The Texas Rangers: The Early Years

Caleb M. Grady came to Texas with his family in 1872 from Kentucky. Two years later, the Gradys moved to Brownwood on Pecan Bayou, then a log cabin community on the edge of the frontier.

In June 1875 Grady enlisted in the Frontier Battalion under Captain W. "Jeff" Maltby. Grady had first seen the captain and his Rangers the previous fall as they rode into Brownwood with a dead Indian draped over one of their pack mules. Maltby's gruesome trophy got considerable attention.

"Mexican Joe, who usually hung around the Ranger camp," Grady later remembered, "scalped the Indian, and cut off some of his fingers for souvenirs."

By the time Grady joined Company E, the hostiles had been pushed farther west. Wanting to keep it that way, the Rangers stayed constantly on scout. The company roster listed forty men, but no more than 10-15 Rangers ever went on a scout at one time. A scout lasted a couple of weeks. As soon as the Rangers returned to camp, another patrol rode out.

That defensive strategy, a combination of pro-active and reactive tactics, had moved westward from the original 13 colonies. In Texas, the ranging concept blended with Spanish and then Mexican tradition. The most commonly claimed genesis of the Texas Rangers is the summer of 1823, when empresario Stephen F. Austin wrote on a scrap of paper that he intended to "...employ ten men...to act as rangers for the common defense...The wages I will give said ten men is fifteen dollars a month payable in property..."

But Dr. Malcolm D. McLean, in his multivolume "Papers Concerning Robertson's Colony in Texas," says the Rangers did not formally become an arm of government until June 1835. Another arguable founding date is Nov. 24, 1835, when the provisional government of Texas