The Texas in the Civil War Message Board

Re: Co.K Mounted Volunteer Regt., Col J.E. McCord,

Cheyrl,

I hope this will help you. I would try to get my hands on copies of the records below to see what they say about him.

From the Soldiers and Sailors System

John Clark (First_Last)
Regiment Name McCord's Frontier Regiment Texas Cavalry
Side Confederate
Company H
Soldier's Rank_In 2 Lieutenant
Soldier's Rank_Out 2 Lieutenant
Alternate Name
Notes
Film Number M227 roll 7

John Clark (First_Last)
Regiment Name Frontier Batt'n Texas Cavalry
Side Confederate
Company B
Soldier's Rank_In -
Soldier's Rank_Out -
Alternate Name
Notes
Film Number M227 roll 7

CONFEDERATE TEXAS TROOPS

Frontier Regiment, Texas Cavalry (46th Regiment Cavalry)

Frontier Cavalry Regiment [also called 46th Regiment] was organized in May, 1864. The unit served in the Trans-Mississippi Department on the Texas frontier principally against Indians. It was formed with 1,240 men and in April, 1865, totalled only 102. The few remaining men disbanded prior to the surrender in June, 1865. The field officers were Colonel James E. McCord, Lieutenant Colonel James B. Barry, and Major W. J. Alexander.

From the Handbook of Texas Online

FRONTIER REGIMENT. The Frontier Regiment was established on December 21, 1861, by the Texas legislature, to replace the (Confederate) First Regiment, Texas Mounted Riflemen. On January 29, 1862, Governor Francis R. Lubbock appointed the ranking officers of the regiment: Col. James M. Norris, Maj. James E. McCord, and Lt. Col. Alfred T. Obenchain. The new law directed that the companies of the Frontier Regiment be divided into detachments of at least twenty-five men each, stationed twenty-five miles apart and just west of the line of settlements from the Red River to the Rio Grande. Between March 17 and April 7, 1862, Norris and his officers rode along the proposed line and established sixteen camps to be occupied by the regiment: Rio Grande Station and camps Cureton, Belknap, Breckenridge, Salmon, Pecan, Collier, McMillan, San Saba, Llano, Davis, Verde, Montel, Dix, Nueces, and Rabb. Eventually, only nine companies of the regiment entered the service, as a Confederate regiment under John S. (Rip) Ford occupied the line from Fort Brown to Fort Bliss. In its first six months on duty the regiment, 1,050 men strong, established patrols from each adjacent camp at two-day intervals; each patrol usually consisted of five privates and one officer. The Indians soon discovered the weakness of a patrol system so familiar in routine and during the winter of 1862-63 began to make more numerous and bolder raids.

On January 17, 1862, the Confederate Congress authorized the secretary of war to receive the Frontier Regiment into Confederate service for the protection of the Indian frontier of Texas. Five days later, however, President Jefferson Davis vetoed the bill because it withheld the control of the executive of the Confederate States over the troops. Texas wished to absolve itself of the expense of maintaining the regiment but insisted that the regiment be kept under state control to ensure the best possible protection for the frontier. In early 1863 Governor Lubbock attempted once more to transfer the regiment to Confederate service. To meet Confederate Army regulations he disbanded the regiment and reorganized it into a full complement of ten companies with the new title of Mounted Regiment, Texas State Troops, although Texans continued to call it by its original name. At the reorganization McCord was elected colonel and James Buckner Barry lieutenant colonel. Once more President Davis refused to accept the regiment if hampered by the condition that it remain under Texas control; it remained on the frontier still funded by Texas authorities.

Detachments of the regiment now occupied a number of other posts in addition to the original sixteen camps, including previously abandoned United States Army forts. Colonel McCord, with evidence before him that the patrol system was breaking down, ordered it discontinued; instead larger numbers of rangers swept to the west and northwest of their camps. Finally, state authorities transferred the regiment to Confederate control, but only after the legislature approved the establishment of the Frontier Organization to ensure protection of the frontier. The transfer took place officially on March 1, 1864. At the same time the ten companies were reduced in number to only eighty men each so that two additional companies could be formed. Two months later the six southern companies moved to the interior to replace troops stripped from the coast. In August 1864 Barry received orders to transfer his four companies from the Fort Belknap region to Harrisburg, near Houston, leaving only a two-company battalion at Camp Colorado on the frontier. Barry's men returned to the northwest frontier in October, but the six southern companies remained for the rest of the war chiefly in the central subdistrict.

The Frontier Regiment's six companies were joined by two other organizations to cover the northwestern settlement line. Capt. Henry S. Fossett's two companies at Camp Colorado patrolled south of that point; Barry's four-company battalion covered the region between Camp Colorado and Fort Belknap; Col. James G. Bourland's Border Regiment protected the region from the Red River to Fort Arbuckle in Indian Territory, and companies of the Frontier Organization covered gaps among the other units. During the last eighteen months of the war the Frontier Regiment found that the Indian menace on the frontier was often overshadowed by use of the frontier units to enforce Confederate conscription laws, arrest deserters, and track down renegades and outlaws.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: James Buckner Barry, Buck Barry, Texas Ranger and Frontiersman, ed. James K. Greer (1932; new ed., Waco: Friends of the Moody Texas Ranger Library, 1978; rpt., Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984). James M. Day, ed., House Journal of the Ninth Legislature, Regular Session, November 4, 1861-January 14, 1862 (Austin: Texas State Library, 1964). Hans Peter Nielsen Gammel, comp., Laws of Texas, 1822-1897 (10 vols., Austin: Gammel, 1898). William Curry Holden, "Frontier Defense in Texas during the Civil War," West Texas Historical Association Year Book 4 (1928). William Curry Holden, Frontier Problems and Movements in West Texas, 1846-1900 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, 1928). Frances Richard Lubbock, Six Decades in Texas (Austin: Ben C. Jones, 1900; rpt., Austin: Pemberton, 1968). David Paul Smith, Frontier Defense in Texas, 1861-1865 (Ph.D. dissertation, North Texas State University, 1987). Michael Reagan Thomasson, James E. McCord and the Texas Frontier Regiment (M.A. thesis, Stephen F. Austin State University, 1965). The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies.

David Paul Smith

MCCORD, JAMES EBENEZER (1834-1914). James Ebenezer McCord, member of the Texas Rangers and the last commander of the Frontier Regiment, was born in the Abbeyville District of South Carolina on July 4, 1834, to William Pressly and Lucinda (Miller) McCord. In 1853 the family moved to Henderson, Texas, in Rusk County, where McCord learned the surveying business. Three years later he led a surveying party to locate a new chain of counties on the western fringe of the Texas frontier. In January 1860 the Texas legislature passed a frontier protection bill that called for a regiment of rangers to patrol the frontier from the Red River to the Rio Grande. McCord served as first lieutenant in the company of Capt. Edward Burleson, Jr. He remained in that capacity until he was mustered out in September, whereupon he reenlisted in the command of William C. Dalrymple, in charge of all ranger forces on the northwestern frontier of the state.

In the early months of the Civil War McCord worked as a supply officer and purchasing agent for the state. When the legislature established the Frontier Regiment on December 21, 1861, McCord became one of the ranking officers. On January 29, 1862, Governor Francis Richard Lubbock appointed McCord major of the regiment; Col. James M. Norris was commander. Discipline problems in the regiment throughout the summer and fall centered on the unpopularity of Colonel Norris. When the state reorganized the regiment in the winter of 1862-63 in hopes that it would be accepted into Confederate service, McCord was elected colonel.

McCord abandoned the passive patrol system begun by Norris and instituted a series of aggressive actions against the Indian raiding parties. With McCord in command the Frontier Regiment saw its greatest success during the summer and fall of 1863. To abrogate the expense of maintaining the regiment, the state transferred it to the Confederacy, effective in March 1864. McCord removed the six southern companies of the regiment from the frontier in May 1864 and remained in command of the detachment for the rest of the war in posts near the coast. After the war he returned to Rusk County and worked on his family's farm. In 1867 he moved to Prairie Lea in Caldwell County, where he married Sarah Elizabeth Mooney on January 30, 1868. On March 17, 1876, McCord moved to his ranch at Home Creek near the site of present Coleman. There he engaged chiefly in the real estate business. In 1892 he established the Coleman National Bank and became its first president. He died in Coleman on December 23, 1914.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Coleman County Historical Commission, History of Coleman County and Its People (2 vols., San Angelo: Anchor, 1985). William Curry Holden, "Frontier Defense in Texas during the Civil War," West Texas Historical Association Year Book 4 (1928). Michael Reagan Thomasson, James E. McCord and the Texas Frontier Regiment (M.A. thesis, Stephen F. Austin State University, 1965).

David Paul Smith

DOVE CREEK, BATTLE OF. In the controversial battle of Dove Creek on January 8, 1865, about 160 Confederates and 325 state militiamen attacked a large encampment of migrating Kickapoo Indians some twenty miles southwest of the site of present San Angelo. The Texans were routed after a desperate fight. On December 9, 1864, Capt. N. M. Gillintine (Gillentine) and a militia scouting party of twenty-three, under command of the Second Frontier District, discovered an abandoned Indian camp. Gillintine reported that it had ninety-two wigwam sites and was located about thirty miles up the Clear Fork of the Brazos River from the ruins of old Fort Phantom Hill. A militia force of about 325 men from Bosque, Comanche, Coryell, Erath, and Johnson counties gathered under Capt. S. S. Totten (Totton). State Confederate troops of the Frontier Battalion were dispatched under Capt. Henry Fossett.

From the beginning the two forces neglected to cooperate fully or agree upon a unified command. After waiting two days at Fort Chadbourne for a rendezvous that never took place, Fossett impatiently set out on January 3 with 161 men and followed a broad trail to the North Concho River and beyond. Four days later his scouts found the Indians, whom they assumed to be hostile Comanches or Kiowas, encamped in timber along Dove Creek. As Fossett prepared to strike, Totten's delayed militia arrived early in the morning of January 8. Some historians have argued that by then the leader should have realized that the Indians were peaceful. Operating on the frontier assumption that all Indians were dangerous, however, the two commanders hastily formed a battle plan that was afterward criticized as inadequate and based on poor reconnaissance. The militia, on horses weary from a forced march, were to dismount and wade the creek for a frontal attack from the north. The Confederate troops were to circle southwestward, capture the grazing herd of horses, and attack from the lower side, thus cutting off an Indian retreat.

The attack went badly. Fossett later estimated the Indian fighting force at between 400 and 600. Totten said 600 and charged that Union jayhawkers were among them. The Indians' position in a heavy thicket was superior, for it gave the well-armed defenders cover, high ground, and a good field of fire. The militiamen were slowed by the creek, heavy briars, and brush. Participant I. D. Ferguson later recounted the fatal wounding of three officers, including Gillintine, and sixteen enlisted men in the opening minutes. The militia was soon routed and out of the battle.

Meanwhile, Fossett's mounted force quickly captured the Indian horses. He dispatched seventy-five troops under Lt. J. A. Brooks to hit the camp from the south, but they were repulsed by heavy fire that cost them twelve horses. The Confederate troops took positions in the timber and continued the fight; they were caught in a crossfire and separated into three groups as the Indians closed in under cover. An Indian counterattack early in the afternoon was repulsed, and the battle continued until almost dark before ending in disorder and confusion. The Indians recaptured their horses and inflicted additional casualties on the Confederates retreating toward Totten's militia, which was tending to the wounded three miles away on Spring Creek. The battered veterans spent a miserable night, drenched by chilling rain that turned to heavy snow. They remained the next day, cold and hungry, forced to eat some of the horses in order to survive. A casualty count showed twenty-two dead and nineteen wounded. An exact number was never known because many militiamen departed without leave.

Indian casualties were even less certain. Totten said they numbered more than a hundred. Fossett gave a body count of twenty-three. The Indians, after crossing the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, said they had lost twelve in the fight and two more who died after arrival in Mexico.

Carrying their wounded on crude litters strapped between pairs of horses, the Texans retreated eastward on January 11, after retrieving their dead. They found shelter and food at John S. Chisum' ranch near the confluence of the Concho and the Colorado rivers.

The Kickapoos had been on their way to Mexico to escape the dissension and violence of the Civil War. The battle embittered this peaceful tribe and led to vengeful border raiding from the sanctuary given them by the Mexican government near Santa Rosa, Coahuila. White settlers along the Rio Grande paid heavily for the misjudgments that led to the Texans' defeat on Dove Creek. Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie finally led 377 men of the Fourth United States Cavalry from Fort Clark on a punitive expedition across the Rio Grande in May 1873. Hostilities declined thereafter.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: William C. Pool, "The Battle of Dove Creek," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 53 (April 1950). Ernest Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier (Lubbock: West Texas Museum Association, 1964).

Elmer Kelton

CAMP SAN SABA, TEXAS. Camp San Saba is on Farm Road 1955 and the San Saba River ten miles southeast of Brady in southeastern McCulloch County. The settlers, who in the early 1860s built the community known as Camp San Saba, were not the first to occupy the region. John O. Meusebach met with a council of Comanches in 1847 near the present townsite. A group of Texas Rangers was stationed in the area in the mid-1850s to protect settlers from Indian attacks. The community supposedly took its name from this ranger camp. Confederate troops protected the settlers during the Civil War. Camp San Saba was the principal settlement in McCulloch County until Brady became the county seat in 1876. A post office opened in Camp San Saba in 1876. In 1884 the community had three churches, a district school, three stores, and a population of 250. Area residents shipped wool and livestock. When the coming of the railroad increased Brady's importance as a shipping point in 1904, Camp San Saba began a steady decline. The post office was discontinued after the 1930s. The population of Camp San Saba was 180 in 1925, fifty in 1939, and thirty-six in 1990 and again in 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Wayne Spiller, comp., Handbook of McCulloch County History (Vol. 1, Seagraves, Texas: Pioneer, 1976; Vol. 2, Canyon, Texas: Staked Plains Press, 1986).

Vivian Elizabeth Smyrl

Good hunting,
Gary D. Bray

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Co.K Mounted Volunteer Regt., Col J.E. McCord, Cmd
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Lt. John Clark; McCord's Regt.; ? sheriff
Re: Lt. John Clark; McCord's Regt.; ? sheriff