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1.

Not every story about the Texas Rangers is one of success, but they are always a story of heroism. The story that follows is a tale of one of the worst days in Ranger history, resulting in one Ranger dead and three wounded, with only one of the four outlaws they were after dead and the others able to flee.

The place where this took place is in east Texas, the Sabine valley, and it all happened on March the 31st 1887. But we have to go back to 1883 for the start of this story.

One of the most notorious families in the Texas Pine woods near to the Louisiana border were the Conner family, headed by "Uncle Willis" Conner. They had been a law abiding farming family raising hogs on land along Bull Creek east of the town of Hemphill, but a dispute between Uncle Willis`s son Charles, and a neighbour Kit Smith ended in the death of Smith and his friend Eli Lowe, when their bullet riddled bodies were found on the evening of December 5th 1883. Charlie and his older brother Frederick, known as Fed were arrested tried and found guilty of the murders. Charlie was sent to prison, but Feds conviction was overturned. The Conner boys broke Fed out of prison and disappeared into the dense woodland with their father, and from that day on were reputed to "live like savages in the dense thickets, stole livestock, trapped, and defied all attempts by the authorities to catch and arrest them." They were always on the move in makeshift camps, and in July 1886 the local authorities sent for the Texas Rangers to help them bring the Conners to justice.

Captain Scott and his men from Co."F" arrived and set about questioning the locals about the Conners movements , but locating them was a difficult task. The Captain and his men finally got onto the trail of Alfred Conners, (also known as Alfie), and managed to arrest him after crossing the Sabine river into Calcasieu Parish in Louisiana, and put him in Jail back in Hemphill. This stopped the stealing for a while but had the Conners looking for revenge, and this time their target was the Texas Rangers.

The Rangers were back in the "Scrappin` Valley" as it had become known, and they were there to stop the Conners from intimidating the locals once and for all time. It was now March 1887 and when they arrived back in Hemphill they began deputising some of the locals to assist them in the search of the Pine woods and thickets to smoke out the Conner family and bring them to Justice.

The civilian members of the group were:- Judge James Polly, the Milam Judge, William Wallace Weatherred, (later a Deputy Marshall), 2 local Marchants, Henry Harris, and John Toole. The 5th Man was called Milton Anthony. All knew the local area, and where the Conners might hide out, and were all good marksmen.
The Rangers consisted of the Captain Scott, sergeant John Brooks, and Rangers Jim Carmichael, Jim Moore, Billy Treadwell, Bob Crowder, Ed Caldwell, Len Harvey, Bob Fenton, and John Rogers.

They started out on the 25th of March and headed south around the thickets for about ten miles and then turned north slowly beating the woods for the Conners hideout. After five days of searching they found what they thought was a fresh trail that led to Walnut Creek and then east for about a mile. Going a few hundred yards further east they came upon a small brook that meandered down to the Sabine river, and it was believed that the Conners moved their camp up and down this brook.. It was known that while moving through the thickets the Conners tied a bell to their Packhorse, so the Rangers hid in the thickets and waited for the Conners to come past. Midnight passed and there was no sign of the Conners. At about 2 in the morning of the 31st March a scout said he had found their camp in a deep dry gully. Capt. Scott decided to split the posse into two and approach from two directions, so Crowder, Caldwell, Weatherred, Polly and the other 3 locals moved off in one direction whilst the remaining Rangers went in the other. The Plan was to find the Conner camp and approach it from two sides. In the darkness both parties had gone past the Conner camp without knowing. This was because the Conners had noticed the Rangers trail earlier, and had taken the bell off of the Packhorse, doused the lamps in camp and planned their own attack..

The night of March 31st 1887 would turn out to be one of the bloodiest in Texas Ranger Frontier Battalion history.