Also known as “Old Rufe,” Cicero Rufus Perry was born in Alabama in 1822. At the age of 11, he moved with his family to Texas, where he would later go on to become a famed Texas Ranger. As history goes, Perry played a role in the siege of Bexar. Following that, he served for three months during 1836 under Captain William W. Hill as a volunteer soldier, which led him to be involved in a battle at Yegua Creek with a Native American tribe. Over the span of his career as both a soldier and a Texas Ranger (a multitude of decades), Perry was known to have received 20 wounds, some quite serious, from arrows to gunshots, and he survived them all.
Perry’s career led him to the direction of John H. Moore, and in early 1839, he is noted as having suffered his first wound. Two years later, while in the service of Thomas Green and Samuel Highsmith, he also performed scouting for Mark B. Lewis and Edward Burleson. He had a part in the Somervell Expedition and by 1844, had joined the famous John Coffee Hays’ Texas Ranger company. As a part of this division, he was involved in a number of skirmishes with Native Americans, most notably the Battle of Walker’s Creek.
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In August of that year, during a fight on the Nueces River with a group of Comanches, Perry received three severe wounds. Perry and his counterpart, Christopher Acklin, were left for dead. Although his wounds were brutal, he walked from close to Uvalde all the way to San Antonio, 120 miles. He was left unarmed and made the entire trek without water or food.
By 1873, Perry was still actively involved as a Texas Ranger, and he took part in the Battle of Deer Creek, where he was recognized as coming to the aid of a group under the direction of Dan W. Roberts. The year following, Perry was promoted to the role of captain in the Frontier Battalion, for Company D. Here, Roberts then served as Perry’s first lieutenant, and then as his successor.
Photo: envato elements
Perry passed away in 1898 in Johnson City, in the Texas Hill Country. He was well-liked by his counterparts, of which John Holland Jenkins was one. When asked about Perry, he described him as “tall, muscular, erect-a perfect specimen of the strong and brave in young manhood,” noting his black hair and “dark eyes, bright with the fires of intelligence and enthusiasm.” Over the course of his career as both a volunteer soldier and with the Texas Rangers, he sustained 20 wounds by lance, arrow, and bullet. All of them he survived. All of them went down in history as part of Perry’s legacy here in the Lone Star State as a Texas Ranger.
