Confederate Military Officer, Texas Ranger. Born in Fort Gibson, Cherokee Nation. His father died when he was 2 and by 1845, he and his family had lived in numerous locations. As an adult, he continued this restless lifestyle, never staying in one place for very long. In 1845, he moved to Texas to live with his brother, John Robert Baylor near La Grange, in Ross Prairie. He attended Rutersville College and later attended Baylor University at Independence, Texas. He worked for a short time as a clerk with the Commissary Department of the U. S. Army at the Alamo in San Antonio. In 1854, he moved to California, sure that he would strike it rich in the gold fields. He was in San Francisco in 1856 and was a member of the Vigilance Committee. He returned to Texas about 1859. In June, 1860, he was again living with his brother, but in Weatherford. Baylor and his brother and others ran down a party of Indian raiders in Parker County and killed nine of the band. He was commissioned a first lieutenant in Company H of the Second Cavalry, John Robert Baylor's Arizona Brigade serving as regimental adjutant before he resigned to be senior aide-de-camp to General Albert Sidney Johnston in the fall of 1861. When Johnston died at the battle of Shiloh, Tennessee on April 6, 1862, Baylor returned to Texas and was elected lieutenant colonel and commander of the Second Battalion of Henry H. Sibley's army. The battalion merged with the Second Cavalry regiment of the Arizona Brigade and he was elected its colonel, and also commanded a regiment of cavalry during the Red River campaign of 1864; commended for gallantry at the battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill. April 6, 1865 at the Fannin Hotel in Galveston, Baylor, after an argument about "military matters", shot and killed a fellow staff member, John Austin Wharton an incident he regretted the rest of his life. After the Civil War, Baylor was commissioned a second lieutenant and commanded Company C, Frontier Battalion of Texas Rangers in El Paso. He and his family made a forty-two day trip to Ysleta to establish his headquarters in 1879. The remainder of that year saw him tracking down the raiding Indians in that area, specifically in the pursuit of Mescalero Apache chief Victorio; however this endeavor was ineffective. In September 1880 Baylor was transferred and promoted to captain of Company A and in 1882, promoted to major and given command of several ranger companies. During this period he was active in the fence-cutting conflict in Nolan County. He was described as being a poor disciplinarian and an indifferent judge of men; he did, however, have a flair for writing for newspapers and had a "fair" education. After his Company was disbanded, he resigned from ranger service in 1885 and was elected to the Texas House of Representatives from El Paso and served as clerk of the district and circuit courts for a number of years. He got along well with his Mexican neighbors, a trait not shared by all Rangers, and lived in Mexico from 1898 until 1913, returning to San Antonio where he died in 1916. He is buried in the Confederate Cemetery.