frontier times – Page 3 – Texas History Notebook

Major Nicholas Nolan

Nicholas Merritt Nolan was born around 1835 in County Kilkenny, Ireland to James Nowlan and Bridget Maher Nowlan. Nolan emigrated to the United States as a youth. In 1852, he enlisted in New York in the United States Army as a private. He was promoted through the ranks and was a first sergeant at the outbreak of the Civil War. During the war, he was commissioned as an officer and served with the 6th United States Cavalry Regiment.

Colonel Ranald Slidell Mackenzie

Ranald Slidell Mackenzie was born on July 27, 1840 in Westchester, New York to Alexander Slidell Mackenzie (1803 – 1848) and Catherine Alexander Robinson Mackenzie (1814 – 1883). He was the oldest of their five children. His father was the son of John Slidell and Mary Mackenzie but his father had adopted the name of Mackenzie (his mother’s maiden name) in 1837. The explanation for the name change was that it was a condition set out in order for him to claim an inheritance from an uncle, his mother’s late brother. Alexander Mackenzie had served for many years in the United States Navy after entering as a midshipman in 1815. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1825 and commander in 1841.

Lambshead Ranch

Usually the names of three people are mentioned in the early history of the land that later became the Lambshead Ranch. They are Randolph Marcy, Jesse Stem and Thomas Lambshead. Marcy (1812 – 1887) well might be the better known of the three. He was an 1832 West Point graduate who served extensively in the American West during his thirty year Army career. His service included the Mexican-American War, Texas, the Pacific Northwest and the territories that later became the states of Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona. Marcy retired in from the United States Army in 1881. One of his daughters had married General George C. McClellan. Marcy was the author of “The Prairie Traveler” published in 1859, which became widely known and used for its maps, illustrations and itineraries of the West. Marcy had mapped and described the area where the ranch is now located. Fort Marcy in New Mexico was named for him and was active from the time of the Mexican-American War until it was decommissioned in 1890.

Henri Castro

Henri Castro (sometimes called Compte Henri De Castro de Boxar) was living in Paris, France at the time he arranged in 1842 to secure a land grant from Republic of Texas president Sam Houston. His first grant proposal was to bring 200 families to Texas the following year. He was not able to fulfill this agreement. A second effort was more successful. Castro’s ambitious agreement was to bring 600 families from Alsace in France to settle in Texas.

Quanah Parker’s Surrender

Colonel Ranald Mackenzie had been searching for Quanah Parker and his band on the western side of Comancheria which is described as the area that the Comanche tribe once roamed. At its strongest point, the tribe roamed from the area which is now New Mexico to West Texas. Quanah’s band was the Quahada, one of several spellings of the name.