Rebellious Ranger: Rip Ford and the Old Southwest
The Texas of John Salmon Ford's day demanded men of courage and versatility. Ford was such a man. He came to Texas in 1836, quickly became active in Texas affairs, and remained so until his death in 1897. During his long life, Ford was a practicing physician, adjutant in Colonel Hays's regiment of Texas Rangers during the Mexican War, newspaper editor, explorer and surveyor, state senator, mayor and city marshal of Austin, Ranger captain and Indian fighter, Mexican revolutionary general,...
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"Few newcomes became so thoroughly Texas as did Rip Ford. His career reads like a dime novel. He was in fact the hero of several such fiction pieces. He was born in South Carolina with the ordinary name of John Salmon Ford. His father, originally a Virginian, drifted west to Lincoln County, Tennessee. The boy quickly went through the country school and at sixteen years of age taught himself for a time. At nineteen he 'read medicine' under Dr. James G. Barksdale, the basis of his later part-time career as a frontier medical man. . . . The book is indispensable for the history of Texas and for certain aspects of the Mexican War."— JOURNAL OF THE WEST
