The Guns of Gonzaullas

"Lone Wolf" Gonzaullas, 1940s Texas Ranger, is a legend and he left behind many artefacts including his engraved pistols and holsters. I've collected images of most of them and so present them here; inspired by my revisiting the Sterling holster that is now clearly identifiable as the maker of Gonzaullas' pair that is on exhibit at the Texas Rangers Museum that he helped found.

This 'money belt' aka 'the scout belt' was a staple of the Texas Rangers at the tail end of the 19th century. The Rangers switched to trousers belts and no cartridge loops at the very beginning of the 20th (and short barrels on their SAs vs the 'Army' long barrel seen on them in early pics).

Below, his Brill is a 'late' by Rabensburg; so circa the year the Rangers were merged into the Texas Department of Public Safety 1935 to be detectives vs enforcers. A .38 Super as I recall, which were chosen by Rangers beginning 1929 to penetrate car bodies because the slow, lead .45LC wouldn't do the job; nor the .45ACP.

Below, better pics of these for him by Wyeth as Artcraft, are in a separate post about them:

Below are Myres. The brown one at far right has been misconstrued as Tom Threepersons' but even the book the image is from correctly identifies it as being Gonzaullas'. OK, maybe the one on the left is not a Myres (the lining, the engraving) but it is Texas; perhaps a Rogers.

Definitely all Myres, all the time:

In his 1942 catalogue, Myres described these as "finely carved, with two pieces of Mexican silver money".

Below are Trammels with no other examples of his work known. Notice the very special way the holster's rear edge has been formed around the 1911. These are much more in the vein of the Donihoo's of TX who was 1960s, but these obviously lacked the clamping action one would expect from a true Donihoo and its welts in the main seam.

Above, the main welt stack has been hand sewn, obviously (e.g., the ragged stitch line).

He wore them in pairs because he wore his pistols in pairs; that being the origin of Sam Myres' 'buscadero' belt for the Rangers: Capt Hughes, having only the use of his left arm, wanted a two-gun set against the day another Ranger might lose use of one hand/arm in battle just as he did (an arrow in his case). Although he is credited with the invention by Myres his injury was a half century prior to its appearance there, and the set appeared in 1914 in another maker's catalogue:

His gunsmith and supplier of his unique sights and trigger shoes appears to have been King Gunworks. The use of target sights was very off-brand in those days, and holsters typically weren't made for them.

There are even better pics of the 1911s than these from the TR Museum. Man did love his trigger shoes, too. Gonzaullas was not Mexican but Spanish though he served with the Mexican Army early in his career. His twin pistols were set up as left and right, and his initials displayed to the inside, and so we know only his left-side pistol has the ambidextrous safety:

The car has been identified by its interior details as a 1942 Ford, the gunleather is Myres.

To read more about it all in my book titled "Holstory -- Gunleather of the Twentieth Century

-- the Second Edition", click on the new link at top of page.