Fort Worth Characters

Endnotes

236 eNDNOTeS Introduction 1. Quoted in Kasey S. Pipes, Ike’s Final Battle (Los Angeles: World Ahead Publishing , 2007), p. xv of Preface. Chapter 1 1. Ella Hazel Atterbury Spraker, The Boone Family: A Genealogical History of the Descendants of George and Mary Boone Who Came to America in 1717 (privately printed, 1922). 2. The words of New York newspaper editor John L. O’Sullivan, written in the Democratic Review in the summer of 1845, which perfectly captured the attitude of millions of Americans in that era. 3. Any attempt to describe Arnold’s physical characteristics cannot be anything more than an educated guess because neither the Army nor those who knew him best left us a description. A handwritten note by an anonymous researcher in his vertical file at the Fort Worth Public Library describes him as “6 feet tall, gray eyes, auburn hair.” Until recently, there was not even a photograph to go by. Now that we have a photographic image, it does not seem to show a man six feet tall. 4. Ripley Arnold’s complete military record is found in George W. Cullum, Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company / Riverside Press, 1891, 3rd ed.), pp. 722–23. 5. There is more than one version of the “Benny Havens, Oh!” story. An alternative version credits the song solely to O’Brien. Regardless of who is credited with writing the lyrics, the tune was not original; it was the Irish standard, “The Wearing o’ the Green.” James S. Robbins, Last in Their Class: Custer, Pickett and the Goats of West Point (New York: Encounter Books, 2006), pp. 73, 426 n. 20; “Major Arnold ’s Life Adventurous; He Fought Duel at West Point,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, October 30, 1949; Clay Perkins, Fort in Fort Worth (Keller, TX: Cross-Timbers Heritage Publishing Co., 2001), p. 36. 6. Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General (Army), Record Group 153, Registers of the Records of the Proceedings of the U.S. Army General CourtsMartial , 1809–1890, Records CC-225 and 243, Washington, DC.: National Archives and Records Administration. Also cited in Perkins, Fort in Fort Worth, pp. 36–37. 7. Historian Clay Perkins characterizes Arnold as “gregarious and good-natured .” He was neither. Perkins, Fort in Fort Worth, p. 35; “Major Arnold’s Life Adventurous”; Robbins, Last in Their Class, p. 426. Endnotes / 237 8. Perkins, Fort in Fort Worth, p. 38; Robbins, Last in Their Class, p. xii. 9. Ripley and Catherine Arnold had five children—Willis, Florida Belle, Kate, Sophia, and Nannie—between 1838 and 1851. Pinning down the birth date and birthplace of each is extremely frustrating because records are either lacking or contradictory. The 1850 census and the work of Mary Bruner, genealogist with the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, provide the best information. See “Ripley Arnold” in Seventh United States Federal Census (1850), Navarro County, Tarrant County, TX, Microfilm Roll No. M-432_910 (available on-line at http:// AncestryLibrary.com); and Bruner, “Descendants of Ripley Allen Arnold,” MS in vertical files, Genealogy, Local History, and Archives Unit, Fort Worth Public Library , Central Library. 10. Arnold’s drinking first becomes an issue while he was a cadet. It continued to plague him throughout his military career although his problems must be inferred rather than being documented. Right up to his death at Fort Graham in 1853, his propensity for drinking is strongly suggested by contemporary accounts. The effect of alcohol on his military career is chronicled in Perkins, Fort in Fort Worth, p. 40 passion. 11. Bruner, “Descendants of Ripley Allen Arnold,” p. 1. 12. John K. Mahon, History of the Second Seminole War, 1835–1842 (Gainesville : University of Florida Press, 1967), p. 315; Cullum, Biographical Register, p. 722; Perkins, Fort in Fort Worth, p. 41; Robbins, Last in Their Class, p. 52; “Major Arnold’s Life Adventurous”; Richard Selcer, The Fort That Became a City (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1995). 13. Willis H. Arnold to the Hon. J. Henderson, June 1, 1840; and Sec. of War to Hon. J. Henderson, July 1, 1840, in Ripley Arnold’s Consolidated Correspondence File, National Archives, Record Group 92, Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, Consolidated Correspondence File, 1794-1815, Box 57, Entry No. 225. 14. Ninth United States Federal Census (1870), Marlin, Falls County, Texas, Microfilm M-593, Roll 1584. Cf. Bruner, “Descendants of...