Texas Ranger N. O. Reynolds, the Intrepid
Texas Ranger N. O. Reynolds, the Intrepid
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| ISBN-13: | 9781574415858 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of North Texas Press |
| Publication date: | 08/15/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 37 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
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Texas Ranger N. O. Reynolds
The Intrepid
By Chuck Parsons, Donaly E. Brice
University of North Texas Press
Copyright © 2014 Chuck Parsons and Donaly BriceAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-57441-585-8
CHAPTER 1
CONTINUING THE WARRIOR TRADITION
"Private in Company B, 147th Illinois Volunteer Infantry."
—Orcelus Reynolds
Moonlight rays fell on the sentinel's Winchester, creating glimmers of light in the camp of the sleeping men. A young Texas Ranger paced the ground nervously, realizing the urgency of his guard. He had to protect the horses and the other Rangers, but he also had to prevent the mobs from taking the prisoner ... and more importantly prevent him from escaping. John Wesley Hardin was the prisoner guarded so closely, the man-killer for whose capture Rangers John Armstrong and Jack Duncan earned a reward of $4,000. Hardin had been the most wanted man in Texas, but now he was a prisoner in the camp of Lieutenant N. O. Reynolds. It was abundant glory for the Rangers, but what if Hardin should escape? What if he was mobbed by friends of his victims? Who would pay for the carelessness?
Texas Ranger Lt. N. O. Reynolds, known as the "Intrepid" by fellow Ranger James Buchanan Gillett and history, is not among the better known of the nineteenth-century lawmen. No other biographies have appeared before, and the few articles discussing his most noted exploits reveal him only in the reflected light of the outlaws he pursued and captured. During his lifetime, however, especially during the 1870s and 1880s, he was widely recognized as an intrepid lawman. He had risen steadily on the ladder of law enforcement, beginning as a jail guard, then serving as a sergeant in the Frontier Battalion of the Texas Rangers, then rising to the rank of Lieutenant Commanding of Company E. Later he was city marshal of Lampasas and then sheriff of Lampasas County. His experiences were extensive, and during his career he earned the respect of countless Texans, the lawless and the law-abiding alike.
N. O. Reynolds never attempted to enhance his legacy or to even seek publicity. On the contrary, the man generally known as Major Reynolds, or simply "Mage," intentionally clouded his beginnings. Even though he avoided the fame that some other Rangers eagerly sought, his actions in reducing the number of outlaws established his reputation for generations to come. He earned glory in Texas and the nickname "The Intrepid" for his resolute fearlessness, his fortitude and "true grit," but his roots reached back to the cradle of American Independence, Pennsylvania. He could claim a Revolutionary soldier among his forebears.
Although his career as a Ranger can be traced fairly completely, his early years remain elusive. The standard Texas certificate of death reveals he was born in Pennsylvania on November 21, 1846, the son of Hiram Gillett and Betsy D. Taylor Reynolds. His widow, Irene Temperance Nevill Reynolds, was the source of this information.
However, Reynolds himself wanted his companions to believe he was a southerner, not a "Yankee," in spite of having fought for the "Yankee" cause during the American Civil War. When joining the Frontier Battalion in 1874 he provided information differing from what his widow gave for the official record. The May 1874 Company D muster roll shows Reynolds as being twenty-five years of age, suggesting a birth year of 1849. As for birthplace, he gave Bradford County, Missouri. The muster roll of Company E prepared by Lieutenant Reynolds himself in September 1877, on the other hand, shows him as being twenty-nine years old, suggesting a birth year of 1848, and again the birthplace is listed as Missouri. One year later Reynolds was lieutenant commander of Company E. He is shown to be thirty years of age, suggesting a birth year of 1847, and again his birthplace is given as Missouri.
Three years later, in 1880, Reynolds was a resident of Hays County, Texas, and the census shows him again as a native of Missouri. For the first time, we have information on his parents' birthplaces. His father's birthplace is given as Kentucky and his mother's as Pennsylvania. Here he gave his age as thirty-one, once again suggesting a birth year of 1849. Two decades later, while a resident in Lockhart, the seat of Caldwell County, Texas, the census shows him as being fifty-four years of age, born in November 1845 in Missouri. A further discrepancy is that both his parents are now shown to be natives of Kentucky. A decade later in Orange County, Texas, Reynolds is shown to be sixty-four years old, suggesting a birth year of 1846, and from Missouri. His parents are now shown to be born in the United States.
In 1920 Reynolds was still in Orange County, renting a house in the city of Orange. Nelson O. Reynolds is shown to be married but living alone in a dwelling on Front Street. He is enumerated as a seventy-three-year-old white male, suggesting a birth year of 1847; his occupation is given as time keeper in an unidentified paper mill. Surprisingly Reynolds indicated he had been born in Pennsylvania but his parents were both born in Kentucky. Obviously there are discrepancies in the records, which he himself, or family members, provided over the decades. As if the differences in birth year weren't confusing enough, Bradford County, Missouri, doesn't exist.
Ranger James Buchanan Gillett, who served six years in the Ranger force and later as sheriff of Brewster County, Texas, greatly admired his commander. When asked about his early life, Reynolds told him that he was "a Missourian by birth, a bootmaker by trade, and that his early history could interest no one." Reynolds was indeed a boot maker for a brief period of time, but he was not born in Missouri and contrary to his statement, there is today great interest in his life.
Reynolds' parents are found on the 1850 Bradford County, Pennsylvania (not Missouri), census, although the name of Nelson or N. O. Reynolds has not been found on any census of 1850, the earliest year in which he could have been enumerated. That year, Hiram Gillett Reynolds, born in Virginia about 1821, resided in LeRoy Township with his wife Betsy, born in Pennsylvania in December 1827. In 1850 Hiram Reynolds was twenty-nine years old, farming with real estate valued at $2,000. Housewife Betsy was twenty-four, also a native of Pennsylvania. There is but one child in this family, identified as Franklin on the census, seven months old in August when the family was enumerated. This child was born in February 1850. Presumably Nelson was overlooked by the census enumerator. Reynolds' most complete obituary, that of the San Antonio Express of March 5, 1922, stated that he was born in 1849 and was a native of Pennsylvania. This suggests the seven-month-old Franklin could be the future N. O. Reynolds, and the census enumerator simply erred in identifying the child. Was the entry of the name of Franklin instead of Nelson merely an error on the part of the census enumerator? Presumably the obituary information was provided by his widow Irene or other members of the immediate family, but differs in three years from the information provided on the standard certificate of death. If Nelson and Franklin are not the same person, then Franklin likely died young as no further record is known of his existence. Also, he is not listed as a survivor to his mother when she died in 1912.
Family sources reveal that his mother, Betsy Dorleska Taylor Reynolds, was the daughter of Levi and Louisa Holcomb Taylor. Betsy, born in Granville Center, died on March 26, 1912, at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Edla A. Rockwell, in Troy, Pennsylvania. She was survived by four daughters, a son (N. O.), and a brother, Volney Taylor of Granville. Her grave in the Granville Cemetery is marked, the stone reading simply, "Betsy D. Reynolds 1827–1912." Her husband Hiram G. Reynolds had died years before on November 7, 1866, at the family home in Coleta, Whiteside County, Illinois.
In the 1850 census there is adjacent to the Hiram Reynolds family a couple in their sixties, Joshua Reynolds and his spouse. Five dwellings later the census taker visited the residence of one Nelson Reynolds. His wife was named Clarissa, and presumably these Reynoldses are relatives of Hiram Reynolds.
Although he may have considered himself a Missourian, listing that state as the place of his nativity, on Texas Ranger muster records as well as three different census records, it is accepted that he was born in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, on November 21, 1846.
As there are inconsistencies in the record of Hiram and Betsy Reynoldses' only son who survived to adulthood, there is little information regarding his siblings as well, all sisters. In 1853 Louisa was born, followed six years later by Emma in 1859. Ella Alvira was born in July 1861, followed by Edla Davis, or Eddie, in 1863.
Family tradition states that when Ella was about two years of age—or in early 1863—the family began a move west. By later 1863 the family was located in Whiteside County, Illinois, located nearly straight west of Chicago and bordering on the Mississippi River. They established their new home in Coleta, a small community known first as Crum's Store after John Thompson Crum who had established the first business. The name was later changed to Clayton, but due to dissatisfaction with both names the citizens elected to call it Coleta. By 1868 community members had established a Methodist Episcopal Church, and by 1869 the United Brethren Society had established a church, followed by the establishment of a Christian Church soon after. As churches and the school flourished a Masonic Lodge was established whose membership gradually increased.
Hiram G. Reynolds owned land in the northwest quarter of the northwest quarter of section thirty-five, township twenty north in range six. After the death of her husband, Betsy sold this land on June 20, 1867, to David A. Bisby. Most interesting is not that she sold the land the family had lived on and farmed, but the identity of her son is listed in the official records: he is here identified as Orcelus N. Reynolds. In later years he occasionally signed his name as Orcelus. Obviously when in Texas, Reynolds preferred to be known as Nelson O. or simply N. O. Reynolds. No doubt his legal name given at birth was Orcelus Nelson Reynolds, a name which he apparently disliked.
As the Reynolds family grew during this decade, the country experienced its greatest upheaval. Young Reynolds experienced combat in the struggle, although in a very limited capacity. The tragedy of the nation was reflected in the Reynolds household as well as it was during this decade that the family lost its patriarch. Hiram G. Reynolds died in 1866, although the cause of his death is unknown. But by then his son, Orcelus Reynolds, was off on his own. With her husband gone and her son seeking his own life on the frontier, there was little to hold the widow Reynolds in Coleta. The Reynolds family left a sparse "paper trail" in Illinois records. By 1870 the widow Reynolds was back in Pennsylvania living with her father Levi Taylor and his third wife, Sarah Campbell.
Levi Taylor, born in 1797 in Massachusetts, was now seventy-two years of age. He and his first wife, Louisa Holcomb, daughter of Sterling and Elizabeth (Stone) Holcomb, had given four children to the world: Alvira, Sterling, Betsy, and Volney. After the death of his first wife, Taylor married Mary Landon. Apparently this marriage was short as there were no children born from the union and by 1850 he was married a third time, now to Sarah Campbell. To this union three sons were born: Milan, Hollis H., and Fred. They perhaps only knew Nelson Orcelus from hearing other family members speak of him.
In 1870 in Granville Township, Bradford County, Pennsylvania, Levi Taylor was the head of the household, a farmer with real estate valued at $15,000 and personal estate valued at $2,900. Sarah was fifty-four, eighteen years younger than her husband. Living with them were Hollis and Fred, Betsy Reynolds, now forty-three, the mother of Orcelus, and her daughters Louisa, now seventeen; Ella, nine; and Edla, six years old. Betsy Reynolds claimed real estate valued at $800 and personal estate valued at $200. Intriguingly, her daughter Emma, now thirteen, is not listed as living with them. She was still living in Illinois with the Samuel D. Perry family. Emma suffered from deafness and an inability to speak, described as "deaf & dumb" by the census enumerator. As an infant she had fallen from a high chair, which resulted in her becoming deaf. Presumably either Samuel D. Perry or his wife was a teacher, and a teacher of the deaf Emma. Curiously Mrs. Reynolds did not take her daughter back to Pennsylvania for whatever education she could receive there.
How often N. O. Reynolds the Texan ever returned home to visit family members in Bradford County is uncertain. From the war's end until his own death he spent his years primarily in Illinois, Missouri, and Texas. Letters and other documents that would reveal the man's personal life, his feelings towards his sisters, and the experiences of the war, seemingly do not exist. Living in Texas his normal reference to being a Missourian by birth suggests that he wished to avoid any possibility of being labeled a Northerner.
With these humble beginnings, the conflicting dates of his birth, variously listed as 1845, '46, '47, '48, and '49, the name change from Orcelus Nelson to Nelson O., the man Reynolds created the guise of being a Southerner, a Missourian. An obituary from the San Antonio Daily Express reported that he had arrived in Texas "at an early day" but with no further clarification. A later publication provided information that he had served in the Civil War for three years and then went to Texas, arriving in 1872. This is only partly correct, as he did serve during the war but not for the Confederacy as many Texans believed he had done. This deception worked on Gillett who recorded his adventurous memoir, but it also adds an air of mysterious deception about his career, causing us to wonder what he did between the end of the war and his first arrival in Texas in 1873.
The recollections of Texas Ranger James B. Gillett provide only a glimpse into the service of Reynolds during the Civil War. Gillett wrote that when Reynolds was mustered in as commander of Company E, Frontier Battalion on September 1, 1877, he was about thirty years of age, and was "vigorous in mind and body, and had a massive determination to succeed as a ranger ... a native of Missouri, and who was always known as Major or 'Mage' Reynolds." Gillett supposedly learned that Reynolds, though "a mere boy," had served with the Confederates in the latter years of the war. Reynolds was one of a party that captured a troop of Federal cavalry, the major of which was well supplied with clothing. As the captors were very scantily clad Reynolds appropriated the major's uniform, hence his nickname. Reynolds and Gillett must have maintained their friendship after their service in the Frontier Battalion, as in "later years, when I had grown intimate with him and was probably closer to him than any other," Gillett brought up the story about the origin of his nickname. Reynolds could have been less secretive about his earlier years, but his answer then did remain with Gillett when he was recording his own memoir. So recalled Gillett years later after the Ranger years were well behind him.
Gillett was correct in at least one respect, that he was well known as Major Reynolds. On the Hays County 1880 census one year after Reynolds resigned from the Frontier Battalion, he was listed as a boarder in a San Marcos hotel, thirty-one years of age and a native of Missouri. When Assistant Marshal Calvert Wilkins enumerated the former Ranger he was not identified as Nelson or N.O., but Major Reynolds. The "rank" of major was obviously the name by which he was best known. In numerous newspaper articles from the decade after his Ranger service he was referred to as Major Reynolds, as if that was his accepted title, with no question as to it being a genuine rank or an honorary title.
But Gillett was wrong on one important point: Reynolds did not serve as a Confederate soldier during the war. He did serve, but as a private in the Union Army. Gillett would not have erred through carelessness in such an important distinction when writing of his beloved commander. N. O. Reynolds, the Intrepid Texas Ranger, intentionally misled his Texas contemporaries into believing he had fought for the Southern Cause.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Texas Ranger N. O. Reynolds by Chuck Parsons, Donaly E. Brice. Copyright © 2014 Chuck Parsons and Donaly Brice. Excerpted by permission of University of North Texas Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword by Leon C. Metz,Acknowledgments,
1. CONTINUING THE WARRIOR TRADITION,
2. JOINING THE FRONTIER BATTALION,
3. REMOVAL OF CATTLE FROM THEIR ACCUSTOMED RANGE,
4. A WHITE MAN TAKES A SCALP,
5. DEATH OF THE AVENGER,
6. RANGERS AGAINST THE CONFEDERACY,
7. A SINGLE SHOT ENDS A FEUD,
8. A PRISONER LOST IN INDIANA,
9. ONE DUBLIN TAKEN, ONE DUBLIN ESCAPES,
10. A KILLING IN SCABTOWN,
11. PROTECTING THE MAN KILLER,
12. GUNSMOKE AT ROUND ROCK,
13. A SHERIFF VS A RANGER,
14. AN OUTRAGE UPON CHILDREN,
15. DEALING WITH FENCE CUTTERS,
16. THE CORNETT-WHITLEY GANG EMERGES,
17. A LOSS AND A FINAL GUARD,
Afterword by Stephen Reynolds Davis,
Appendix A The Gentlemen in White Hats—The Men of Company E, Frontier Battalion,
Appendix B Texas State Historical Markers Relevant to N. O. Reynolds' Career,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,
Interviews
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