Benjamin Franklin Burris: Texas Ranger and Confederate Soldier (1840–1914)
By: William V. Scott
Published: December 21, 2021
Updated: December 21, 2021
Benjamin Franklin “Dock” Burris, Texas Ranger, Confederate soldier, cowboy, and stockraiser, was born on August 24, 1840, in Galveston, Texas, to Benjamin B. Burris and Susan Adeline (Riggs) Burris. His father was a farmer from Ohio. According to Burris’s own reminiscence in 1910, he left Galveston on his own and moved to Karnes County in 1855, where he worked as a cowboy in South Texas until 1858. He then drove a freight wagon between Indianola and San Antonio.
In 1859 Burris enlisted at Helena in Karnes County as a private in Capt. William G. Tobin’s Company of Texas Mounted Volunteers. Tobin raised a company of 100 rangers from San Antonio, and they were sent to Brownsville. Burris was one of forty men who joined Tobin’s company enroute to Brownsville. Burris transferred to Capt. Peter Tumlinson’s Company of Texas Mounted Volunteers in 1860 and served in this frontier battalion of the Texas Rangers on the Rio Grande during the Cortina War. Burris’s brother, Joseph Benson Burris, also served in the Texas Mounted Volunteers, sometimes in the same company.
In 1861 B. F. Burris enlisted in a cavalry company in Gonzales County under Capt. Marcus L. Evans, which later became Company C of the Eighth Texas Cavalry or Terry’s Texas Rangers. The unit was mustered into the Confederate service at Houston, on September 12, 1861. Burris saw service at Woolsonville, Kentucky; battle of Shiloh; and Perrysville, Kentucky, before being promoted to third corporal in August 1862. On December 31, 1862, in the battle of Stones River near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Burris suffered a gunshot wound to the arm. He also served with distinction at the battle of Chickamauga.
Capt. Alexander May Shannon of Company C was reassigned to the command of the secret service of the Army of Tennessee in 1863. Burris was chosen as a member of a thirty-man specialty unit to be known as “Shannon’s Scouts.” This unit scouted behind Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's position during the Atlanta campaign. The scouts were famed for making raids on Sherman's divisions and carried out reconnaissance missions—locating routes and relaying military intelligence back to Confederate command. In one of the scouts’ raids, these men, often disguised in Federal uniforms, killed more than fifty Federal troops and captured more than 100. Burris was captured at Fayetteville, North Carolina, on March 10, 1865. He was held in a prison pen until forwarded to Hart's Island, a short-lived prisoner-of-war camp in New York, and was paroled in June 1865. Burris was later awarded the Cross of Honor by the United Confederate Veterans.
Benjamin Burris married Jane Elizabeth Johnston on July 24, 1866, in Karnes County, Texas. The Burris family had six or more children; the 1880 census listed four sons and two daughters in Bee County. After the Civil War, Burris returned to the cattle industry and drove cattle to Abilene, Kansas, as well as to Rockport on the Gulf Coast. He was involved in stockraising in Bee, Goliad, and Karnes counties throughout the 1870s and into the 1880s before immigrating to LaSalle County in 1883.
Benjamin Franklin Burris died on May 16, 1914, in Cotulla, Texas, where he is buried in the Cotulla Cemetery. Burris was the grandfather of Earl Hays Burris, Jr., who served the state of Texas as a Texas Ranger and a cattle inspector for the U. S. Department of Agriculture during World War II.
Bibliography:
“Benjamin Franklin Burris,” Find A Grave Memorial (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/10285134/benjamin-franklin-burris), accessed May 31, 2021. Confederate Pension Applications, 1899–1975. Vol. 1–646 & 1–283, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Austin. Leonidas B. Giles, Terry's Texas Rangers (Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1911). Charles L. Olmsted, The Good, the Bad, the Butlers: Story of a Texas Pioneer Family (Bloomington, Indiana: iUniverse, 2015). The Online Archive of Terry’s Texas Rangers: Benjamin Franklin Burris (https://web.archive.org/web/20101130190516/http://terrystexasrangers.org/biographical_notes/b/burris_bf.html), accessed December 18, 2021. San Antonio Daily Express, July 17, 1910. Vertical Files, Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum, Waco, Texas.
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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, “Burris, Benjamin Franklin,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed March 09, 2026, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/burris-benjamin-franklin.
Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
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- December 21, 2021
- December 21, 2021
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