There is a story, old enough that Davy Crockett was sometimes given the credit, about a raccoon that looked down from a tree, saw who was holding the rifle, and said, "Don't shoot, I'll come down." In the Army's telling, the man with the rifle was Captain Martin Scott of the 5th Infantry. The coon knew better than to argue.
Bennington
Martin Scott was born in January 1788 on a poor farm at Bennington, Vermont, the son of Phineas Scott, one of the town's first settlers. The sources split on the day, the 17th or the 18th. By the age of 12 he was the best shot in the neighborhood and had killed his first bear. He had almost no schooling. In 1814, in the last year of the war with Britain, a commission as an ensign arrived for him unasked, and he walked off the farm to join his company at Sackets Harbor, New York.
He was discharged in 1815, came back in 1818 as a lieutenant of the Regiment of Riflemen, and was sent up the Missouri. The other officers did not like him. He did not drink, did not gamble, did not smoke and did not spend, and he sent most of his pay home to his mother and sister. They baited him into a duel with a consumptive Virginian named Daniel Keith who was nearly as good a shot as he was. Keith announced he would shoot the Yankee in the guts. Scott said he would hit Keith at the first button of his coat. Both men fired, both hit exactly where they said, and both, improbably, lived. Scott was court-martialed in October 1819 and kept his commission.
The best shot in the service
He transferred to the 5th Infantry in 1821, made captain in 1828, and spent the next 18 years at the cold posts of the upper Mississippi and the Great Lakes, Fort Snelling, Fort Howard, Fort Mackinac, hunting with a pack of 2 dozen dogs and a black horse. A young lieutenant named Randolph Marcy watched him at Fort Howard in 1833 pin a playing card to a tree 75 yards off, load and fire a muzzleloader 3 times in a minute and 20 seconds, and put all 3 balls through a space the size of a dime. Marcy dug the balls out of the tree to prove it. Scott was barred from turkey shoots as a matter of fairness. In 1837 he signed the Treaty of St. Peters with the Ojibwe as the Army's witness; in 1842 he commanded Fort Mackinac. In 1840 or 1841, past 50, he married Lavinia McCracken, a painter and poet from Rochester.
Mexico
The war with Mexico gave the frontier captain the recognition 2 decades of garrison duty had not. He fought at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma in May 1846 and was breveted major; he was made a full major on June 29, 1846, and breveted lieutenant colonel for Monterrey that September. He went on to Vera Cruz and Churubusco under Winfield Scott, no relation.
At Molino del Rey on September 8, 1847, he was commanding the 5th Infantry in a frontal assault on a stone mill under heavy fire. Most of the officers were down behind whatever cover there was. Scott stood. A captain of the 6th Infantry, William Hoffman, told him to get down. The reply has come down in 2 versions, "The ball was never molded to kill Martin Scott," or "Martin Scott never skulks," and a few minutes later a ball came through his chest. He put his cap under his head, handed Hoffman his purse and his watch for his wife, and died.
His body came home in February 1848 and was buried at Bennington on March 2 with Masonic honors. The stone says no braver or better officer fell in the Mexican War. Lavinia drowned in 1854 when the steamer Arctic went down off Newfoundland.
The fort
In December 1849 the Army renamed its year-old post on Barons Creek outside Fredericksburg for him. Fort Martin Scott lasted 5 years as a fort and is now a Texas state historic site. Scott had marched through South Texas with Taylor's army in 1846, but he never saw the place that carries his name, and his name is also on the plaque of Mexican War dead in the Texas Capitol.
Sources: Handbook of Texas, Fort Martin Scott; Randolph B. Marcy, "Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border" (Harper, 1866); Emerging Civil War, "The 'Mythical' Martin Scott" (2017), drawing on Marcy and the Army registers; Francis B. Heitman, "Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army" (1903); City of Fredericksburg, "Martin Scott the Man"; Bennington Museum, Martin Scott collection; Find a Grave, Lt. Col. Martin Scott, Bennington.