Green · Frontier & law
1856–1937
Six years in the saddle, written down forty years later.
At eighteen Gillett enlisted in the Frontier Battalion of the Texas Rangers. His account of 1921 is not a history but the memory of a participant: direct, concrete, and without invented adventure.
GREEN
On June 1, 1875, eighteen-year-old James Gillett enlists in Company D of the Frontier Battalion. Ahead lie days in the saddle, the pursuit of cattle thieves and murderers, fights with Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache, and later the office of city marshal of El Paso.
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James Buchanan Gillett was born in Austin, Texas, on November 4, 1856. His boyhood began not on the open frontier but in the state capital; only when the family moved to Lampasas in 1872 did the world that would shape him enter his life: rangeland, cattle drives, long rides, and settlements beyond which the reach of the state quickly thinned.
After his father's death Gillett went to Menardville. On June 1, 1875, aged eighteen, he enlisted in Captain Daniel W. Roberts's Company D of the Frontier Battalion.
For six years he served in several companies of the Texas Rangers, riding patrols through Central and West Texas, pursuing cattle thieves and wanted men, and taking part in operations against Kiowa, Comanche, and Lipan Apache. The service carried him from the San Saba to the Rio Grande and into the country west of the Pecos.
In July 1878 Gillett rode with the detachment that made a forced march to Round Rock to stop the bank robbery planned by the Sam Bass gang. The fight was over when his unit came in; the next morning the rangers found the mortally wounded Sam Bass under an oak tree.
Gillett left the service at his own request on December 26, 1881, with the rank of first sergeant. After a short spell with the Santa Fe Railroad he became assistant city marshal of El Paso and, in 1882, city marshal of a fast-growing railroad town.
In 1885 he returned to cattle and built a second career as a West Texas rancher, retiring to Marfa in 1923. The title of captain, by which he was later known, was honorary. In 1921 he published Six Years with the Texas Rangers, 1875 to 1881. Gillett died at Temple, Texas, on June 11, 1937.
