The greatest shaping force in human life is heredity, and from my father I inherited my love of the open frontier and its life of danger and excitement. This inheritance was further strengthened by environment and training, and finally led me to embrace the life of the Texas Ranger. My father, James S. Gillett, was himself a frontiersman, though born in the quieter, more settled east. At a very early age his parents emigrated from his birthplace in Kentucky and moved to Missouri. Here, after a short time, they died and the young orphan lived with a brother-in-law. When still quite a youth my father, with three other adventurous Missourians, set out on an expedition to Santa Fe, New Mexico. While passing through Indian Territory, now the State of Oklahoma, the little party was captured by the Osage Indians. Fortunately for the youngsters, their captors did them no harm, but turned them loose after two weeks' imprisonment in the redskin camp.
Despite this first setback my father persevered and reached Santa Fe. Here he lived several years and mastered the Spanish language. Not long afterward the emigrating fever again caught him up and he journeyed to Van Buren, Arkansas. While living there he studied law and was admitted to the bar. Shortly thereafter he removed to Paris, Texas, from which he was elected to the Texas Legislature as representative for Lamar and adjoining counties.
When Texas entered the Union and brought on the Mexican War with the United States, my father enlisted in 1846 and rose to the rank of major. In 1854 he was Adjutant-General of Texas. Between 1859 and 1860, during the governorship of Sam Houston, my father was quartermaster of a battalion of rangers, thus making it natural that I should also feel drawn toward this famous organization.
At the beginning of the Civil War my father was beyond military age,—he was born in 1810—but as the South became hard pressed for men he enlisted in the spring of 1864 and served in Captain Carington's company until the end of the war.
In 1850, a few years before he became Adjutant-General, my father married Miss Bettie Harper, then a resident of Washington County, Texas. My mother's father, Captain Harper, was a southern planter who emigrated from North Carolina between 1846 and 1848, and, settling in Washington County, established a Dixie plantation with a hundred slaves. My mother was a highly cultivated and refined woman. On her marriage she brought several negro servants with her to her new home in Austin. Of her union with my father five children were born. The first two, both boys, died in infancy. I was the fourth child born to my parents, and first saw the light of day in Austin, Texas, on November 4, 1856. An older sister, Mary, and a younger, Eva, survived to adulthood.
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