This article is part of an occasional series of articles highlighting the extraordinary collection of historical documents in the Briscoe Center for American History at UT Austin. By Nathan Jennings The John Coffee Hays Collection at UT Austin’s Briscoe Center for American History contains a printed oral history by early Texas historian Andrew Jackson Sowell. The oral histories recount […]
A Texas Ranger and the Letter of the Law
John Salmon “Rip” Ford had a long military career as a soldier of the Texas Republic (1836-46). He was a volunteer in the Mexican War, a Texas Ranger on Texas’s borders, and commander of a Confederate Cavalry Regiment in the Civil War. Ford’s archive at UT-Austin’s Center for American History, contains records of his activities as a physician and newspaper editor, as well, revealing an uncommon breadth of occupational skills.