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Visit the sites of Texas Ranger gunfights

Texas Ranger historian Mike Cox is the author of Gunfights & Sites in Texas Ranger History (History Press, $21.99 paperback).

“This book is the first of its kind,” he explains, “a guide to historic sites across the state with a Ranger connection — places where battles with Indians, Mexican soldiers or bandits took place or where gunfights with outlaws (and at least once with another ranger) went down, as well as surviving structures, even some still-visible bullet holes.”

The book, arranged by region and county, also includes a number of graves, monuments, statues, and markers as well as some significant trees.

“Sully,” the popular statue of Lawrence Sullivan Ross on the Texas A&M campus, is included. Before Ross was president of A&M, he was a ranger captain and then governor. Students hoping for good luck on exams often leave a penny with Sully. Ross, of course, is memorialized in Alpine where a whole university is named for him — Sul Ross State University.

Some other West Texas sites included are the Fence Cutter War in Brownwood, the Texas Ranger Motel in Santa Anna, a shootout with John Wesley Hardin in Comanche, the Santa Claus Bank Robbery in Cisco, the grave in Abilene of an 1870s ranger named Pleasant White, and a gunfight at the Nip and Tuck Saloon in Colorado City.

A few others around the state: the statue of Ranger Frank Hamer in Navasota, Fort Parker in Groesbeck, Spindletop boomtown in Beaumont where rangers were called in, memorials to rangers Joseph Tivy and Charles Schreiner in Kerrville, the Hoo-Doo War in Mason, and several old calabooses including Menard and Mason.

Cox notes that twenty-eight of Texas’s 254 counties are named for men who served as Texas Rangers. They are Baylor, Bell, Brooks, Burleson, Caldwell, Callahan, Coleman, Coryell, Deaf Smith, Denton, Duval,  Eastland, Erath, Gillespie, Hardeman, Hays, Karnes, Kerr, Kimble, Johnson, McCulloch, Parker, Robertson, Scurry, Sutton, Walker, Williamson, and Young.

Alamo legend:  Joe, the Slave Who Became an Alamo Legend by Ron J. Jackson Jr. and Lee Spencer White (University of Oklahoma Press, $29.95 hardcover) tells the story of the twenty-year-old slave who survived the Alamo. Jackson, a journalist, and White, a preservationist, spent seventeen years uncovering and writing Joe’s story.

“His history was cloaked in mystery,” they write in the book’s preface, “a puzzle we were determined to solve.”

Their quest would take them to five states and into Mexico as they pursued “the adventure of a lifetime as we walked in Joe’s footsteps.”

Joe not only survived the Alamo, they write, but he also “gave the clearest and most complete account of the final assault on the Alamo in the crucial days following the battle.” Much of what is known about the fall of the Alamo is from Joe’s testimony to Texas revolutionary leaders.

Singer-songwriter and Alamo aficionado Phil Collins wrote the book’s foreword.

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Glenn Dromgoole, is co-author, with Carlton Stowers, of 101 Essential Texas Books Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.

>> Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Lit

Houston Writers Guild launches Kickstarter with Dec. 3 goal

The Houston Writers Guild has launched a Kickstarter campagin to support establishment of the HWG Press, an internal publishing press that works to bring undiscovered authors’ works to the public.

Thr group hopes to reach its fundraising goal to provide the opportunity to produce a series of genre and theme-bases anthologies to be published biannually. These funds will not only finance the production of these books, but also assist in the promotion and marketing needed to publicize these authors’ contributions while promoting literacy.

The guild hopes to reach its $2,000 goal by Dec. 3, 2015. Learn more at

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1619951127/hwg-press-waves-series

The Houston Writers Guild is a community of writers of all skill levels striving to improve their craft and career through education, workshops, conferences and webinars. www.houstonwritersguild.org

(From organization’s press release)