James Madison Buck: Texas Ranger and County Sheriff (1827–1911)
By: William V. Scott
Published: July 24, 2025
Updated: July 24, 2025
James Madison Buck, Confederate soldier, Texas Ranger, and sheriff, was born on January 19, 1827, in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, to J. L. and Sarah Buck. On the 1850 agricultural census in Nacogdoches County, Texas, a James Buck had twenty-five improved and 175 unimproved acres, four horses, four milk cows, two beef cattle, and fifty hogs. He produced 200 bushels of corn and twenty-five pounds of tobacco. Buck moved to Central Texas in 1857 and in San Marcos joined as a Texas Ranger (mounted volunteer) under Capt. William G. Tobin on October 18, 1859. The following day he was placed in Capt. John Littleton’s First Company of Volunteers in San Antonio. He served in the pursuit of Juan Nepomuceno Cortina until he was discharged as second corporal on February 12, 1860. Per Peter Tumlinson, his attorney, Buck filed a claim for $221.19 on November 22, 1860, for pay during his service and a horse that was shot under him in battle.
On June 13, 1860, in Brownsville, Texas, Buck married Martha Ann Rowland. They had ten children: Charles, Eugene, John, Martha, Lee Roy, Mary, Louis, Maud, Lela, and Mabel. On the 1860 census, Buck was listed as a farm laborer in Brownsville. He enlisted as a private in Capt. John Littleton’s Company, Second Regiment of Texas Mounted Rifles (Company I, Second Texas Cavalry), at Camp Carricitas on June 16, 1861. He served with the company until he was medically discharged on June 20, 1862. He later served as a private in Company H of Santos Benavides's Texas Cavalry Regiment. In August 1865 he took an oath of amnesty administered by Capt. John Scott of the Twenty-fifth Illinois Infantry, who was serving as the provost marshal for the Central District of Texas, at Victoria.
After the Civil War, the Buck family resided in various regions of South Texas for the next twenty years. They lived near Pleasanton in Atascosa County in 1870, when the census recorded Buck’s occupation as a carpenter. The 1880 census recorded the family in La Salle County, where Buck was a farmer. Buck was elected the first county sheriff of La Salle County in January 1881. He served until May 1881, when he resigned and retained the office of tax collector and assessor, an office he held for eight years.
Buck was involved in Freemasonry for more than thirty-nine years and was affiliated with several Texas lodges. He became a Master Mason on May 29, 1871, at Pleasanton Lodge No. 283. His highest recorded Masonic office was when he was elected to Senior Warden of the La Salle Lodge No. 572 in 1883.
The Buck family’s last Texas residence was in La Salle County. In 1888 Buck moved his family to what was then Lincoln County in New Mexico Territory. He held the office of deputy assessor under Lewis Neatherlin, who was assessor of Lincoln County. In the 1890s the Bucks lived near Roswell, where Buck was one of twelve charter members for Lodge No. 18. His wife Martha died there in 1897. As Buck aged, he lived with his various children in the Pecos Valley, including the communities of Carlsbad, Artesia, Hagerman, and Roswell. On the 1910 census he was listed as a widowed farmer living with his son, Charles James Buck, in Artesia.
James Madison Buck died at the age of eighty-three on January 18, 1911, a day before his birthday, at his daughter’s house in Roswell. He was buried there with Masonic rites in South Park Cemetery (known at the time as Southside). Obituaries described him as an “old time pioneer” of the Pecos Valley and the West.
Bibliography:
Albuquerque Morning Journal, January 21, 1911. Carlsbad Current-Argus, May 14, 1897. Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Texas, National Archives and Records Service, Washington. “James Madison Buck,” Find A Grave Memorial (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/24872638/james_madison-buck), accessed July 8, 2025. Annette Martin Ludeman, La Salle: La Salle County (Quanah, Texas: Nortex, 1975).
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The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry.
William V. Scott, “Buck, James Madison,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed March 09, 2026, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/buck-james-madison.
Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
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- July 24, 2025
- July 24, 2025
