man of Texas" and "personified the Texas establishment as the Texas establishment wanted to see itself." He considered himself "a conservative who believed in active government." He had a vision of moving Texas into a dynamic era and entered the governorship saying that his administration should emphasize one of three crucial issues of the day: education, race relations, or poverty. He chose to be "an education governor" both because he believed that the most enduring way to address social problems was through education and because he "had a farm boy's dream to become the governor of the intellectuals and of the cultivated." Connally effectively used his political skills to increase taxes substantially in order to finance higher teachers' salaries, better libraries, research, and new doctoral programs. He considered this the crowning achievement of his administration. He promoted programs to reshape and reform state government, to develop the state's tourism industry (including his endorsement of liquor by the drink and pari-mutuel betting), to establish a state fine arts commission and a state historical commission, and to establish the University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures, which was initiated as part of HemisFair '68, a state-supported world's fair at San Antonio.

After leaving the governor's office in 1969 Connally joined Vinson and Elkins, a large law firm in Houston named for William Ashton Vinson and James A. Elkins, both early principals in the firm. The same year, he was named a member of President Richard M. Nixon's foreign-intelligence advisory board and assumed a favored position among Nixon's advisors (it was said that "If Connally is not for a matter, the President won't do it"). In 1971 he became Nixon's secretary of the treasury and earned a reputation as "a tough American statesman." He sought to address the nation's growing trade deficit and inflation by such mechanisms as currency devaluation and a price freeze. In 1972 he spearheaded a Democrats for Nixon organization that helped the Republican president carry Texas. Connally switched parties from Democrat to Republican in 1973, three months after LBJ's death. In the wake of the bribery-related resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew in October 1973, Nixon passed word that he would name Connally to fill the vacancy. This would have put Connally in a strong position to run for president in 1976. Nixon and Connally had privately mused about starting a new Whig-type party in the tradition of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. But Democrats and Republicans alike in the Senate erupted in a "firestorm of protest." Warnings went up that if Nixon pursued the appointment, some powerful Senate Democrats "would be determined to destroy Connally." This was during the height of the Watergate scandal, which ultimately forced Nixon to resign. Nixon named House minority leader Gerald Ford vice president but said that he intended to support Connally for the 1976 GOP nomination. In the aftermath, Connally rejoined Vinson and Elkins but soon confronted a criminal prosecution for alleged bribery and conspiracy in a "milk-price" scandal. He was acquitted after a trial in federal court.

Connally's aborted effort to win the GOP's presidential nomination in 1980 was short-lived. He was hurt in part by a "wheeler-dealer" identification reminiscent of LBJ, and a press criticism that he was a political "chameleon." He was also damaged by a 1977 bank partnership he entered into with two Arab sheiks and an ill-advised or misunderstood speech he delivered to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. in 1979, that was interpreted as having anti-Semitic overtones. Connally raised and spent $11 million on the fourteen-month campaign but dropped out of the primaries, having gained the binding commitment of only one GOP convention delegate. He felt himself to be a victim of the Watergate scandal. After he lost his bid for the presidential nomination in 1980, he left politics and government.

In February 1982 Connally, a man of some wealth, took mandatory retirement from Vinson and Elkins. In 1981 he went into the business of real estate development with his former political protégée, Ben Barnes. In the partnership Connally was the "intimidating Olympian eminence," and Barnes was the "sometimes overpowering salesman and legman." Both had superb business and political contacts in the state and nation "and saw no reason why the values of their political life could not work equally well in their business life." The partners "conducted business," however, "as if they were campaigning for higher office." They signed personal notes on loans bearing short-term interest at 18 percent and by June 1983 had sixteen major projects under way totaling $231 million. It was a boom time in the Texas petroleum industry, with world oil prices ranging up to thirty-seven dollars a barrel. When the oil price collapsed, the state's economy collapsed. Connally and Barnes were out on a limb that broke and took them with it, along with many other wealthy Texans and most of the state's major financial institutions. The fiasco led Connally to acknowledge that "we were moving too far too fast and paying dearly for it." He declared bankruptcy, and he and Nellie held a globally publicized auction of their holdings and expensive personal belongings to apply the proceeds to their debt. The positions Connally held in law and business had taken him to the high echelons of corporate America. He was a director of the Coastal Corporation, Kaiser Tech, Kaiser Aluminum, Methodist Hospital of Houston, and Maxxam, Incorporated. He had earlier served on the boards of the New York Central Railroad, U.S. Trust, Pan American Airways, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, Greyhound Corporation, Ford Motor Company, Signal Companies, First City Bank Corporation, Superior Oil Company, Falkenbridge Nickel, and American General Insurance. He was a member of the State Bar of Texas, and the American, Houston, and District of Columbia Bar associations. Connally died on June 15, 1993, at the Methodist Hospital of Houston, where he was being treated for pulmonary fibrosis. He was buried in the State Cemetery in Austin. He was survived by his wife, a daughter, Sharon C. Ammann, and two sons, John Bowden III and Mark.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson (New York: Knopf, 1982-). John Connally, with Mickey Herskowitz, In History's Shadow: An American Odyssey (New York: Hyperion, 1993). D. B. Hardeman and Donald C. Bacon, Rayburn: A Biography (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1987). Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963-1969 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971). Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: Harper and Row, 1976). William Manchester, The Death of a President (New York: Harper and Row, 1967). Merle Miller, Lyndon: An Oral Biography (New York: Putnam, 1980). Richard M. Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1978). James Reston, Jr., The Lone Star: The Life of John Connally (New York: Harper and Row, 1989).

Ashley Newton Denton

Ashley Newton Denton, physician, army surgeon, and state representative, was born in Indian Territory on March 12, 1836, the son of John Bunyon Denton and Mary Greenlee (Stuart) Denton. The Denton family immigrated to Texas around 1837, settling at Clarksville in Red River County. The father was an early itinerant Methodist Episcopal preacher and frontiersman who became the namesake for modern-day Denton County. Denton himself studied medicine in Fort Worth and at Galveston Medical College. After graduating he began his practice at Sutherland Springs, Wilson County. On June 25, 1861, Ashley Denton married Margaret Hester Murchison. This couple had five sons and three daughters. Shortly after his marriage Denton volunteered for service in the Confederate Army, joining the Nineteenth Texas Cavalry Regiment as a surgeon.

Following the Civil War Denton returned to Texas and settled in San Antonio. In 1872 he won election as representative on the Democratic ticket for District Twenty-nine-comprised of Bexar, Bandera, Blanco, Burnet, Comal, Gillespie, Kendall, Kerr, Llano, Mason, Wilson, Edwards, Kimble, and Menard counties - to the Thirteenth Texas Legislature. Dr. Denton returned to public service in January 1883 when he received appointment as superintendent of the State Lunatic Asylum (now the Austin State Hospital) in Austin. He continued in this capacity through 1888; according to contemporary accounts he performed his duties with an unprecedented degree of excellence. Ashley Newton Denton died in San Marcos on March 4, 1901. He was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, as well as of the Knights of Honor Lodge.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Denton County (http://www.dentoncounty.com/dentondays/Ashley_denton.asp), accessed July 7, 2007. Family Group Denton (http://longislandgenealogy.com/hicks/gp3849.htm), accessed July 7, 2007. E. H. Loughery, Personnel of the Texas State Government for 1885 (Austin: Snyder, 1885). Members of the Legislature of the State of Texas from 1846 to 1939 (Austin: Texas Legislature, 1939).

John Oatman Dewees

John Oatman Dewees, cattleman, son of Thomas and America (Oatman) Dewees, was born in Putnam County, Illinois, on December 30, 1828. In 1849 he moved to Hallettsville, Texas, with his family and, in partnership with his father and brother Thomas, operated a stock farm near Bastrop. In 1854 he moved to Seguin and in 1857 to Live Oak County; he raised livestock in both places on free range. By the time of the Civil War he owned 1,600 cattle. In 1862 he joined Company B of Col. Peter C. Woods's Thirty-second Texas Cavalry, with which he served throughout the conflict; he reportedly participated in more than thirty skirmishes, including Blair's Landing and the battle of Yellow Bayou.

After he was paroled in 1865 Dewees returned to Texas and with borrowed money bought pastureland in Wilson County, on which he raised cattle. In 1871, in association with James F. Ellison, he drove 2,000 cattle to Kansas and sold them profitably. The two men soon thereafter formed a partnership: Dewees bought Texas cattle, and Ellison oversaw their delivery and marketing at northern railheads, ranges, and Indian reservations. By 1882, when the partnership was dissolved because of Ellison's financial reverses, the two had delivered more than 400,000 cattle to the northern market and ranked among the state's leading drovers. Afterward Dewees ranched on 60,000 acres that he partly owned and partly leased in Wilson, Karnes, and Atascosa counties. From 1876 to 1899 he lived in San Antonio and traded livestock there. Dewees was a Mason. He married Anna Irvin of Guadalupe County in 1873, and they had one daughter. When Dewees died in San Antonio on June 10, 1899, his estate was valued in excess of $300,000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: John Henry Brown, Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas (Austin: Daniell, 1880; reprod., Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1978). J. Marvin Hunter, Trail Drivers of Texas (2 vols., San Antonio: Jackson Printing, 1920, 1923; 4th ed., Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985). San Antonio Daily Express, June 11, 1899. San Antonio Light, June 11, 1899. Jimmy M. Skaggs, The Cattle-Trailing Industry: Between Supply and Demand, 1866-1890 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1973).

Jesse Evans

Jesse Evans, whose home is on a ranch fourteen miles northeast of Lamesa, in Dawson county, where he has been enjoying life in ease and contentment for several rears, is one of the noted old-time cattlemen of Texas. He is one of the few men still living who experienced the fortunes of the cattle business when it was still an infant industry in Texas and continued to follow it through the remarkable changes of subsequent years.

Born in Cleveland county, North Carolina, in 1834, he came to Southwest Texas in 1853, and during the years before the war was identified with the cattle industry in the region around San Antonio, in what is now Wilson county (though then still a part of Bexar county). During the war he had charge of the mail route between San Antonio and Victoria. Returning to the cattle business, he was for some years engaged in taking cattle to market over the great trails from the Southwest Texas frontier north through the Indian nations. He was also a cattle trader, well known among the cattlemen of that time. For three years after the war he lived at New Braunfels, but then went into the cattle business on a ranch on Medicine river near Dodge City, Kansas. During his career he has worked cattle all over the frontiers of West and Southwest Texas, and also in Oklahoma and Kansas. For a time he had his ranch headquarters at Fort Supply, in what is now northwestern Oklahoma. Among the well known cattlemen then associated with him was Charles Colcord, the wealthy and prominent citizen of Oklahoma City. On the Evans ranch, near Fort Supply, occurred the fight between the United States troops and the Cheyenne Indians under Chief Dullknife. Mr. Evans has had his headquarters in the Big Springs country since 1885, and has pitched the camp where he intends to rest during the remaining years of his life.

He has a comfortable home and a happy family. He was married while living in Southwest Texas, to Miss Emma Beall. She was born in Georgia. Their six children are : J. D., W. H., Mrs. Emma Graham, R. L., Brinkley and Mrs. May Smith.

Source: History of Central and Western Texas, Vol. I by Paddock, B. B. (Buckley B.). Chicago : Lewis Pub. Co., 1911, p. 389.

Josefa Augustina Flores de Barker

Josefa Augustina Flores de Barker, donor of the site of Floresville, was born to Jose' Maria Flores and Maria Leonides Flores probably in the early 1800s. She grew up on the family's extensive lands and, in San Antonio on April 17, 1854, married Samuel Williams Barker, who became the first sheriff of Wilson County. When her father died, Josefa inherited a portion of his estate, 200 acres of which she donated to establish the town of Floresville in 1833, with the request that the settlement be named in honor of her great-great-grandfather, Francisco Flores de Abrego, whose hacienda was six miles from the site of the present town. Many of her descendants have continued to live in the community and surrounding areas, and in 1990 some still owned the land that was handed down to them through five generations of the Flores de Abrego family.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Louise Stadler, ed., Wilson County History (Dallas: Taylor, 1990).

Sam Fore, Jr.

Sam Fore, Jr., newspaperman, the son of Samuel Lane and Letitia (Chenault) Fore, was born in Cuero, Texas, on May 3, 1891. His family moved to Stockdale, in Wilson County, and finally in 1903 to Floresville. But even at Stockdale, before he was twelve, the boy had smelled printer's ink, at Charles Hanson's Enterprise, and he prevailed upon the old editor to make him the printer's devil. There, for six months, he learned to set type by hand from wooden cases in the tiny plant. When the family moved to Floresville, Sam soon was nominally on the payroll of the Chronicle, a semiweekly owned by Dr. John V. Blake, a local physician. Here, before and after school and on Saturdays, Fore learned to set type at the rate of two galleys an hour, as well as to pump the old-fashioned press and to handle job printing. When he finished the eighth grade, he began full-time employment with Blake and was soon getting into the editorial side of country newspaper work. In 1910 he was promoted to society editor and in 1911 to assistant editor.

On July 11, 1911, Fore married Elma Teas, daughter of C. S. Teas, a family friend. Later that year, when H. C. Thompson, editor of the Chronicle, died, Blake concluded that Fore was the man to take over as editor. Sam was barely twenty. Two years later Blake proposed that the young couple (Elma was working in the front office) should buy the paper. The purchase became official at year's end, 1912.

Sam and Elma Fore devoted the next forty-nine years toward making the Floresville Chronicle Journal an effective instrument for community improvement. The new editor made a point of traveling throughout the county to meet his public. He did not neglect Floresville itself. In February of his first year as publisher he organized a civic club; it soon had thirty-five members, and Fore was its secretary. The first business of the new club was to organize a city "Clean Up Campaign," which Fore backed with full publicity. During those same months he ran for city clerk in the April election and won, 169 to 52. It was the only political office he ever held, and he held it for fifty years.

In 1919, five years after he first attended the annual convention of the Texas Press Association, he was elected vice president. A year later he was president-the youngest president ever elected. In the 1920s he helped organize the South Texas Press Association to serve the special interests of that region. He continued active in both groups for the rest of his life.

His hometown paper was always the base of his operations. In the 1960s a budding journalist, Emily Lamon, was chosen by a foundation to find and celebrate an ideal country editor. She found Sam Fore and wrote a little book about him. In her preface she says: "He believes in what he calls the mission of the press. `If I couldn't say things good, I wouldn't say anything,' he says. `I didn't try to step up strife and discord. It is as important to know what to leave out as what to put in. I never put anything sensational into the paper. That's not good for this town.' His ideas are strong- he never voted against a bond issue, never voted for liquor, and never scratched a Democrat on an election ticket. Yet his paper is not a campaign sheet for anything but community improvement. Sam Fore comes close to being THE country editor-and for his community he is."

Fore worked hard to establish the Wilson County Fair. The advent of World War I got him into fund-raising; by the end of the war he was county chairman of the Great United War Work Campaign. In the 1920s he began to advocate the diversification of farm crops rather than total dependence on King Cotton. He began also to diversify his own business interests; he bought from the Chamber of Commerce in Robstown its newspaper, the Robstown Record. Operating under a succession of editors, the paper augmented the Fore family's income and extended Sam's influence. In May of 1929 Governor Dan Moody appointed Fore a regent at the Texas College of Arts and Industries in Kingsville (now Texas A&M University at Kingsville), adjacent to the King Ranch. His served two six-year terms.

In the 1930s Floresville was in the Nineteenth Congressional District, which ran all the way from San Antonio south to the coast, including Floresville and the King Ranch. Richard M. Kleberg, was the congressman for that district, and Sam Fore was his enthusiastic supporter. When Kleberg appointed a young unknown, Lyndon B. Johnson, to his staff, he told Johnson to go by Floresville and visit Sam Fore before reporting for duty. Johnson made such an impression on Sam and Elma Fore that Sam told Elma next morning, as they watched him drive away: "That boy is going to be President of the U.S.A., and I'm going to be at his inauguration." This was the beginning of a close relationship between the small-town editor and the rising young politician.

The country was by now in the depths of the Great Depression, and Floresville and all South Texas was suffering. Fore worked through Johnson and Kleberg to get all possible relief measures from the burgeoning New Deal programs. He had become Democratic executive committeeman for the Nineteenth Senatorial District. His efforts in behalf of this constituency won him the appellation "Mr. Democrat of South Texas."

Sam and Elma Fore had two daughters. When the family attended the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia in 1936, Governor James Allred appointed one of the daughters Texas Sweetheart at the Convention. To the delight of all Texas Democrats, Marion Fore was chosen "Queen" of the entire convention. Sam Fore attended his last Democratic Convention at Atlantic City in 1964. He and Elma had operated the Chronicle Journal for a full half century. They were past seventy, and Sam's health was failing. They sold the paper on September 1, 1963, to Mr. and Mrs. Joe H. Fietsam.

Fore died at home in Floresville on December 24, 1966. President and Mrs. Johnson headed those who joined the Fores' neighbors at the Methodist church on December 26 to pay their last respects. He was survived by his wife, his two daughters, four grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Emily Lamon, Sam Fore, Jr., Community Newspaper Editor (Austin: Department of Journalism Development Program, University of Texas, 1966). Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin.

Maude Truitt Gilliland

Maude Truitt Gilliland, author, was born on the Capisallo Ranch in Hidalgo County, Texas, on December 21, 1904, the daughter of Alfred L. and Mary Christine Truitt. At the time of her birth, and throughout much of her early life, the remote area she knew as home was sparsely settled, limited in its access to the rest of the state, and the focus of frequent border disputes between Texans and Mexicans. Within a year of her birth her family moved to Rincón Ranch, a large ranch in Starr and Hidalgo counties where her father worked as foreman and manager. The family later moved to Mission, where Maude lived from 1911 to 1923. She remained in Mission until she married Grenade Don Gilliland. With him, and later their children, she lived in Pleasanton and at various sites throughout the Rio Grande valley.

Ranching and law enforcement-and their overlapping interests-were important influences in Maude Gilliland's life. The Texas Rangers used Rincón as a scouting headquarters in the South Texas area, and numerous other law-enforcement officers stopped at the ranch regularly. Maude Gilliland's family had close ties to these groups. Her grandfather, P. M. Truitt, served with John Coffee (Jack) Hays's Texas Rangers in the 1840s, and her father, in addition to working as a rancher, held a special ranger commission and worked in various other law-enforcement jobs in South Texas. G. D. Gilliland was a Texas Ranger and later a border patrol officer.

After raising her family, Maude Gilliland turned to chronicling her experiences in South Texas. Her first book, which she both wrote and illustrated, was Rincón (Remote Dwelling Place)-A Story of Life on a South Texas Ranch at the Turn of the Century (1964). It was praised for its accurate portrayal of the Rio Grande valley and ranch life in South Texas. In 1968 she wrote Horsebackers of the Brush Country-A Story of Texas Rangers and Mexican Liquor Smugglers. This work, covering the period 1920-33, provides a detailed historical account of border gunfights that erupted between state and federal law officials and Mexican horsebackers who attempted to smuggle liquor into Texas during prohibition. Her third book, published in 1977, was Wilson County Texas Rangers, 1837-1977. It relates the exploits of forty-four Texas Rangers from this south central Texas county and includes numerous ranger photographs never before published. In each of her books Gilliland expresses a laudatory and sympathetic view of law enforcers in the border area, crediting them with curbing the careers of notorious smugglers, bandits, and cattle rustlers.

Maude Gilliland remained in Pleasanton until 1979, when she and her husband moved to Cotulla. Preceded in death by her husband, she died in Cotulla in July 1989 and was buried in her husband's hometown of Fairview, Texas, in Wilson County. She was survived by two daughters and several grandchildren.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: "Southwestern Collection," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 81 (July 1977). Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin.

Benito Andres Jimenez

Benito Andres Jimenez, teacher, politician, and business and community leader, was born in Floresville, Texas, on November 30, 1902, one of seven children born to Josefina (Lopez) and Manuel Jesus Ximenez. B. A. Jimenez was a life- long resident of Floresville and attended Lodi Elementary School, comprised predominantly of Mexican-American students. Before seeking political office, he began using "Jimenez" as a surname to avoid basing his political career upon his father's achievements. Jimenez graduated from Floresville High School in 1920 and attended St. Louis College (now St. Mary's University) and Alamo City Commercial College in San Antonio, where he studied business administration. During his college studies Jimenez taught school from 1921 to 1922 in Canada Verde, a small community near Floresville. Jimenez was a member of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church and was active in many civic affairs. El Salón de la Agrupación Nacional, initially known as Club Independiente when it was founded in 1901, was a Mexican-American club that coordinated fiestas patrias. Jimenez served as president of El Salón from 1923 to 1948. In 1940 Jimenez was appointed associate member of the Advisory Board for Registrants in Wilson County in connection with the Selective Service Act. Additionally, he was elected to the board of directors of the Wilson County Tuberculosis Association in 1947 and named committee chairman of the Red Cross Fund Campaign in 1947 and 1948. He was also appointed to the Wilson County Advisory Committee for the State Education Board in 1948. Aside from his many civic contributions, Jimenez also co-owned Jimenez and Zuniga grocery store from 1928 to 1943.

Jimenez's bilingual abilities enabled him to accept an appointment by Judge Sam B. Carr of the Eighty-first Judicial District as official court interpreter, a position he held from 1940 to 1967. In 1948 Special Federal Judge William R. Smith, Jr., named Jimenez state interpreter for the United States Representative's election, in which Lyndon B. Johnson narrowly defeated incumbent candidate Coke R. Stevenson. The election was hotly contested and included charges of voting fraud. Jimenez's duties involved translating court testimony given by Mexican Americans who answered questions regarding voting procedures during the election. In 1942 Jimenez was elected to his first public office as school board president of the Lodi Common School District. After six years he relinquished this position but continued serving as the board's advisor until 1955, when the school district was consolidated with the Floresville Independent School District. In 1947 Jimenez was elected justice of the peace of Precinct 1 and served in this capacity for four years. In 1950 Jimenez was elected to the Wilson County Commissioner's Court. He held the office of county commissioner of Precinct 1, the largest precinct in Wilson County, until his death in 1967. He was opposed for reelection only once, in 1952, during his seventeen-year tenure.

In 1965 the American G.I. Forum and the League of United Latin American Citizens Council 254 named Jimenez Man of the Year for his public service. In 1967 the Floresville Chamber of Commerce selected Jimenez Citizen of the Year in recognition of his civic contributions. Jimenez married Andrea Gonzalez of Poth, Texas, in 1928. They had four daughters, all of whom became school teachers. Jimenez suffered a stroke in 1965, but continued working as county commissioner from his bedside. He died of a heart attack on August 26, 1967. He is buried in the Sacred Heart Catholic Cemetery in Floresville. Jimenez's legacy as a public servant continues as he was named in November 1993 to San Fernando Cathedral's Fifth Annual Roll Call of Honor, which recognizes individuals "who have earned distinction as pioneers, role models, advocates and inspirational leaders of the Hispanic community."

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Floresville Chronicle Journal, April 9, 1948. San Antonio Express-News, April 27, 1986. San Antonio News, December 28, 1965.

John Rhodes King

John Rhodes King, legislator, Texas Ranger, Confederate officer, and first mayor of Seguin, son of William and Rachel (Petty) King, was born in Stewart County, Tennessee, on March 24, 1816. He and his younger brother, Henry, joined a group of immigrants to Texas from Paris, Tennessee, in August 1837. The group crossed the Sabine River into Texas on September 13 and arrived in Gonzales on October 6. Finding prejudice in Gonzales against selling lots to new immigrants, King participated in forming a joint-stock company to purchase and survey land for a new town, named Seguin on February 25, 1839, in honor of Juan N. Seguín.

On March 16, 1839, King joined a newly raised ranger company as second sergeant to protect settlers from Indian raids. He served under the famed "Old Paint," Matthew Caldwell. After discharge six months later, he joined the Texas Auxiliary to help the Federalist forces in the Mexican civil war, who had promised the Texans recognition of their independence in exchange for furnishing 1,500 volunteers to the Federalist army. Upon returning to San Antonio on March 18, 1840, King joined a company of minute men to protect the area from the Indians. During the Mexican Invasions of 1842, he was named lieutenant under Capt. John Coffee (Jack) Hays for the Texas forces in San Antonio, which despite defense was captured by the Mexican army on September 11. Reinforcements arrived, and a number of battles ensued, with the Mexicans retreating to Mexico on October 1.

In June 1846, after the outbreak of the Mexican War, King joined a company of Col. John Hays's First Texas Regiment of Mounted Troops under Gen. Zachary Taylor. Back in Seguin in 1849, King served as deputy county clerk for Guadalupe County. On November 5, 1850, he was elected first lieutenant of a company of Texas Rangers formed to protect the state from Indian incursions. He returned to Seguin the following year, opened a grocery store, and married Ruth Eliza Wheeler.

An act incorporating Seguin was approved by the legislature on February 7, 1853, and in March, King was elected first mayor of the town. He organized several Masonic lodges dedicated to encouraging education and regulating the use of liquor. In June 1855, he was elected to the Sixth Legislature and appointed to the committees on Public Lands, Indian Affairs, Military Affairs, and Claims and Accounts. In the fall of 1859 he moved to Cibolo Creek in Eastern Bexar County. He was active in the movement to create Wilson County, and carried the petition to Austin.

Following the Secession Convention in Austin on January 28, 1861, Capt. John R. King joined the staff of Col. Henry McCullough, commander of the Texas Mounted Riflemen, C.S.A., and served in Texas and Arkansas. After resigning due to illness in December 1862, he moved first to Seguin and then to his ranch on Cibolo Creek in Wilson County, where he operated a steam sawmill, gristmill, and cotton gin. On February 15, 1876, King was elected a county commissioner, and in 1877 Stockdale was laid out as a townsite on land partially belonging to him. On November 7, 1882, he was elected to the Eighteenth Legislature, where he served on the committees on Stock and Stockraising, Military Affairs, and Indian Affairs, and as a member of a joint House-Senate committee to report on the condition of the Governor's Mansion. After being reelected in 1884, he served on the committees on State Affairs, Judicial Districts, Counties and County Boundaries, Private Land Claims and Public Roads, and Bridges and Ferries. After retiring from public life in 1886, he chaired the building committee for the construction of the Stockdale Methodist Church on land that he and his brother- in-law had donated. John R. King died on May 17, 1898, and is buried in Stockdale Cemetery.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Betty Sue Bird, The Life and Times of John Rhodes King (M.S. thesis, Texas A & I University, 1970). John Rhodes King Papers, Texas State Archives, Austin.

Leonidas Socrates Lawhon

Leonidas Socrates Lawhon, also referred to Leonardus and S. S. Lawhorn, attorney and state representative, was born in Georgia on July 16, 1835, the son of Luther Allen and Martha Ann (Hardman) Lawhon. Lawhon immigrated to Texas in the mid-1850s, settling in Helena, Karnes County, and practicing law. He later served as a judge in this county. On February 27, 1859, he married a woman listed as Adrianna E. This couple had three sons and one daughter. One of the sons, Luther, may have been the L. L. Lawhorn who was senator for District Twenty-two in the Twenty-third Texas Legislature. Lawhon himself was a leading member of the community and in 1873 won election as representative for District Twenty-four - comprised of Calhoun, Jackson, Victoria, Refugio, San Patricio, Bee, Goliad, DeWitt, Karnes, Live Oak, and Aransas counties - to the Fourteenth Texas Legislature. Following this turn at state office, Lawhon returned to Karnes County and remained here until about 1880 when he relocated to Floresville, Wilson County. He died in Gonzales County on August 10, 1902.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Hedwig K. Didear, A History of Karnes County and Old Helena (Austin: Jenkins, 1969). Members of the Legislature of the State of Texas from 1846 to 1939 (Austin: Texas Legislature, 1939).

Josefina Lopez de Ximenes

Josefina López de Ximenes, farmer and the first Mexican-American teacher in Wilson County, was born in Panna Maria, Texas, on April 25, 1865, to Benito and Caroline Opiela López. Her parents were immigrants from Mexico and Poland, respectively, and her father was a businessman in San Antonio and later in Panna Maria. Josefina attended area Catholic schools, where she was an excellent student. She graduated from the Floresville Academy and then taught there until her marriage in November 1893 to Manuel J. Ximenez, a deputy sheriff and United States deputy marshal in Wilson County. The couple had seven children. Josefina López de Ximenes became a teacher in Wilson County.

She was widowed in 1911 but was apparently able to provide for her family, probably as a farmer. She also ensured that they attend school, a difficult challenge for Texas Mexicans at that time. She successfully influenced them with her love of learning, for five of her children pursued teaching careers. She also encouraged the educational goals of her granddaughters, some of whom she raised. Evangelina Bazan, one of these, has recalled that López de Ximenes taught her to read in English and Spanish and urged her to attend college when she was still a child. Twenty-six descendants became teachers. Josefina López de Ximenes died on March 1, 1961, and was buried at Sacred Heart Cemetery in Floresville. In 1986 her story became part of an exhibit called "Tejana Heroines: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow," sponsored by Hispanas Unidas in San Antonio.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: San Antonio Express News, April 27, 1986. Louise Stadler, ed., Wilson County History (Dallas: Taylor, 1990).

William Owen Murray

Hon. William Owen Murray. Many years of conscientious public service have made the name of Senator William Owen Murray one of the most familiar in public life of Texas.' Mr. Murray is now chairman of the state prison commission, having been appointed and taking office in September, 1913. This is an office involving the most taxing and onerous duties, and their performance in an intelligence and disinterested manner is one of the highest contributions which any citizen can render to his home state. Senator Murray succeeded Chairman Cabbell. Mr. Murray has been identified with public affairs in Texas for many years, and came to Huntsville from Floresville, Wilson county, where his home has been since October 20, 1880.

William Owen Murray was born in Morgan county, Missouri, October 22, 1857, and was two years of age when the family moved to Texas in 1859. He grew up in Wilson county, received a common school education and continued the traditions of the family as a farming class. He began his business career as a clerk in LaVernia in Wilson county, then entered the county clerk 's office in Floresville, and after three years went into business as a merchant there and continued therein until 1907. In the meantime he had branched out and established a general mercantile house in Fairview, and another business in Runge, Carnes County, Texas. As his interests expanded he invested in farms, ranches and banks, and among other affairs is a stockholder and director in the First National Bank of Floresville, and president of the Floresville Oil and Manufacturing Company.

However, it is with his political career that this sketch is most concerned, and his public service has been one of much eventfulness and prominence. Soon after acquiring the franchise, he became interested in practical politics, and the first state convention he attended enrolled him as one of its youngest delegates. He helped to nominate Governors Sayres, Lanham, and Colquitt. His first official place was as alderman at Floresville, and in 1898 he represented his district in the Twenty-Sixth Legislature, and was vice chairman and then chairman of the appropriation committee of the house. He continued to sit in the lower house of the legislature during the twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh, twenty-eight, twenty-ninth, and he was then elected to the senate and served in the thirtieth, thirty-first, thirty-second, and thirty-third senates, until he resigned in August, 1913. His purpose in going to the legislature was to see that the school land legislation was properly enacted. He secured the passage of the Murray bill through the house in the twenty- eighth session, but the bill did not become a law until the twenty-ninth legislature. In the senate he represented the twenty-second district, embracing thirteen counties. His special work in the senate was to defeat iniquituous and trivial legislation, and he made a record in that capacity. He served as chairman of the committee on land and land office and in many ways made himself a leader of Austin and as one of the ablest of the states ' legislators. Senator Murray left the senate with the expectation of being entirely rid of politics, but consented to serve on the state prison commission solely from a conscientious sense of public duty and as a compliment to his friend Governor Colquitt.

Senator Murray is a son of Asa W. Murray. The father, who was born in 1832 in Wilmington, North Carolina, was the son of Owen Murray, a planter. The Murrays in South Carolina were of the slave-holding class, were of Scotch stock, and some of the colonial ancestors were identified with the famous Mecklenburg declaration of independence. Asa W. Murray began his career as a merchant in Morgan county. Missouri, and on moving to Texas engaged in farming in Wilson county. Later he went into the Confederate army as a private, and was in the Trans-Mississippi Department throughout the war, and escaped without wounds or capture. Following his return from the army he took up farming, and was elected and served as sheriff and collector of his county, and on leaving office established a furniture store at Floresville, where he spent the remaining years of his active life. Mr. Asa W. Murray married Miss Annie Mobley, a daughter of William Mobley, who was an early settler in Morgan county, and a Baptist minister. Mrs. Murray, who died in Floresville in 1890, had children as follows: Senator W. O. ; James S.. of Wilson county; Mrs. Annie Boehmer of Eagle Pass; Mrs. Sue Ezell of Floresville ; Albert C. of Lordburg, New Mexico ; Nettie, wife of O. A. McCracken of Floresville ; Asa B., of Floresville.

The Murray family have always been identified with the Presbyterian church. Senator Murray is affiliated with the Lodge and Chapter of the Masonic Order and with the Knights of Pythias. He was married in Floresville, October 10, 1883, to Miss Ella Peacock, one of four daughters of Thomas and Salima (Steele) Peacock, who came from Shelby county, Tennessee. The children of Senator Murray are: Mattie S., Ida May, William O., Jr., and DeWitt. Mattie and Ida May graduating from the University two and three years ago, Wm. O., Jr., graduates in June of this year and DeWitt will graduate June, 1915.

Source: A history of Texas and Texans, Vol. IV by Francis W. Johnson. Chicago: The American Historical Society, 1914.

William Owen Murray

William Owen Murray, lawyer and judge, son of William O. and Ella (Peacock) Murray, was born on April 11, 1890, in Floresville, Texas. He began his legal and political career in Wilson County, where he was elected county judge in 1914, just before graduating from the University of Texas law school. He had previously attended West Texas Military Academy in San Antonio.

Murray was in public office for more than fifty years, with only a two-year (1917-19) interruption for World War Iqv service as a field artillery captain in the Thirty-sixth Division.qv He was elected district attorney of the Eighty- first Judicial District in 1920 and district judge in 1926. In 1932 he was elected to the Fourth Court of Civil Appeals at San Antonio, where he served continuously for thirty-three years, part of the time as chief justice. During his long career as an appellate judge, he wrote 1,564 opinions, plus fifty-six dissenting and concurring opinions. One of his best-known decisions (1959) favored the right of cities in dry counties to decide by election whether to remain dry-the right of "local option" (see PROHIBITION MOVEMENT).

Murray was married to Louise Green; they had five children. He was a Mason and a Presbyterian. He died on February 18, 1974, in San Antonio and was buried in Sunset Memorial Park in that city.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: San Antonio Express, February 19, 1974. Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin.

Joseph Benjamin Polley

Joseph Benjamin Polley, Confederate soldier and writer, was born near Bailey's Prairie, Brazoria County, Texas, on October 27, 1840, the sixth of eleven children of Joseph Henry and Mary (Bailey) Polley. Joseph Henry Polley, a native of New York, had first come to Texas with Moses Austin in 1819 and returned with Stephen F. Austin in 1821 as one of the Old Three Hundred colonists. In 1847 the family moved to a farm on Cibolo Creek about thirty miles east of San Antonio. In 1861 Polley graduated from Florence Wesleyan University at Florence, Alabama, and returned to Texas to enlist in Company F of the Fourth Texas Infantry, one of the regiments of the famed Hood's Texas Brigade of the Army of Northern Virginia. Polley served through almost all of the major battles of the brigade, received a head wound at the battle of Gaines Mills in 1862, and lost his right foot at the battle of Darbytown Road near Richmond on October 7, 1864.

After returning to Texas at the end of the war, he read law and was admitted to the bar in 1868 but did not establish a practice until 1876, when he moved to Floresville. He served as Wilson county attorney in 1877 and 1878 and as a member of the Sixteenth Legislature in 1879. In 1866 he married Mattie LeGette; the couple had four children. Polley was elected commander of the Texas Division of the United Confederate Veterans. He died in Floresville on February 2, 1918.

His memoir of his army service, Hood's Texas Brigade (1910), is considered one of the classics of Civil War literature. Charles W. Ramsdell noted that "the author's happy style has made the book very readable, very unlike the great bulk of regimental and brigade histories." Polley's first Civil War book, A Soldier's Letters to Charming Nellie (1908), while informative and entertaining, has been suspected to be a post-war fabrication rather than the genuine Civil War letter cycle which it is represented to be. Polley was also a frequent contributor to Confederate Veteran.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: John Henry Brown, Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas (Austin: Daniell, 1880; reprod., Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1978).

Claiborne Rector

Claiborne Rector, early settler and soldier in the Texas Revolution, was born in Alabama on September 28, 1802. He moved to Texas in January 1830 and settled in the area of present Brazoria County. On March 1, 1836, he enlisted in David Murphree's company, Second Regiment, of Sam Houston's army; he participated in the battle of San Jacinto. Rector served in Byrd Lockhart's spy company in July 1836 and remained in the Texas army until September 1 of that year. He settled in what is now Wilson County by 1840 and received a 4,000-acre patent of land in December 1845. Rector represented Wilson County at the Secession Convention in 1861. He was captain of the Cibolo Guards Light Infantry in the Texas State Troops during the Civil War. Rector married twice and had three children. He died on March 23, 1873, and was buried in the Concrete Cemetery, Guadalupe County, Texas.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sam Houston Dixon and Louis Wiltz Kemp, The Heroes of San Jacinto (Houston: Anson Jones, 1932). Deed L. Vest, A Century of Light: The History of Brahan Lodge No. 226, A.F. & A.M., La Vernia, Texas, 1858-1959 (Fort Worth: Masonic Home and School, 1959).

Seguin, Juan Nepomuceno

Juan Seguin, political and military figure of the Texas Revolution and Republic of Texas, was born in San Antonio on October 27, 1806, the elder of two sons of Juan Jose' Maria Erasmo Seguin and Maria Josefa Becerra. Although he had little formal schooling, Juan was encouraged by his father to read and write, and he appears to have taken some interest in music. At age nineteen he married Maria Gertrudis Flores de Abrego, a member of one of San Antonio's most important ranching families. They had ten children, among whom Santiago was a mayor of Nuevo Laredo and Juan, Jr., was an officer in the Mexican military in the 1860s and 1870s. Seguin began his long career of public service at an early age. He helped his mother run his father's post office while the latter served in Congress in 1823-24. Seguin's election as alderman in December 1828 demonstrated his great potential. He subsequently served on various electoral boards before being elected alcalde in December 1833. He acted for most of 1834 as political chief of the Department of Bexar, after the previous chief became ill and retired.

Seguin's military career began in 1835. In the spring he responded to the Federalist state governor's call for support against the Centralist opposition by leading a militia company to Monclova. After the battle of Gonzales in October 1835, Stephen F. Austin granted a captain's commission to Seguin, who raised a company of thirty-seven. His company was involved in the fall of 1835 in scouting and supply operations for the revolutionary army, and on December 5 it participated in the assault on Gen. Martin Perfecto de Cos's army at San Antonio. Seguin entered the Alamo with the other Texan military when Antonio Lapez de Santa Anna's army arrived, but was sent out as a courier. Upon reaching Gonzales he organized a company that functioned as the rear guard of Sam Houston's army, was the only Tejano unit to fight at the battle of San Jacinto, and afterward observed the Mexican army's retreat. Seguin accepted the Mexican surrender of San Antonio on June 4, 1836, and served as the city's military commander through the fall of 1837; during this time he directed burial services for the remains of the Alamo dead. He resigned his commission upon election to the Texas Senate at the end of the year.

Seguin, the only Mexican Texan in the Senate of the republic, served in the Second, Third, and Fourth Congress. He served on the Committee of Claims and Accounts and, despite his lack of English, was chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs. Among his legislative initiatives were efforts to have the laws of the new republic printed in Spanish. In the spring of 1840 he resigned his Senate seat to assist Gen. Antonio Canales, a Federalist, in an abortive campaign against the Centralists, but upon his return to San Antonio at the end of the year he found himself selected mayor. In this office Seguin became embroiled in growing hostilities between Anglos and Mexican Texans. He faced personal problems as well. He had gained the enmity of some residents by speculating in land. He financed his expedition in support of Canales by mortgaging property and undertook a smuggling venture in order to pay off the debt. Although upon his return from Mexico he came under suspicion of having betrayed the failed Texan Santa Fe expedition, he still managed to be reelected mayor at the end of 1841. His continuing conflicts with Anglo squatters on city property, combined with his business correspondence with Mexico, incriminated him in Gen. Rafael Velasquez's invasion of San Antonio in March 1842. In fear for his safety, Seguin resigned as mayor on April 18, 1842, and shortly thereafter fled to Mexico with his family.

He spent six years in Mexico and then attempted to reestablish himself in Texas. While living in Mexico he participated, according to him under duress, in Gen. Adrian Woll's invasion of Texas in September 1842. Afterward his company served as a frontier defense unit, protecting the Rio Grande crossings and fighting Indians. During the Mexican War his company saw action against United States forces. At the end of the war he decided to return to Texas despite the consequences. He settled on land adjacent to his father's ranch in what is now Wilson County. During the 1850s he became involved in local politics and served as a Bexar County constable and an election-precinct chairman. His business dealings took him back to Mexico on occasion, and at the end of the 1860s, after a brief tenure as Wilson county judge, Seguin retired to Nuevo Laredo, where his son Santiago had established himself. He died there on August 27, 1890. His remains were returned to Texas in 1974 and buried at Seguin, the town named in his honor, during ceremonies on July 4, 1976.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Jesus F. de la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered: The Memoirs and Selected Correspondence of Juan N. Seguin (Austin: State House Press, 1991).

James Charles Wilson

James Charles Wilson, senator, was born in Yorkshire, England, on August 24, 1816. He attended Oxford University before he moved to Texas in 1837. He joined Charles K. Reese's company for the Somervell expedition in 1842 and became a private in Company E on the Mier expedition under William S. Fisher. Captured with that expedition, he refused the proffered help of the British government on the grounds that he was an English citizen and remained in prison until he managed to escape on July 30, 1843. Back in Texas he lived in Brazoria, where he became district clerk on March 1, 1845. He represented Calhoun, Jackson, Matagorda, and Wharton counties in the House of the Third Legislature. From November 1851 to February 1852 he was a member of the Fourth Legislature and served again in the special session of the Fourth Legislature to February 7, 1853. In 1856 Wilson was elected commissioner of the court of claims. In addition to his legal career he was an itinerant minister in the Methodist Church. Wilson County, established in 1860, was named for him. Wilson died at Gonzales on February 7, 1861, and was buried in the Askey Cemetery. In 1936 he was reinterred in the State Cemetery in Austin.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Zachary T. Fulmore, History and Geography of Texas As Told in County Names (Austin: Steck, 1915; facsimile, 1935). Hobart Huson, District Judges of Refugio County (Refugio, Texas: Refugio Timely Remarks, 1941). Members of the Legislature of the State of Texas from 1846 to 1939 (Austin: Texas Legislature, 1939).

William Lee Wright

William Lee (Will) Wright, famed captain of the Texas Rangers and sheriff of Wilson County, son of L. B. Wright and Ann Tumlinson, was born in Lockhart, Texas, on February 19, 1868. He moved to DeWitt County with his family; later he moved to Wilson County. Wright participated in the transition of the Texas Rangers from their horseback era in the early 1900s to the modern rangers of the Texas Department of Public Safety after 1935. Four rangers-the "Big Four"-had an enormous impact on this change: M. T. (Lone Wolf) Gonzaullas, F. A. (Frank) Hamer, Thomas R. Hickman, and Wright. Wright's belief that there should be less political interference and patronage in ranger affairs became one of the axioms of the new order. A talkative, bespectacled man who resembled Theodore Roosevelt, Wright took part in ranger operations in an intermittent way for nearly four decades. In his early life he became a cowboy on the Eckhardt Ranch in DeWitt County and the Rutledge Ranch in Karnes County. He served as a justice of the peace and in 1892 as a deputy sheriff of Wilson County. Then in 1898 Wright joined the Texas Rangers and ultimately became part of the company commanded by John M. Rogers. In 1902 he left the rangers and was elected sheriff of Wilson County. He was later elected president of the Texas Sheriffs' Association. He served in this post for fifteen years. In 1917 Governor William P. Hobby appointed Wright a ranger captain. He served in this capacity, except for a period of time between 1925 and 1927, until the end of the administration of Governor Ross S. Sterling in the early 1930s. Wright, called el capitán diablo (the devil captain), and the rangers under his command guarded the border during World War I, intervened in the railroad strikes of 1922, chased liquor smugglers, and brought law and order to such oil boom towns as Wink. Wright rejoined the rangers in 1935, served during the era of the Department of Public Safety, and left the service in 1939. So many relatives of Wright joined the Texas Rangers that they came be called, as one writer noted, "The Wright Family Rangers." Wright married Mary Ann (Molly) Brown in 1892; they had one daughter and six sons, two of whom were Texas Rangers. Milam H. Wright, a brother, also became a well-known ranger. Will Wright died on March 7, 1942, in Floresville.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Ben H. Procter, Just One Riot: Episodes of Texas Rangers in the 20th Century (Austin: Eakin Press, 1991). William Warren Sterling, Trails and Trials of a Texas Ranger (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968). Walter Prescott Webb Papers, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. Walter Prescott Webb, The Texas Rangers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1935; rpt., Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982).

Manuel Jesus Ximenez

Manuel Jesus Ximenez, Wilson County sheriff, son of Esteban Ximenez and Theresa Haby G'sell de la Garza, was born in Graytown, Texas, on December 25, 1857. At an early age he moved to Lodi, one of the oldest settlements in Wilson County. His early formal education was limited, and he was mostly self-educated. His public career began around 1880. Ximenez served as tax assessor and collector, county clerk, deputy sheriff, and United States marshal in Wilson County. In 1890, 1892, and 1898 he was elected sheriff of Wilson County. Ximenez was a sheriff cut in the traditional pattern of most country lawmen, but he was ahead of his time when it came to moral and social issues. Before being elected sheriff he had labored for a more humane jail for the prisoners, and by the end of 1887 the new jail was completed. He brought reform to the area when he abolished the practice of lynching in Wilson County, and he ensured continuity of his philosophy in the department by surrounding himself with competent people whom he trained and advised. At the turn of the century Ximenez joined in the capture of Gregorio Cortez Lira for the murder of sheriffs from Karnes and Gonzales counties. In 1898 he assisted Theodore Roosevelt in recruiting and training the First United States Volunteer Cavalry (the Rough Riders) in the San Antonio area prior to Roosevelt's departure to Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Years later Ximenez was a guest of President Roosevelt at the White House. As a civic leader, Ximenez contributed to the Floresville Academy and also succeeded in having the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway pass through Floresville. Ximenez's first marriage was to Serafina Jacoba Olivares; they had six children. After Serafina's death, he married Josefina O. Lopez on November 3, 1893; they had two sons and four daughters. Ximenez died on January 11, 1911, and was buried at the Sacred Heart Catholic Cemetery in Floresville.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Arnoldo De León, The Tejano Community, 1836-1900 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982). San Antonio Light, January 15, 1911. Louise Stadler, ed., Wilson County History (Dallas: Taylor, 1990).
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