George Wythe Baylor

George Wythe Baylor (August 24, 1832 – March 24, 1916) was a Confederate cavalry officer from Texas, and a veteran of many battles of the American Civil War. He was also a noted lawman and frontiersman with the Texas Rangers.

Born at Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, in 1832, Baylor came to Texas at the end of 1845 as a boy and was educated there. After the outbreak of the Civil War, he enlisted in the Confederate States Army, and was elected first lieutenant, 2nd Texas Mounted Rifles. He witnessed the death of General Johnston at Shiloh, and fought in many engagements of the Red River campaign in Louisiana in 1864. He was promoted to major, and later colonel, by President Davis, although his promised regiment of Texas Rangers was never raised owing to the collapse of the Confederacy in 1865.

After the war, Baylor commanded Texas Rangers in hunting Comanches and Apaches in Texas and across the border into Mexico, often in pursuit of the Apache chief Victorio and his raiding band. He was also an elected representative of the Texas State Government, representing El Paso from 1887 to 1889. He later retired to Guadalajara, Mexico, and lived there for some years, but was compelled to return to the United States in 1913 due to the Mexican Revolution. He died in San Antonio in 1916.

Early life

George Wythe Baylor was born at Fort Gibson, in the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory, on August 24, 1832.Daniell 1887, p. 104. His father, an army surgeon in the 7th Infantry Regiment, was John Walker Baylor, eldest son of Major Walker Baylor, of Bourbon County, Kentucky, whose wife was Jane, , a sister of Jesse Bledsoe, of Kentucky. The Baylor lineage traces their origin to Devon, England. His mother was Sophia Maria, , of Baltimore, Maryland, her father being Henreich Weidner, of Hessen Cassel, Germany, and her mother being Marie Chartelle, of an old Huguenot family. He was their fifth son and eighth child.

His father moved from Bourbon county, Kentucky, to Fort Gibson, with his young family, going down from Louisville to the mouth of the Arkansas River on a keel boat, and this boat was dragged up the river to Fort Gibson.Daniell 1887, p. 105. His mother took along a lot of fruit trees, roses and plants.

His father dying when he was four years old, his mother, then living on Second Creek, Mississippi, near Natchez, went to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, then to Little Rock, and finally to Fort Gibson again. In December 1845, Baylor came to Texas while still a boy, stopped at Ross Prairie, Fayette county, and went to school for a while to Professor William Halsey at Rutersville, and afterwards was sent by his uncle, Judge R. E. B. Baylor, to Baylor University, at Independence, Texas, then under the control of Henry Graves.He went from school to San Antonio, and, lured by the gold rush, left there in March 1854 for California, five months being required to make the trip. He remained in California five years, and, although brought out by the Democratic party in 1859 for the Legislature, he preferred to come back to Texas. Returning to San Antonio in May 1859, he left for Parker county.
In 1860 he commanded a company of rangers in what was known as the Buffalo Hunt. There were some 300 men in the expedition, and Baylor he was leader of a company of 33 frontiersmen. The Comanches generally gave them a wide berth, although Baylor's men killed some Comanche men. The rangers discovered the scalps of a babe and a woman with braided hair, both adorning the shield of a chief whom they had killed. The campaign lasted six weeks and was the first extended service which Baylor saw.''El Paso Herald'', April 2, 1916. p. 7. In the same year, Baylor's profession was listed on the Parker county tax records and the United States census as "Indian killer". The rangers also practiced scalping, and, as Baylor later explained, for the benefit of his "eastern friends", this was to manipulate the Comanches' fear of losing their scalps—without which they could not hope to enjoy the best pleasures of their afterlife.

Civil War

With the outbreak of the Civil War, Baylor enlisted in the Confederate States Army, joining Captain Hamner's company (Company H, 2nd Texas Mounted Rifles) at Weatherford on March 17, 1861, and was elected first lieutenant, the company being attached to Colonel John S. Ford's regiment of cavalry.Yeary, ed. 1912, p. 45. He enlisted for three years and was sworn in as first lieutenant of his company in San Antonio in May 1861. His brother, John R. Baylor

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