Lou Roberts and Her Texas Ranger--A True Texas Love Story

 By Celia Yeary

WITH NO PHOTO OF
LOU ROBERTS
AVAILABLE, I CHOSE
THIS PHOTO OF A 1910
ACTRESS WHOM I
THINK MIGHT HAVE
LOOKED LIKE HER

She was lovingly called Lou by her family and friends, and later by her beloved husband, Dan Roberts. Their meeting and life together was a true Texas love story.

Born Luvenia Conway in 1849 in Crockett, Texas, she moved with her family to Columbus, Texas, where she married Daniel Webster Roberts on September 13, 1875.

At age 33, Dan Roberts was a fine specimen of a man, tall, lanky, and strong. He was a veteran of the Texas militia during the Civil War, had joined Company D of the Frontier Battalion of the Texas Rangers in 1874, when the rangers were reorganized to offer protection to pioneers on the Texas frontier.

Daniel Roberts once said, "I was born and rocked in the cradle of war in Texas." The Nineteenth Century did, indeed, bring the Texas Revolutionary War against Mexico, then the Civil War, and the wars between the settlers and the Comanche, the Kiowa, the Apache, and others.  



A GROUP OF UNIDENTIFIED TEXAS RANGERS.
NO PHOTO WAS AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC OF
DAN ROBERTS, BUT IN READING ABOUT HIM,
I BELIEVE HE MIGHT HAVE RESEMBLED THE
THIRD MAN FROM THE LEFT ON THE BACK ROW.

Lieutenant Roberts planned to resign his position in order to marry Luvenia. However, his commander, Major Jones, merely laughed and told him he could bring his wife along to the frontier.

Luvenia Roberts first settled in Mason, Texas, forty miles from her husband's ranger camp in Menard County, but soon was forced to move into the camp after the Mason County War erupted--a local war between the Texans and the Germans that killed a dozen men.

At the camp, she and her husband lived in a renovated camp house, and she learned the skills of shooting, fishing, and horseback riding. She enjoyed her unique position as a woman in a frontier ranger company, and she was well-received by her husband's colleagues. In the six years with the rangers, during which time her husband was promoted to captain and commander of the company, she lived in several frontier camps, including those at Sabinal and Junction City.

 In 1928 she published a sixty-four-page memoir of her years with the rangers entitled A Woman's Reminiscences of Six Years in Camp with the Texas Rangers. Lauded for its contributions to both the military and social history of the Texas frontier, this work was reissued in 1987 by State House Press in a volume that also contained her husband's 1914 work Rangers and Sovereignty.

CAMP ROBERTS

In her book, she wrote: "My friends thought I was courageous; in fact quite nervy to leave civilization and go into Indian country. But it did not require either. I was much in love with my gallant captain and willing to share his fate wherever and whatever it might be. Besides, the romantic side of it appealed to me strongly. I was thrilled with the idea of going to the frontier, the home of the pioneer."

SAN SABA RIVER IN WEST TEXAS

 

In 1878, Lou and Dan set up a tent house in Menard County on the San Saba River. She relates the home they had there: "Up until this time we had had only one tent and a kitchen, but at Camp San Saba we were supplied a second tent, which because of its size the Rangers called it 'the elephant.' We felt that our household was growing. The 'elephant' I furnished as my guest chamber, and equipped it with army cot, washstand, a small table, and a mirror hung on the tent pole. Our kitchen was built of logs, with a tent for a roof. Both our tents were floored; we had outgrown gunny-sack floor coverings. The two tents and kitchen were surrounded by a brush fence, with a whitewashed gate that look quite imposing, The State furnished us a cook. The rations issued to the Rangers, included only the substantials, but were of such generous quantities that we had a surplus to exchange for butter, milk, eggs, etc. Honey was obtained from bee trees. Game and fish were abundant."

 Luvenia Conway Roberts died in Austin on July 14, 1940. Preceded in death by her husband and one son, she was survived by her daughter-in-law and several grandchildren. She was buried with her husband at the State Cemetery in Austin.

 A True Texas Love Story, of Lou and Dan Roberts.
~*~*~

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Celia Yeary-Romance...and a little bit 'o Texas

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Sources:

The On-Line Handbook of Texas
Wikipedia Commons
Wikipedia Encyclopedia
Texas Tears and Texas Sunshine-Voices of Frontier Women
Tales From Out Yonder