If you’re a fan of TV westerns, below is a link to a TV western reunion that took place in 1978.

 It’s a video gathering of all the western TV and movie greats who were alive at that time hosted by Glenn Ford.  They gathered in a saloon, and discussed the era when there were more westerns on TV than any other classification.

 Be prepared to spend 50 minutes of nostalgia.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NtMAwx7jF8

Back in 1835 there was an area of North America that, like the United States some fifty plus years earlier wanted to become independent of their mother country. On October 17, the people of that rebelling area approved the forming of a group of armed and mounted men whose duty was to range the borders and protect them. Some 175 years later that organization is still in existence and going as strong as ever.

That area of North America seeking independence? It was Texas. That group of armed and mounted men? The Texas Rangers.

In 1835 Texas comprised of isolated pockets of frontier settlers. And Texas leaders needed someone to “range” the frontier and protect the borders from Santa Ana’s soldiers as well as hostile Indians within the territory. And that’s exactly what the Texas Rangers did.

Then, a year later when Texas got its independence, it was decided to upgrade this semi-official force into the primary law enforcement authority.

Although they were created by the Texas government, they were an irregular group of civilians who provided their own horses and guns.

They were given considerable independence, carrying out the duties that would normally be done by the army…such as fighting Indians, and law enforcement agencies…tracking down cattle thieves, train and stage robbers and murderers.

As Texas entered into the 20th century the Texas Rangers were still very much an independent agency. But, they were receiving more and more criticism about their using excessive violence and ignoring the finer points of the law. So, in the 1930’s, the state got control of the Rangers, making them a modern and professional law organization.

If you wanted to send a valuable package in the early 1800’s, your only option was to find an honest looking person going there, and then ask them to carry your package. But all that changed on October 10, 1839.

Sending any type of valuable package in the early 1800’s was a very risky process. First you would try to persuade a stagecoach driver or steamboat captain to take it for you. If they didn’t want the responsibility, you would then look for a passenger with an honest looking face to take it. And sometimes that “honest person” and your package would disappear.

But on October 10, 1839, a former railroad conductor by the name of William Harnden came up with what could be called the first express company. He started out modestly with deliveries between Boston and New York. Most of the items carried were business documents, bank drafts, currency and newspapers.

The fee was a few cents to a few dollars, depending not on the size of the document, but its value. At first William Harnden made the deliveries himself, carrying the items in a carpetbag.

By 1841, just two years later, he had offices in Philadelphia, Albany, London and Paris. An employee by the name of Henry Wells suggested that instead of expanding to the east, he should expand to the west.

Harnden looked to the west and saw nothing but wilderness and Indians and routes that were hardly traveled, as opposed to messengers traveling by steamship or stagecoach over populated areas. So William Harnden told Henry Wells to “do it on your own account.”

William Harnden died at the age of 33, the result of tuberculosis and overwork. And he was not able to see what happened when Henry Wells took his advice, and along with a partner named William G. Fargo started a company with a name that’s familiar even today, called Wells-Fargo.