Bücher der Reihe Texas Classics

';Durham's account is modest and straightforward . . . has many lessons for anyone interested in the history of the Old West, leadership or law enforcement.' American West Review Only an extraordinary Texas Ranger could have cleaned up bandit-plagued Southwest Texas, between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, in the years following the Civil War. Thousands of raiders on horseback, some of them Anglo-Americans, regularly crossed the river from Mexico to pillage, murder, and rape. Their main objective? To steal cattle, which they herded back across the Rio Grande to sell. Honest citizens found it almost impossible to live in the Nueces Strip. In desperation, the governor of Texas called on an extraordinary man, Captain Leander M. McNelly, to take command of a Ranger company and stop these border bandits. One of McNelly's recruits for this task was George Durham, a Georgia farm boy in his teens when he joined the ';Little McNellys,' as the Captain's band called themselves. More than half a century later, it was George Durham, the last surviving ';McNelly Ranger,' who recounted the exciting tale of taming the Nueces Strip to San Antonio writer Clyde Wantland. In Durham's account, those long-ago days are brought vividly back to life. Once again the daring McNelly leads his courageous band across Southwest Texas to victories against incredible odds. With a boldness that overcame their dismayingly small number, the McNellys succeeded in bringing law and order to the untamed Nueces Stripsucceeded so well that they antagonized certain ';upright' citizens who had been pocketing surreptitious dollars from the bandits' operations. ';The reader seems to smell the acrid gunsmoke and to hear the creak of saddle leather.' Southwestern Historical Quarterly

Terry Jordan explores how German immigrants in the nineteenth century influenced and were influenced by the agricultural life in the areas of Texas where they settled.

This book of reminiscences of old XIT Ranch cowmen puts on record the everyday life of the individuals who made the ranch run.

A narrativehistory of the Civil War years in Galveston, Texas.

The memoirs of a man who participlated in virtually every major event in Texas history from 1836 to 1896.

A classic since its first publication in 1947, Adventures with a Texas Naturalist distills a lifetime of patient observations of the natural world.

A firsthand account of pioneer life in east Texas.