By Terri Jo Ryan

Tribune-Herald staff writer

The Texas Rangers stand 100 feet tall in the eyes of some residents of the Lone Star State who admire the legacy of the frontier’s oldest law enforcement agency.

Some have even proposed placing a large replica of a 19th-century Ranger outside the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum to pay tribute to the courageous souls who helped tame the West.

History does not record how tall Ranger M.B. Davis of Waco was, but his stature in Texas history is more the result of his work as a naturalist than a gun-slinging lawman, as the author of numerous newspaper articles on the conservation and humane treatment of wildlife.

Davis, a native of Henrico County in Virginia, was 15 and a student at the Virginia Military Institute when the Civil War erupted. He served the Confederacy in two cavalry units of the Army of Northern Virginia.

He moved to Waco in 1873 to work at the Waco Daily Record. But the journalist yearned for more adventure than he could find there, said Chuck Parsons, contributor to Texas Ranger Dispatch magazine.

At 32, Davis evidently left the news business to muster into Company E of the Texas Rangers at Camp Bear Creek, Kimble County, on Sept. 1, 1877. He was honorably discharged from the service on March 31, 1878, Parsons said.

During his seven months in the Rangers, Parsons said, Davis wrote four dispatches on the activities of the Frontier Battalion (as it was known then) for the Galveston Daily News. Among the adventures recounted was guarding over outlaw John Wesley Hardin (1852-1895), who reportedly killed some 30 men in his criminal career.

After his Ranger days, Davis returned to newspaper work. Throughout the early 1880s, he worked for publications in San Antonio and Fort Worth. When he went to work for The Dallas Morning News in 1885, he was assigned to cover McLennan County, a job he held until his death 27 years later.

With Champe Carter McCulloch, whose house is one of the Historic Waco Foundation museums, and H.E. Ambott of Waco, he formed the first Game Protective Association in Texas. He also served as secretary of the Texas Audubon Society from 1904 until his death eight years later.

Throughout 1906, Davis and state Audubon director Henry Philemon Attwater lobbied for the re-enactment of the 1903 Model Game Law. While serving on the state’s Game Law Committee in 1907, the men recommended requiring licenses of both resident and nonresident hunters, with the revenue from permits and fines to be used solely for wildlife protection and game propagation.

In 1910 Davis helped form the Texas Humane Society in Waco, and in 1912, he served on the Constitution and By-laws Committee of the Texas Game and Fish Protective Association.

When he died here on June 18, 1912, the Waco Daily Times Herald noted how many hearts were saddened “because of the death of one of its best beloved citizens, Captain M. B. Davis.”

Davis was buried in Oakwood Cemetery beside his daughter, Constance L. Davis (1871-1906).

For decades, his grave lay unmarked, until Civil War historian John A. Stovall of Tarleton State University in Stephenville campaigned for an official federal marker. On May 21, 2005, officials from academia and the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame dedicated a tombstone for Davis.

Additional source: Handbook of Texas Online.