The Maj. Ripley Arnold statue near the courthouse.
Happy birthday, Fort Worth!
Today in 1849 was a very good day for pioneer settlers Captain Edmund S. Terrill and J.P. Lusk, among the first settlers of what today is the city of Fort Worth, what we consider the grandest kingdom in all of Texas.
Those two had pitched a tent somewhere near what is now Samuels Avenue in the winner of 1848-49. In the spring, the duo established the first commercial establishments that today is part of the 13th largest city in America.
The two were undoubtedly quite pleased to hear the clanking hooves and neighs of the 2nd Dragoons of the U.S. Army, redesignated the 2nd Cavalry Regiment in 1861, headed by Maj. Ripley Arnold, who a few weeks later would set down stakes at the junction of the Clear Fork and the West Fork that form the Trinity River.
That day is the birthday of Fort Worth, June 6, 1849.
Happy No. 173 and tip one at happy hour for Ripley Arnold, who named in camp in honor of Mexican-American War hero Maj. Gen. William Jenkins Worth, the father of Texas’ fort system, which stretched from the Red River to the Rio Grande.
On Monday, Tarrant County officials, as well as members of the Tarrant County Historical Commission, marked the occasion by dedicating the Maj. Ripley Allen Arnold Collection on Monday at the Tarrant County Courthouse’s 1895 Room, 100 W. Weatherford St., which sits in between the old fort grounds to the west and Arnold’s burial plot to the east at Pioneers Rest Cemetery.
Tarrant County bought the collection for $75,000 through funds provided by the Fash Foundation in Fort Worth. Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley and Commissioner Roy Brooks and Commissioner Gary Fickes joined those in attendance at the dedication ceremony just inside the courthouse.
The purchase of the Arnold collection from a private collector took several years, but it's free to view and available at your courthouse.
Maj. Ripley Arnold's sword.
“When it came available, and I found out about it, I said, ‘He’s the father of Fort Worth. He needs to come home. He needs to come home,” says Linda Fash Bush, president of the Fash Foundation.
Gen. Worth never dipped a toe in the Trinity River, dying right around the time — May 7 — that Arnold got the order from Col. William S. Harney to move north and set up shop.
Worth is a notable, mostly forgotten figure in history.
“I found General Worth a different man from any I had before served directly under,” said Ulysses S. Grant in his highly acclaimed memoirs, written on his deathbed. “He was nervous, impatient and restless on the march, or when important or responsible duty confronted him.
“He enjoyed, however, a fine reputation for his fighting qualities, and thus attached his officers and men to him.”
A highly sympathetic Worth biography General William Jenkins Worth: Monterey’s Forgotten Hero, authored by Edward Wallace and published by SMU in 1953 is out there, though it’s now out of print. Its scarcity has elevated the cost of a copy to the price of beef.
Wallace said he took up the subject of Worth because he didn’t believe history did him any justice. One reason for that, Wallace added, was because Winfield Scott lived 20 years longer and made sure to sully his legacy.
That’s all probably true and a tease to this epic election showdown in 1852 between Worth and Scott. It also makes it pretty clear that the reader is going to get a pretty filtered perspective.
All it takes, however, is a Google search of the 51-foot high Worth granite obelisk memorial structure and burial place in New York City to understand that, using the criteria of the present, he was a big deal in his day. Certainly not Elvis big, like Grant would become. But Worth was considered, as Wallace glowingly declares, the “beau sabreur” of the U.S. Army, the most gallant, most handsome warrior and best horseman in service to his country.
His burial procession, some nine years after his death — Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was Gen. Worth’s monument and final burial place — included Gov. John King, 6,500 soldiers, Mayor Fernando Wood and a bevy of Tammany politicos. As the New York Press described it, New York’s shops closed at noon and church bells began to toll. Sixteen iron gray horses pulled the catafalque and his mahogany casket in a two-mile long parade. Bands played Handel’s Dead March from Saul.
So admired was Worth by the public — he was the first American to plant an American flag south of the disputed territory of the Nueces River — that many speculated at the time after the Mexican War that superiors in the U.S. Army as well as political movers in Washington, D.C., maneuvered to see to it that Worth be appointed to a position in Texas. In Texas, he would be as far away from the centers of American power after the widely successful end of the Mexican-American War and his celebrated role in it as commander of the Eighth Infantry.
I presented an argument once in an electric white paper — ahem, a blog — that had cholera not felled Worth in 1849, he might have run for president against his archrival Winfield Scott, the flamboyant Army general, in 1852. As early as 1848, supporters rallied support for a presidential bid, the New York Herald going so far as to call for a meeting in February to nominate Gen. Worth for the presidency.
The real hero of Fort Worth is, of course, Ripley Arnold, who has enjoyed a historical renaissance in recent years after also being somewhat lost over the course of more than 100 years. In 2014, city officials dedicated a 22-foot bronze statue of Arnold at the John V. McMillan Plaza just west of the courthouse.
Over the years, there had been periodic calls to erect a monument to Arnold. In the early 1900s, Col. Abe Harris, who was present at the founding of the fort, lobbied the city council to do something more to honor Arnold, taking them through his “thrilling career” and declaring his determination to “see proper honor done his memory.”
Mayor T.J. Powell noted Worth’s monument in New York City and signaled his support for a “more modest” donation for a monument to Arnold.
It took more than 100 years to see a proper honor done in Arnold’s memory.
Ripley Arnold's Mexican-American War medal.
The collection dedicated on Monday includes, among many other things, Arnold’s sword, which is inscribed with his name, pictures of his family, and his Mexican War medal, which is believed to have been received on his behalf by his wife Catherine when the medals were first issued in 1876.
Arnold died in 1853.
“Most people still don’t know much about him, but at least he has a statue and that could start conversation about him,” says Richard Selcer, historian and author of a number of books on the history of Fort Worth.