George’s tumultuous life is the stuff of legends, of Hollywood action movies, of dime store novels.
He was a restless pioneer. A leader. A stone-cold killer. A mass of contradictions.
It’s not a pretty story at times, certainly not by today’s standards, but few people in the American west lived a more eventful life than George Wythe Baylor and lived to tell the tale — literally.
George Wythe Baylor was born at Fort Gibson in what was then called the Indian Territory on August 24, 1832, the eighth and youngest child of Dr. John Walker Baylor and Sophie Weidner.
John Baylor’s brother was Judge Robert Emmett Bledsoe (R.E.B.) Baylor. Just 13 years later, R.E.B. became one of the founders of Baylor University in Independence. The Judge himself is a larger-than-life figure in Baylor University history. He served on the Supreme Court of Texas and traveled on horseback through the state for 20 years, it is said, with a Bible in one saddlebag and his lawbooks in the other.
George W.’s oldest brother, also named John Walker, was one of a handful of men in Gen. Sam Houston’s army to die at the Battle of San Jacinto.
When George’s father died in 1836, the family repeatedly moved and in December 1845, George joined his brother John Robert and his family in Ross Prairie, 18 miles from modern-day La Grange.
George attended the Methodist-affiliated Rutersville College, seven miles from La Grange, studying with Prof. William Halsey. Then, at the urging and support of Judge Baylor, attended Baylor University in Independence.
Nearly 70 years later, George wrote a lengthy and stirring account of his life, Into the Far, Wild Country: True Tales of the Old Southwest, filled with extraordinary, exacting detail of his life adventures. Sadly, while entire chapters in his biography are given over to the most minute detail of savage battles with the Comanche and Apache nations as an adult, he includes nothing of his time at Baylor. But George clearly received a good education — for the rest of his life, his peers marveled at his eloquent diction and beautiful writing style, often studded with literary quotations and allusions.
We do know that he lived with another older brother, Henry, as they attended classes in Independence.
Though George is said to have graduated from Baylor, records from the University’s earliest days in Independence are fragmentary and his exact graduation date is not known. Historian Darren L. Ivey writes George probably graduated in 1852, which would make him one of Baylor’s earliest graduates.
From Baylor University, George joined his mother Sophie, who had since moved to San Antonio, to accept a position with the U.S. Army as a clerk for the Commissary Department, then located in the historic Alamo complex. He slept in a room next to the famous Alamo chapel and in his leisure time, gave tours of the site, pointing out where Davy Crockett was believed to have died less than 20 years earlier.
But in a pattern that would repeat for most of his life, George grew restless and in early spring 1854 caught the California Gold Rush fever, left for New Orleans, and boarded a steamship for San Francisco. He arrived on April 16, soon got involved in vigilante manhunts involving “bushwhackers,” got shot in the thumb in an ambush, successfully hunted grizzly bears, killed a few presumptive outlaws in shoot-outs, was arrested by authorities, tried, acquitted, and four years later returned home to San Antonio without any gold, but with a prized violin he soon mastered and played the rest of his life.
Back in Texas, George learned that his beloved (if hot-headed) older brother John too had been involved in vigilante activities with the Army on the Frontier fighting Comanches in a series of small battles throughout Central and West Texas — and promptly enlisted as well. When the 1860 federal census in Parker County was taken, George listed his occupation as “Indian Fighter.” Historian Jerry D. Thompson writes the two Baylor brothers were so successful in their bloody pursuits that they were regularly featured and lauded as heroes by Texas newspapers.
George even dabbled in politics and, in 1855, joined Sen. Sam Houston in bolting from the Democratic Party to join the new Know Nothing Party.
But by Spring 1861, both George and John had been caught up in the impending succession of Texas from the Union. Their sisters quickly handstitched a Confederate flag and the boys raised it in front of the Capitol Hotel in Austin, causing a near riot. Later, George boasted to the El Paso Herald that the event marked the “first ‘secesh’ flag raised in Texas.”
The two brothers enlisted in the Confederate army and were assigned to the 2nd Arizona Mounted Rifles (also called the 2nd Texas Mounted Rifles or 2nd Arizona Regiment), tasked with guarding the 658-mile San Antonio-El Paso Road. According to Thompson, the capture of hundreds of disorganized Union troops in the St. Augustin Pass in the Organ Mountains near Las Cruces “was hailed throughout Texas and would long remain one of the crowning achievements of their lives.”
“Colonel George Baylor … was one of the most charming men I ever knew. He was a living example of the folly of our trying to shape our lives and mark out our destinies in advance. He loved peace and quiet, yet no soldier of fortune ever led a life so full of strenuous activity and adventure as he.”
S. O. Young, The Houston Chronicle, 1916
George’s exploits caught the eye of Gen. Sidney Albert Johnston, who added him to his staff. With Johnston’s 2nd Texas Infantry, George fought in the Battle of Shiloh on the Tennessee River, where he was slightly wounded — but was not one of the 24,000 Union and rebel casualties of that brutal battle. Johnston, however, was mortally wounded in the fight and it was George who held him in his final hours.
Back in Texas, Baylor was promoted to colonel and met and soon wed Sallie Garland Sydnor, daughter of one of the richest businessmen in Galveston. He soon returned to duty with the 2nd Arizona and fought in several more bloody battles in Louisiana along the Red and Atchafalaya rivers. In May 1864, during another deadly skirmish at Yellow Bayou near Norwood’s Plantation, Baylor had his horse shot out from under him but survived to continue the fight. He was promoted first to regimental and then brigade commander.
But the Civil War was already drawing to a close. On April 1, 1865, Baylor ran afoul of Confederate Gen. John Austin Wharton, a “wealthy and arrogant orator and jurist,” Thompson writes. When George received a telegram that his wife Sallie was “gravely ill,” he received permission to return to Houston on a 30-day leave. Wharton dismissed George’s concerns and demanded he return to his regiment. The “egotistical, proud and often defiant” Baylor believed that Wharton was calling him a liar.
In Baylor’s account in Into the Far, Wild Country, the two men soon encountered each again in Houston, where Wharton sneered, “What are you doing here, sir?” When George replied, “I came down on business to see General Magruder,” Wharton shot back, “Your place, sir, is with your regiment.” More harsh words followed: when Baylor called him an “internal demagogue,” Wharton shouted that he was a “damned liar.” Blows were exchanged and finally Gen. James Edward Harrison of Waco separated to the two.
Later that day, Wharton and Harrison confronted Baylor in Magruder’s hotel room and another shouting match again devolved into a physical altercation. In the scuffle, George shot and killed the unarmed Wharton with his pistol. “I trust everyone who knows me personally will believe me when I say the whole thing was a matter of sorrow and regret to me,” Baylor writes in Into the Far, Wild Country. He was held in the Houston courthouse, bravely accompanied by Sallie — which Ivey writes likely “saved” her husband from Wharton’s vengeful friends.
Lee surrendered to Grant at the Appomattox Court House on April 9, just days later. With the fall of the Confederacy, court martial proceedings were dropped.
The irony, of course, is that it was a fellow Confederate, George W. Baylor, not a Union soldier, who killed one of the last rebel generals to die during the final hours of the Civil War.
Over the next three years, Baylor was tried for murder several times but eventually acquitted. The trials were dutifully covered in the Galveston Daily News, where “Clyde” reported on Dec. 4, 1868, “I imagine there are few who believe there is much danger of conviction.”
Meanwhile, Baylor busied himself by establishing George W. Baylor & Company, a firm dealing with exporting and purchasing cotton, on Avenue B in the Strand in Galveston. The company purchased large advertisements in the Galveston and Houston newspapers following the Civil War.
Abruptly, three years later, a different set of ads appeared touting Baylor first as an insurance agent, then as a real estate agent. Later still, when he operated a sheep ranch in Leon, near San Antonio, it was significant enough to merit a mention in the Dallas Daily Herald in February 1874. And, finally, he worked briefly as a gentleman farmer. Perhaps he wasn’t a good businessman or, as Ivey suggests, perhaps the old warrior was just bored.
In 1879, George petitioned Gov. Oran Milo Roberts for a captaincy in the Texas Rangers — citing his experience both on the frontier and with the Confederacy. Roberts granted his request and delivered an impressive charge: “Lt. Baylor, I want you to remember out in that far, wild country, that you represent the honor and dignity of the great State of Texas.” According to writer J.B. Gillett, Baylor replied, “Governor, as far as an army of ten men can do, you may rest assured that I will.”
On August 1, 2nd Lt. Baylor was assigned to the command of Ranger Company C in El Paso. The next day, he left for El Paso with Sallie and their two daughters, Helen (born in 1865) and Mary (born in 1875).
In June 1930, 50 years later, Mary was interviewed by the San Antonio Light about the dangerous 42-day journey riding in an ambulance with two wagons full of water, provisions, a gamecock, and four hens. She vividly recalled the scenes of desolation from the charred remains of an earlier 16-wagon team that had been attacked by Apaches, killing all of the drivers. Also making the journey was her mother Sallie’s beloved piano, which would remain with the family for generations.
Contemporary accounts described Baylor as being more than six feet tall, better educated than most, a “splendid” musician, and far more experienced than most men on the frontier. In the years that followed, he used his education to write widely of his experiences fighting outlaws and Apaches in far West Texas and throughout New Mexico. Fluent in Spanish, Baylor was widely recognized for his efforts in El Paso ending the so-called “Salt Wars” of 1877 between Anglo and Mexican settlers and his lifelong warm relationship with Mexican officials.
“As an Indian fighter, then a gallant Confederate soldier, and again an Indian fighter, Colonel Baylor faced death a hundred times, yet lived to breathe his last amid the quiet surroundings of a peaceful home, after reaching a ripe age, filled with exciting events.”
San Antonio Republic, 1916
Baylor’s most notable opponent was the feared Apache chief Victorio, whose people fought with heroic intensity as settlers continually flooded into their remaining lands. George’s detailed written accounts of his running battles with Victorio thrilled newspaper and magazine readers across the country. In January 1881, he was present at the last fight between the fragments of Victorio’s people and the Texas Rangers.
When the Rangers down-sized in 1885, Baylor was elected as a Texas state representative in the Eighth District, which included 10 organized and eight unorganized counties in far West Texas — by far the largest district in the state. His name appears in the Texas Collection’s copy of Morrison & Fourmy’s Directory of the City of Waco, 1888-1889, from Ysleta, representing El Paso, Edwards, Menard, Pecos, Presidio, Crockett, Tom Green, and Midland counties.
Ivey’s history of the Texas Rangers notes that Baylor would be defeated in a bid for reelection in 1889, be appointed clerk of the U.S. District Court, then clerk of the U.S. Federal Court, resign to run for county assessor and collector, but be defeated in 1892.
Eventually, in 1900, George, Sallie, and daughter Mary joined Helen and her husband in Mexico, eventually relocating to the American colony in Guadalajara, where the sisters and Sallie founded a private school. The move was covered by the El Paso Times in an article on April 22, 1908, where it was reported that Baylor had exchanged his original homestead in Ysleta for “7,500 square meters of land” in Jalisco. The newspaper called him “one of the best known characters of early Texas history.”
While in Mexico, Baylor tried to earn a living by writing hundreds of articles for various newspapers and magazines in the United States and Mexico and frequently played his violin to accompany Mary in public and private events.
Helen died in Monterrey in 1903, and Sallie died of pneumonia in their home on April 3, 1904. Both were buried in Guadalajara.
Baylor’s impact extended to his grandchildren. After studying in Spain, Helen’s son James Harper Lee became one of the very few American matadors to succeed in Mexico, eventually charging $1,000 per fight. Known as the “Yankee Matador,” he was later the subject of the book Knight in the Sun. At age 22, Lee’s arrival in Mexico City in August 1909 for the bull-fighting season merited a banquet at the St. Regis Hotel and coverage by the El Paso Times. Despite suffering two nearly fatal gorings, Lee killed more than 100 bulls in Mexican arenas before retiring. He died in 1941.
When the Mexican Revolution broke out, rioting in Guadalajara forced the Baylors to hastily leave Mexico in August 1913, eventually finding their way back to San Antonio, where they settled at 901 Avenue B. Even Baylor’s departure was news.
The Houston Post featured a headline on October 4, 1913, that reads, “General Baylor Mexican Refugee.” He is described as “probably the most picturesque and interesting refugee to come out of Mexico as a result of the present political conditions there and who arrived in Houston early Friday with a small party, mostly Americans, and all recently of Guadalajara.”
The El Paso Times said Baylor vowed never to return to his beloved Mexico and adds that the “old warrior” was forced to leave behind property worth $10,000. “It’s worth a lot to get back,” Baylor told the newspaper. “I’m among friends again. I’ve been in three wars and that’s enough for any man.”
Baylor said the family would retire and stock a farm in Uvalde County on land given to him by Texas Gov. Jim Hogg years earlier. “I’m going to live out there, raise chickens and cattle and go fishing the rest of my life. I think I have earned it.”
Col. George W. Baylor died in San Antonio on March 27, 1916, and was buried in an unmarked grave in one of the Confederate cemeteries in East San Antonio. He was 83.
Twenty years later, the State of Texas placed a centennial marker on his grave that reads: “Born August 24, 1832 at Fort Gibson in what is now the State of Oklahoma. Died March 24, 1916. Colonel of the 2nd Regiment Arizona Brigade, C.S.A. Later a noted Texas Ranger.”
His death was marked by lengthy obituaries in newspapers in Galveston, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, and particularly El Paso. Of Baylor, The San Antonio Republic said, “… Colonel Baylor faced death a hundred times yet lived to breathe his last amid the quiet surroundings of a peaceful home after reaching a ripe age.”
In another tribute, reporter S.O. Young of The Houston Chronicle called Baylor “one of the most charming men I ever knew.” Young also described him “one of the finest violinists” he had ever heard, a “gifted master of the violin” with an “exquisite touch.” The Houston Post’s article a few days later called him “one of the last departing links who constituted the chain connecting the ante-bellum days with those of the present.”
With his passing, one source indicated that George was the last Baylor University graduate to have fought in the Civil War to die. But historian Dr. Michael Parrish told me that “most likely the longest living Confederate veteran who attended Baylor was the notorious Gen. Felix Huston Robertson (1839-1928),” who retired to Waco after the war.
A year after Baylor’s passing, a lengthy article in the San Antonio Light titled “Texas Baylors, Indian Fighters, Descended From a Historic Family” noted George’s ancestors fought at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and served with Gen. George Washington in the American Revolution.
George W. Baylor was one of the original inductees in the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco on February 6, 1976.
Of Baylor, who considered himself “first and foremost an Indian fighter,” famed historian Prescott Webb called him a “courageous individual fighter” who “lacked reserve, was a poor disciplinarian and an indifferent judge of men.”
Wilburn Hill King, an early Texas Ranger historian, said Baylor was “noted for excellence of personal character and conduct, and soldierly courage and zeal.” Ivey writes, “In his temperament, he was the last of the old-style Texas Rangers.”
