John Coffee Hays

John Coffee Hays

John Coffee "Jack" Hays (January 28, 1817 – April 21, 1883) was a Texas Ranger captain and military officer of the Republic of Texas and the United States armies. Hays served in several armed conflicts, including the Indian and the Mexican-American wars.

Hays was born at Little Cedar Lick, Wilson County, Tennessee. His sister, Sarah Hays Lea, was the mother of John Hays Hammond. In 1836, Hays settled in Texas, and joined the Texan army under General Thomas Rusk, who appointed him member of a company of Texas Rangers. His notable deeds on the line of duty against the Mexican forces earned him the promotion to Deputy, and in 1840 he achieved the rank of captain.

In the following years, Hays led the Rangers on a campaign against the Comanche and other hostile tribes, and succeeded in weakening their power. Later, he commanded the force against the invasion from Mexico of 1842 and in the Mexican-American War (1845), where the Rangers excelled and gained a nationwide fame. Despite his youth at the time, Hays is often referred as responsible for giving cohesion, discipline and group mentality to the Rangers, and a rallying figure to his men. Flacco, a chief of the allied Indian tribe of the Lipan, used to call Hays "Bravo-Too-Much".

Hays was described by Nelson Lee, one of the Rangers under his command as "a slim, slight, smooth-faced boy, not over twenty years of age, and looking younger than he was in fact. In his manners he was unassuming in the extreme, a stripling of few words, whose quiet demeanor stretched quite to the verge of modesty. Nevertheless, it was this youngster whom the tall, huge-framed brawny-armed campaigners hailed unanimously as their chief and leader".

In 1848, after the war had ended, Hays left the Rangers and travelled to San Antonio and later to California. He settled in San Francisco County, where he was elected sheriff in 1850. He also became active in politics, and was appointed United States surveyor general for California in 1853.

Hays also was one of the founders of the city of Oakland, and in the following years he amassed a considerable fortune with real estate and ranching enterprises. He assumed a neutral position during the Civil War and was elected a delegate to the Democratic national convention in 1876 which nominated Samuel J. Tilden for the presidency of the United States.

Hays died in California on April 21, 1883 and was buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland. A school located in the Montclair neighborhood of Oakland (the current site of the Moraga Avenue firehouse) was named in his honor; it was closed in 1913. Hays County, Texas as well as Hays High School in Buda, Texas are named in his honor.