Show Me Your Badge, Ranger

By Kathleen Rice Adams

Texas Ranger, c. 1846 (Library of Congress collection)

Texas Ranger badges are a hot commodity in the collectibles market, but the caveat “buyer beware” applies in a big way. The vast majority of items marketed as genuine Texas Ranger badges are reproductions, facsimiles, or toys. Very few legitimate badges exist outside museums and family collections, and those that do hardly ever are sold. There’s a very good reason for that: Manufacturing, possessing, or selling Texas Ranger insignia, even fakes that are “deceptively similar” to the real thing, violates Texas law except in specific circumstances.

According to Byron A. Johnson, executive director of the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum (the official historical center for the Texas Ranger law-enforcement agency), “Spurious badges and fraudulent representation or transactions connected with them date back to the 1950s and are increasing. We receive anywhere from 10 to 30 inquiries a month on badges, the majority connected with sales on eBay.”

If you had to, could you identify a legitimate Texas Ranger badge? Test your knowledge: Which of the alleged badges below are genuine? Pick one from each set. (All images are ©Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum, Waco, Texas, and are used with permission. All Rights Reserved.)

Set 1

©TRHFM, Waco, TX

©TRHFM, Waco, TX

Answer: The right-hand badge, dated 1889, is the earliest authenticated Texas Ranger badge in the collection of the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum. Badges weren’t standard issue for Rangers until 1935, although from 1874 onward, individual Rangers sometimes commissioned badges from jewelers or gunsmiths, who made them from Mexican coins. Relatively few Rangers wore a badge out in the open. As for the item on the left? There’s no such thing as a “Texas Ranger Special Agent.”

Set 2

©TRHFM, Waco, TX

©TRHFM, Waco, TX

Answer: On the left is an official shield-type badge issued between 1938 and 1957. Ranger captains received gold badges; the shields issued to lower ranks were silver. The badge on the right is a fake, though similar authentic badges exist.

Set 3

©TRHFM, Waco, TX

©TRHFM, Waco, TX

Answer: The left-hand badge was the official badge of the Rangers from July 1957 to October 1962. Called the “blue bottle cap badge,” the solid, “modernized” design was universally reviled. The right-hand badge is a fake. According to the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum, “No genuine Texas Ranger badges are known to exist with ‘Frontier Battalion’ engraved on them.”

Set 4

©TRHFM, Waco, TX

©TRHFM, Waco, TX

Answer: The badge on the right, called the “wagon wheel badge,” has been the official Texas Ranger badge since October 1962. Each is made from a Mexican five-peso silver coin. The badge on the left is a “fantasy badge.” According to the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum, the most common designation on such badges is “Co. A.”

How did you do?

For more information about the Texas Rangers—including the history of the organization, biographical sketches of individual Rangers, and all kinds of information about badges and other insignia—visit the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum online at TexasRanger.org. The museum and its staff have my utmost gratitude for their assistance with this post. They do the Rangers proud.


And while we’re on the subject of Rangers... My short story “The Second-Best Ranger in Texas” bows tomorrow as a 99-cent e-book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords.

His partner’s grisly death destroyed Texas Ranger Quinn Barclay. Cashiered for drunkenness and refusal to follow orders, he sets out to fulfill his partner’s dying request, armed only with a saloon girl’s name.

Sister María Tomás thought she wanted to become a nun, but childhood dreams aren’t always meant to be. At last ready to relinquish the temporary vows she never should have made, she begs the only man she trusts to collect her from a mission in the middle of nowhere.

When the ex-Ranger’s quest collides with the ex-nun’s plea in a burned-out border town, unexpected love blooms among shared memories of the dead man who was a brother to them both.

Too bad he was also the only man who could have warned them about the carnage to come.

 

Descended from a long line of Texas ranchers, preachers, and teachers on one side and Kentucky horse thieves and moonshiners on the other, Kathleen Rice Adams had no choice but to become an outlaw. Maybe that’s why all of her protagonists wear black hats. Visit her at KathleenRiceAdams.com.

Jim Griffin: Horses, Dogs, and Texas Rangers

 Howdy,

My name’s Jim Griffin, and I’ll be the regular 2^nd Thursday of the month contributor on the Western Fictioneers blog.

As a brief introduction, my main loves, not in any particular order, are horses, dogs, (especially small dogs), the Texas Rangers, and New Hampshire, particularly the southwest corner, otherwise known as the Monadnock region. Now, some of you are no doubt scratching your heads and saying, “horses, dogs, Texas Rangers, all right. But what in the world does New Hampshire have to do with anything Western?” The answer is, not much, except for this. The first use of branding to identify livestock, which just about everyone assumes started with the large free-roaming longhorn cattle herds in Texas and then spread throughout the West, actually was in New Hampshire. And the livestock branded weren’t cattle, but those critters anathema to the old time cattleranchers, sheep. Yes, sheep… woolies…mutton. Branding sheep in New Hampshire and later other parts of New England started back in Colonial times, even before the United States existed as a country. Just like western cattlemen grazed their herds on common land, identifying ownership by brands, in colonial New England animals, mostly sheep and swine, were pastured on common land, usually called the town common. Unlike the typical image of a nice patch of green land surrounded by neat white houses and a white-steepled church, the common or green was usually either dusty or muddy (depending on the weather and time of year) from grazing and rooting livestock, and trash-strewn besides. But we can still thank the farmers of New Hampshire for introducing branding to the New World. And of course some New Hampshire folk headed West to help settle the frontier. Several fought at the Alamo, and many in the Civil War. As people from New England’s land, never very fertile to begin with and extremely rocky, played out, plenty of New Englanders headed West to start again.

Now on to things more Western. I’ve had horses most of my life, and can’t imagine having to live without one. I still think the infernal combustion engine is the creation of the devil, and the world would be better off with fewer cars and more horses. Maybe we’d all learn to relax a bit more and get along with each other better, too, if more of us rode horses. It’s hard to stay angry when you’re on the back of a good horse.

As far as the Texas Rangers, I’ve been fascinated by the organization since I was a kid. Have a friend who just retired from the Rangers, and got to know enough about them that I’m considered an amateur and unofficial historian of the outfit, although I sure don’t claim to be an expert. I’ve collected a whole passel of Texas Ranger artifacts over the years, which are now in the permanent collections of the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco, Texas. It’s a great museum to learn about the Rangers. If any of you are down Waco way be sure to stop it, and see some of my stuff. Most is in the Texas Rangers in Popular Culture Gallery, and the items get rotated in and out.

And that’s the lead-in for the chance to mention my books. I’ve got two series of Texas Rangers novels in print, plus one stand alone book, and some more in the works. Not to mention a whole bunch of stuff all over the web.  And of course stories in both Western Fictioneers anthologies, and am one of the contributors to the WF Wolf Creek series. My novels completely traditional Westerns, no avant-garde edgy stuff or western mixed with science fiction ala The Wild Wild West. You’ll find straight-shootin’ good guys, nasty bad guys, brave women, smart horses, and plenty of fist-fighting action and shooting in my stories. You won’t need to be afraid to let your kids (or your mama) read most of ‘em.

One other passion of mine is traveling all over the West, although I don’t have the chance to do that as much as I used to. My first trip west I was headed to a job in San Diego, and at an overnight stop in Midland, Texas my hosts offered to take me on a trail ride to let my horse stretch his legs, since he’d been riding in a horse trailer behind my ‘65 Impala for three days, and the previous stops only had small corrals for him. Started the ride, and after a couple of miles of sand and more sand I finally had to ask where was the beach? Here, where there’s sand, there’s usually a beach. Not in west Texas.

Other big surprise was when I first saw the Rocky Mountains. Kept wondering why they didn’t look all that high, not much higher than a lot of the mountains here in northern New England. Then it hit me that when you first see the Rockies you’re already a mile or more above sea level. So, a 12,000 foot mountain seen from 6,000 feet altitude on the plains doesn’t look much higher than one of our 6,000 footers seen from 700 feet above sea level.

So, enough of this introductory stuff. Next time around I’ll promise to talk Rangers, horses, books, and maybe even a dog or two. Not all at the same time, of course. And if any of you have any questions on the above subjects, I’d love to hear ‘em.

Jim