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Frank Sieker, 1885 91 Chapter 5 Frank Sieker 1885 For genealogical lineage few families come near matching the contributions to Texas Ranger history as do the Siekers. Four of Dr. Edward Armon Sieker’s sons would—at one time or another—enlist in the Frontier Battalion’s memorable Company D, a frontline unit with more than its fair share of ultimate sacrifices. The oldest of the four Ranger brothers was Lamartine Pemberton Sieker, best known to history as Lamar, but family, friends, and fellow Rangers simply called him Lam. Lam Sieker, a charter member of Company D, would rise through the ranks to a captaincy, and then assistant adjutant general of the state. Edward Armon Sieker, Jr., likewise was a Company D charter member, attaining the rank of sergeant, a position he held while leading the Presidio County chase after Jessie Evans’ gang and the subsequent gunplay wherein Ranger Red Bingham gave up the ghost. While age-wise Tom Sieker fit between brothers Lamar and Ed, his entry date as a Company D Ranger was early on, too, November 13, 1876. The youngest of the four brothers and the last to sign on as a Texas Ranger is the subject of this sequence of events, Frank Edward Sieker.1 Though born in Baltimore, Maryland, Frank Sieker had corresponded with this or that brother and made the 1878 decision to go west. There, in the beginning, he would seek adventure eking out a few dollars chasing an ever-dwindling herd of buffalo wandering the open and unfenced grasslands of West Texas. Basing operations out of San Angelo, then still known as Across the River, the band of hunters closed the year with pegged hides and sober insight; the profitability of stalking and skinning buffalo was on the wane,the high-water mark for any guaranteed financial killing a year or two past. Yet a single man, but a fellow needing a job not only for filling empty pockets, but for the sake of pride as well, Frank Sieker thought he’d follow the footsteps of older brothers. 2 91 92 Chapter 5 Nepotism is not new. Therefore it should be no great revelation that seemingly not an eyebrow was raised on September 23, 1884, when Frank Sieker enlisted in Company D, the working unit Lam Sieker captained, and his brother Ed Sieker oversaw as a line-sergeant further down the chain-of-command.3 Company D’s history is rich with several distinctions, one of which is the frequency boys from the same family show up on the Muster Roll. At the time of Frank Sieker’s enlistment, Company D headquarters , christened Camp Leona, was pleasantly situated and shaded at the southern edge of the picturesque Texas Hill Country near Uvalde, Uvalde County. Although not positioned directly on the Texas/Mexican borderline, Rangers working from Camp Leona with regularity made scouts due west to the Rio Grande in what would soon become Val Verde County (Del Rio) and due south to the Rio Grande in Maverick County (Eagle Pass), as well as points between—and beyond.4 The transition from rookie to journeyman takes time. Private Frank Sieker may have acquired outdoors and marksmanship skills as a buffalo hunter, but he was a tenderfoot in the game of policing. To straighten out that subtly defined learning curve, Frank Sieker, as would all neophyte Rangers, underwent an apprenticeship under guidance of veterans. The crucial curriculum would not be learned in a stuffy classroom under tutelage of some naive would-be or wannabe lawman who had never, ever faced a real bad man, but in the field, on-the-job-training by real Texas Rangers, fellows who had already survived and gainfully graduated a school of hard knocks. Differentiating with precision Private Sieker’s enforcement activities while engaged in learning the ropes of the Texas Ranger business is problematic . Many are the summations in Ranger reports identifying only an officer or noncom leading the scout, such as “Captain Sieker and six men.” The first report actually identifying Private Frank Sieker by name is the Monthly Return of December 1884, a tad over three months after swearing his oath. On December 31, 1884, Privates James V. Latham and Frank Sieker left Camp Leona to conduct a murder investigation near the headwaters of the West Nueces River.5 Unfortunately the two Texas Rangers, after traveling 100 horseback miles, returned to Camp Leona on January 3, 1885, empty-handed, no evil murderer in tow.6 Though...

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