Levi Perryman was one of Montague County’s most consequential nineteenth-century figures — Confederate cavalryman, Indian fighter on the Red River, twice-elected sheriff, cattleman, and community philanthropist. The arc of his life maps almost exactly onto the county’s formative decades: he arrived in 1859, one year before Montague County was formally organized; he fought the Civil War and came home to a frontier still contested by raiding parties; he won the sheriff’s office in 1873 and spent seven years turning the rule of law into a practical reality in a place where it had not always existed; and he died in 1921, having outlived most of the world he had helped build. The Bowie Blade described him at his death as “one of the rugged pioneers of the county who came here when the west was young.”
Who Was Levi Perryman?
Levi Perryman was born on March 29, 1839, in Lamar County, Texas — and he suffered loss before he drew his first breath. His mother, Elizabeth Farmer Perryman, died the same day he was born, and his father Alex G. Perryman followed within months. His uncle Jack Perryman took the infant in, raised him on the Texas frontier, and gave him a rudimentary education at Paris, Texas.
In 1859 — one year before Montague County would be formally organized — twenty-year-old Levi rode west and settled three miles west of the nascent community of Forestburg. Uncle Jack staked him with “fifty head of cattle, a saddle horse equipped, and a ten-dollar gold piece,” along with the frontier directive: “Now my son, root hog or die.” The Perryman name was already woven into Forestburg’s founding through Austin Perryman, one of the community’s earliest 1850s settlers alongside Wash Williams and Bob Clark. Levi’s settlement reinforced that multi-generational anchor.
By the 1880s Levi had accumulated approximately 2,500 acres and was a landowner of regional significance.
What Did Perryman Do in the Civil War?
On August 9, 1862, Perryman enlisted at Gainesville as a private in Company I, 31st Texas Dismounted Cavalry, under Captain Gilbert. He also served in Marshall’s Squadron and saw combat at Prairie Grove (Arkansas, December 1862) and at the Red River Campaign engagements of Pleasant Hill and Mansfield (Louisiana, April 1864).
B.B. Paddock’s A Twentieth Century History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas (1906) records that Perryman received a furlough home in the spring of 1865 and did not reach his destination before Lee’s surrender ended the war. Paddock noted his record was exemplary: “no Yankee prison cell knew him…no absence without leave and no hospital record were charged against him.”
What Was Perryman’s Role as an Indian Fighter?
After returning from the war, Perryman established himself on the Red River frontier at a moment when raiding parties remained a genuine threat to Montague County settlers. He engaged in dozens of encounters with raiding tribes along the Red River corridor in the late 1860s and early 1870s.
Years later, Perryman set down his firsthand accounts of those battles in writing. The Montague County Historical Commission published those recollections in 1987; copies are available through the Commission and the Tales ‘N’ Trails Museum in Nocona. These accounts constitute a primary-source record of Red River frontier conflict from a participant’s perspective — an unusually direct window into what the frontier era looked like from inside it.
How Did Perryman Shape Montague County as Sheriff?
Perryman was elected sheriff of Montague County in 1873 — just fifteen years after the county was organized. His first term earned him a strong local reputation for pursuing horse thieves, whom he reportedly “hated worse than any other” class of criminal. He was petitioned to run again in 1878 and won a second term, serving until approximately 1880.
A letter dated April 9, 1875, from Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts Stephen H. Darden to the Montague County Presiding Justice — preserved as item metapth186870 in the Levi Perryman Collection — addresses “debts drawn on Levi Perryman, Sheriff, for assessing taxes,” documenting his dual role as sheriff and tax collector during Reconstruction. This combination of offices was common in rural Texas counties of the era; the same individual responsible for catching criminals was also responsible for collecting the public revenue.
Among the criminals he brought to justice during his two terms were Wild Bill McPherson, Bob Simmons (extradited from Kansas), and Ike Stowe, named in secondary accounts drawing on Paddock’s 1906 record. His sheriff service overlapped with the height of Spanish Fort’s prominence as a Red River cattle-trade crossing point, placing him at the intersection of Montague County’s two defining frontier economies — livestock and law enforcement.
What Was Perryman’s Community Legacy?
In 1866, Perryman married Josephine (Milam) Price, a widow with a son, Pleas Milam. Together they had eight children: Napoleon, William J., Elbert, Kate, Lennie, Charley, Sarah, and Bob. Charley and Sarah died as infants; Napoleon died young. Josephine died in 1884.
Perryman served as a founding member of the Forestburg Methodist Church and joined the Odd Fellows Lodge in Saint Jo and Masonic lodges in both Forestburg and Gainesville — civic commitments that deepened his role as a community anchor.
In 1883, Perryman purchased the Forestburg-area cemetery and deeded it to Montague County — an act of civic philanthropy that preserved what is now known as Perryman Cemetery. The Texas Historical Commission erected a marker at the cemetery in 1983 (Marker No. 3992), its text reading: “A Forestburg community leader, Perryman had been a Confederate soldier, an Indian fighter, and sheriff.” The cemetery contains twenty-nine Perryman family graves and remains active.
Levi Perryman died on March 22, 1921 — just days short of his eighty-second birthday.
The Levi Perryman Collection at UNT
The Levi Perryman Collection is fully digitized and publicly accessible. It is held by the UNT Libraries Special Collections, Willis Library, University of North Texas, Denton. The collection spans 1873–1921 and comprises 418 items, including correspondence, financial documents (journals, promissory notes, tax receipts), legal documents (deeds, warranty deeds, indemnity bonds), and printed material.
All 418 items are digitized and searchable via two portals:
- UNT Portal to Texas History: texashistory.unt.edu (search “Levi Perryman” or browse “The Civil War and its Aftermath: Diverse Perspectives”)
- UNT Digital Library: digital.library.unt.edu
Digitization was funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). The collection represents an unusually rich primary-source archive for a single county figure of this era — most frontier-era Montague County residents left no comparable documentary record.
For the broader history of Montague County law enforcement from 1858 onward, see Sheriffs of Montague County.
