Ranger, Texas (1920s)

1 October 2019

With matter-of-fact style Martin Van Buren Brewer, late Private, 23rd Georgia Infantry told of his experience in September 1862 some 50 years later:

On the trip to Maryland I was very weak, but waded the Potomac River, going and coming. It is strange how much men can stand; more even than a horse; at least they did in those days.

John Fowler was shot in the head a few paces from me and Tom Williams was killed later in the day at Sharpsburg. Williams never knew what hit him, as he was shot over the eye and the blood would have run on my feet if I had not raked up the dirt and stopped it.

Brewer went to Texas after the war and farmed in Tarrant, Erath, and, from 1874, Eastland Counties. One of the first successful oil wells in that part of Texas was drilled on his farm in about 1918 and nearby Ranger, pictured here, boomed. He moved to town after his wife died in 1918 and lived to be 96 years old, dying in 1937.

That photograph is of unknown provenance, found online on the genealogy site FamilyOldPhotos.

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