One helped give El Paso its name. Another led a celebrated Union cavalry raid through Mississippi. A German immigrant rose from the enlisted ranks to command the post, while a future commander of American forces in Cuba served here years before the Spanish-American War.
The officers who passed through Fort Davis carried experiences that stretched from the battlefields of Mexico to the Civil War and, eventually, overseas. Their careers made this remote military post a crossroads in a much larger American story.
Among them were Anson Mills, the surveyor and inventor; Benjamin Grierson, the cavalry commander who became a West Texas rancher; and William Shafter, whose military career eventually took him to Cuba. Others left quieter records of advancement, temporary command and decades of service.
Their stories also belong to the soldiers they led, particularly the Black infantrymen and cavalrymen known as Buffalo Soldiers. After the Civil War, those troops rebuilt Fort Davis, constructed roads, escorted travelers and carried out military campaigns across the region. Their service helped expand American settlement while advancing federal control over lands inhabited and contested by Native peoples.
Building a post on Limpia Creek
Washington Seawell’s connection to Fort Davis began with its creation.
In October 1854, the lieutenant colonel arrived with six companies of the 8th Infantry to establish a post near Limpia Creek. Water, grass and building materials made the location useful to an Army charged with protecting travel along the San Antonio-El Paso Road.
Seawell belonged to an earlier generation of officers. An 1825 West Point graduate, he had served in Florida during the Seminole wars and held assignments across a country whose military presence was moving steadily westward. He commanded Fort Davis through much of its first several years and returned for another brief period in 1860. He retired from active service in 1862 and died in 1888.
Not everyone who followed him had entered the Army through West Point.
Theodore Fink, a German immigrant, enlisted in the 8th Infantry in 1841. He advanced to sergeant major before receiving an officer’s commission in 1848. By November 1859, he was a first lieutenant commanding Fort Davis.
His rise placed a former enlisted soldier in charge of the same post led by academy-trained career officers. Promoted to captain in 1860, Fink died the following year.
William McEntyre Dye briefly succeeded him in the spring of 1860. Dye’s assignment lasted only weeks, but his later career carried him into some of the Civil War’s major operations. An 1849 West Point graduate, he became colonel of the 29th Iowa Infantry and served in the Vicksburg campaign, the Red River campaign and operations against Mobile, Alabama.
James Bomford, another early commander, brought experience from the Mexican War. He commanded Fort Davis during part of 1860 and later received recognition for his service at Perryville during the Civil War. He eventually became colonel of the 8th Infantry.
Bomford survived the Civil War by decades, dying in 1892. His career connected the Army that fought in Mexico with the force that emerged from the nation’s internal war.
A different Army returns
Federal troops evacuated Fort Davis in 1861 after Texas seceded. Confederate troops subsequently occupied the post, which stood abandoned after their departure in 1862.
When the Army returned in 1867, the garrison reflected a consequential change in federal military service. Congress had authorized permanent Black regiments, and soldiers of the 9th Cavalry helped establish the second Fort Davis.
Black soldiers served under predominantly white officers in a segregated Army. Their work included the exhausting routines of construction, maintenance, patrols and escorts that sustained the post between military campaigns.
Edward Hatch and James Wade were among the officers whose careers became closely associated with those regiments.
Hatch had served with Iowa volunteer cavalry during the Civil War, earning honorary promotions for gallantry at Franklin and Nashville. In 1866, he became colonel of the newly organized 9th Cavalry, a position he held until his death in 1889.
Wade, the son of Ohio Sen. Benjamin Wade, had commanded Black cavalrymen during the Civil War. He became a major in the 9th Cavalry after the conflict and later advanced to lieutenant colonel of the 10th Cavalry.
Both men commanded Fort Davis during the years following its reopening. Wade’s career continued through the Spanish-American War, and he eventually became a major general in the Regular Army.
George Lippitt Andrews became another enduring presence at the post. Appointed colonel of the 25th Infantry in 1871, he accumulated roughly four years in command at Fort Davis during the 1870s.
For the Andrews family, the assignment crossed generations. His son, George Andrews, served at Fort Davis as a second lieutenant in his father’s regiment and later became a general officer.
Zenas Bliss supplied another connection between the fort’s early and later years. He had served under Seawell before the Civil War, then returned as a major in the 25th Infantry, assuming command during Andrews’ absences.
Bliss eventually retired as a major general. In 1898, he received the Medal of Honor for his conduct at Fredericksburg more than three decades earlier.
Battlefield reputations on a remote frontier
Several Fort Davis commanders arrived with records already marked by combat honors.
Louis Carpenter had fought in the Civil War before becoming a captain in the 10th Cavalry. His service included recognition for gallantry at Gettysburg and Winchester, followed by further distinction during fighting in Kansas.
His actions in Kansas and Colorado in September and October 1868 later earned him the Medal of Honor. At Fort Davis, Carpenter held command during several periods in 1878 and 1879. He retired as a brigadier general in 1899.
Napoleon Bonaparte McLaughlen followed a path from enlisted service to senior command. He advanced from private to sergeant in the 2nd Dragoons before receiving a commission at the outbreak of the Civil War.
By the war’s end, he had commanded a Massachusetts volunteer regiment and received an honorary promotion to brigadier general. He later commanded Fort Davis as a major in the 10th Cavalry before retiring in 1882.
Frank Baldwin’s record was especially unusual: He received the Medal of Honor twice.
One award recognized his conduct at Peachtree Creek during the Civil War. The other recognized his leadership in a November 1874 attack at McClellan’s Creek in the Texas Panhandle that rescued two captive girls. Baldwin also served in campaigns on the northern Plains and later in the Philippines. His brief command at Fort Davis came during the winter of 1889-90.
These officers’ military honors reflected the Army’s assessment of their actions. The western campaigns themselves were also part of a struggle over land and sovereignty, with profound consequences for the Native communities the Army fought.
A surveyor, an inventor and a demanding subordinate
Anson Mills’ connection to West Texas began before his service at Fort Davis.
After leaving West Point without graduating, he came to Texas and worked as a surveyor. He surveyed military reservations, including Fort Davis, and in 1859 submitted a street map bearing the name El Paso for the settlement previously known by several names, including Franklin.
His work helped establish the layout and identity of a growing border community.
Mills joined the Union Army during the Civil War and later served in the 3rd Cavalry. He came to Fort Davis as a major in the 10th Cavalry, serving under Grierson and periodically commanding the post himself.
His accomplishments extended beyond military assignments. Mills developed a woven ammunition belt adopted for military use, turning a practical equipment problem into a commercially successful invention. He later served on the international boundary commission dealing with the United States and Mexico.
He also left a pointed assessment of his superior.
In his memoir, Mills portrayed Grierson as generous but insufficiently strict. He complained that the colonel delegated administrative work and too readily accepted promises of better behavior from offenders.
That judgment offers a glimpse of tensions within the officer corps. Mills valued discipline and close supervision; Grierson’s approach drew criticism from a subordinate who believed he supplied both.
The cavalry raider who stayed
Grierson’s route into military leadership was unconventional. Before the Civil War, he had worked as a music teacher and bandleader.
His 1863 raid through Mississippi helped support the Union campaign against Vicksburg and established his reputation as a cavalry commander. In 1866, he organized the 10th Cavalry.
At Fort Davis, where he commanded during much of 1882-85, Grierson lived with his family while leading a regiment whose Black troopers faced discrimination within the country they served.
The National Park Service describes his confidence in those soldiers, respect for Native cultures and lack of West Point credentials as factors that distanced him from other officers.
He retired as a brigadier general in 1890, took up ranching near Fort Davis and died in 1911. His association with the region continued beyond his military orders.
Careers that reached beyond the mountains
Albert Brackett brought another form of experience to Fort Davis: He wrote military history as well as participating in it.
A Mexican War volunteer who later received a Regular Army commission, Brackett published his history of the U.S. cavalry in 1865. He commanded Fort Davis during several periods in the mid-1880s, retired as a colonel in 1891 and died in 1896.
Shafter’s later fame came from a different war.
A veteran of Michigan volunteer service during the Civil War, he commanded Fort Davis as lieutenant colonel of the 24th Infantry in the early 1870s and returned as colonel of the 1st Infantry in 1881.
In 1898, he led American land forces in the campaign against Santiago, Cuba. The officer who once managed a remote West Texas garrison had become a central figure in an overseas war.
Together, these careers show how closely Fort Davis was connected to events beyond the Davis Mountains. Its commanders included immigrants, former enlisted men, academy graduates, volunteer officers, authors and inventors.
The preserved post gives those careers a common address. Here, between assignments that carried them across the country and beyond it, they confronted the daily work of running a garrison — work sustained by soldiers whose names appear far less often in accounts of the men who commanded them.
