Rebellious Ranger: Rip Ford and the Old Southwest

"Few newcomes became so thoroughly Texas as did Rip Ford. His career reads like a dime novel. He was in fact the hero of several such fiction pieces. He was born in South Carolina with the ordinary name of John Salmon Ford. His father, originally a Virginian, drifted west to Lincoln County, Tennessee. The boy quickly went through the country school and at sixteen years of age taught himself for a time. At nineteen he 'read medicine' under Dr. James G. Barksdale, the basis of his later part-time career as a frontier medical man. . . . The book is indispensable for the history of Texas and for certain aspects of the Mexican War."- JOURNAL OF THE WEST

W. J. Hughes held degrees from the University of Colorado, Western Illinois University, and Texas Technological College. He taught history at Mankato State College in Minnesota.

Walter L. Buenger is Associate Professor of History at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas.