DUFF, JAMES (ca. 1828–1900?). James Duff, freighter and Confederate irregular, was born in Scotland about 1828. He had become a San Antonio merchant by 1856, when his wagons were used to transport a large meteorite (now known as the Wichita County Iron) to Austin; his wagons also were involved with the removal, directed by Robert S. Neighbors, of the Texas Comanches to Indian Territory in 1859. Duff served as commander of an irregular Texas Confederate military unit, Duff's Partisan Rangers. Unionism in the Hill Country brought about his assignment to that area in May 1862. He left his duty station at San Antonio, camped on the Pedernales a few miles west of Fredericksburg, and declared martial law in several precincts of Kerr and Gillespie counties. He dismissed the Unionist enrolling officer, Jacob Kuechler, and began what many Hill Country people regarded as a reign of unjustified terror. Captain Duff learned of Fritz Tegener's battalion and its planned departure for Mexico and sent part of his troops in a pursuit that culminated in the battle of the Nueces on August 10, 1862. One participant in the encounter testified to Duff's presence at the "massacre" and his refusal to provide medical assistance to the defeated Germans. Another story had Duff arriving there after the battle. Harassment of Unionists continued in the Fredericksburg area until Duff's return to San Antonio. Duff's command was later expanded into the Thirty-third Texas Cavalry; he served on the Texas coast throughout the remainder of the war. A death certificate out of Surrey County, England, lists a James Duff, age seventy-two, as having died on April 16, 1900.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Don Hampton Biggers, German Pioneers in Texas (Fredericksburg, Texas: Fredericksburg Publishing, 1925). Kenneth F. Neighbours, Robert Simpson Neighbors and the Texas Frontier, 1836–1859 (Waco: Texian Press, 1975). Guido E. Ransleben, A Hundred Years of Comfort in Texas (San Antonio: Naylor, 1954; rev. ed. 1974). Thomas C. Smith, Here's Yer Mule: The Diary of Thomas C. Smith (Waco: Little Texan, 1958). The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. R. H. Williams, With the Border Ruffians: Memories of the Far West, 1852–1868 (New York: Dutton, 1907; 2d ed., London: Murray, 1908).
