The Journal · People

The people in our stories

The Rangers, county bosses, storekeepers and ranch families who turn up in the Journal, each with a page of their own: who they were, what they did, and the stories they appear in.

Bill Mason

1897 to 1949

The Alice radio commentator who named a deputy sheriff's dance hall on the air and was shot dead by the deputy the next day.

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Buffalo Hump

1800 to 1870

The Penateka war chief who burned Linnville in 1840, signed the Meusebach treaty on the San Saba in 1847, and ended his life trying to farm.

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Charles Goodnight

1836 to 1929

The scout who found the trail to the Pease River camp in 1860, then blazed a cattle trail, invented the chuck wagon and put the first ranch in the Panhandle.

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Coke Stevenson

1888 to 1975

The Hill Country freighter who taught himself law by campfire, became governor, and lost the United States Senate by 87 votes to Box 13.

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Cynthia Ann Parker

1824 to 1870

Taken by Comanches at 9, taken back by Rangers at about 34, and never at home again; the mother of Quanah Parker.

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Frank Hamer

1884 to 1955

Texas Ranger across 2 careers: the border sergeant of 1915 to 1918, and the retired captain the state sent after Bonnie and Clyde in 1934.

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George Parr

1901 to 1975

The Duke of Duval, who inherited his father's county, went to prison, got a presidential pardon, delivered Box 13 to Lyndon Johnson, and shot himself in a Chrysler at the edge of a pasture.

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Ira Aten

1862 to 1953

The small, stubborn Texas Ranger who ran down the Braeutigam killers at Fredericksburg, booby-trapped fences with dynamite, and lived long enough to help build the Imperial Valley.

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Johann Wolfgang Braeutigam

1829 to 1884

The Fredericksburg settler who bought a dead Army fort, turned it into the happiest place in Gillespie County, and was shot dead there over an almost empty till.

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June Peak

1845 to 1934

The former Dallas city marshal whose special Ranger company chased Sam Bass across North Texas, was held at Dallas so Jim Murphy could find it, and broke the gang at Salt Creek.

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Lyndon Johnson

1908 to 1973

The 36th president, who appears in our stories twice: as a 10 year old whose father walked Canales to the hearings, and as the man Box 13 sent to the Senate.

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Martin Scott

1788 to 1847

The Vermont bear hunter who became the best rifle shot in the United States Army, would not duck at Molino del Rey, and got a Texas fort named for him that he never saw.

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Murdo Mackenzie

1850 to 1939

The Scot who ran the Matador's million and a half acres from Colorado for 26 years and made it the best managed big ranch in the West.

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Quanah Parker

1845 to 1911

The last war chief of the Quahadi Comanche, son of a captive Texas girl, who surrendered in 1875 and spent the next 36 years becoming the most powerful Indian in Oklahoma.

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Robert Runyon

1881 to 1968

The Brownsville studio photographer who sold the 1915 Ranger postcards, then ran the city and catalogued its plants.

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Stephen F. Austin

1793 to 1836

The colonizer called the Father of Texas, whose 1829 map, published by Henry S. Tanner in 1830, put a silver mine near the San Saba and helped make a failed Spanish prospect a lost mine.

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