Life and Adventures of L. D. Lafferty: Being a True Biography of One of the Most Remarkable Men of the Great Southwest...and Hairbreadth Escapes

"L. D. Lafferty has been described as a rough ashlar of reckless daring and thoughtless intrepidity and a youthful adventurer who had fought Indians at the age of 15." - We Never Retreat: Filibustering Expeditions into Spanish Texas (2015)
"L. D. Lafferty, a contemporary of Lafitte's, recalled that Lafitte frankly confessed that he had enough silver and gold on the island to freight a ship." -Mysteries and Legends of Texas (2010)
"Lorenzo Dow Lafferty, son of a Tennessee Indian trader who followed the Cherokees to Arkansas in 1810 , spent three of his teenage years ( 1815-1818 ) living in a Cherokee town on the White River." -The Arkansas Historical Quarterly (1997)

This book is a "True Biography of One of the Most Remarkable Men of the Great Southwest, from an Adventurous Boyhood in Arkansas, Through a Protracted Life of Almost Unparalleled Sufferings and Hairbreadth Escapes Upon the Frontier of Texas"

Why is so little known about the early Texas heroic exploits of "The Rover" Lorenzo D. Lafferty?
In introducing his book, Abney writes:

"That truth is often stranger than fiction is clearly shown in this biography; yet should it be asked, why a man possessed of such extraordinary powers has been so little known, our answer is this: When he first came to Texas, in 1818, he was uneducated, and had no ambition to acquire fame or notoriety; and as he never became a permanent citizen of Texas, during the days of the Republic, but merely fought as a volunteer during the several periods of revolution, from 1818 to 1832, returning to his home in Arkansas at intervals, he was not sufficiently known to attract special attention. And, furthermore, he had acquired, during his long residence among the Cherokee Indians, in early life, much of their peculiar habit of reserve and dignified retirement, and hence shrank from any public recognition of his services in behalf of the oppressed.
"Nor would he render himself conspicuous by thrusting into the public prints an account of his early contests with the Osage, Pawnee, and Kickapoo Indians. And it was not without much persuasion, as well as logical argument, that he finally consented to allow the leading adventures of his eventful life to appear in this volume. In chronicling his connection with the Texans in their early struggles for liberty, it became necessary for the author to consult freely the best historians of that period, in order to test the correctness of Lafferty's statements by a comparison of the same with those given by accepted history."

About the author:

Alexander Hamilton Abney, who was most commonly known as A. H. Abney, was born on March 24, 1822 in Richmond, Virginia, and died September 2, 1882 in Lampasas, Texas. Abney saw military service between 1846 and 1848 in Texas during the Mexican War. He was a sergeant in Seibel's Battalion, Alabama Volunteer Infantry. He also fought in the Texas Indian Wars. In 1858 he served in the Texas legislature from Upsur County. During the Civil War in late 1862 Abney supplied the Confederate quartermaster in Jefferson, Marion County, Texas with mules, wagons, harnesses, shoes and other leather goods. Afterward Abney lived in Merlin and then moved to Rockport in 1870. In 1875 he authored a biography of the Life and Adventures of L. D. Lafferty published by H. S. Goodspeed. In 1878 he moved to Floresville, Wilson County where he served as county judge in 1880.

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