COVE

John Joel Glanton: the man who would become the notorious leader of the Glanton gang was born in 1819 along side his twin brother Julian in Edgefield Country, South Carolina. His parents were Charles William and Margaret Hill Glanton. His father Charles Glanton would pass away in 1826, and the mother with her children would relocate to Louisiana, eventually ending up in Jackson County, Arkansas. She would remarry a wealthy war veteran and Walnut Woods Plantation owner, Major John Roddy. John Glanton at a young age had a violent attitude and explosive temper. As his childhood is largely unknown, many believe he would become an outlaw and leave Tennessee to settle in Gonzales

Texas, where he would fight in the 1835 Texan Revolution Against Mexico. Eventually, in his teenage years, he would be engaged to his fiancée, but she would be killed and scalped by Lipan Apaches while he was away at war. on March 27, 1836, he escaped the Goliad massacre, barely making it out with his life. He would also be a brief part of a faction war called the Regulator Moderator war, where he killed or wounded men on both sides. He would also briefly leave Texas, being arrested in New Orleans on March 11, 1841, for shooting a pistol at a policeman. Having missed the officer, no charges were pressed as no one was harmed. By 1845 he would attempt to get a 320-acre grant for a plot of land in Jackson County, Arkansas. The land would be approved but there was no certificate of the purchase, he would give this claim to his brother, and Glanton would again travel to Texas in 1846. He would then take part in the Mexican-American War in 1847. First, he was a sentry, then he went on to be in the Texas Rangers later in the war.