Bill McDonald (Texas Ranger)


William Jesse McDonald, known as Captain Bill McDonald , was a Texas Ranger who served briefly as a bodyguard for both U.S. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, opponents, along with incumbent President William Howard Taft, in the bitter 1912 United States presidential election.

McDonald was born in Kemper County near Meridian, Mississippi, but relocated with his mother, the former Eunice Durham, and other relatives, his sister Mary T. McDonald , to east Texas after the American Civil War. His father, Enoch McDonald, had been killed in 1862 in the battle of Corinth, Mississippi. The McDonalds settled on a farm near Henderson in Rusk County. At the age of sixteen, McDonald quarreled with federal officials during Reconstruction and was tried for treason but acquitted through the intervention of future U.S. Representative David B. Culberson. He graduated in 1872 from Soule Commercial College in New Orleans, Louisiana. As a young man, McDonald taught penmanship in Henderson until he opened a small store at Browns Bluff on the Sabine River in Gregg County, Texas. He later established a grocery store in Mineola in Wood County, Texas.

Source: Wikipedia


RELATED SEARCHES