If you read my post last week about Sally Perry Stewart who was my great-great grandmother, then you read a little bit about my great-great grandfather, John William Stewart. Sally had the following to say about her husband, over sixty years after his death:
In 1863 Sally Perry was married to John William Stewart. Mr. Stewart was a Texas Ranger and served in various parts of the state for over 10 years. . . . Mr. Stewart died in 1873 just 10 years after his marriage to Sally Perry. His death occurred on Aug. 19, which was the ninth birthday of his eldest son, B. C. During the time Mr. Stewart served as a Ranger he worked under Captain Chris Bitix, famous leader of the Texas Rangers. His work included a close check on Indians and at one time a group of 300 of them were arrested near Austin and sent back across the border into Oklahoma.
Newspaper article about Sally Perry, 1938
So, there’s a little more to the story than Sally told the reporter. John William Stewart was sometimes known as J.W., but even more often he went by his nickname, Buff. No one knows for sure how he got the nickname Buff, but there’s a story that as a young teenager he tried to ride a buffalo. I guess after such an exploit one might be able to carry off the nickname Buff with some confidence or even cockiness.
I say that Buff might have been a little cocky because of the rest of his story. He married Miss Sally Perry in July, 1863 at the height of the Civil War. Sally was twenty-one years old. Buff was only sixteen. He and Sally spent about six months together, maybe (unless Buff was out looking for a buffalo to lasso), until January of 1864 when Buff joined the Texas Ranger company formed and commanded by Captain G.C. (Christopher) Bittick, Burnet County, 3rd Frontier District, Texas State Troops. At this point Buff was still only seventeen years old, but he told the Rangers that he was eighteen. (The age for conscription in Texas at this time was eighteen. Buff wouldn’t actually be eighteen until December of 1864.) Captain Bittick’s Ranger Company was organized in Burnet County, where Buff and his wife lived, under a law passed in December, 1863 by the Texas Legislature:
The resulting law, which established the Frontier Organization and transferred the Frontier Regiment, passed the legislature on December 15, 1863. The law declared that all persons liable for military service who were actual residents of the frontier counties of Texas were to be enrolled into companies of from twenty-five to sixty-five men. The act defined the frontier line and the fifty-nine organized frontier counties of Texas. . . . Companies in the Frontier Organization normally averaged between fifty and fifty-five men in strength, usually with about fifteen men per squad for patrol duty. The length of service at any one time varied according to the task, presence of the enemy, and availability of supplies, but most squads on patrol duty expected to remain out for about ten days at a time. The Frontier Organization not only provided protection against Indian incursions but also enforced Confederate conscription, rounded up deserters, and provided protection to settlers from renegades and bandits.
~Handbook of Texas, Volume 2
Before he went off to ride with his Texas Ranger Company, Buff did something else important: apparently sometime in November or December, he fathered his first son, Boling Christopher Stewart, born in August, 1864, and given the same middle name as Buff’s Ranger captain, Captain Bittick.
After war was over, Buff continued to serve with the Texas Rangers, but he managed to get home often enough to father three daughters: Frances (b. 1865), Luna (b.1868), and Sarah (b.1870). Then, in 1871, Buff and Sally had a second baby boy, John William Stewart, named for his father.
Buff was, I guess, supporting the family with his law enforcement duties and maybe a little extra work when he came home in between rotating patrol duty. But in 1873, something happened that changed the lives and fortunes of the entire Stewart family. Buff Stewart changed his place of residence from Burnet to Huntsville, Texas and became convict #2794. He was convicted in Burnet County in April, 1873 of attempted murder.
I can’t find any information about how Buff’s switch from one side of the law to the other took place or about whom he tried to kill or why. However, he died while incarcerated at Huntsville on August 19, 1873. His older boy was nine years old when his daddy died, and his younger son, my great grandfather, was almost but not even two years old. Sally, only thirty-one years old when her even-younger husband died, never remarried and managed to raise all five of her children alone. Maybe she got help from her family or her husband’s family, but she nevertheless lived a long life, died in 1939 at the age of ninety-seven, and apparently remembered only the good parts of her short marriage to Texas Ranger Buff Stewart.