That Long Day at Salerno
It was three o'clock in the afternoon, 4 September 1943, when I crawled back under a temporary shade I had thrown up out of discarded shelter half, and some sticks and pieces of telephone wire. The African sun bore down, but was not nearly so hot as the south wind blowing at 110 degrees off the Algerian desert. We had been in that dirty wheat field, not 2000 yards from the Mediterranean for three days shaking down for an invasion of parts unknown and had just sent off the last of our stuff being combat loaded on the attack transport, U.S.S. Dickman. She was tied up with countless other invasion ships at the French naval base of Mers-el-Cabir at Oran, Africa. I was one of a thousand sweating infantrymen of the 2nd Battalion, 142nd Infantry, dressed in heavy woolen combat uniforms, and my only possessions at the moment were my side arms, gas mask and combat pack containing part of a day's ration of dog food, referred to officially as Army Ration, Type C. Our only job at the moment was to patiently wait for the trucks to come the next day and haul us to the Dickman. As Battalion Executive Officer and second in command, my many duties had boiled themselves down to the simple routine of staying around Battalion Headquarters and holding things together, especially in the absence of the commanding officer (Lt. Col. Samuel S. Graham), who at that time had gone to 36th Division Headquarters to see what he could find out, if anything.
After pulling myself under the shade I tried to go to sleep, but it was too hot and I guess I was still a little mad at Rosey (Capt. Samuel W. Rosenberg), the Battalion Surgeon, who had just jumped me for the third straight day because the slit trenches we were using for latrines had not been dug deep enough to suit him. He knew there was nothing but solid rock eight inches beneath that Hell-hole of a blistering wheat field, and we were doing the best we could with our small entrenching tools. The thought occurred to me that Rosey would be better off sticking closer to his aid station aside the Oran highway where our medical detachment was enjoying a satisfactory pickup trade from jeep wrecks and the heavy traffic moving to the port.
As usual the desert wind stopped about sundown and a cool breeze drifted in from the Mediterranean. I got up and sauntered down to the aid station where I stood around for a while watching Rosey carefully supervise the preparation of a man for evacuation. A medico told me his motorcycle had sideswiped a truck and he was suffering with a compound fracture of the right thigh. The aid stood by directing everything by the numbers. To him it was just another training exercise for what lay ahead.
After seeing the man off in an ambulance we sat on some medical chests and had us a game of casino, with the Chaplain (Capt. Harris T. Hall) and the S3 (Capt. Carthal N. Morgan) sitting in. After a while Rosey broke out some alcohol from one of the medical chests and poured a generous portion into our mess cups and cut it some with what was left of an open can of grapefruit juice. The play continued and we made speculations about the coming invasion. A medico sergeant tuning a radio chimed in that he had gotten it straight from a division jeep driver that it was Italy. The Chaplain dealt the cards while we listened to some of Tommy Dorsey being broadcast direct to us from Germany. At the end of the record, Berlin Sal in her throaty voice cut in and confirmed what the medico had just said. After bragging us up big and speculating on what some of our sweethearts were up to that evening with the draft dodgers back in Texas, she went on to say what a fool General Clark was for thinking of throwing away the lives of so many fine young Americans by dumping them on the Italian beaches against crack divisions of battle smart young German soldiers. She claimed they were waiting for us in such well prepared positions that we would never get ashore alive. And as a parting gesture, she sent her personal regards to Colonel Sam, our battalion commanding officer, and a half dozen other well known officers in the Division. After she signed off I overheard a soldier braggingly tell a medico about the plans he had for Berlin Sal the very first time he met up with her in Germany. I think he spoke for most of the men in the outfit.
It was long after dark when I left the aid station. Our five companies were scattered over an area of about four city blocks and I walked around for over an hour checking on how the men were doing. Under flashlights and candles there were hundreds of games going and the action would make a dealer from Las Vegas choke up and want to cry. Every man in the outfit seemed to be Hell-bent on getting rid of his money. They knew they would be aboard ship in a few hours where they wouldn't let a man bet on the time of day and later too busy playing the odds with death to cut a deck of cards.
We sailed out of Oran at five the next evening. The convoy moved in four columns 1000 yards apart with the cruisers Philadelphia, Savannah, and Boise, on the inside. Ships flying mostly British and American flags stretched as far as the eye could see with our destroyers plowing the edge of every horizon.
The Dickman, manned by the Coast Guard, had been the liner President Roosevelt before the war. She was an old friend. So were her crew and officers. We had practiced loading her for combat, sailed the Mediterranean and had gone through landing rehearsals against the coast of Africa under the cover of darkness to familiarize our officers and men with the conditions they were soon to face. Every detail of loading and unloading had been worked out down to the last man, vehicle and piece of equipment. The first to come off in combat was the last to be put aboard, so that everything could be unstacked in proper order. Each man and officer was assigned to a numbered boat team, and the men of respective teams were quartered together aboard ship. In spite of the crowded conditions, life on the Dickman was pleasant. Everyone had a bunk to sleep on off the ground and the chow aboard ship was excellent. Since our combat orders had not as yet come down, everyone took it easy, and those who could make it top side stood around on deck watching the greatest armada of ships that had ever been seen sailing for combat.
The following morning about ten, a motor launch from a British transport carrying the 3rd Battalion and Regimental Headquarters pulled alongside the Dickman and sent up word the regimental commander (Col. John D. Forsythe) wanted Col. Sam, me and the S3 at his command post on the British ship immediately. We scrambled down a rope ladder thrown over the side and took off on a calm sea for regiment. When we were all assembled, the Colonel appeared with his staff and a large map board and began issuing his orders.
It was to be Italy, the Gulf of Salerno at a place called Paestum, a walled Grecian ruin built 500 years before the time of Christ. Navy frog-men who had walked out the beaches under the cover of darkness had reported them to be mined and heavily covered with barbed-wire entanglements. The well prepared defense positions on the dune line were manned by Italian soldiers. All enemy gun emplacements had checked to be exactly as shown on the close-up oblique aerial photographic maps that had just been placed in our hands.
The Gulf of Salerno lies south of the Sorrento Peninsula, which separates it from the Bay of Naples. From the town of Salerno at the southern base of the peninsula are beautiful beaches stretching twenty-five miles south to the town of Agropoli. The Fifth Army plan was for a British corps consisting of two assault divisions and British commandos and American rangers to land in the Salerno area. With a twelve mile gap between us and the British corps our division was to go ashore with two regiments in assault over four 600 yard beaches named Red, Green, Yellow and Blue in the vicinity of Paestum. The rest of the American corps was in Sicily awaiting the return of our ships for them. The first assault waves were to hit the beaches at 3:30 AM 9/Sept/43, with our regiment on the left sending an assault battalion in at Red Beach and one at Green.
Our 2nd Battalion drew Green Beach in the center with a sector that included all of the mile square ruins of Paestum with our right boundary forming an east-west line running inland from the Grecian Tower of Paestum, which lay quite close to the water southwest of the town. The Tower of Paestum was a fifty foot stone structure, built as a medieval watch tower and commanded an excellent view of the beaches. We were later to find its fourteen foot thick walls to be an indestructible fortress against anything we could carry ashore by hand. From the top of its walled turret enemy machine gunners and snipers had it pretty much their own way.
We were to move rapidly inland, take the town of Paestum and reorganize at the railroad just beyond town. Our initial objective was 3600 foot Mount Soprano five miles across a flat plain. We were then to advance over the mountains another seven miles to the town of Roccadaspide, where we were to hold and await further orders. All lines of communication would move directly to the beaches over which all supply and evacuation would be made.
With copies of the orders, bundles of maps and aerial photographs, and boxes containing a booklet on Italy that was to be placed in the hands of each man, we left for the Dickman. On the way we discussed our plans and by the time we climbed aboard, Colonel Sam was ready to issue his orders. I called all officers to the ward room, passed out the maps and turned things over to the Colonel.
It was to be exactly as how we had worked out in our training exercises. The assault wave was Company E, commanded by Capt. James G. Barnett, on the left and F, commanded by Capt. Homer Spence, on the right. In the second wave came G, commanded by Capt. Terrell J. Davis, the heavy weapons company. The third wave was made up of the rest, Headquarters Company, commanded by Capt. Willard H. Gill, attached engineer platoon, artillery forward observer team, navy shore party, navy fire direction team and our medical detachment. After that the coast guard would return to the Dickman for all of our heavy equipment, vehicles, supply personnel and anti-tank platoon. The pioneer platoon of Headquarters company was to be issued wire cutters and scattered among the boat teams of the first wave with the mission of cutting the wire on the beach. The attached engineer platoon was later to clear the beach of mines.
Co. E was to move through Paestum and Co. F to take the tower and move straight in keeping the south wall of Paestum on its left. Battalion Headquarters would be set up at the railroad station at the far edge of Paestum, and after reorganizing at the tracks E and F were to advance on Mount Soprano. Co. G was to follow in reserve and the heavy machine gun and heavy mortars of H Company were to go under rifle company control on reaching the beach. That is not exactly the way the whole thing worked out. I don't think anything worked out according to plan except the parting shot of Colonel Sam when he said, "I want every man to be on that mountain by sundown." Everyone personally saw to it that he got there, except the dead and wounded.
Except for a visiting reconnaissance from the German air force that reported our departure from Oran, our convoy was not attacked and everything went along on the Dickman as if we were on a cruise ship. Eating and sleeping were our pleasures and our deck sports consisted of reading the book on Italy and cleaning our weapons. The booklet fed the imagination of our more amorous soldiers, and the talk of beautiful Italian women took up most of their spare time, while the Mexicans, native Texans who made up about a third of our outfit, passed hours away whetting their bayonets with pocket stones and talking Spanish.
The sign and counter-sign we were to use the first twenty-four hours after landing puzzled us all. If a man ran into an unknown party, especially at night, he was supposed to holler, "Male Fist," and if he was a friend he would reply, "Hearts of Oak." That would make you know he wasn't the enemy. The words just didn't make sense to the Mexicans and the farm boys from the Midwest couldn't figure it out well enough to explain it to the rest of us Texans. The only man who seemed able to live with the words was the communications officer (2nd Lt. Robert H. Cromwell), who had been in a Broadway play and he said it had something to do with knights and warriors many years ago in England. I know the words were responsible for the death of a lieutenant in E Company (2nd Lt. Fremont C. Dibble). A private in E told me the lieutenant hollered, "Male Fist," a couple of times when he reached the dune line off the beach and the enemy shot him in his tracks. The Mexicans took a shorter route. They would just whisper, "Sergeant, it's me, Rodriguez," and of course the sergeant knowing Rodriguez's voice would let it go at that. We were not worried much because it was generally known that those Italians didn't have much stomach for fighting.
After supper the last night aboard, the bosun's shrill whistle sounded over the loud speakers and we heard the familiar, "Now hear this," and we all stopped and listened. Over the loud speaker came the voice of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, "Hostilities between the United Nations and Italy have terminated, effective at once." The men were bewildered as to what came next and so was I, but we did our best to make it clear that the invasion was scheduled to go on as ordered. Even on so short a notice the Germans might have been able to take over the entire defense and resistance to the invasion might be heavier than expected.
I went down to the bottom of the aft hold to D deck to check on my boat team made up of over forty men. I think it was number twenty-one and consisted of a rifle squad, a light machine gun squad, a 60 mm mortar crew, a couple of linemen with rolls of phone wire, the Battalion Surgeon and aid man with a litter, the Battalion Sergeant Major (T Sgt Elvin E. Carter) and his clerk, the captain of H and the captain of Headquarters Company and their runners, and me and my walkie-talkie man, Charles R. Bick, who was from Pennsylvania. Bick was just a kid. I remember the night those French women gave him his sixteenth birthday party down in Algeria where we were camped out at a race track at Tlemcen. They all kissed him good night as if he was their own boy. But Bick was large for his age. The officers were nowhere around as they were checking their units, but I sat around for a while trying to reassure the men. Every boat team was a mixture like mine, so if a boat was blown out of the water we would not have all our eggs in one basket.
When I came back to headquarters, Colonel Sam told me to find those twelve extra bazookas he had picked up at Division the other night and put them out with ammunitions wherever I could place them. He said it might be just our luck to hit one of those armored German panzer outfits. I had a hard time getting rid of the bazookas, because the rifle companies already had their share of them and the men in H and Headquarters Company were loaded down with special equipment. When I passed the last bazookas off on the Captain of Headquarters Company he hollered at a soldier that was standing around doing nothing. It was old Mack, a man who couldn't do a damned thing well except pass out letters at mail call. When Mack took the bazooka and two rounds of ammunition he said, "Hell, Captain, I don't know how to shoot the damn thing." And the Captain replied, "Mack, you just carry it ashore and maybe someone will find a use for it."
I would never have dreamed it, but within a few hours Mack got himself a German tank. A sergeant that was with him told me about it. A bunch of them were hiding behind a stone fence when the sergeant spotted a tank coming down the fence on the opposite side. He yelled at Mack to bring his bazooka, and Mack disclaimed any knowledge of the weapon. The sergeant told Mack just to put it on his shoulder and when he told him, to raise up, poke the thing at the tank and pull the trigger. The sergeant loaded the rocket launcher from the rear and when the tank was half way past them he cocked it and said, "Now, Mack, now." Mack raised up slowly, pulled the trigger and knocked the Hell out of the tank. Then Mack slid down behind the wall and said, "I shore hope I didn't hurt nobody."
The Chaplain had raised the Devil with me for over two days, because he was assigned to a boat team in the third wave. He wanted to be in the first wave, and I had tried to reason with him that every boat in the first wave was so overloaded that you couldn't squeeze a sardine into a one of them. That night after holding his last prayer service on top of a hatch, he hit me up again, and this time more forcefully than ever. I could tell he meant business, but I tried to reason with him that if he did land with the first wave it would be too dark and with so much shooting going on he couldn't do a darned thing if he were there. He said, "Men will be dying there, and there is where I belong." I couldn't answer an argument like that and gave in. "O.K., Chaplain," I said. "There are thirty-six landing craft on board this ship and you just pick the one that suits you and get on it." I think the Chaplain found plenty to do in his line early in the day.
At midnight the Dickman's engines went dead and her anchor chain rattled over her side. We had arrived at the troop transport area twelve miles off shore. A terrific naval bombardment had opened up twelve miles off shore. A terrific naval bombardment had opened up far to the north pounding the shore defenses where the British were to land. The orange flashes in the northern sky reminded one of a huge electric storm of great intensity. According to the plan given us we were to make our assault on the beaches at Paestum without previous naval or air bombardment, a fruitless idea of trying to trick the Germans into thinking our entire effort was to be made farther north. But General Clark rarely, if ever, fooled his German counterpart, Filed Marshal Albert Kesselring, a shrewd and superior defensive specialist.
When the first teams were called to their boat stations I went below and joined my group. One of the men gave me a hand grenade, which I slipped into my gas mask cover that hung by a long strap over my shoulder. We stood in the center of the dark cargo hold, smoking our last cigarettes and saying very little. Our instructions were to load and lock our pieces, only to fire in the darkness when absolutely necessary. We could not take the chance of shooting at everything that moved in the dark, otherwise we might wind up killing each other. I adjusted my pack once more and my hand unconsciously went down to my Colt automatic hanging at my hip. From there on we were entirely in the hands of the Coast Guard until they put us on the beach eight minutes behind the first wave.
Finally, boat team twenty-one was called, and we began to climb out of the hold one by one. I brought up the rear to see that everything was clear. I followed my bunch across the cargo deck to the opposite side of the ship. It was getting darker by the minute, because the moon had just gone down. I felt my way up the gang-way to the top deck, where our landing craft hung free on power winches at the far end of the ship. One by one we walked a long, narrow plank with nothing but the sea below us until we half fell five feet into the bottom of the LCVP (Landing Craft Vehicular Personnel). I landed on top of several men as there was little standing room left for me. Those snub-nosed assault craft had a ramp in front that could be quickly dropped when it hit the beach, permitting the landing party to scramble ashore. I stood in the very back of the boat where I belonged, for it was my duty to see that everyone got off.
When we started lowering away I heard the coast guardsman operating the winch take a parting shot at the coxwain of our boat. "I thought you joined the Coast Guard to stay home," he yelled. I have forgotten the exact nasty words the coast guardsman threw back, but they were expressive.
Our coxswain knew his business. As soon as we hit the water he took off in the darkness for the rendezvous where we joined eleven other boats of the second wave going round and round in a big circle. Off in the night, hundreds of other boats were circling in like fashion, biding their time until the moment they were to fan out at the line of departure and make a fast run for the beach. We didn't have much to say to each other, but just stood there packed tightly in the churning boat shivering as the spray drenched us to the skin. I kept turning my ankle on the litter Rosey's aid man had brought aboard.
We lost all track of time and were not conscious of what was going on until the coxswain opened up the throttle and yelled above the roar of the noisy engines that we had crossed the line of departure, 1200 yards off shore. As in training, I told everyone to get below the side plates, but I remained standing amazed at what I saw in the distance. There was the dark outline of Mount Soprano just exactly as it appeared on the aerial photos, and I studied every detail of the Italian landscape that came to me through the darkness. Without warning all Hell broke loose. Flares went up high over the beach, and every German gun opened up all at once. Tracer machine gun bullets splattered off the side of our boat and passed overhead like strings of pearls in the night, and you could feel the breath of the flat trajectory 88 mms as they barely missed. I didn't have to tell anyone to get down. We were all hunting the bottom side of that boat, but there wasn't room. The squeeze triggered some of the cartridges of compressed gas in our life belts and a few inflated, making conditions far too tight. I looked over my shoulder and there was the coxswain standing erect as if nothing was happening. He was gunning his engines for all they were worth, racing hard for the beach.
When we went aground fifty yards off the shore the ramp fell and everyone scrambled out of there as if the thing was on fire. As I started to run out of the boat, back came Rosey yelling, "Where's the litter, where's the litter?" I shouted, "To Hell with the litter. Let's get out of here." We both ran into the sea. The water tripped me and I fell head-over-heels going completely under. Someone grabbed me by the pack and started dragging me ashore. When I got to my feet in waist deep water all machine guns were laying down a heavy cross fire of tracer bullets in a final protective line. The fire was so hot that I didn't think we were going to make it, but most of it was passing a couple of feet over our heads.
At the water's edge I saw men lying all over the ground. I thought they were dead. I made a dash across the beach and hit the ground when a flare went up and hung there lighting the area brighter than day. Down the beach I could see men crawling on their bellies and hands and knees, with their butts low. When the flare went out I made another dash and hit the wire. My gas mask flopped between my legs tripping me as I ran. I rolled over on my back and slipped it off. I started working myself under the wire. I pushed with my feet while I held the wire up with my hands. Mortars were hitting all over the place, throwing sand in my eyes. I kept on wiggling. When I kicked off the last strand, I rolled over on my belly and took a quick look around. There was a machine gun in the dunes just to my left rattling like a snake, but it was firing over my head. I decided to make a run for the dunes. When I crawled up into the high grass, I recognized the machine gun position as the one plainly shown on the aerial photo. I reached for my hand grenade, but it was with my gas mask under the wire.
I figured the best thing for me was to get off that beach. I jumped over into a depression in the dunes. Just as I got to my feet I saw four Germans about twelve or fourteen feet away coming straight at me. I knew they were Germans, because of the shape of their helmets and the way they carried their rifles close to the knee at the balance. Apparently they hadn't seen me. I let them have three shots from the hip and when they ducked one way, I ducked the other. We parted company. I was kind of startled at the muzzle blast of my .45. A bright orange flame shot out about a foot from the muzzle every time it went off. That sort of trick might give my position away, I thought.
It was a little more peaceful in back of the dunes. Most of the action was still on the beach. I was glad to get my breath. After wandering aimlessly down a little draw, a rifleman from E called to me by name and we joined up. The Germans in the darkness were hollering all over the place. I asked the man from E, who spoke some German, what they were yelling about. He listened a minute and replied, "The damn crazy Americans won't stop and fight. They're just walking through us."
Pretty soon we came out on a big clearing. A bazooka shell lit up the country. Right in front of us was the Tower of Paestum. From behind the high turret German machine guns and snipers were letting the beach have it for all they were worth. Bazooka men from F and the regiment to the right (the 141st) were pounding away at the base of the tower, but it wasn't doing a bit of good. A bunch of riflemen were just standing around watching. The Germans were firing from positions well behind the turret wall, which was too high up for a hand grenade, and there was very little that anybody could do.
Then and there I decided to get back into my own sector. The man from E and I took off to the left and try to find the walled city of Paestum. In about five minutes we ran into something like fifteen men from F and G. Rosey and his aidman carrying the litter were with them. They had just taken nine prisoners. I couldn't quite figure what was going on. The Germans were so scared they couldn't stand still, while the men of F and G were taking the Germans' helmets and trying them on for size. Finally they asked me what we were going to do with the Germans. I said I guessed we had better take them with us, so we all started off together to find Paestum.
As we stumbled over telephone wire covered in brightly colored plastic, we tried to cut it with pocket knives and bayonets, but it was made of steel and too tough to handle. We moved forward in a very loosely held together group, with the prisoners bunched up in the middle just a little in the front of center. When moved forward in a very loosely held together group, with the prisoners bunched up in the middle just a little in the front of center. When we hit the wall of Paestum, I yelled for everyone to keep it to the rocks had fallen off the wall obstructing our progress in the darkness, but other than that things were progressing O.K. But when you move around too much in close combat nothing stays peaceful for long. Just to our right a machine gun opened up firing a burst of tracer into the wall, richocheting them into us. The prisoners hit the ground first and then we fell in behind the large rocks. When I lay there trying to make a simple estimate of the situation, I heard a German tank creeping past us in starts and stops with the Germans yelling to the driver not twenty-five feet to our right. Every time one of us would move, the machine gun fired another burst, chipping rocks in the wall. I was in a complete dilemma. I said to myself that we can't go forward because of the machine gun, we can't go to the right because of the tank, the wall was too high on the left, and I am not going to pull back. And it didn't seem healthy to just stay there.
I turned to a BAR man hiding behind the same rock and said, "You know? I don't know what the Hell to do." The man with the Browning Automatic rifle whispered, "Come to think of it, I saw a hole in the wall back yonder not over fifty yards."
I rolled out of my pack still dripping sea water and threw away my field glasses and map case. I told him that I was going back and see about that hole. If there was one, I'd come back and get the men. When they started pulling out for him to open up on that machine gun with his automatic rifle and cover us.
Rosey was lying there listening to every word.
I turned to him and said, "Come on Rosey, let's go back and see about that hole in the wall."
Then I took off and Rosey followed.
We found the hole in the wall. It was really just a gap, but you could manage to get to it by climbing up some fallen rocks. When I got on top I heard voices on the other side. I recognized Bugler's. Bugler (T5 Charles W. Stimson) was the battalion clerk, and was called Bugler because he used to be the company bugler back in old National Guard days at Sweetwater, Texas. I asked him who he was with and he said a bunch from E and G. I crawled back through the wall to get the other men but it wasn't necessary. I heard the Browning start firing and all the men crawled through the gap, except the BAR man and the prisoners. He later told me that soon after we left they started shelling the area and he and the prisoners jumped in a deep hole and stayed there until after daylight when he turned them over to the MP's on the beach. He was still a little mad at us for having dumped the prisoners on him, but later I put him in for a citation for getting us out of that tight spot and to make it up to him for the dirty trick we had unintentionally pulled on him.
Everything was as quiet as death in that ghostly city of ruins, but the sound of the action to our rear remained hot. I did not know the condition of the battalion. From the looks of the group I had, the whole thing must be mighty badly disorganized. I had between fifty and sixty men from every unit in the battalion, a few non-cons, and one lieutenant (1st Lt. Woodrow R. Jenkins), the S1 (Capt. Willard H. Gill) and the Battalion Surgeon for officers. Every man must have come off the beach as an individual, for there was no semblance of organization. I did know that tanks and German troops were moving into action. Artillery swished overhead to form geysers in the sea, but within the walls of Paestum it was like being in a tomb where a sound had not been heard for a thousand years. The place was uncanny. My mouth was dry and I could feel death lurking out there in the darkness ready to strike from nowhere. The situation appeared to me to be quite critical. My only desire was to get my men out of there and on to a river shown on the aerial photo where we could dig in and fight it out at daybreak.
It was too dark to do much and time was running out. I hollered at the non-coms to grab them off some men and form squads. Then, I told the lieutenant to send out scouts to our front and we would all move through the east gate of Paestum and dig in as soon as we got to the river. The S1 was to bring up the rear and keep the men punched up.
As soon as we got moving I sent out three-man patrols to cover our right and left flanks, but no sooner had the patrols disappeared in the darkness than they would gradually swing back and rejoin the main party. No one moved fast enough to suit me and I soon found myself out front with the scouts. After punching them up I moved back through the men yelling that if they wanted to live after the sun came up they had better get out on that river and dig in. Finally, I just took off in front of the scouts and everyone followed behind.
You could feel daylight coming on, and off to our right the columns of two Grecian temples made a silhouette in the graying sky. We stumbled over old ruins and climbed crumbling walls of houses whose floors were of beautiful tile mosaics. When we reached the east wall of Paestum there was a commotion in a black tunnel in the wall and just as I started to shoot into the tunnel women's voices shrieked out, "Italiano, Italiano!" The lieutenant had already crawled to the top of the wall and called back that you couldn't get off the other side, so we all turned to our right and went to the east gate. There, standing in the middle of the gate and all alone was Colonel Sam, his back to the railroad station.
The Colonel evidently had the same idea that I had, for he ordered us to cross the plowed field to our front and dig in at the river referred to on the map as the Capodifiume, which ran in the general direction of our objective, Mount Soprano. Just as day began to break Colonel Sam and I took off together across the flat plain with our men fanned out on either side. I asked him how in the Hell he had gotten to the gate all by himself, but I can't remember what he said.
The Capodifiume was nothing more than a drainage canal fed by an ice cold spring flowing from the base of a nose of Mount Soprano. It was about twelve feet wide with straight banks covered with a dense growth of head-high rushes. Its water was so crystal clear it looked to be about two feet deep and good enough to drink. When we reached the stream we could see no Germans anywhere, so the Colonel told me to set up the battalion command post there and ordered the lieutenant and the men to proceed up the left bank of a hundred yards or so and take up a defensive position.
The Colonel, the S1, Bugler and I sat down in the rushes with Rosey and about four medicos in red cross helmets squatting around. Each aid man carried a full bag of medical supplies with wire and metal splints hanging from shoulder straps. With the coming of daylight rifle and machine gun fire broke out heavy back in the town. I was glad to be out of there, and all we could do was to wait until some of the rest of our outfit caught up with us. Then, all of a sudden a German heavy mortar opened up across the river lobbing shells into the railroad station where some of our men were trying to assemble. I jumped to my feet and through the tall weeds could get only a faint glimpse of Germans partly concealed behind a house throwing shells into the upright tube. They weren't over seventy-five yards from us and in order to get a clear shot at them I dashed into the river for the other side. I went over my head in water and never touched bottom. I grabbed some weeds on the concave bank, but wasn't able to get a footing. For a moment I thought I was going to drown, but someone heard me splashing in the water and Colonel Sam reached over the bank and pulled me out. The shock of being drenched in ice water gave me the rigors and I shook all over.
Before I had gotten control of my nerves one of the medics jumped up hollering and pointing to our rear at four German machine gunners running across the plowed field from the direction of Paestum. Colonel Sam was already yelling at them when I pulled my automatic and let them have several rounds from the hip. They hit the ground and when I let them have another burst they dropped their weapons and trotted in German style with their hands high in the air. Colonel Sam left to see about our men to the front, while I went about searching the prisoners. They insisted on holding their hands up, but I made them put them down thinking that the German mortar crew might see hands over the top of the reed and let us have a round of what they were throwing into Paestum. I took nearly a carton of Chesterfield cigarettes and some matches off of them and divided them among us, as ours had been soaked in sea water. Where they had gotten the American cigarettes I never found out, but through Rosey, who spoke German, they told me they were from the 16th (Armored) Panzer Division and had been waiting at the beach for us for three days.
When I gave out of questions, Rosey said the Germans wanted to know if I would answer a question for them. I said, "Sure, what do they want to know?"
Rosey spoke to them in German and then turned to me and said, "You'll never guess it. They want to know if we're cowboys from Texas."
The First Sergeant of F (Joe W. Gill) looking for his company appeared from a hedge row of blackberry bushes bordering the plowed field. A machine pistol bullet had driven his wedding band up the bone into the palm of his hand, but he wasn't complaining. In the crook of his arm he carried the machine pistol he had taken off the German that had shot him. I assured the sergeant that his company was still somewhere back to Paestum, but he was determined to go forward. After considerable friendly persuasion on my part and some help from Rosey, I induced him to take the prisoners to the rear where he could find an aid station with the tools to remove the ring. I didn't feel like ordering a brave man like that to the rear, but sort of left the decision up to him, and was glad when he reluctantly agreed. I heard he rejoined F that night on Mount Soprano.
Things were beginning to break up back at Paestum. You could see our men individually and in pairs infiltrating toward us up the hedge rows, and a Ford truck painted a dusty tan raced at high speed on a dirt road leading from the town. It got past us before we realized it had German markings. A hairlipped man from E with his 60 mm mortar appeared from behind the hedge row and I yelled for him to put it into action and knock out those Germans who were still shooting their mortar into Paestum. This man was also named Mack. He was an exceedingly smart soldier, but due to his speech difficulty hadn't risen in rank higher than corporal.
When I told him to put his mortar into action, he replied, "I can't, I loth my thight."
Remembering that I had seen him practice shooting his mortar without a sight in Africa, I told him to try it like back in Africa. He moved over to a clearing where he could get a better view of things and I told him to aim at the Germans behind the house. He sat down, put the mortar barrel between his knees, and after pulling the safety pin, held the shell with its tail sticking into the tube. He deliberately moved the barrel back and forward until he thought he had it just right and let go of the shell. It hit bottom and came out of the barrel in a high arc.
When the shell exploded Mack threw down the mortar and jumped up into the air and ran around in a circle exclaiming loudly, "Yethus Thrith, I got a hit, I got a hit."
Only minutes after Mack knocked out the mortar a German tank pulled up so close to the opposite bank of the river that you could see its turret and gun barrel sticking through the reeds. It fired two 88 mms that exploded in the field just behind us. And then its two machine guns firing in angry bursts began cutting down the reeds on the river bank. We all ran and dove head first into the thorny blackberry hedge. I still have white marks on my hands and arms and body where those sharp thorns tore at my flesh.
I decided it was time to move the command post. From the opposite side of the hedge-row I could see men infiltrating in pairs and small widely scattered groups, taking advantage of whatever cover they could find. It looked like we were getting on the move. I jumped into a drainage ditch knee deep in water and started forward. Those of battalion headquarters followed in single file. Behind me were the Chaplain, the S1, the captain of H, Bugler, and Rosey and his aid men, all sloshing in the water. The shoulder-high Rosey and his aid men, all sloshing in the water. The shoulder-high ditch and grassy bank gave us good cover. When we came around a bend I could see straight ahead where the ditch emptied into the river. At that moment the same tank or another one pulled up on the opposite bank of the river and started raking the field to our left with its machine guns. Two other tanks pulled into view and also opened fire. We all crawled out of the ditch and took cover in the tall grass. I could see our men lying flat in open fields, some of them firing at the tanks with their rifles. The river acting as a barrier kept the tanks from running over our position. Finally when a bazooka shell ricocheted off the side of one tank, all three withdrew to the south and disappeared into some woods.
Those tank crews were gaining a certain respect for our riflemen. Already they had lost five tanks to bazookas in our battalion. A sergeant out of H (John Y. McGill) had knocked one out by climbing the tank and dropping a hand grenade down the open turret after someone had shot the crew leader when he had stuck his head out of the top for a look-see. Drivers operating with their forward ports open for better vision had been killed in their seats by riflemen firing pointblank through the openings. The Germans had taken a heavy loss in armor in similar fashion throughout our entire division, and in a way were operating at a distinct disadvantage. We were so completely disorganized and scattered that at no time did we provide a tank with a suitable target. The Germans were utterly confused by our tactics. While they were shooting at one man another lay hidden closely by with a bazooka. We were like a corps of army worms advancing on Mount Soprano, each individually Hell-bent on getting to the mountain. Our tactics of individual infiltration applied more pressure on them than they could cope with, and they alone knew that it would be only a matter of time when some of us would be sniping at their artillery positions at the base of Mount Soprano.
For some reason unknown to us our artillery was not giving us any support and it was getting well up into the day. Neither had the navy come in to silence the German artillery firing at the beaches. One very active 88 mm gun crew was shooting direct fire at the beaches from a position high up on Mount Soprano. So far the only weapons that we had employed against the Germans in our sector had been those we had brought ashore by hand.
After the tanks withdrew I moved on and found the Battalion Sergeant Major and my runner, Bick, by the river. Bick was standing there soaking wet and shivering, watching the sergeant apply a first aid packet to a man shot through the leg. The sergeant told me later that when they ran out of our assault boat, Bick grabbed him by his rifle belt and he had had to pull Bick hanging on his belt all the way, part of the time with Bick crying. They had arrived at the river just as the tanks moved up and started firing. The wounded man had fallen into the river and was drowning. They could all hear the man crying for help, but no one dared move. Then all of a sudden Bick laid his radio down and stood up. He deliberately walked through the cross fire of the tanks and our riflemen and stood on the bank of the river until he had found his man and dove in. When the action was over they found Bick clinging to the bank holding the man's head out of the water. While Bick may never have gotten a medal for that act of bravery in those few moments he became a man. He later rose to the rank of staff sergeant.
I took the radio and sat on the ground calling Red Fox One and Red Fox Two, or any other Red Fox who would answer. Red Fox was the call signal within our battalion. No one answered. After a long time the captain of G came in and said that he and about one hundred men were over by a house with a red roof. As there were a number of houses all with red roofs dotting the landscape, I could not figure out his exact location, but he assured me they were in pretty good shape and all moving toward the mountain.
Just before I reached a wooden foot bridge crossing the river, I ran into Rosey and his aid men working on the wounded. While some of the stretcher bearers were bringing the most urgent cases in on litters, Rosey and his key men were working steadily putting on tourniquets to stop bleeding and applying splints to fractured legs. They were too busy to even look up. I stopped to encourage the men with their "million dollar wounds," which meant a one-way ticket home, but their only thought at the moment was to join their outfit on Mount Soprano. As soon as a man was fixed up for evacuation, the Chaplain saw to it that he was hidden in the reeds to give him advantage of all available cover. And the Chaplain saw to it that those who died in the aid station were lined up in a neat little row off behind some bushes. Every Memorial Day my particular respects go out to one waxen face that stared open-eyed in death at me there on the ground. I don't remember which company he was from.
I looked toward the sea. Off in the distance across the sloping plain to the north I could see an entire infantry regiment (the 143rd) deployed over a mile wide moving up in our direction. It was our reserve regiment which had been forced to land farther up the beach, because Paestum was too hot. By then it was growing late in the afternoon.
I could hear our artillery coming into action. Off in the direction of G our artillery forward observer had finally gained radio contact with his battery of 105 mms. The captain of G told me that the lieutenant of artillery had crawled up on the roof of a house and told his battery to fire one round at "the house with the red roof." From there he could adjust the fire of the battery on any target of his choice. The battery fired. The shell hit the barn just behind and blew half the barn roof over the top of the house. The lieutenant suddenly became aware of the fact that every house in Italy had a red tile roof.
The German tanks made another pass. They pulled up and started firing machine guns at us and their 88 mms at the regiment below. I hit the ground and so did everyone else except Rosey who kept working on the wounded, completely unconscious of what was going on about him. Our artillery forward observer asked for fire from his four gun battery located somewhere back at Paestum. While the battery was firing two or three rounds for adjustment, the tanks pulled out and that was the last we saw of them that day. In the meantime some of our riflemen had infiltrated the German artillery position and after a few rounds from their M1's, the German artillery pulled out hastily on the only escape route open to them on a dirt road to the north. Then a U. S. naval destroyer pulled in and opened fire on the 88 mms high up on Mount Soprano. When the first blast hit up there on the mountain, the 88 mms stopped firing and we all started moving on Mount Soprano, still two or three hours short of our objective.
I picked up a pack and a gas mask and a couple of hand grenades at the aid station and crossed the wooden foot bridge to the opposite side of the river. At that point the river cut back to the left and it was a much shorter route to the mountain. Bick was with me jabbering to the other walkie-talkie men on his radio and telling me that most of the rest of the battalion was going to cross the river farther up or go around where it headed at the big spring. The sergeant major, Bugler, and a half-dozen enlisted men followed me. Somehow I had lost the S1 and the machine gun officer who had been with me all day. Rosey and the Chaplain stayed behind attending to their work.
A soldier in combat rarely, if ever, knows what is going on outside his own little barnyard, which in most cases is quite small. To hear the others tell it they got it lots worse than we did, both on our right and left flanks. In one respect the 2nd Battalion had been lucky. The Germans had considered the walled ruins of Paestum a natural barrier to tank operations and had concentrated their main armored efforts against the troops coming in above and below Paestum. But that didn't help the lieutenant from the third platoon of E (3nd Lt. James J. Curran). Shortly after daylight he and a German tank contested each other over the priority of going out the east gate of Paestum. The lieutenant and his small group were hidden behind some rocks just before the gate anxious to depart the city, while the tank wanted the right of way. The men were pinned down and the tank was afraid to close in because of bazooka fire. It was a flat stalemate. But the lietenant who had been a Massachusetts state policeman before the war, couldn't stand the indecision. Every once in a while he would rise up and throw a hand grenade at the tank, which in turn would retaliate by spraying everything with machine gun fire. After about the third or fourth toss a sergeant yelled in a loud voice, "For Christ sake, Lieutenant, leave the Goddamned thing alone." They lay there for a while and finally the tank pulled back and let the lieutenant and his men through. A little later the lieutenant was hit by shrapnel and was evacuated to a hospital ship some twelve miles off shore, but went AWOL on another landing craft and rejoined E shortly after daylight the next morning.
A parallel account was told me by a sergeant out of G who said that he and about six men were hiding behind a stone fence when a general officer of the Division appeared and hollered for them to get out from behind that wall and get going to the mountain. The sergeant told him there were German tanks out there and the general said, "Those are American tanks, come on, let's go," and jumped the wall. A tank let him have an 88 that nearly split his legs and the general jumped back into the nest of soldiers and said, "They are German, for sure."
After crossing the bridge we followed a foot path that took us through overhead grape arbors loaded with ripe fruit ready for the press and through little farm enclosures with figs drying on trays laid out in the sun on top of the shed roofs. We ate them as we passed not because we were conscious of being hungry, but mainly because they were in reach. Not an Italian was in sight, neither were the Germans. The only thing alive and moving were a few hogs rooting in forbidden potato fields. As we passed around a series of hay stacks we came upon a recently abandoned German artillery position. What impressed me most was its comfort and neat appearance. It was unique and still had a rather pleasant smell. Everything was intact just as the Germans had left it, except the artillery piece and the empty shell cases were missing. Around the perimeter of the gun emplacement, which was completely concealed by a balcony of overhead grape vines, were benches and couches made of bamboo and reeds that the German soldiers had built for leisurely comfort. Their dead cigarette butts carefully placed in an earthen bowl on a table appeared to be fresh smoked, and I sat down for a moment on one of the benches for a rest.
A letter lay on the table and I opened it. I couldn't read the German, but the picture enclosed made me think of our families back in Texas. There was the baby boy on the soldier's knee with a little girl hanging onto his pants and the mother, who looked like she might have been nine months pregnant, stood pointing to a little dog who was sitting up asking for a biscuit. A couple of grandparents appeared proudly in the background. After studying their faces for a long time, I took a match and burned the picture, because I thought it too personal to fall into other hands.
As we moved on we followed a well beaten patch of tank tracks, which led to a route around the headwaters of the Capodifiume, where a big spring burst out of the ground flowing several thousand gallons a minute. A battalion runner picked up a half-used belt of machine gun ammunition discarded by one of the tanks and showed it to me. It was something new to us. The belt was loaded with regular metal cases contaning wooden bullets stained a shingle red. We figured they were good for only a very short range and were used in close combat so as not to overfire into their own troops under such conditions as had prevailed earlier in the day.
The sun was about an hour high when we sat on the ground by a house one hundred feet from the spring. We tried to keep our minds off the dead German who lay a little apart from us where he had been thrown out of a passing tank. A set of tank tracks led up to the front door where he lay on the ground. He could well have been one of the drivers shot while operating with the forward ports open. We were growing very tired and still had a hard climb ahead of us. To our front we could see men climbing halfway up the steep slopes of the mountain, with hundreds of others following close behind emerging from the flat plain below. One could definitely discern a distinct pattern of reorganization forming on the mountainside. Each company had its own objective on each side of a gap in the mountain and you could see the men beginning to funnel toward their individual destinations. It appeared to be like a magnet slowly drawing the separate pieces of a confused puzzle back into proper order. There was E on the left and F on the right, with G funneling up toward the middle of the gap.
Back at the Tower of Paestum a very strange character out of the adjoining regiment had attached himself to me. He was tall and thin and appeared to be the kind that had never had a friend or anyone to speak kindly to him in his life. He had no apparent talents for being a soldier or anything else for that matter and never said a word or came close or did anything. He just seemed to be around every time I looked up. He gave me the feeling I didn't want to have him around, and several times during the day I found myself asking him why he didn't go off and hunt up his own outfit. He would only look at me out of his sad eyes and be gone for a while, and then there he would be again, just there. I tried my best to ignore him, but had the feeling he was always somewhere around.
When I caught myself unconsiously glancing out of the corner of my eye to see how the dead German was getting along, I saw this lanky fellow appear from behind the farm house carrying a large demijohn of wine under his left arm. Our eyes met and he slowly moved toward me and placed the jug in my hands. I removed the cork and took a long pull at the bottle, and then passed the wine to the others sitting in a circle. I reached for a pack of cigarettes and handed them to him and when our eyes met we smiled to each other. Soon we all began to laugh and talk for the first time that day and opened rations and ate.
While Bick and another soldier were going to the spring to fill our canteens, I took a message book from Johnny (Pfc. Johnnie A. Pricer), a battalion runner, and wrote a message to Regiment giving them a report on the condition of things and our progress. I gave the message to Johnnie and told Bugler to go along for company and in case Regiment wanted further details to fill them in.
When Johnnie and Bugler took off, we all stood up. I motioned to the lanky soldier to come along, and we slowly climbed to the gap in the mountain where we dug in for the night.
Texas Military History
Summer, 1965
[James T. Padgitt, son of Mrs. J. Tom Padgitt, entered the Army Nov. 20, 1940; sent to ETO April 1, 1943; fought at Salerno; 12 months overseas; attached to 36th Division; awarded Purple Heart; held the rank of lieutenant colonel; discharged on Nov. 1, 1944.]
It was three o'clock in the afternoon, 4 September 1943, when I crawled back under a temporary shade I had thrown up out of discarded shelter half, and some sticks and pieces of telephone wire. The African sun bore down, but was not nearly so hot as the south wind blowing at 110 degrees off the Algerian desert. We had been in that dirty wheat field, not 2000 yards from the Mediterranean for three days shaking down for an invasion of parts unknown and had just sent off the last of our stuff being combat loaded on the attack transport, U.S.S. Dickman. She was tied up with countless other invasion ships at the French naval base of Mers-el-Cabir at Oran, Africa. I was one of a thousand sweating infantrymen of the 2nd Battalion, 142nd Infantry, dressed in heavy woolen combat uniforms, and my only possessions at the moment were my side arms, gas mask and combat pack containing part of a day's ration of dog food, referred to officially as Army Ration, Type C. Our only job at the moment was to patiently wait for the trucks to come the next day and haul us to the Dickman. As Battalion Executive Officer and second in command, my many duties had boiled themselves down to the simple routine of staying around Battalion Headquarters and holding things together, especially in the absence of the commanding officer (Lt. Col. Samuel S. Graham), who at that time had gone to 36th Division Headquarters to see what he could find out, if anything.
After pulling myself under the shade I tried to go to sleep, but it was too hot and I guess I was still a little mad at Rosey (Capt. Samuel W. Rosenberg), the Battalion Surgeon, who had just jumped me for the third straight day because the slit trenches we were using for latrines had not been dug deep enough to suit him. He knew there was nothing but solid rock eight inches beneath that Hell-hole of a blistering wheat field, and we were doing the best we could with our small entrenching tools. The thought occurred to me that Rosey would be better off sticking closer to his aid station aside the Oran highway where our medical detachment was enjoying a satisfactory pickup trade from jeep wrecks and the heavy traffic moving to the port.
As usual the desert wind stopped about sundown and a cool breeze drifted in from the Mediterranean. I got up and sauntered down to the aid station where I stood around for a while watching Rosey carefully supervise the preparation of a man for evacuation. A medico told me his motorcycle had sideswiped a truck and he was suffering with a compound fracture of the right thigh. The aid stood by directing everything by the numbers. To him it was just another training exercise for what lay ahead.
After seeing the man off in an ambulance we sat on some medical chests and had us a game of casino, with the Chaplain (Capt. Harris T. Hall) and the S3 (Capt. Carthal N. Morgan) sitting in. After a while Rosey broke out some alcohol from one of the medical chests and poured a generous portion into our mess cups and cut it some with what was left of an open can of grapefruit juice. The play continued and we made speculations about the coming invasion. A medico sergeant tuning a radio chimed in that he had gotten it straight from a division jeep driver that it was Italy. The Chaplain dealt the cards while we listened to some of Tommy Dorsey being broadcast direct to us from Germany. At the end of the record, Berlin Sal in her throaty voice cut in and confirmed what the medico had just said. After bragging us up big and speculating on what some of our sweethearts were up to that evening with the draft dodgers back in Texas, she went on to say what a fool General Clark was for thinking of throwing away the lives of so many fine young Americans by dumping them on the Italian beaches against crack divisions of battle smart young German soldiers. She claimed they were waiting for us in such well prepared positions that we would never get ashore alive. And as a parting gesture, she sent her personal regards to Colonel Sam, our battalion commanding officer, and a half dozen other well known officers in the Division. After she signed off I overheard a soldier braggingly tell a medico about the plans he had for Berlin Sal the very first time he met up with her in Germany. I think he spoke for most of the men in the outfit.
It was long after dark when I left the aid station. Our five companies were scattered over an area of about four city blocks and I walked around for over an hour checking on how the men were doing. Under flashlights and candles there were hundreds of games going and the action would make a dealer from Las Vegas choke up and want to cry. Every man in the outfit seemed to be Hell-bent on getting rid of his money. They knew they would be aboard ship in a few hours where they wouldn't let a man bet on the time of day and later too busy playing the odds with death to cut a deck of cards.
We sailed out of Oran at five the next evening. The convoy moved in four columns 1000 yards apart with the cruisers Philadelphia, Savannah, and Boise, on the inside. Ships flying mostly British and American flags stretched as far as the eye could see with our destroyers plowing the edge of every horizon.
The Dickman, manned by the Coast Guard, had been the liner President Roosevelt before the war. She was an old friend. So were her crew and officers. We had practiced loading her for combat, sailed the Mediterranean and had gone through landing rehearsals against the coast of Africa under the cover of darkness to familiarize our officers and men with the conditions they were soon to face. Every detail of loading and unloading had been worked out down to the last man, vehicle and piece of equipment. The first to come off in combat was the last to be put aboard, so that everything could be unstacked in proper order. Each man and officer was assigned to a numbered boat team, and the men of respective teams were quartered together aboard ship. In spite of the crowded conditions, life on the Dickman was pleasant. Everyone had a bunk to sleep on off the ground and the chow aboard ship was excellent. Since our combat orders had not as yet come down, everyone took it easy, and those who could make it top side stood around on deck watching the greatest armada of ships that had ever been seen sailing for combat.
The following morning about ten, a motor launch from a British transport carrying the 3rd Battalion and Regimental Headquarters pulled alongside the Dickman and sent up word the regimental commander (Col. John D. Forsythe) wanted Col. Sam, me and the S3 at his command post on the British ship immediately. We scrambled down a rope ladder thrown over the side and took off on a calm sea for regiment. When we were all assembled, the Colonel appeared with his staff and a large map board and began issuing his orders.
It was to be Italy, the Gulf of Salerno at a place called Paestum, a walled Grecian ruin built 500 years before the time of Christ. Navy frog-men who had walked out the beaches under the cover of darkness had reported them to be mined and heavily covered with barbed-wire entanglements. The well prepared defense positions on the dune line were manned by Italian soldiers. All enemy gun emplacements had checked to be exactly as shown on the close-up oblique aerial photographic maps that had just been placed in our hands.
The Gulf of Salerno lies south of the Sorrento Peninsula, which separates it from the Bay of Naples. From the town of Salerno at the southern base of the peninsula are beautiful beaches stretching twenty-five miles south to the town of Agropoli. The Fifth Army plan was for a British corps consisting of two assault divisions and British commandos and American rangers to land in the Salerno area. With a twelve mile gap between us and the British corps our division was to go ashore with two regiments in assault over four 600 yard beaches named Red, Green, Yellow and Blue in the vicinity of Paestum. The rest of the American corps was in Sicily awaiting the return of our ships for them. The first assault waves were to hit the beaches at 3:30 AM 9/Sept/43, with our regiment on the left sending an assault battalion in at Red Beach and one at Green.
Our 2nd Battalion drew Green Beach in the center with a sector that included all of the mile square ruins of Paestum with our right boundary forming an east-west line running inland from the Grecian Tower of Paestum, which lay quite close to the water southwest of the town. The Tower of Paestum was a fifty foot stone structure, built as a medieval watch tower and commanded an excellent view of the beaches. We were later to find its fourteen foot thick walls to be an indestructible fortress against anything we could carry ashore by hand. From the top of its walled turret enemy machine gunners and snipers had it pretty much their own way.
We were to move rapidly inland, take the town of Paestum and reorganize at the railroad just beyond town. Our initial objective was 3600 foot Mount Soprano five miles across a flat plain. We were then to advance over the mountains another seven miles to the town of Roccadaspide, where we were to hold and await further orders. All lines of communication would move directly to the beaches over which all supply and evacuation would be made.
With copies of the orders, bundles of maps and aerial photographs, and boxes containing a booklet on Italy that was to be placed in the hands of each man, we left for the Dickman. On the way we discussed our plans and by the time we climbed aboard, Colonel Sam was ready to issue his orders. I called all officers to the ward room, passed out the maps and turned things over to the Colonel.
It was to be exactly as how we had worked out in our training exercises. The assault wave was Company E, commanded by Capt. James G. Barnett, on the left and F, commanded by Capt. Homer Spence, on the right. In the second wave came G, commanded by Capt. Terrell J. Davis, the heavy weapons company. The third wave was made up of the rest, Headquarters Company, commanded by Capt. Willard H. Gill, attached engineer platoon, artillery forward observer team, navy shore party, navy fire direction team and our medical detachment. After that the coast guard would return to the Dickman for all of our heavy equipment, vehicles, supply personnel and anti-tank platoon. The pioneer platoon of Headquarters company was to be issued wire cutters and scattered among the boat teams of the first wave with the mission of cutting the wire on the beach. The attached engineer platoon was later to clear the beach of mines.
Co. E was to move through Paestum and Co. F to take the tower and move straight in keeping the south wall of Paestum on its left. Battalion Headquarters would be set up at the railroad station at the far edge of Paestum, and after reorganizing at the tracks E and F were to advance on Mount Soprano. Co. G was to follow in reserve and the heavy machine gun and heavy mortars of H Company were to go under rifle company control on reaching the beach. That is not exactly the way the whole thing worked out. I don't think anything worked out according to plan except the parting shot of Colonel Sam when he said, "I want every man to be on that mountain by sundown." Everyone personally saw to it that he got there, except the dead and wounded.
Except for a visiting reconnaissance from the German air force that reported our departure from Oran, our convoy was not attacked and everything went along on the Dickman as if we were on a cruise ship. Eating and sleeping were our pleasures and our deck sports consisted of reading the book on Italy and cleaning our weapons. The booklet fed the imagination of our more amorous soldiers, and the talk of beautiful Italian women took up most of their spare time, while the Mexicans, native Texans who made up about a third of our outfit, passed hours away whetting their bayonets with pocket stones and talking Spanish.
The sign and counter-sign we were to use the first twenty-four hours after landing puzzled us all. If a man ran into an unknown party, especially at night, he was supposed to holler, "Male Fist," and if he was a friend he would reply, "Hearts of Oak." That would make you know he wasn't the enemy. The words just didn't make sense to the Mexicans and the farm boys from the Midwest couldn't figure it out well enough to explain it to the rest of us Texans. The only man who seemed able to live with the words was the communications officer (2nd Lt. Robert H. Cromwell), who had been in a Broadway play and he said it had something to do with knights and warriors many years ago in England. I know the words were responsible for the death of a lieutenant in E Company (2nd Lt. Fremont C. Dibble). A private in E told me the lieutenant hollered, "Male Fist," a couple of times when he reached the dune line off the beach and the enemy shot him in his tracks. The Mexicans took a shorter route. They would just whisper, "Sergeant, it's me, Rodriguez," and of course the sergeant knowing Rodriguez's voice would let it go at that. We were not worried much because it was generally known that those Italians didn't have much stomach for fighting.
After supper the last night aboard, the bosun's shrill whistle sounded over the loud speakers and we heard the familiar, "Now hear this," and we all stopped and listened. Over the loud speaker came the voice of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, "Hostilities between the United Nations and Italy have terminated, effective at once." The men were bewildered as to what came next and so was I, but we did our best to make it clear that the invasion was scheduled to go on as ordered. Even on so short a notice the Germans might have been able to take over the entire defense and resistance to the invasion might be heavier than expected.
I went down to the bottom of the aft hold to D deck to check on my boat team made up of over forty men. I think it was number twenty-one and consisted of a rifle squad, a light machine gun squad, a 60 mm mortar crew, a couple of linemen with rolls of phone wire, the Battalion Surgeon and aid man with a litter, the Battalion Sergeant Major (T Sgt Elvin E. Carter) and his clerk, the captain of H and the captain of Headquarters Company and their runners, and me and my walkie-talkie man, Charles R. Bick, who was from Pennsylvania. Bick was just a kid. I remember the night those French women gave him his sixteenth birthday party down in Algeria where we were camped out at a race track at Tlemcen. They all kissed him good night as if he was their own boy. But Bick was large for his age. The officers were nowhere around as they were checking their units, but I sat around for a while trying to reassure the men. Every boat team was a mixture like mine, so if a boat was blown out of the water we would not have all our eggs in one basket.
When I came back to headquarters, Colonel Sam told me to find those twelve extra bazookas he had picked up at Division the other night and put them out with ammunitions wherever I could place them. He said it might be just our luck to hit one of those armored German panzer outfits. I had a hard time getting rid of the bazookas, because the rifle companies already had their share of them and the men in H and Headquarters Company were loaded down with special equipment. When I passed the last bazookas off on the Captain of Headquarters Company he hollered at a soldier that was standing around doing nothing. It was old Mack, a man who couldn't do a damned thing well except pass out letters at mail call. When Mack took the bazooka and two rounds of ammunition he said, "Hell, Captain, I don't know how to shoot the damn thing." And the Captain replied, "Mack, you just carry it ashore and maybe someone will find a use for it."
I would never have dreamed it, but within a few hours Mack got himself a German tank. A sergeant that was with him told me about it. A bunch of them were hiding behind a stone fence when the sergeant spotted a tank coming down the fence on the opposite side. He yelled at Mack to bring his bazooka, and Mack disclaimed any knowledge of the weapon. The sergeant told Mack just to put it on his shoulder and when he told him, to raise up, poke the thing at the tank and pull the trigger. The sergeant loaded the rocket launcher from the rear and when the tank was half way past them he cocked it and said, "Now, Mack, now." Mack raised up slowly, pulled the trigger and knocked the Hell out of the tank. Then Mack slid down behind the wall and said, "I shore hope I didn't hurt nobody."
The Chaplain had raised the Devil with me for over two days, because he was assigned to a boat team in the third wave. He wanted to be in the first wave, and I had tried to reason with him that every boat in the first wave was so overloaded that you couldn't squeeze a sardine into a one of them. That night after holding his last prayer service on top of a hatch, he hit me up again, and this time more forcefully than ever. I could tell he meant business, but I tried to reason with him that if he did land with the first wave it would be too dark and with so much shooting going on he couldn't do a darned thing if he were there. He said, "Men will be dying there, and there is where I belong." I couldn't answer an argument like that and gave in. "O.K., Chaplain," I said. "There are thirty-six landing craft on board this ship and you just pick the one that suits you and get on it." I think the Chaplain found plenty to do in his line early in the day.
At midnight the Dickman's engines went dead and her anchor chain rattled over her side. We had arrived at the troop transport area twelve miles off shore. A terrific naval bombardment had opened up twelve miles off shore. A terrific naval bombardment had opened up far to the north pounding the shore defenses where the British were to land. The orange flashes in the northern sky reminded one of a huge electric storm of great intensity. According to the plan given us we were to make our assault on the beaches at Paestum without previous naval or air bombardment, a fruitless idea of trying to trick the Germans into thinking our entire effort was to be made farther north. But General Clark rarely, if ever, fooled his German counterpart, Filed Marshal Albert Kesselring, a shrewd and superior defensive specialist.
When the first teams were called to their boat stations I went below and joined my group. One of the men gave me a hand grenade, which I slipped into my gas mask cover that hung by a long strap over my shoulder. We stood in the center of the dark cargo hold, smoking our last cigarettes and saying very little. Our instructions were to load and lock our pieces, only to fire in the darkness when absolutely necessary. We could not take the chance of shooting at everything that moved in the dark, otherwise we might wind up killing each other. I adjusted my pack once more and my hand unconsciously went down to my Colt automatic hanging at my hip. From there on we were entirely in the hands of the Coast Guard until they put us on the beach eight minutes behind the first wave.
Finally, boat team twenty-one was called, and we began to climb out of the hold one by one. I brought up the rear to see that everything was clear. I followed my bunch across the cargo deck to the opposite side of the ship. It was getting darker by the minute, because the moon had just gone down. I felt my way up the gang-way to the top deck, where our landing craft hung free on power winches at the far end of the ship. One by one we walked a long, narrow plank with nothing but the sea below us until we half fell five feet into the bottom of the LCVP (Landing Craft Vehicular Personnel). I landed on top of several men as there was little standing room left for me. Those snub-nosed assault craft had a ramp in front that could be quickly dropped when it hit the beach, permitting the landing party to scramble ashore. I stood in the very back of the boat where I belonged, for it was my duty to see that everyone got off.
When we started lowering away I heard the coast guardsman operating the winch take a parting shot at the coxwain of our boat. "I thought you joined the Coast Guard to stay home," he yelled. I have forgotten the exact nasty words the coast guardsman threw back, but they were expressive.
Our coxswain knew his business. As soon as we hit the water he took off in the darkness for the rendezvous where we joined eleven other boats of the second wave going round and round in a big circle. Off in the night, hundreds of other boats were circling in like fashion, biding their time until the moment they were to fan out at the line of departure and make a fast run for the beach. We didn't have much to say to each other, but just stood there packed tightly in the churning boat shivering as the spray drenched us to the skin. I kept turning my ankle on the litter Rosey's aid man had brought aboard.
We lost all track of time and were not conscious of what was going on until the coxswain opened up the throttle and yelled above the roar of the noisy engines that we had crossed the line of departure, 1200 yards off shore. As in training, I told everyone to get below the side plates, but I remained standing amazed at what I saw in the distance. There was the dark outline of Mount Soprano just exactly as it appeared on the aerial photos, and I studied every detail of the Italian landscape that came to me through the darkness. Without warning all Hell broke loose. Flares went up high over the beach, and every German gun opened up all at once. Tracer machine gun bullets splattered off the side of our boat and passed overhead like strings of pearls in the night, and you could feel the breath of the flat trajectory 88 mms as they barely missed. I didn't have to tell anyone to get down. We were all hunting the bottom side of that boat, but there wasn't room. The squeeze triggered some of the cartridges of compressed gas in our life belts and a few inflated, making conditions far too tight. I looked over my shoulder and there was the coxswain standing erect as if nothing was happening. He was gunning his engines for all they were worth, racing hard for the beach.
When we went aground fifty yards off the shore the ramp fell and everyone scrambled out of there as if the thing was on fire. As I started to run out of the boat, back came Rosey yelling, "Where's the litter, where's the litter?" I shouted, "To Hell with the litter. Let's get out of here." We both ran into the sea. The water tripped me and I fell head-over-heels going completely under. Someone grabbed me by the pack and started dragging me ashore. When I got to my feet in waist deep water all machine guns were laying down a heavy cross fire of tracer bullets in a final protective line. The fire was so hot that I didn't think we were going to make it, but most of it was passing a couple of feet over our heads.
At the water's edge I saw men lying all over the ground. I thought they were dead. I made a dash across the beach and hit the ground when a flare went up and hung there lighting the area brighter than day. Down the beach I could see men crawling on their bellies and hands and knees, with their butts low. When the flare went out I made another dash and hit the wire. My gas mask flopped between my legs tripping me as I ran. I rolled over on my back and slipped it off. I started working myself under the wire. I pushed with my feet while I held the wire up with my hands. Mortars were hitting all over the place, throwing sand in my eyes. I kept on wiggling. When I kicked off the last strand, I rolled over on my belly and took a quick look around. There was a machine gun in the dunes just to my left rattling like a snake, but it was firing over my head. I decided to make a run for the dunes. When I crawled up into the high grass, I recognized the machine gun position as the one plainly shown on the aerial photo. I reached for my hand grenade, but it was with my gas mask under the wire.
I figured the best thing for me was to get off that beach. I jumped over into a depression in the dunes. Just as I got to my feet I saw four Germans about twelve or fourteen feet away coming straight at me. I knew they were Germans, because of the shape of their helmets and the way they carried their rifles close to the knee at the balance. Apparently they hadn't seen me. I let them have three shots from the hip and when they ducked one way, I ducked the other. We parted company. I was kind of startled at the muzzle blast of my .45. A bright orange flame shot out about a foot from the muzzle every time it went off. That sort of trick might give my position away, I thought.
It was a little more peaceful in back of the dunes. Most of the action was still on the beach. I was glad to get my breath. After wandering aimlessly down a little draw, a rifleman from E called to me by name and we joined up. The Germans in the darkness were hollering all over the place. I asked the man from E, who spoke some German, what they were yelling about. He listened a minute and replied, "The damn crazy Americans won't stop and fight. They're just walking through us."
Pretty soon we came out on a big clearing. A bazooka shell lit up the country. Right in front of us was the Tower of Paestum. From behind the high turret German machine guns and snipers were letting the beach have it for all they were worth. Bazooka men from F and the regiment to the right (the 141st) were pounding away at the base of the tower, but it wasn't doing a bit of good. A bunch of riflemen were just standing around watching. The Germans were firing from positions well behind the turret wall, which was too high up for a hand grenade, and there was very little that anybody could do.
Then and there I decided to get back into my own sector. The man from E and I took off to the left and try to find the walled city of Paestum. In about five minutes we ran into something like fifteen men from F and G. Rosey and his aidman carrying the litter were with them. They had just taken nine prisoners. I couldn't quite figure what was going on. The Germans were so scared they couldn't stand still, while the men of F and G were taking the Germans' helmets and trying them on for size. Finally they asked me what we were going to do with the Germans. I said I guessed we had better take them with us, so we all started off together to find Paestum.
As we stumbled over telephone wire covered in brightly colored plastic, we tried to cut it with pocket knives and bayonets, but it was made of steel and too tough to handle. We moved forward in a very loosely held together group, with the prisoners bunched up in the middle just a little in the front of center. When moved forward in a very loosely held together group, with the prisoners bunched up in the middle just a little in the front of center. When we hit the wall of Paestum, I yelled for everyone to keep it to the rocks had fallen off the wall obstructing our progress in the darkness, but other than that things were progressing O.K. But when you move around too much in close combat nothing stays peaceful for long. Just to our right a machine gun opened up firing a burst of tracer into the wall, richocheting them into us. The prisoners hit the ground first and then we fell in behind the large rocks. When I lay there trying to make a simple estimate of the situation, I heard a German tank creeping past us in starts and stops with the Germans yelling to the driver not twenty-five feet to our right. Every time one of us would move, the machine gun fired another burst, chipping rocks in the wall. I was in a complete dilemma. I said to myself that we can't go forward because of the machine gun, we can't go to the right because of the tank, the wall was too high on the left, and I am not going to pull back. And it didn't seem healthy to just stay there.
I turned to a BAR man hiding behind the same rock and said, "You know? I don't know what the Hell to do." The man with the Browning Automatic rifle whispered, "Come to think of it, I saw a hole in the wall back yonder not over fifty yards."
I rolled out of my pack still dripping sea water and threw away my field glasses and map case. I told him that I was going back and see about that hole. If there was one, I'd come back and get the men. When they started pulling out for him to open up on that machine gun with his automatic rifle and cover us.
Rosey was lying there listening to every word.
I turned to him and said, "Come on Rosey, let's go back and see about that hole in the wall."
Then I took off and Rosey followed.
We found the hole in the wall. It was really just a gap, but you could manage to get to it by climbing up some fallen rocks. When I got on top I heard voices on the other side. I recognized Bugler's. Bugler (T5 Charles W. Stimson) was the battalion clerk, and was called Bugler because he used to be the company bugler back in old National Guard days at Sweetwater, Texas. I asked him who he was with and he said a bunch from E and G. I crawled back through the wall to get the other men but it wasn't necessary. I heard the Browning start firing and all the men crawled through the gap, except the BAR man and the prisoners. He later told me that soon after we left they started shelling the area and he and the prisoners jumped in a deep hole and stayed there until after daylight when he turned them over to the MP's on the beach. He was still a little mad at us for having dumped the prisoners on him, but later I put him in for a citation for getting us out of that tight spot and to make it up to him for the dirty trick we had unintentionally pulled on him.
Everything was as quiet as death in that ghostly city of ruins, but the sound of the action to our rear remained hot. I did not know the condition of the battalion. From the looks of the group I had, the whole thing must be mighty badly disorganized. I had between fifty and sixty men from every unit in the battalion, a few non-cons, and one lieutenant (1st Lt. Woodrow R. Jenkins), the S1 (Capt. Willard H. Gill) and the Battalion Surgeon for officers. Every man must have come off the beach as an individual, for there was no semblance of organization. I did know that tanks and German troops were moving into action. Artillery swished overhead to form geysers in the sea, but within the walls of Paestum it was like being in a tomb where a sound had not been heard for a thousand years. The place was uncanny. My mouth was dry and I could feel death lurking out there in the darkness ready to strike from nowhere. The situation appeared to me to be quite critical. My only desire was to get my men out of there and on to a river shown on the aerial photo where we could dig in and fight it out at daybreak.
It was too dark to do much and time was running out. I hollered at the non-coms to grab them off some men and form squads. Then, I told the lieutenant to send out scouts to our front and we would all move through the east gate of Paestum and dig in as soon as we got to the river. The S1 was to bring up the rear and keep the men punched up.
As soon as we got moving I sent out three-man patrols to cover our right and left flanks, but no sooner had the patrols disappeared in the darkness than they would gradually swing back and rejoin the main party. No one moved fast enough to suit me and I soon found myself out front with the scouts. After punching them up I moved back through the men yelling that if they wanted to live after the sun came up they had better get out on that river and dig in. Finally, I just took off in front of the scouts and everyone followed behind.
You could feel daylight coming on, and off to our right the columns of two Grecian temples made a silhouette in the graying sky. We stumbled over old ruins and climbed crumbling walls of houses whose floors were of beautiful tile mosaics. When we reached the east wall of Paestum there was a commotion in a black tunnel in the wall and just as I started to shoot into the tunnel women's voices shrieked out, "Italiano, Italiano!" The lieutenant had already crawled to the top of the wall and called back that you couldn't get off the other side, so we all turned to our right and went to the east gate. There, standing in the middle of the gate and all alone was Colonel Sam, his back to the railroad station.
The Colonel evidently had the same idea that I had, for he ordered us to cross the plowed field to our front and dig in at the river referred to on the map as the Capodifiume, which ran in the general direction of our objective, Mount Soprano. Just as day began to break Colonel Sam and I took off together across the flat plain with our men fanned out on either side. I asked him how in the Hell he had gotten to the gate all by himself, but I can't remember what he said.
The Capodifiume was nothing more than a drainage canal fed by an ice cold spring flowing from the base of a nose of Mount Soprano. It was about twelve feet wide with straight banks covered with a dense growth of head-high rushes. Its water was so crystal clear it looked to be about two feet deep and good enough to drink. When we reached the stream we could see no Germans anywhere, so the Colonel told me to set up the battalion command post there and ordered the lieutenant and the men to proceed up the left bank of a hundred yards or so and take up a defensive position.
The Colonel, the S1, Bugler and I sat down in the rushes with Rosey and about four medicos in red cross helmets squatting around. Each aid man carried a full bag of medical supplies with wire and metal splints hanging from shoulder straps. With the coming of daylight rifle and machine gun fire broke out heavy back in the town. I was glad to be out of there, and all we could do was to wait until some of the rest of our outfit caught up with us. Then, all of a sudden a German heavy mortar opened up across the river lobbing shells into the railroad station where some of our men were trying to assemble. I jumped to my feet and through the tall weeds could get only a faint glimpse of Germans partly concealed behind a house throwing shells into the upright tube. They weren't over seventy-five yards from us and in order to get a clear shot at them I dashed into the river for the other side. I went over my head in water and never touched bottom. I grabbed some weeds on the concave bank, but wasn't able to get a footing. For a moment I thought I was going to drown, but someone heard me splashing in the water and Colonel Sam reached over the bank and pulled me out. The shock of being drenched in ice water gave me the rigors and I shook all over.
Before I had gotten control of my nerves one of the medics jumped up hollering and pointing to our rear at four German machine gunners running across the plowed field from the direction of Paestum. Colonel Sam was already yelling at them when I pulled my automatic and let them have several rounds from the hip. They hit the ground and when I let them have another burst they dropped their weapons and trotted in German style with their hands high in the air. Colonel Sam left to see about our men to the front, while I went about searching the prisoners. They insisted on holding their hands up, but I made them put them down thinking that the German mortar crew might see hands over the top of the reed and let us have a round of what they were throwing into Paestum. I took nearly a carton of Chesterfield cigarettes and some matches off of them and divided them among us, as ours had been soaked in sea water. Where they had gotten the American cigarettes I never found out, but through Rosey, who spoke German, they told me they were from the 16th (Armored) Panzer Division and had been waiting at the beach for us for three days.
When I gave out of questions, Rosey said the Germans wanted to know if I would answer a question for them. I said, "Sure, what do they want to know?"
Rosey spoke to them in German and then turned to me and said, "You'll never guess it. They want to know if we're cowboys from Texas."
The First Sergeant of F (Joe W. Gill) looking for his company appeared from a hedge row of blackberry bushes bordering the plowed field. A machine pistol bullet had driven his wedding band up the bone into the palm of his hand, but he wasn't complaining. In the crook of his arm he carried the machine pistol he had taken off the German that had shot him. I assured the sergeant that his company was still somewhere back to Paestum, but he was determined to go forward. After considerable friendly persuasion on my part and some help from Rosey, I induced him to take the prisoners to the rear where he could find an aid station with the tools to remove the ring. I didn't feel like ordering a brave man like that to the rear, but sort of left the decision up to him, and was glad when he reluctantly agreed. I heard he rejoined F that night on Mount Soprano.
Things were beginning to break up back at Paestum. You could see our men individually and in pairs infiltrating toward us up the hedge rows, and a Ford truck painted a dusty tan raced at high speed on a dirt road leading from the town. It got past us before we realized it had German markings. A hairlipped man from E with his 60 mm mortar appeared from behind the hedge row and I yelled for him to put it into action and knock out those Germans who were still shooting their mortar into Paestum. This man was also named Mack. He was an exceedingly smart soldier, but due to his speech difficulty hadn't risen in rank higher than corporal.
When I told him to put his mortar into action, he replied, "I can't, I loth my thight."
Remembering that I had seen him practice shooting his mortar without a sight in Africa, I told him to try it like back in Africa. He moved over to a clearing where he could get a better view of things and I told him to aim at the Germans behind the house. He sat down, put the mortar barrel between his knees, and after pulling the safety pin, held the shell with its tail sticking into the tube. He deliberately moved the barrel back and forward until he thought he had it just right and let go of the shell. It hit bottom and came out of the barrel in a high arc.
When the shell exploded Mack threw down the mortar and jumped up into the air and ran around in a circle exclaiming loudly, "Yethus Thrith, I got a hit, I got a hit."
Only minutes after Mack knocked out the mortar a German tank pulled up so close to the opposite bank of the river that you could see its turret and gun barrel sticking through the reeds. It fired two 88 mms that exploded in the field just behind us. And then its two machine guns firing in angry bursts began cutting down the reeds on the river bank. We all ran and dove head first into the thorny blackberry hedge. I still have white marks on my hands and arms and body where those sharp thorns tore at my flesh.
I decided it was time to move the command post. From the opposite side of the hedge-row I could see men infiltrating in pairs and small widely scattered groups, taking advantage of whatever cover they could find. It looked like we were getting on the move. I jumped into a drainage ditch knee deep in water and started forward. Those of battalion headquarters followed in single file. Behind me were the Chaplain, the S1, the captain of H, Bugler, and Rosey and his aid men, all sloshing in the water. The shoulder-high Rosey and his aid men, all sloshing in the water. The shoulder-high ditch and grassy bank gave us good cover. When we came around a bend I could see straight ahead where the ditch emptied into the river. At that moment the same tank or another one pulled up on the opposite bank of the river and started raking the field to our left with its machine guns. Two other tanks pulled into view and also opened fire. We all crawled out of the ditch and took cover in the tall grass. I could see our men lying flat in open fields, some of them firing at the tanks with their rifles. The river acting as a barrier kept the tanks from running over our position. Finally when a bazooka shell ricocheted off the side of one tank, all three withdrew to the south and disappeared into some woods.
Those tank crews were gaining a certain respect for our riflemen. Already they had lost five tanks to bazookas in our battalion. A sergeant out of H (John Y. McGill) had knocked one out by climbing the tank and dropping a hand grenade down the open turret after someone had shot the crew leader when he had stuck his head out of the top for a look-see. Drivers operating with their forward ports open for better vision had been killed in their seats by riflemen firing pointblank through the openings. The Germans had taken a heavy loss in armor in similar fashion throughout our entire division, and in a way were operating at a distinct disadvantage. We were so completely disorganized and scattered that at no time did we provide a tank with a suitable target. The Germans were utterly confused by our tactics. While they were shooting at one man another lay hidden closely by with a bazooka. We were like a corps of army worms advancing on Mount Soprano, each individually Hell-bent on getting to the mountain. Our tactics of individual infiltration applied more pressure on them than they could cope with, and they alone knew that it would be only a matter of time when some of us would be sniping at their artillery positions at the base of Mount Soprano.
For some reason unknown to us our artillery was not giving us any support and it was getting well up into the day. Neither had the navy come in to silence the German artillery firing at the beaches. One very active 88 mm gun crew was shooting direct fire at the beaches from a position high up on Mount Soprano. So far the only weapons that we had employed against the Germans in our sector had been those we had brought ashore by hand.
After the tanks withdrew I moved on and found the Battalion Sergeant Major and my runner, Bick, by the river. Bick was standing there soaking wet and shivering, watching the sergeant apply a first aid packet to a man shot through the leg. The sergeant told me later that when they ran out of our assault boat, Bick grabbed him by his rifle belt and he had had to pull Bick hanging on his belt all the way, part of the time with Bick crying. They had arrived at the river just as the tanks moved up and started firing. The wounded man had fallen into the river and was drowning. They could all hear the man crying for help, but no one dared move. Then all of a sudden Bick laid his radio down and stood up. He deliberately walked through the cross fire of the tanks and our riflemen and stood on the bank of the river until he had found his man and dove in. When the action was over they found Bick clinging to the bank holding the man's head out of the water. While Bick may never have gotten a medal for that act of bravery in those few moments he became a man. He later rose to the rank of staff sergeant.
I took the radio and sat on the ground calling Red Fox One and Red Fox Two, or any other Red Fox who would answer. Red Fox was the call signal within our battalion. No one answered. After a long time the captain of G came in and said that he and about one hundred men were over by a house with a red roof. As there were a number of houses all with red roofs dotting the landscape, I could not figure out his exact location, but he assured me they were in pretty good shape and all moving toward the mountain.
Just before I reached a wooden foot bridge crossing the river, I ran into Rosey and his aid men working on the wounded. While some of the stretcher bearers were bringing the most urgent cases in on litters, Rosey and his key men were working steadily putting on tourniquets to stop bleeding and applying splints to fractured legs. They were too busy to even look up. I stopped to encourage the men with their "million dollar wounds," which meant a one-way ticket home, but their only thought at the moment was to join their outfit on Mount Soprano. As soon as a man was fixed up for evacuation, the Chaplain saw to it that he was hidden in the reeds to give him advantage of all available cover. And the Chaplain saw to it that those who died in the aid station were lined up in a neat little row off behind some bushes. Every Memorial Day my particular respects go out to one waxen face that stared open-eyed in death at me there on the ground. I don't remember which company he was from.
I looked toward the sea. Off in the distance across the sloping plain to the north I could see an entire infantry regiment (the 143rd) deployed over a mile wide moving up in our direction. It was our reserve regiment which had been forced to land farther up the beach, because Paestum was too hot. By then it was growing late in the afternoon.
I could hear our artillery coming into action. Off in the direction of G our artillery forward observer had finally gained radio contact with his battery of 105 mms. The captain of G told me that the lieutenant of artillery had crawled up on the roof of a house and told his battery to fire one round at "the house with the red roof." From there he could adjust the fire of the battery on any target of his choice. The battery fired. The shell hit the barn just behind and blew half the barn roof over the top of the house. The lieutenant suddenly became aware of the fact that every house in Italy had a red tile roof.
The German tanks made another pass. They pulled up and started firing machine guns at us and their 88 mms at the regiment below. I hit the ground and so did everyone else except Rosey who kept working on the wounded, completely unconscious of what was going on about him. Our artillery forward observer asked for fire from his four gun battery located somewhere back at Paestum. While the battery was firing two or three rounds for adjustment, the tanks pulled out and that was the last we saw of them that day. In the meantime some of our riflemen had infiltrated the German artillery position and after a few rounds from their M1's, the German artillery pulled out hastily on the only escape route open to them on a dirt road to the north. Then a U. S. naval destroyer pulled in and opened fire on the 88 mms high up on Mount Soprano. When the first blast hit up there on the mountain, the 88 mms stopped firing and we all started moving on Mount Soprano, still two or three hours short of our objective.
I picked up a pack and a gas mask and a couple of hand grenades at the aid station and crossed the wooden foot bridge to the opposite side of the river. At that point the river cut back to the left and it was a much shorter route to the mountain. Bick was with me jabbering to the other walkie-talkie men on his radio and telling me that most of the rest of the battalion was going to cross the river farther up or go around where it headed at the big spring. The sergeant major, Bugler, and a half-dozen enlisted men followed me. Somehow I had lost the S1 and the machine gun officer who had been with me all day. Rosey and the Chaplain stayed behind attending to their work.
A soldier in combat rarely, if ever, knows what is going on outside his own little barnyard, which in most cases is quite small. To hear the others tell it they got it lots worse than we did, both on our right and left flanks. In one respect the 2nd Battalion had been lucky. The Germans had considered the walled ruins of Paestum a natural barrier to tank operations and had concentrated their main armored efforts against the troops coming in above and below Paestum. But that didn't help the lieutenant from the third platoon of E (3nd Lt. James J. Curran). Shortly after daylight he and a German tank contested each other over the priority of going out the east gate of Paestum. The lieutenant and his small group were hidden behind some rocks just before the gate anxious to depart the city, while the tank wanted the right of way. The men were pinned down and the tank was afraid to close in because of bazooka fire. It was a flat stalemate. But the lietenant who had been a Massachusetts state policeman before the war, couldn't stand the indecision. Every once in a while he would rise up and throw a hand grenade at the tank, which in turn would retaliate by spraying everything with machine gun fire. After about the third or fourth toss a sergeant yelled in a loud voice, "For Christ sake, Lieutenant, leave the Goddamned thing alone." They lay there for a while and finally the tank pulled back and let the lieutenant and his men through. A little later the lieutenant was hit by shrapnel and was evacuated to a hospital ship some twelve miles off shore, but went AWOL on another landing craft and rejoined E shortly after daylight the next morning.
A parallel account was told me by a sergeant out of G who said that he and about six men were hiding behind a stone fence when a general officer of the Division appeared and hollered for them to get out from behind that wall and get going to the mountain. The sergeant told him there were German tanks out there and the general said, "Those are American tanks, come on, let's go," and jumped the wall. A tank let him have an 88 that nearly split his legs and the general jumped back into the nest of soldiers and said, "They are German, for sure."
After crossing the bridge we followed a foot path that took us through overhead grape arbors loaded with ripe fruit ready for the press and through little farm enclosures with figs drying on trays laid out in the sun on top of the shed roofs. We ate them as we passed not because we were conscious of being hungry, but mainly because they were in reach. Not an Italian was in sight, neither were the Germans. The only thing alive and moving were a few hogs rooting in forbidden potato fields. As we passed around a series of hay stacks we came upon a recently abandoned German artillery position. What impressed me most was its comfort and neat appearance. It was unique and still had a rather pleasant smell. Everything was intact just as the Germans had left it, except the artillery piece and the empty shell cases were missing. Around the perimeter of the gun emplacement, which was completely concealed by a balcony of overhead grape vines, were benches and couches made of bamboo and reeds that the German soldiers had built for leisurely comfort. Their dead cigarette butts carefully placed in an earthen bowl on a table appeared to be fresh smoked, and I sat down for a moment on one of the benches for a rest.
A letter lay on the table and I opened it. I couldn't read the German, but the picture enclosed made me think of our families back in Texas. There was the baby boy on the soldier's knee with a little girl hanging onto his pants and the mother, who looked like she might have been nine months pregnant, stood pointing to a little dog who was sitting up asking for a biscuit. A couple of grandparents appeared proudly in the background. After studying their faces for a long time, I took a match and burned the picture, because I thought it too personal to fall into other hands.
As we moved on we followed a well beaten patch of tank tracks, which led to a route around the headwaters of the Capodifiume, where a big spring burst out of the ground flowing several thousand gallons a minute. A battalion runner picked up a half-used belt of machine gun ammunition discarded by one of the tanks and showed it to me. It was something new to us. The belt was loaded with regular metal cases contaning wooden bullets stained a shingle red. We figured they were good for only a very short range and were used in close combat so as not to overfire into their own troops under such conditions as had prevailed earlier in the day.
The sun was about an hour high when we sat on the ground by a house one hundred feet from the spring. We tried to keep our minds off the dead German who lay a little apart from us where he had been thrown out of a passing tank. A set of tank tracks led up to the front door where he lay on the ground. He could well have been one of the drivers shot while operating with the forward ports open. We were growing very tired and still had a hard climb ahead of us. To our front we could see men climbing halfway up the steep slopes of the mountain, with hundreds of others following close behind emerging from the flat plain below. One could definitely discern a distinct pattern of reorganization forming on the mountainside. Each company had its own objective on each side of a gap in the mountain and you could see the men beginning to funnel toward their individual destinations. It appeared to be like a magnet slowly drawing the separate pieces of a confused puzzle back into proper order. There was E on the left and F on the right, with G funneling up toward the middle of the gap.
Back at the Tower of Paestum a very strange character out of the adjoining regiment had attached himself to me. He was tall and thin and appeared to be the kind that had never had a friend or anyone to speak kindly to him in his life. He had no apparent talents for being a soldier or anything else for that matter and never said a word or came close or did anything. He just seemed to be around every time I looked up. He gave me the feeling I didn't want to have him around, and several times during the day I found myself asking him why he didn't go off and hunt up his own outfit. He would only look at me out of his sad eyes and be gone for a while, and then there he would be again, just there. I tried my best to ignore him, but had the feeling he was always somewhere around.
When I caught myself unconsiously glancing out of the corner of my eye to see how the dead German was getting along, I saw this lanky fellow appear from behind the farm house carrying a large demijohn of wine under his left arm. Our eyes met and he slowly moved toward me and placed the jug in my hands. I removed the cork and took a long pull at the bottle, and then passed the wine to the others sitting in a circle. I reached for a pack of cigarettes and handed them to him and when our eyes met we smiled to each other. Soon we all began to laugh and talk for the first time that day and opened rations and ate.
While Bick and another soldier were going to the spring to fill our canteens, I took a message book from Johnny (Pfc. Johnnie A. Pricer), a battalion runner, and wrote a message to Regiment giving them a report on the condition of things and our progress. I gave the message to Johnnie and told Bugler to go along for company and in case Regiment wanted further details to fill them in.
When Johnnie and Bugler took off, we all stood up. I motioned to the lanky soldier to come along, and we slowly climbed to the gap in the mountain where we dug in for the night.
Texas Military History
Summer, 1965
[James T. Padgitt, son of Mrs. J. Tom Padgitt, entered the Army Nov. 20, 1940; sent to ETO April 1, 1943; fought at Salerno; 12 months overseas; attached to 36th Division; awarded Purple Heart; held the rank of lieutenant colonel; discharged on Nov. 1, 1944.]
Colonel William H. Day: Texas Ranchman
The Days were known around the Texas capital of Austin as the "Week Boys." There were seven of them: William, John, Dock, Perry, Joe, Addison, and Tony—all pioneer cowmen, each a soldier in the Confederacy. Their range was anywhere a Texas longhorn ate grass from Texas into Canada. There were also three daughters: Jane, Emma, and Sarah Day.
The original Day in America was John, who was born of Scotch parents at Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1742. During the Revolution he served as an Indian Scout in Virginia. John's pioneering blood was evidently passed on to his grandson, Jesse, because that younger Day kept pace with the fringes of western civilization as it moved across the country. From his native Tennessee, he moved to North Georgia. There his son William was born May 8, 1833. Two years later Jesse Day moved his family on west to settle for twelve years in the southwest corner of Missouri in Barry County. For more than a decade he freighted quantities of goods and supplies into Texas and returned with longhorn cattle to sell in Missouri.
Bill Day went on several freighting trips to Texas with his father before Jess moved his family there in 1847. After living at Bastrop and San Antonio for four years, Jesse bought a farm and settled near Mountain City in Hays County between San Antonio and Austin. He put his boys to work on the farm and kept several wagons and teams busy hauling from the Gulf ports to Austin. Freighting in Texas in the Fifties was an active business, because all trade with the outside world moved overland in wagons.
When Bill Day was old enough to branch out for himself, he acquired some wagons and teams and took up freighting. In eighteen months he managed to save fifteen hundred dollars, which he wisely decided to spend on an education. With what supplementary funds his father was able to send him, he went through Cumberland University at Lebanon, Tennessee. In 1858 he graduated as a Civil Engineer.
During Bill Day's last two years in school he received numerous letters from his father in Hays County, which give a flavor of the times in that section of Texas during 1857 and 1858:
February 23, 1857—...We are driving (to the port) on as usual. The spring is opening beautiful and people is planting corn and some done. I have planted about thirty acres and have the most of my field ready for planting. Monroe (Dock) and Perry is on the third trip to the port. Hauling is worth two dollars both ways. The grass is getting fine and stock doing well. We have had but little rain since last May and it has been fine for teaming and work of every kind. Stock is in better order this spring than they have in several past....
May 23, 1857—Prospects looks quite gloomy with regards to crops. We have had no rain yet. Our wheat will make nothing on account of the frost and the dry weather. The corn is dying fast. Prospects bids fare to make nothing. Corn is not to be had at enny price. There is a great menny sent to Orleans and bought at ninety cents. Flower is worth from twelve to fourteen per barrel and money as scare again as it was when you left here. I have nothing of importance to write you but that we have had a considerable revival of religion here within the last few weeks. There has several of the girls profesed religion, one of Mr. Stevenson's, two of Mr. Bredelov's, Susan Rowden and Mrs. Walden.
I am going to the port in the morning. There is very little doing. People has pretty well done working their crops, what little they have got. They will have nothing to do for they don't think of improving much while it is so dry. John (Day) is on the road with his teams. He has a very dead prospect for crops. Nearly all the people in Stringtown is hauling water from San Marcos and our water is getting very low in the well. We will have to start hauling water if it continues dry much longer. The Blanco is dry from Nance's down. Stock is doing badly. If we don't have rain soon we will have to depend on some other country for bread another season for I don't think it will be made here....
August 3, 1857—...We have had no rain yet. Our crops is so far gone that all the rain that could fall would not help them. We are cutting up to save the fodder. It is thought that there will not be enough made west of the Brazos to feed the people. A great many won't make their seed. Prospects is duller here than I ever have seen in Texas. Hauling is worth eighty cents from the port and none to do at that. And if there was, it could not be done on account of the scarcity of water. We are hauling water from the Blanco as is all this settlement. All from Owens to San Marcos are hauling from San Marcos. Not withstanding the dirth in our land, the Lord has blessed us with good health. There hasn't been a case of sickness in our settlement this year. We have had no need of medison, but great need of bread and meat.
I wrote you about the middle of June to Lebanon and sent you a draft on the Union Bank at New Orleans for fifty dollars. I now send a draft enclosed for one hundred dollars on the same bank. I want you to write me at what time you will need money so that I may make my arrangements to meet your wants. I don't want you to think of leaving school until you complete your studies on account of hard times, at least not until I fale to rase money to pay your way.
November 29, 1857—...I received the barrel of wheat that you sent me a few days ago. I have sowed about sixteen acres and there came about two million grashoppers and has eat it all up. I have not sowed the barrel I got from Tennessee, waiting for the grashoppers to leave. We have had plenty of rain to start the watercorces again and think if continues seasonable and the grashoppers don't take our crops in the spring we will stand some chance to make something another year. If we don't, we may leave Texas. There has a great many left already, but I think of trying it another season and if we make no crops we will be obliged to try something else besides farming. Times seems to be giting harder. People is suing one another and selling property at one third of the value. Our legislature is in session and speaks of doing something to relieve the pople, but has done nothing yet.
Monroe [Dock] is still going to school yet. Gipson is teaching here with twelve or fourteen scollars and I think the chance bad to git a good teacher here soon. I think of farming and teaming some teams to pay expenses and work along till times gits better. Land can't be rented at no price. I shall let what I can't tend lay out for all money is scarce. Everything is higher than it has been since I came to Texas. I sent to Orleans for a barrel of pickled pork and it cost me thirty six dollars. Bacon is worth twenty cents per pound, corn two dollars per bushel, flower worth from ten to twelve per barrel. If better times don't come I don't now what we shall do. The last two years has put Texas five year behind what she was two year ago and I don't think she will be up again for the next ten to come. The only thing that keeps us alive is what little money we get for hauling a load now and then from the port.
Perry has gone down to the port. We have had not enough frost to kill the grass and I think he will be able to get back on the grass [without feeding] for we have very fine warm weather.
John Day and Driskill's families [J. L. Driskill married Nancy Day] are well and they have about two hundred steers gathered to take to Missouri in the spring. They expect to heard them this winter in the mountains.
January 24, 1858—...We have been overflooded with rain. We have had rain every change, quarter and full of the moon for about two months. Stock is doing very well. Plenty of good fat beeves, but very little pork. What there is is worth ten dollars a hundred, corn worth two dollars per bushel, flower fifteen dollars per barrel and money scarcer than it is enny place. There is a great many that will not be able to buy seed corn. Driskill and Monroe [Dock] is gone to the port and John is herding the steers. They expect to start to Missouri with them as soon as grass rises. Matters is moving on with the tide and sometimes very swift for people is sueing one another and selling property for nothing. There has been no emigration this fall and in consequence of it much land will lay out. Try to make out the best you can as times is hard here.
May 17, 1858—...I have no good news to write you. Hard times still is looking us in the fase. The grashoppers has eat up all the crops that was plented first and all that has come up the second time. I had a hundred and forty acres near waist high and they et it all and twenty five acres of wheat. They even et the rutes out. We have give out making enny crops this year. We have had a great deal of rain, enough to of made two crops. I have quit my farm. Have got three teams on the road, but hauling only worth one dollar to Austin when there is enny to do. We have not heard from the boys since they crossed the Red River with them cattle. We have fine grass and plenty of water; fat beef and little bread. Everything has a downward tendency and gloomy prospects...
When Bill Day returned home with his diploma in Civil Engineering, he found the times even harder than reported in his father's letters. Crops were a failure and hundreds of draft horses and mules were lying idle throughout the country. Such was not the case on the Louisiana cotton and sugar plantations that Bill Day passed through on his way back to Texas. Work stock there was selling at a premium. Consequently it did not take him long to get into business. He gathered a herd of horses and mules and set out with them for Louisiana. It is reported that, while this business involved considerable risk and offered numerous harrowing experiences, it was profitable and Bill Day continued driving mules to Louisiana until 1860.
The late winter of that year he, Dock, and his father gathered a herd of cattle to drive to Kansas City. April 22, 1860, they reached the Brazos River at Waco and found the stream almost out of banks. Knowing that the swollen stream might hold them up for several days, they proceeded to swim the herd. But when Jesse plunged his horse into the boiling water, something went wrong. Both he and his horse went under. Bill Day tried desperately to save his father, but Jess never reached the shore alive. The two brothers tried to return their father's body to Austin, but they were forced to bury him at Belton. The remains were later removed to Austin.
They returned to the herd and started on toward Kansas City. En route they were met by citizens who were opposed to their driving the herd over their lands. They were forced at the point of guns back to neutral territory. There they made a good sale of the stock, but the purchaser failed to fulfill his contract. In some way they managed to get the herd through to St. Louis where they found a ready market. They turned their money into horses and headed for the sugar plantations of Louisiana. After their arrival home in January 1861, Bill Day left immediately on a horse buying trip to Matamoros, Mexico. While in Mexico the news of secession and impending war reached him. Bill Day returned home immediately.
Texas seceded from the Union on February 1, 1861, and on February 26 Captain E. Kirby Smith, commanding Company B, 2nd U.S. Calvary stationed at Camp Colorado, Coleman County, Texas, ordered the Federal troops to abandon the fort. Captain Smith surrendered to Colonel H. E. McCulloch, resigned his commission in the U.S. Army and tendered his services to the C.S.A. At this time there was hopes that secession would not lead to war and those of Smith's command who so desired were permitted to return to the North in peace. Company B marched to Green Lake and then to Indianola, where it embarked on the S. S. Coalzacoalcos on March 31 for Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, by way of Key West and New York.
Thus Camp Colorado fell into the hands of the Confederate Army. Bill Day's Hays County friend, William A. Pitts, was commissioned to organize a company at Camp Colorado and he was successful in getting William to join his company. Bill Day's five brothers enlisted in Hays County units. War Department records show that William Day enlisted in Captain William A. Pitts' Company, 1st Regiment Texas Mounted Riflemen, later 1st Regiment (McCulloch's) Texas Cavalry, C.S.A. at Camp Colorado on July 1, 1861. The Company muster roll of October, 1861, shows Day "Absent on detached service at Ft. Mason from October 26, 1861." A subsequent record, dated April 29, 1862, shows Day paid as a teamster for the above organization.
No later army record of Day has been found, but in John Henry Brown's Encyclopedia of the New West, published after Day's death, it is learned that he had enlisted in the army for the period of one year, and after serving out his term of enlistment, he was mustered out of service at Fredericksburg, Texas, on July 1, 1862. From this source it is further revealed that after his separation from the army, he immediately purchased a herd of beeves in that rich cattle country and drove them to Alexandria, Louisiana, where he sold them to the Confederate Army. From that time until the end of the war he drove under contract to furnish supplies of cattle to the Confederate Army, and in this period was the boss of two thousand men getting up and driving cattle to army depots.
The end of hostilities found him in Mason, Texas, with all of his assets in worthless Confederate money. This emergency caused him to take a job with a New Orleans livestock commission house, but it was not long before he was back in Texas. On his return through East Texas, he found that lumber was in great demand in Texas. In a Mr. Dunlap's general store at Brenham, Texas, on February 4, 1866, he learned of some big timber over at near-by Montgomery that could be had reasonably. After purchasing some timber there he returned to New Orleans and purchased the machinery for a small steam sawmill, which when in operation Day felt would clear $50 a day. He had his first mill running by May 15, and it was not long until he had several such mills which he operated until he sold out his lumber interests in the Fall of 1868. [W. H. Day Letters, In personal possession of James T. Padgitt, Coleman, Texas.]
That winter W. H. Day and his brother-in-law, J. M. Driskill, formed a partnership and made plans to drive a herd of cattle to Abilene, Kansas, late that spring. In the year 1869 the system of banking and credit on the frontier had not yet developed to a very refined point. In the absence of banks, the general merchandise store that was to be found in operation on the fringe of civilization, acted as the middleman in various forms of commercial transactions. A letter of credit given by Spencer Ford at Bryan, Texas, February 25, 1869 to Day and Driskill explains how such matters were often handled.
You are hereby authorized to draw on me for such amounts, payable in Dry Goods, as may be necessary to meet your demands in the purchase of Beeves this Spring, and by this letter of credit can make whatever arrangements to that end with merchants living in the Stock Sections, such arrangements being subject to such conditions you yourselves may impose.
With this letter of credit in hand, Day and Driskill arrived in the stock country where they went about gathering their trail herd. That summer they arrived at the market of Abilene, Kansas, with a herd of 1400 cattle.
The drive of the previous year, Day's first experience on the newly-opened Kansas market, evidently proved to be a productive venture, because in 1870 he drove a trail herd of three thousand head to Leavenworth, Kansas. He arrived there to find the cattle market badly overstocked and prices low. Consequently, he killed and packed his beef and shipped it to New York, where it is reported he liquidated for $70,000, thereby realizing a large profit.
After estimating that the drive of 1871 would exceed 750,000 head and that the Kansas market would be glutted with Texas cattle, he decided to quit the trade until the cattle business became more profitable. Being a civil engineer, he engaged himself for the next two years in locating and selling lands.
Although Day had a natural fondness for the cattle business, it was probably the depression of 1873 that brought him back into the livestock trade. That spring he went to work for the livestock commission firm of Hunter and Evans, of St. Louis, and remained with them for about a year. By the spring of 1874, however, he was back in business for himself buying cattle. At Denison, Texas, he set up a small packing plant where he butchered his cattle and shipped the beef in refrigerator cars to Eastern markets. As an operator, Day was known as a quick trader. He knew his business thoroughly, which permitted speedy judgment and fast transactions. He could glance at a steer and quickly figure his margin of profit at the market. His excellent character, manner, and bearing, as well as his recognized knowledge of the trade, instilled confidence in all with whom he dealt.
Hunter and Evans evidently appreciated Day's abilities in the livestock trade, for in 1875, they persuaded him to take charge of their entire Texas business, which was very extensive at the time. This connection took him all over the livestock domain of the state. He made frequent trips to the coast country, San Antonio, and Mason County, but returned often to Denison, where he had made a fond attachment for Miss Mabel Doss, a music teacher, whom he later married.
By 1876 Day had become such an extensive operator throughout Texas that he gained the title of Colonel Day, by which he was respectfully known the rest of his life. It was also in that year his keen foresight told him that cattlemen of the Southwest would eventually have to change their method of operations; the day of the open range would pass and the cattle grower would have to own his land. During Day's Civil War period he no doubt became impressed with the ranch country in Coleman County, because when Brazoria and Ft. Bend counties decided to put their school lands, lying in Coleman County, on the market, Colonel Day went directly to those counties and bought 22,000 acres of school lands which lie in the southwest corner of Coleman County, from their respective commissioners courts, paying them fifty cents per acre, twenty-five cents per acre cash and the balance on time. This transaction made Colonel Day the first large landowner in Coleman County. In 1876 he purchased several herds of cattle in South Texas, drove them to his ranch, and began his first grazing operations.
When Colonel Day arrived at the ranch he found Rich Coffey and his family living at the mouth of the Concho on the Coleman county side of the Colorado River, in what is known as the Coffey Flat. The Coffeys had come from Brown County in 1861 and had at first camped on Grape Creek just below the mouth of Little Grape, but by the time Colonel Day arrived, they had moved to the Coffey Flat on the Colorado at the mouth of the Concho where they were living in a dugout. Bill McCauley, a son-in-law of Rich Coffey and an excellent stone mason, had built a two-room rock house on the bank of Grape Creek and it was here that Colonel Day established the Day Ranch headquarters. Incidentally, this rock house was the first one built in the southwestern part of Coleman County and is still in use as a ranch headquarters on the ranch. At the Trap Crossing on the Colorado River, just west of the present town of Leaday, lived a man named Hogue who had put in a fifteen-acre farm there in 1874. A. S. Creswell moved into the country in the fall of 1876. He first camped at Bull Hollow on Elm Creek, but soon bought a claim of 320 acres from a Mr. Cleghorn and on Christmas Day of that year moved into what is known as the Creswell Bend of the Colorado River. From what can be gathered, Colonel Day spent the rest of the year getting his ranch established and did not make his accustomed trip up the trail to market. Early in the spring of 1877 Colonel Day decided to drive 7000 head to Kansas that year. He had his ranch well established and could not resist his first calling and the rich possibilities to be found with a herd at the other end of the trail. He set May 1 as the date he wished to have his herd on the trail and immediately busied himself in scouting for cheap beef. This search took him to Corpus Christi, where he purchased the basic part of his trail herd. With these cattle on the road to his Coleman County ranch he wrote on April 30 from Austin:
I start for Kansas tomorrow. I go from here to ranch and from there to Dodge City by way of Panhandle of Texas. It will be some time before I reach the settlements. I have 7000 head on the road to Kansas. Write me June 1st at Dodge City.
After selling his herd at Dodge City, there was another matter of business that was most important to Colonel Day's plans for the future. He was forty-four years old and still a bachelor. With his new spread in Coleman County, he most of all needed a wife. The person figuring in these plans was Miss Mable Doss, with whom he had been pressing his case on his frequent trips to Denison and Sherman. Miss Mabel was spending the summer at Brownsville, Missouri, and it was for that place he started as soon as he could pay off his boys and accomplish a matter of banking in Kansas City. As it was not until more than a year later that he was to gain this cherished prize, Colonel Day returned to Texas that fall and spent the winter buying and gathering another trail herd. On the monetary side of the ledger, things were beginning to come the Colonel's way, and that spring, through his agents, McCord and Lindsey of Coleman, he secured another 7,200 acres to add to his ranch.
The summer of 1878 again found Day with a trail herd in Kansas. He retraced his steps of the previous year, but this time with greater success for that fall he succeeded in winning the hand of Miss Doss. At Sherman, Texas, on January 26, 1879, they were married in the First Presbyterian Church of that city. After the wedding they left for Austin where they visited in the home of Colonel Day's mother. Mabel remained in the Day home while her husband, in the company of his new brother-in-law, Will Doss, went to Coleman County to gather the trail herd for that year. This was an unwelcome separation so soon after being married, but they were looking forward to a later honeymoon in Kansas after the herd had been gotten off.
The men arrived at the ranch March 7 and soon started out to buy cattle. Ranchmen had been delayed in rounding up because of the backwardness of spring and the cattle buyers got off to a slow start. By March 28, however, Colonel Day started receiving cattle in the San Saba country. Although Doss was also out on a purchasing mission, buying and gathering 4,500 head of cattle was a slow and tedious task. There were very few large outfits operating in the country and the average purchases were from one to two hundred head. Cattle had first to be found and contracted for, then cowboys had to be brought from the ranch to receive, brand, and then drive them long distances to the concentration point on the Day Ranch. On May 23, Colonel Day wrote that he had 4,000 head gathered on the ranch and he was in San Saba, where he had just contracted 500 more to deliver at Coleman City in time to meet the main herd as it passed that place on May 28.
Before the cattle left the ranch, they were divided into two groups: a steer and a cow herd. J. T. Hoch, the Colonel's favorite trail boss of three years' standing, took the steer herd. "Tobe" (William Walter) Driskill, a nephew, took the cow herd that followed. Will Doss was left in charge of the ranch, and after seeing the herds across the Pecan Bayou headed to Ft. Griffin, Colonel Day went directly to Austin. He and his wife took the cars for Kansas City where they planned to have some time together before the trail outfits arrived.
On June 5, Day was registered at the Dodge House and wrote the following letter to his wife at Kansas City:
I arrived back in Dodge this evening, after being absent five and a half days. I did not remain in Dodge long when I came up, I found Brother Dock and Tony waiting my arrival. We soon got a conveyance and started down the trail to meet my cattle. We met the first herd about sixty miles down. Found the boys all well and getting along very well. Had lost but few cattle. I camped with them one night and went on next morning to meet the other herd, which we did that day, which was about one hundred miles from here. I found all right with them. That was the cow herd, the one that had the cattle that my brothers wanted. I cut out for Dock and Tony four hundred cows and calves which shaped up the herd very well. I sold them all my cows and calves and started the balance for here. My first herd of 2500 will be here tomorrow and I will begin to turn over to J. M. Driskill the next day. Will take me about two days to get through with them. By that time the other herd will be here. I have some cattle in the last herd not sold, but don't think it will take me long to sell them, as the market is pretty good. I will send up with Driskill all my young cattle to the Yellowstone and if no bad luck will be back in about two weeks....
On their way home, the Days stopped by Hot Springs, Arkansas, and by September 4 were back in Austin and on their way to the Day Ranch. This was Mrs. Day's first trip to the ranch about which she had heard so much. They left Austin in a new, large, three-seated hack, which the Colonel had bought in St. Louis. In this hack there must have been everything desired in a frontier conveyance, because years later Buffalo Bill Cody bought it and used it in his famous Wild West Show.
Early in spring of 1879 a four-strand barbed wire fence had been started around the Day Ranch. Cedar posts and wire had been freighted in wagons from Austin and, all year long, a crew of about twenty men had been busy building a fence aound the 7500-acre Red Wire Pasture, so called because the wire was painted red. This was the first fence of any distinction built in Coleman County and possibly in that entire section of the country, because it must be remembered that this was a land of open and free range for many, many miles in all directions. Following the Red Wire Pasture, Day next fenced his Grape Creek pasture.
After a trip of several days across country in the big ranch hack, the Days arrived at the Rock House Headquarters of the Day Ranch. As previously mentioned, this was a two room structure, but from lumber hauled from Austin two wooden rooms had been added on the south. This was used strictly as a headquarters house, because most of the cowboys on the ranch lived in a cow camp that moved wherever their work took them.
No more vivid picture of life on the Day Ranch is at hand than the one described by Mrs. Day in a letter written in September, 1879:
Col. Day is building a fence around his pasture, which when done will contain forty thousand acres of land. It is a beautiful country, rolling prairie, covered with good grass, interspersed with timber, through which are beautiful little streams of running water and cool springs. Just across the Colorado River, which runs along one side of it, are high bluffs, hills and mountains which appear perfectly grand. We have a good stone house with four rooms and a front porch, a smoke house full of hams, breakfast bacon, flour meal, dried apples, beans, golden and maple syrup by the barrel, splendid pickles, canned corn, tomatoes, grapes, blackberries, strawberries, sugar, coffee and catsup. I believe that is all we have to eat except cheese and maple sugar, which I keep in my room for my own use. Col. shipped his provisions from Austin, one of the nearest railroad points. We get a nice mutton or goat every once in a while or a hind quarter of beef. Then the boys bring in a deer occasionally and every evening some quail or a turkey—have plenty of wild game.
Col. hired a man and his wife to keep house for us so I could go with him whenever I want to. He got me a gentle pony, nice saddle, etc. I made me a navy blue riding habit and the way I fly over these praries—it would do you good to see me. When I get tired of riding horse back he takes the buggy or rather the little spring wagon. You see he starts early in the morning and does not get back until nearly dark. I have to go with him or be very lonely at home with Mrs. Thompson, the housekeeper. He has twenty men at work on the fence and it keeps him busy bossing them. The fence will be done the second week in November. Col. will then buy up his cattle to fill it and then he will go to Austin. He will return in the spring to get off his herd to Kansas. I will come with him again if he will let me.
I have but one neighbor, Mrs. Gatlin, who lives seven miles from me. She spent the day with me day before yesterday. She is a splendid woman; has lived here but two years. I wish you could see her house. It is made of poles stuck straight up and down covered with boards. That is a paradise compared to the other houses in this country, most of which are dug outs. All these people who live here are good hearted, but wholly uneducated. Col. got me a guitar to bring with me instead of a piano and they call it a music box and think it very large. What would they think, could they see a piano?
There are few panthers, plenty of snakes, centipedes, tarantulas, wolves, prairie dogs, and polecats out here, so, you see, if I get up a music class out here they will have to be my pupils.
Col. and I are going to Coleman City tomorrow, which is twenty-five miles north of the ranch, so I stayed home today to write my letters. Here comes a wagon. Who can it be? Well, what do you think! Old. Mr. Cresswell, the only man for forty miles who has a garden and he has a good one, he has brought over twenty-five watermelons, a sack of string beans, and some nice fresh tomatoes with his compliments to the 'Old Boss' and his boys. Ha, Ha, he forgot me, but that is all O.K. I'll just quit my letter a moment and try one of these melons all the same.
I'll have to send these melons to the boys. They camp where they are at work, as it is so far to come home. It is eleven miles from the house to the far side of the pasture.
Do you wonder I weigh one hundred forty-five pounds? I wish you were here with me. I'll venture you'll never complain again. What do you say, Myrt? Come out and ranch it a while. I'd dance on my head to see you coming. Come to Ft. Worth on the cars, then stage to Brownwood, and I'll meet you there with our "traveling she-bang". Col. got it in St. Louis. It is nice, cost $373.00, has three seats in it. They can be let down and a bed fixed in it like a sleeping car. We can cook and eat in it, if the weather is raining. Can't you come? Tell Annie I'll be settled next summer, if I don't go to Colorado, and will then have my piano and shall expect her then if she is not married.
Let me hear from you, if you will allow me to still be your friend, and I'll promise to do better in the future. Address me at Trap Post Office [officially recorded as RICH COFFEY, TEXAS, in Postmaster Generals office, Washington, D. C.], Coleman County, Texas.
That winter the Days returned to Austin, where they remained for the winter months, but on the morning of February 16, 1880, they were again opening the gate to the big pasture. As they drove through the gate they were met by Hill Young, a cowboy on the ranch, who appeared quite ill with a bad cold. Colonel Day urged him to leave the camp and come to the house until he felt better. Early the next morning he came in and asked whether he could lie down a while. The Colonel gave him a strong toddy and put him to bed. He sent for the only physician in the neighborhood, Dr. D. B. Currie, of Paint Rock, Texas. When the doctor arrived he pronounced the case as pneumonia.
Colonel Day was compelled to go to Ft. Concho on business, but left the sick man in the hands of Mrs. Day, the doctor, and several of the cowboys. Upon returning a few days later, he found that Hill Young had died and had been buried. The boys had made a coffin which Mrs. Day had covered with some dark material. Young was an Odd Fellow and the lodge at Coleman had helped lay his body at rest in the Coleman Cemetery. Colonel Day was later buried beside this young man.
The details of how the Days busied themselves the spring of 1880 are not known. Day and his brother-in-law, J. L. Driskill, signed a note, dated March 1 for $10,000 on the Armour Brothers Banking Company of Kansas City, and it is presumed that they drew on this company for the cattle they purchased that spring, which were to be added to those already on the ranch, in making up the trail herd for that year's drive. All mail directed to the ranch was received at Rich Coffey Post Office, located in the Trap Store. This store was on the ranch at the Trap Crossing on the Colorado River. On the Concho County side of the crossing was a store called the Trigger. When these two stores came into existence is not known, but the Trap Crossing is an old landmark known to many an early day trail outfit. Only a few hundred yards from where the Trap Store stood is an old "Boot Hill Cemetery," located on a hill overlooking the Colorado River, where cowboys of the early Seventies were laid to rest. The crumbling old grave markers reveal that the average age of those resting beneath them was nineteen. No doubt the whiskey to be had at the Trap Store plus the normal hazards of the trail accounted for the need of a cemetery there. No one rests there who died of old age. The river at flood stages certainly has claimed its toll of cowboys since the first cattle crossed there.
The next report of Colonel Day is on July 7, 1880. This comes through a letter written by Mrs. Day, who was stopping at the St. James Hotel in Kansas City. He was in the Black Hills of South Dakota looking over J. S. Driskill's ranch and considering the possibilities of buying a ranch near Deadwood. An interesting passage from Mrs. Day's letter is as follows: "They celebrated the Fourth on the third in Kansas City. Grant and party were there. I saw them all and a more ordinary set of people I never saw. Fireworks best I've seen."
The Colonel did not like the Dakota country and returned to meet his trail herd, and on July 30, he was registered at the Dodge House. When the herd arrived, his brother Tony, who ranched 150 miles north of Dodge City, helped him work the cattle into classes suitable to meet the various demands of the market. A Colonel Grimes bought the cow herd, the steers were disposed of to other buyers, and W. L. Nichols bought the lame and cripples, paying five dollars a round for twenty-one head. The Armour note was stamped paid on August 18, and Colonel and Mrs. Day were off to Manitou, Colorado, for a much needed vacation.
Vacations were not of long duration for an operator like Day. He had already contracted to deliver another herd of Texas cattle in November to a point somewhere between Camp Supply, Indian Territory, and Dodge City. Consequently, on September 2, he was back at the Day Ranch making plans to assemble a second trail herd. He wrote to Mrs. Day as follows:
When I arrived at the ranch I found all the boys well, cats, dogs, etc. in good condition. Grass in pasture fine and cattle doing well. Have bought no cattle yet, but think I will be able to get the herd up in about twenty-five days. Hock and the trail outfit have not gotten in yet, but look for them soon.
On October 5 he had the five and eight dollar yearlings and two year olds, bought in Coleman and Concho counties, headed north towards Camp Supply. After seeing the herd off, he swung by Austin to see Mrs. Day who was then expecting a blessed event the latter part of December. After riding the train to Dodge, he took the stage south to Camp Supply. At that place, on November 23, he wrote Mrs. Day from the store of Lee and Reynolds as follows:
I have had a great deal of trouble delivering the cattle, but got through today, although have to drive part of the herd twenty-five miles farther towards Dodge. Can do that in two days. It is fifteen degrees below zero and snow about ten inches on the ground, so you may know how it is to camp out. Have lost a few cattle during the snow, though not many. They all say there has not been such a snow storm in ten years. I will have to settle with the boys and then will start home.
Mrs. Day had evidentially given him a list of things the baby would need, because he made a stop in Kansas City where he bought a long list of baby clothes and blankets. From Kansas City he made a hurried swing by the Day Ranch and on to Austin where he arrived in time to be present at the birth of a daughter, Willie Mable, on December 19, 1880.
While Colonel Day was sweating it out, just before Willie was born, he was relieved to hear from John Doss, at the Day Ranch, as follows:
After regards to all, would say I arrived home all O.K. found things all right. Jim got home from Brownwood, got 46 bu. of corn, paid seventy-five cents per bu. I will have Henry Eubank to send him back as soon as he can. There will be some thirteen or fourteen hundred of the I C cattle in this evening.
Captain Doakes took his mares and Jack out of pasture this A.M., said for you to make out his account. He was one short. I think he took out nineteen head. His address is Paint Rock. Mr. Andrews says tell you he took your advice as how to approach the Captain in a trade, so he went for him Red Hot and talked fast and sold his jack to the Captain.
Jim House, at the Trigger, got robbed. Two men came to the store about dark. House was at supper. They went up to his house and called for him, said they wanted to buy corn. Jim went down and traded them some $2.50 worth. He suspicioned them and slipped $55.00 down his pants. One of them pulled down a six shooter on Jim and told him to hold up his hands; Jim's pistol caught in his pocket. They took his pistol and he gave up his money, some $12.00. Jim told them to leave some change in the drawer; they left $1.50. Told Jim to take a seat by the stove while they looked over the store. Each took one pair boots, fine hat, shirt and underclothing, and ten boxes of sardines, dressed in the store and left their old ones. Said they could not live at home and that was the way they made their living. They talked some time and was going to tie Jim, but Jim promised not to leave the store. They locked Him in and told Jim they would leave his key and pistol up on the hill. They asked Jim for his gun. Jim told him to take it. They took a box of cartridges, remarking they might have occasion to do some shooting tomorrow.
Ridge Goodman has just arrived, says the I. C. cattle will be here at Davidson's pens tonight. Hetler (the fence builder) has not returned from Brownwood.
Incidentally, Jim House [Howze], connected with the Trigger story, later became the sheriff of Concho County.
About three weeks later John Doss sent Colonel Day another report from the Day Ranch:
After my regards would say the trail outfit got in this evening, except Tolbert, Will Doss and Wilkerson, who stopped off at Ft. Griffin and Coleman.
The horses all look bad. They say they lost fourteen head on the way back. Harry is going to Austin and can give you full particulars. Johnnie Glenn is going back up the trail 75 miles from here to look for six horses they lost. We are having cold weather with four inches of snow on the ground. Stock looks bad with some few dieing. We will have to feed the horses that came back, as they would not get through the winter. The OOZ stock looks bad and we occasionally find a dead calf.
The fence is all in good fix. J. T. Hoch is looking after the north string and I the south string, when it is so I can get out.
Today is the first day that any work has been done by Hetler's fence building crew since Monday week on account of weather. Last Saturday they cut posts up on Grape Creek. He is putting posts around the Hogue Farm and making a fence.
I wish you would come up. I think it would be to your interest.
In the same mail came a letter postmarked at Paint Rock from Ridge Goodman, a cow buyer who frequently purchased cattle for Day on a commission basis. Goodman informed him that he was looking around to see what one's and two's could be put up for that spring, but that grade was very scarce and hard to get and it was quite likely that it would take several months of buying a few here and a few there to get a herd together. He further remarked that the I. C. outfit had gone to the head of the San Saba to winter and that most of the cattle in the country had drifted south and were with the I. C. outfit.
When little Willie Mable Day was one month old the Days were making plans to leave Austin as soon as the mother and baby were able to travel. One of their grandmothers, Mrs. F. P. Doss, on January 17, revealed their plans in the following letter:
Mabel married Col W. H. Day, a citizen of Austin for the past 20 years. He is a stockman and has a pasture of 47,000 acres fenced with wire and has 10,000 head of cattle in it. We are going to move out there next week as he thinks it best to be out there. He drives every summer. The ranch is in Coleman County twenty-five miles from Coleman City.
Will Doss brought the "traveling she-bang" down to Austin and moved Mrs. Day, little Willie, and Mrs. Doss to the Ranch. Colonel Day sent word to Goodman to contract the I. C. yearlings and two year olds and to buy any others he could find. On February 4, Day was on his way to Kansas City to borrow money with which to finance the proposed drive and to feel out the market. He had very little cash on hand as he had been using every available dollar to make down payments on lands that were being added to his ranch. His lawyer, W. T. Simms, and McCord and Lindsey, of Coleman, as well as W. Von Rosenberg and Lawrence and Edwards, his Austin land agents, were all buying whatever land that came on the market in the Day Ranch area. W. T. Simms had Colonel Day's power of attorney for the purpose of acting for him in land purchases and that spring he acquired many thousands of acres for his client at from fifty cents to a dollar an acre.
On April 1 Colonel Day and his boys had rounded up the Grape Creek Pasture and for several days had been branding and working cattle on the relatively level, open country immediately in front of the Rock House. After a long, hard day on horseback, he found no difficulty in going to sleep that night. In the middle of the night he suddenly awoke and immediately realized there was something wrong with the herd that had been bedded for the night not far from the house. He hurriedly pulled on his clothes and ran to the yard gate where he jumped on a night horse left saddled there for such emergencies. It was now apparent that something had stampeded the herd and he pushed his horse to full speed to rush to the aid of the few cowboys standing their tour of the night watch. Somewhere in the darkness the Colonel's horse stepped into a prairie dog hole and wildly spilled himself and rider. The horn of the saddle hit Day squarely in the stomach severely injuring him internally.
After a few days he felt some better and was up and around. For the next several weeks he suffered from his stomach, but not thinking it of much consequence, he deferred seeking medical aid until the symptoms of his case assumed a grave aspect. When Dr. D. B. Currie, a local physician, told him his case was dangerous, he requested that Dr. James Johnson, who had been his physician when he lived in Denison, be called in council. When Dr. Johnson arrived, he found that the stomach injury had resulted in gangrene and human skill could not save the patient.
On the afternoon of his death the Colonel expressed no desire to live for himself, but he said he would like to live a few years longer to place his business in a secure position for his wife and infant child. Before his death he told his wife the details of his business and instructed her to take over.
At eight o'clock in the evening on June 14, 1881, a Cattle King of Texas died as the results of injuries received in line of duty.
Following the death of her husband, Mrs. Mable Day took personal charge of the Day Ranch and assumed the responsibility of paying off the $117,000 claims and debts against the estate. At a time when women were unwelcome in the business world, she developed into the most outstanding business woman of her period in Texas. She refinanced her business by organizing a $200,000 Kentucky corporation known as the Day Cattle Ranch Company, in which she retained the controlling stock and management. In 1885 she was running 9,000 cattle on the Day Ranch. She lost over a hundred miles of fence in the fence cutting war of 1883. Although heavily in debt, she survived when Cattle Kings went broke all around her. In 1889, when she married Captain Joseph C. Lea, "The Father of Roswell," she was mentioned by the press of Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico as "The Cattle Queen of Texas." In New Mexico, she started what is now New Mexico Military Institute in her Roswell home. [Captain J. C. Lea Letters, March 9, 1891, and others undated. In personal possession of James T. Padgitt, Coleman, Texas.] She wound up her life by colonizing over five hundred families on the Day Ranch in Coleman County, Texas.
The Southwest Historical Quartery
April, 1950
The Days were known around the Texas capital of Austin as the "Week Boys." There were seven of them: William, John, Dock, Perry, Joe, Addison, and Tony—all pioneer cowmen, each a soldier in the Confederacy. Their range was anywhere a Texas longhorn ate grass from Texas into Canada. There were also three daughters: Jane, Emma, and Sarah Day.
The original Day in America was John, who was born of Scotch parents at Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1742. During the Revolution he served as an Indian Scout in Virginia. John's pioneering blood was evidently passed on to his grandson, Jesse, because that younger Day kept pace with the fringes of western civilization as it moved across the country. From his native Tennessee, he moved to North Georgia. There his son William was born May 8, 1833. Two years later Jesse Day moved his family on west to settle for twelve years in the southwest corner of Missouri in Barry County. For more than a decade he freighted quantities of goods and supplies into Texas and returned with longhorn cattle to sell in Missouri.
Bill Day went on several freighting trips to Texas with his father before Jess moved his family there in 1847. After living at Bastrop and San Antonio for four years, Jesse bought a farm and settled near Mountain City in Hays County between San Antonio and Austin. He put his boys to work on the farm and kept several wagons and teams busy hauling from the Gulf ports to Austin. Freighting in Texas in the Fifties was an active business, because all trade with the outside world moved overland in wagons.
When Bill Day was old enough to branch out for himself, he acquired some wagons and teams and took up freighting. In eighteen months he managed to save fifteen hundred dollars, which he wisely decided to spend on an education. With what supplementary funds his father was able to send him, he went through Cumberland University at Lebanon, Tennessee. In 1858 he graduated as a Civil Engineer.
During Bill Day's last two years in school he received numerous letters from his father in Hays County, which give a flavor of the times in that section of Texas during 1857 and 1858:
February 23, 1857—...We are driving (to the port) on as usual. The spring is opening beautiful and people is planting corn and some done. I have planted about thirty acres and have the most of my field ready for planting. Monroe (Dock) and Perry is on the third trip to the port. Hauling is worth two dollars both ways. The grass is getting fine and stock doing well. We have had but little rain since last May and it has been fine for teaming and work of every kind. Stock is in better order this spring than they have in several past....
May 23, 1857—Prospects looks quite gloomy with regards to crops. We have had no rain yet. Our wheat will make nothing on account of the frost and the dry weather. The corn is dying fast. Prospects bids fare to make nothing. Corn is not to be had at enny price. There is a great menny sent to Orleans and bought at ninety cents. Flower is worth from twelve to fourteen per barrel and money as scare again as it was when you left here. I have nothing of importance to write you but that we have had a considerable revival of religion here within the last few weeks. There has several of the girls profesed religion, one of Mr. Stevenson's, two of Mr. Bredelov's, Susan Rowden and Mrs. Walden.
I am going to the port in the morning. There is very little doing. People has pretty well done working their crops, what little they have got. They will have nothing to do for they don't think of improving much while it is so dry. John (Day) is on the road with his teams. He has a very dead prospect for crops. Nearly all the people in Stringtown is hauling water from San Marcos and our water is getting very low in the well. We will have to start hauling water if it continues dry much longer. The Blanco is dry from Nance's down. Stock is doing badly. If we don't have rain soon we will have to depend on some other country for bread another season for I don't think it will be made here....
August 3, 1857—...We have had no rain yet. Our crops is so far gone that all the rain that could fall would not help them. We are cutting up to save the fodder. It is thought that there will not be enough made west of the Brazos to feed the people. A great many won't make their seed. Prospects is duller here than I ever have seen in Texas. Hauling is worth eighty cents from the port and none to do at that. And if there was, it could not be done on account of the scarcity of water. We are hauling water from the Blanco as is all this settlement. All from Owens to San Marcos are hauling from San Marcos. Not withstanding the dirth in our land, the Lord has blessed us with good health. There hasn't been a case of sickness in our settlement this year. We have had no need of medison, but great need of bread and meat.
I wrote you about the middle of June to Lebanon and sent you a draft on the Union Bank at New Orleans for fifty dollars. I now send a draft enclosed for one hundred dollars on the same bank. I want you to write me at what time you will need money so that I may make my arrangements to meet your wants. I don't want you to think of leaving school until you complete your studies on account of hard times, at least not until I fale to rase money to pay your way.
November 29, 1857—...I received the barrel of wheat that you sent me a few days ago. I have sowed about sixteen acres and there came about two million grashoppers and has eat it all up. I have not sowed the barrel I got from Tennessee, waiting for the grashoppers to leave. We have had plenty of rain to start the watercorces again and think if continues seasonable and the grashoppers don't take our crops in the spring we will stand some chance to make something another year. If we don't, we may leave Texas. There has a great many left already, but I think of trying it another season and if we make no crops we will be obliged to try something else besides farming. Times seems to be giting harder. People is suing one another and selling property at one third of the value. Our legislature is in session and speaks of doing something to relieve the pople, but has done nothing yet.
Monroe [Dock] is still going to school yet. Gipson is teaching here with twelve or fourteen scollars and I think the chance bad to git a good teacher here soon. I think of farming and teaming some teams to pay expenses and work along till times gits better. Land can't be rented at no price. I shall let what I can't tend lay out for all money is scarce. Everything is higher than it has been since I came to Texas. I sent to Orleans for a barrel of pickled pork and it cost me thirty six dollars. Bacon is worth twenty cents per pound, corn two dollars per bushel, flower worth from ten to twelve per barrel. If better times don't come I don't now what we shall do. The last two years has put Texas five year behind what she was two year ago and I don't think she will be up again for the next ten to come. The only thing that keeps us alive is what little money we get for hauling a load now and then from the port.
Perry has gone down to the port. We have had not enough frost to kill the grass and I think he will be able to get back on the grass [without feeding] for we have very fine warm weather.
John Day and Driskill's families [J. L. Driskill married Nancy Day] are well and they have about two hundred steers gathered to take to Missouri in the spring. They expect to heard them this winter in the mountains.
January 24, 1858—...We have been overflooded with rain. We have had rain every change, quarter and full of the moon for about two months. Stock is doing very well. Plenty of good fat beeves, but very little pork. What there is is worth ten dollars a hundred, corn worth two dollars per bushel, flower fifteen dollars per barrel and money scarcer than it is enny place. There is a great many that will not be able to buy seed corn. Driskill and Monroe [Dock] is gone to the port and John is herding the steers. They expect to start to Missouri with them as soon as grass rises. Matters is moving on with the tide and sometimes very swift for people is sueing one another and selling property for nothing. There has been no emigration this fall and in consequence of it much land will lay out. Try to make out the best you can as times is hard here.
May 17, 1858—...I have no good news to write you. Hard times still is looking us in the fase. The grashoppers has eat up all the crops that was plented first and all that has come up the second time. I had a hundred and forty acres near waist high and they et it all and twenty five acres of wheat. They even et the rutes out. We have give out making enny crops this year. We have had a great deal of rain, enough to of made two crops. I have quit my farm. Have got three teams on the road, but hauling only worth one dollar to Austin when there is enny to do. We have not heard from the boys since they crossed the Red River with them cattle. We have fine grass and plenty of water; fat beef and little bread. Everything has a downward tendency and gloomy prospects...
When Bill Day returned home with his diploma in Civil Engineering, he found the times even harder than reported in his father's letters. Crops were a failure and hundreds of draft horses and mules were lying idle throughout the country. Such was not the case on the Louisiana cotton and sugar plantations that Bill Day passed through on his way back to Texas. Work stock there was selling at a premium. Consequently it did not take him long to get into business. He gathered a herd of horses and mules and set out with them for Louisiana. It is reported that, while this business involved considerable risk and offered numerous harrowing experiences, it was profitable and Bill Day continued driving mules to Louisiana until 1860.
The late winter of that year he, Dock, and his father gathered a herd of cattle to drive to Kansas City. April 22, 1860, they reached the Brazos River at Waco and found the stream almost out of banks. Knowing that the swollen stream might hold them up for several days, they proceeded to swim the herd. But when Jesse plunged his horse into the boiling water, something went wrong. Both he and his horse went under. Bill Day tried desperately to save his father, but Jess never reached the shore alive. The two brothers tried to return their father's body to Austin, but they were forced to bury him at Belton. The remains were later removed to Austin.
They returned to the herd and started on toward Kansas City. En route they were met by citizens who were opposed to their driving the herd over their lands. They were forced at the point of guns back to neutral territory. There they made a good sale of the stock, but the purchaser failed to fulfill his contract. In some way they managed to get the herd through to St. Louis where they found a ready market. They turned their money into horses and headed for the sugar plantations of Louisiana. After their arrival home in January 1861, Bill Day left immediately on a horse buying trip to Matamoros, Mexico. While in Mexico the news of secession and impending war reached him. Bill Day returned home immediately.
Texas seceded from the Union on February 1, 1861, and on February 26 Captain E. Kirby Smith, commanding Company B, 2nd U.S. Calvary stationed at Camp Colorado, Coleman County, Texas, ordered the Federal troops to abandon the fort. Captain Smith surrendered to Colonel H. E. McCulloch, resigned his commission in the U.S. Army and tendered his services to the C.S.A. At this time there was hopes that secession would not lead to war and those of Smith's command who so desired were permitted to return to the North in peace. Company B marched to Green Lake and then to Indianola, where it embarked on the S. S. Coalzacoalcos on March 31 for Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, by way of Key West and New York.
Thus Camp Colorado fell into the hands of the Confederate Army. Bill Day's Hays County friend, William A. Pitts, was commissioned to organize a company at Camp Colorado and he was successful in getting William to join his company. Bill Day's five brothers enlisted in Hays County units. War Department records show that William Day enlisted in Captain William A. Pitts' Company, 1st Regiment Texas Mounted Riflemen, later 1st Regiment (McCulloch's) Texas Cavalry, C.S.A. at Camp Colorado on July 1, 1861. The Company muster roll of October, 1861, shows Day "Absent on detached service at Ft. Mason from October 26, 1861." A subsequent record, dated April 29, 1862, shows Day paid as a teamster for the above organization.
No later army record of Day has been found, but in John Henry Brown's Encyclopedia of the New West, published after Day's death, it is learned that he had enlisted in the army for the period of one year, and after serving out his term of enlistment, he was mustered out of service at Fredericksburg, Texas, on July 1, 1862. From this source it is further revealed that after his separation from the army, he immediately purchased a herd of beeves in that rich cattle country and drove them to Alexandria, Louisiana, where he sold them to the Confederate Army. From that time until the end of the war he drove under contract to furnish supplies of cattle to the Confederate Army, and in this period was the boss of two thousand men getting up and driving cattle to army depots.
The end of hostilities found him in Mason, Texas, with all of his assets in worthless Confederate money. This emergency caused him to take a job with a New Orleans livestock commission house, but it was not long before he was back in Texas. On his return through East Texas, he found that lumber was in great demand in Texas. In a Mr. Dunlap's general store at Brenham, Texas, on February 4, 1866, he learned of some big timber over at near-by Montgomery that could be had reasonably. After purchasing some timber there he returned to New Orleans and purchased the machinery for a small steam sawmill, which when in operation Day felt would clear $50 a day. He had his first mill running by May 15, and it was not long until he had several such mills which he operated until he sold out his lumber interests in the Fall of 1868. [W. H. Day Letters, In personal possession of James T. Padgitt, Coleman, Texas.]
That winter W. H. Day and his brother-in-law, J. M. Driskill, formed a partnership and made plans to drive a herd of cattle to Abilene, Kansas, late that spring. In the year 1869 the system of banking and credit on the frontier had not yet developed to a very refined point. In the absence of banks, the general merchandise store that was to be found in operation on the fringe of civilization, acted as the middleman in various forms of commercial transactions. A letter of credit given by Spencer Ford at Bryan, Texas, February 25, 1869 to Day and Driskill explains how such matters were often handled.
You are hereby authorized to draw on me for such amounts, payable in Dry Goods, as may be necessary to meet your demands in the purchase of Beeves this Spring, and by this letter of credit can make whatever arrangements to that end with merchants living in the Stock Sections, such arrangements being subject to such conditions you yourselves may impose.
With this letter of credit in hand, Day and Driskill arrived in the stock country where they went about gathering their trail herd. That summer they arrived at the market of Abilene, Kansas, with a herd of 1400 cattle.
The drive of the previous year, Day's first experience on the newly-opened Kansas market, evidently proved to be a productive venture, because in 1870 he drove a trail herd of three thousand head to Leavenworth, Kansas. He arrived there to find the cattle market badly overstocked and prices low. Consequently, he killed and packed his beef and shipped it to New York, where it is reported he liquidated for $70,000, thereby realizing a large profit.
After estimating that the drive of 1871 would exceed 750,000 head and that the Kansas market would be glutted with Texas cattle, he decided to quit the trade until the cattle business became more profitable. Being a civil engineer, he engaged himself for the next two years in locating and selling lands.
Although Day had a natural fondness for the cattle business, it was probably the depression of 1873 that brought him back into the livestock trade. That spring he went to work for the livestock commission firm of Hunter and Evans, of St. Louis, and remained with them for about a year. By the spring of 1874, however, he was back in business for himself buying cattle. At Denison, Texas, he set up a small packing plant where he butchered his cattle and shipped the beef in refrigerator cars to Eastern markets. As an operator, Day was known as a quick trader. He knew his business thoroughly, which permitted speedy judgment and fast transactions. He could glance at a steer and quickly figure his margin of profit at the market. His excellent character, manner, and bearing, as well as his recognized knowledge of the trade, instilled confidence in all with whom he dealt.
Hunter and Evans evidently appreciated Day's abilities in the livestock trade, for in 1875, they persuaded him to take charge of their entire Texas business, which was very extensive at the time. This connection took him all over the livestock domain of the state. He made frequent trips to the coast country, San Antonio, and Mason County, but returned often to Denison, where he had made a fond attachment for Miss Mabel Doss, a music teacher, whom he later married.
By 1876 Day had become such an extensive operator throughout Texas that he gained the title of Colonel Day, by which he was respectfully known the rest of his life. It was also in that year his keen foresight told him that cattlemen of the Southwest would eventually have to change their method of operations; the day of the open range would pass and the cattle grower would have to own his land. During Day's Civil War period he no doubt became impressed with the ranch country in Coleman County, because when Brazoria and Ft. Bend counties decided to put their school lands, lying in Coleman County, on the market, Colonel Day went directly to those counties and bought 22,000 acres of school lands which lie in the southwest corner of Coleman County, from their respective commissioners courts, paying them fifty cents per acre, twenty-five cents per acre cash and the balance on time. This transaction made Colonel Day the first large landowner in Coleman County. In 1876 he purchased several herds of cattle in South Texas, drove them to his ranch, and began his first grazing operations.
When Colonel Day arrived at the ranch he found Rich Coffey and his family living at the mouth of the Concho on the Coleman county side of the Colorado River, in what is known as the Coffey Flat. The Coffeys had come from Brown County in 1861 and had at first camped on Grape Creek just below the mouth of Little Grape, but by the time Colonel Day arrived, they had moved to the Coffey Flat on the Colorado at the mouth of the Concho where they were living in a dugout. Bill McCauley, a son-in-law of Rich Coffey and an excellent stone mason, had built a two-room rock house on the bank of Grape Creek and it was here that Colonel Day established the Day Ranch headquarters. Incidentally, this rock house was the first one built in the southwestern part of Coleman County and is still in use as a ranch headquarters on the ranch. At the Trap Crossing on the Colorado River, just west of the present town of Leaday, lived a man named Hogue who had put in a fifteen-acre farm there in 1874. A. S. Creswell moved into the country in the fall of 1876. He first camped at Bull Hollow on Elm Creek, but soon bought a claim of 320 acres from a Mr. Cleghorn and on Christmas Day of that year moved into what is known as the Creswell Bend of the Colorado River. From what can be gathered, Colonel Day spent the rest of the year getting his ranch established and did not make his accustomed trip up the trail to market. Early in the spring of 1877 Colonel Day decided to drive 7000 head to Kansas that year. He had his ranch well established and could not resist his first calling and the rich possibilities to be found with a herd at the other end of the trail. He set May 1 as the date he wished to have his herd on the trail and immediately busied himself in scouting for cheap beef. This search took him to Corpus Christi, where he purchased the basic part of his trail herd. With these cattle on the road to his Coleman County ranch he wrote on April 30 from Austin:
I start for Kansas tomorrow. I go from here to ranch and from there to Dodge City by way of Panhandle of Texas. It will be some time before I reach the settlements. I have 7000 head on the road to Kansas. Write me June 1st at Dodge City.
After selling his herd at Dodge City, there was another matter of business that was most important to Colonel Day's plans for the future. He was forty-four years old and still a bachelor. With his new spread in Coleman County, he most of all needed a wife. The person figuring in these plans was Miss Mable Doss, with whom he had been pressing his case on his frequent trips to Denison and Sherman. Miss Mabel was spending the summer at Brownsville, Missouri, and it was for that place he started as soon as he could pay off his boys and accomplish a matter of banking in Kansas City. As it was not until more than a year later that he was to gain this cherished prize, Colonel Day returned to Texas that fall and spent the winter buying and gathering another trail herd. On the monetary side of the ledger, things were beginning to come the Colonel's way, and that spring, through his agents, McCord and Lindsey of Coleman, he secured another 7,200 acres to add to his ranch.
The summer of 1878 again found Day with a trail herd in Kansas. He retraced his steps of the previous year, but this time with greater success for that fall he succeeded in winning the hand of Miss Doss. At Sherman, Texas, on January 26, 1879, they were married in the First Presbyterian Church of that city. After the wedding they left for Austin where they visited in the home of Colonel Day's mother. Mabel remained in the Day home while her husband, in the company of his new brother-in-law, Will Doss, went to Coleman County to gather the trail herd for that year. This was an unwelcome separation so soon after being married, but they were looking forward to a later honeymoon in Kansas after the herd had been gotten off.
The men arrived at the ranch March 7 and soon started out to buy cattle. Ranchmen had been delayed in rounding up because of the backwardness of spring and the cattle buyers got off to a slow start. By March 28, however, Colonel Day started receiving cattle in the San Saba country. Although Doss was also out on a purchasing mission, buying and gathering 4,500 head of cattle was a slow and tedious task. There were very few large outfits operating in the country and the average purchases were from one to two hundred head. Cattle had first to be found and contracted for, then cowboys had to be brought from the ranch to receive, brand, and then drive them long distances to the concentration point on the Day Ranch. On May 23, Colonel Day wrote that he had 4,000 head gathered on the ranch and he was in San Saba, where he had just contracted 500 more to deliver at Coleman City in time to meet the main herd as it passed that place on May 28.
Before the cattle left the ranch, they were divided into two groups: a steer and a cow herd. J. T. Hoch, the Colonel's favorite trail boss of three years' standing, took the steer herd. "Tobe" (William Walter) Driskill, a nephew, took the cow herd that followed. Will Doss was left in charge of the ranch, and after seeing the herds across the Pecan Bayou headed to Ft. Griffin, Colonel Day went directly to Austin. He and his wife took the cars for Kansas City where they planned to have some time together before the trail outfits arrived.
On June 5, Day was registered at the Dodge House and wrote the following letter to his wife at Kansas City:
I arrived back in Dodge this evening, after being absent five and a half days. I did not remain in Dodge long when I came up, I found Brother Dock and Tony waiting my arrival. We soon got a conveyance and started down the trail to meet my cattle. We met the first herd about sixty miles down. Found the boys all well and getting along very well. Had lost but few cattle. I camped with them one night and went on next morning to meet the other herd, which we did that day, which was about one hundred miles from here. I found all right with them. That was the cow herd, the one that had the cattle that my brothers wanted. I cut out for Dock and Tony four hundred cows and calves which shaped up the herd very well. I sold them all my cows and calves and started the balance for here. My first herd of 2500 will be here tomorrow and I will begin to turn over to J. M. Driskill the next day. Will take me about two days to get through with them. By that time the other herd will be here. I have some cattle in the last herd not sold, but don't think it will take me long to sell them, as the market is pretty good. I will send up with Driskill all my young cattle to the Yellowstone and if no bad luck will be back in about two weeks....
On their way home, the Days stopped by Hot Springs, Arkansas, and by September 4 were back in Austin and on their way to the Day Ranch. This was Mrs. Day's first trip to the ranch about which she had heard so much. They left Austin in a new, large, three-seated hack, which the Colonel had bought in St. Louis. In this hack there must have been everything desired in a frontier conveyance, because years later Buffalo Bill Cody bought it and used it in his famous Wild West Show.
Early in spring of 1879 a four-strand barbed wire fence had been started around the Day Ranch. Cedar posts and wire had been freighted in wagons from Austin and, all year long, a crew of about twenty men had been busy building a fence aound the 7500-acre Red Wire Pasture, so called because the wire was painted red. This was the first fence of any distinction built in Coleman County and possibly in that entire section of the country, because it must be remembered that this was a land of open and free range for many, many miles in all directions. Following the Red Wire Pasture, Day next fenced his Grape Creek pasture.
After a trip of several days across country in the big ranch hack, the Days arrived at the Rock House Headquarters of the Day Ranch. As previously mentioned, this was a two room structure, but from lumber hauled from Austin two wooden rooms had been added on the south. This was used strictly as a headquarters house, because most of the cowboys on the ranch lived in a cow camp that moved wherever their work took them.
No more vivid picture of life on the Day Ranch is at hand than the one described by Mrs. Day in a letter written in September, 1879:
Col. Day is building a fence around his pasture, which when done will contain forty thousand acres of land. It is a beautiful country, rolling prairie, covered with good grass, interspersed with timber, through which are beautiful little streams of running water and cool springs. Just across the Colorado River, which runs along one side of it, are high bluffs, hills and mountains which appear perfectly grand. We have a good stone house with four rooms and a front porch, a smoke house full of hams, breakfast bacon, flour meal, dried apples, beans, golden and maple syrup by the barrel, splendid pickles, canned corn, tomatoes, grapes, blackberries, strawberries, sugar, coffee and catsup. I believe that is all we have to eat except cheese and maple sugar, which I keep in my room for my own use. Col. shipped his provisions from Austin, one of the nearest railroad points. We get a nice mutton or goat every once in a while or a hind quarter of beef. Then the boys bring in a deer occasionally and every evening some quail or a turkey—have plenty of wild game.
Col. hired a man and his wife to keep house for us so I could go with him whenever I want to. He got me a gentle pony, nice saddle, etc. I made me a navy blue riding habit and the way I fly over these praries—it would do you good to see me. When I get tired of riding horse back he takes the buggy or rather the little spring wagon. You see he starts early in the morning and does not get back until nearly dark. I have to go with him or be very lonely at home with Mrs. Thompson, the housekeeper. He has twenty men at work on the fence and it keeps him busy bossing them. The fence will be done the second week in November. Col. will then buy up his cattle to fill it and then he will go to Austin. He will return in the spring to get off his herd to Kansas. I will come with him again if he will let me.
I have but one neighbor, Mrs. Gatlin, who lives seven miles from me. She spent the day with me day before yesterday. She is a splendid woman; has lived here but two years. I wish you could see her house. It is made of poles stuck straight up and down covered with boards. That is a paradise compared to the other houses in this country, most of which are dug outs. All these people who live here are good hearted, but wholly uneducated. Col. got me a guitar to bring with me instead of a piano and they call it a music box and think it very large. What would they think, could they see a piano?
There are few panthers, plenty of snakes, centipedes, tarantulas, wolves, prairie dogs, and polecats out here, so, you see, if I get up a music class out here they will have to be my pupils.
Col. and I are going to Coleman City tomorrow, which is twenty-five miles north of the ranch, so I stayed home today to write my letters. Here comes a wagon. Who can it be? Well, what do you think! Old. Mr. Cresswell, the only man for forty miles who has a garden and he has a good one, he has brought over twenty-five watermelons, a sack of string beans, and some nice fresh tomatoes with his compliments to the 'Old Boss' and his boys. Ha, Ha, he forgot me, but that is all O.K. I'll just quit my letter a moment and try one of these melons all the same.
I'll have to send these melons to the boys. They camp where they are at work, as it is so far to come home. It is eleven miles from the house to the far side of the pasture.
Do you wonder I weigh one hundred forty-five pounds? I wish you were here with me. I'll venture you'll never complain again. What do you say, Myrt? Come out and ranch it a while. I'd dance on my head to see you coming. Come to Ft. Worth on the cars, then stage to Brownwood, and I'll meet you there with our "traveling she-bang". Col. got it in St. Louis. It is nice, cost $373.00, has three seats in it. They can be let down and a bed fixed in it like a sleeping car. We can cook and eat in it, if the weather is raining. Can't you come? Tell Annie I'll be settled next summer, if I don't go to Colorado, and will then have my piano and shall expect her then if she is not married.
Let me hear from you, if you will allow me to still be your friend, and I'll promise to do better in the future. Address me at Trap Post Office [officially recorded as RICH COFFEY, TEXAS, in Postmaster Generals office, Washington, D. C.], Coleman County, Texas.
That winter the Days returned to Austin, where they remained for the winter months, but on the morning of February 16, 1880, they were again opening the gate to the big pasture. As they drove through the gate they were met by Hill Young, a cowboy on the ranch, who appeared quite ill with a bad cold. Colonel Day urged him to leave the camp and come to the house until he felt better. Early the next morning he came in and asked whether he could lie down a while. The Colonel gave him a strong toddy and put him to bed. He sent for the only physician in the neighborhood, Dr. D. B. Currie, of Paint Rock, Texas. When the doctor arrived he pronounced the case as pneumonia.
Colonel Day was compelled to go to Ft. Concho on business, but left the sick man in the hands of Mrs. Day, the doctor, and several of the cowboys. Upon returning a few days later, he found that Hill Young had died and had been buried. The boys had made a coffin which Mrs. Day had covered with some dark material. Young was an Odd Fellow and the lodge at Coleman had helped lay his body at rest in the Coleman Cemetery. Colonel Day was later buried beside this young man.
The details of how the Days busied themselves the spring of 1880 are not known. Day and his brother-in-law, J. L. Driskill, signed a note, dated March 1 for $10,000 on the Armour Brothers Banking Company of Kansas City, and it is presumed that they drew on this company for the cattle they purchased that spring, which were to be added to those already on the ranch, in making up the trail herd for that year's drive. All mail directed to the ranch was received at Rich Coffey Post Office, located in the Trap Store. This store was on the ranch at the Trap Crossing on the Colorado River. On the Concho County side of the crossing was a store called the Trigger. When these two stores came into existence is not known, but the Trap Crossing is an old landmark known to many an early day trail outfit. Only a few hundred yards from where the Trap Store stood is an old "Boot Hill Cemetery," located on a hill overlooking the Colorado River, where cowboys of the early Seventies were laid to rest. The crumbling old grave markers reveal that the average age of those resting beneath them was nineteen. No doubt the whiskey to be had at the Trap Store plus the normal hazards of the trail accounted for the need of a cemetery there. No one rests there who died of old age. The river at flood stages certainly has claimed its toll of cowboys since the first cattle crossed there.
The next report of Colonel Day is on July 7, 1880. This comes through a letter written by Mrs. Day, who was stopping at the St. James Hotel in Kansas City. He was in the Black Hills of South Dakota looking over J. S. Driskill's ranch and considering the possibilities of buying a ranch near Deadwood. An interesting passage from Mrs. Day's letter is as follows: "They celebrated the Fourth on the third in Kansas City. Grant and party were there. I saw them all and a more ordinary set of people I never saw. Fireworks best I've seen."
The Colonel did not like the Dakota country and returned to meet his trail herd, and on July 30, he was registered at the Dodge House. When the herd arrived, his brother Tony, who ranched 150 miles north of Dodge City, helped him work the cattle into classes suitable to meet the various demands of the market. A Colonel Grimes bought the cow herd, the steers were disposed of to other buyers, and W. L. Nichols bought the lame and cripples, paying five dollars a round for twenty-one head. The Armour note was stamped paid on August 18, and Colonel and Mrs. Day were off to Manitou, Colorado, for a much needed vacation.
Vacations were not of long duration for an operator like Day. He had already contracted to deliver another herd of Texas cattle in November to a point somewhere between Camp Supply, Indian Territory, and Dodge City. Consequently, on September 2, he was back at the Day Ranch making plans to assemble a second trail herd. He wrote to Mrs. Day as follows:
When I arrived at the ranch I found all the boys well, cats, dogs, etc. in good condition. Grass in pasture fine and cattle doing well. Have bought no cattle yet, but think I will be able to get the herd up in about twenty-five days. Hock and the trail outfit have not gotten in yet, but look for them soon.
On October 5 he had the five and eight dollar yearlings and two year olds, bought in Coleman and Concho counties, headed north towards Camp Supply. After seeing the herd off, he swung by Austin to see Mrs. Day who was then expecting a blessed event the latter part of December. After riding the train to Dodge, he took the stage south to Camp Supply. At that place, on November 23, he wrote Mrs. Day from the store of Lee and Reynolds as follows:
I have had a great deal of trouble delivering the cattle, but got through today, although have to drive part of the herd twenty-five miles farther towards Dodge. Can do that in two days. It is fifteen degrees below zero and snow about ten inches on the ground, so you may know how it is to camp out. Have lost a few cattle during the snow, though not many. They all say there has not been such a snow storm in ten years. I will have to settle with the boys and then will start home.
Mrs. Day had evidentially given him a list of things the baby would need, because he made a stop in Kansas City where he bought a long list of baby clothes and blankets. From Kansas City he made a hurried swing by the Day Ranch and on to Austin where he arrived in time to be present at the birth of a daughter, Willie Mable, on December 19, 1880.
While Colonel Day was sweating it out, just before Willie was born, he was relieved to hear from John Doss, at the Day Ranch, as follows:
After regards to all, would say I arrived home all O.K. found things all right. Jim got home from Brownwood, got 46 bu. of corn, paid seventy-five cents per bu. I will have Henry Eubank to send him back as soon as he can. There will be some thirteen or fourteen hundred of the I C cattle in this evening.
Captain Doakes took his mares and Jack out of pasture this A.M., said for you to make out his account. He was one short. I think he took out nineteen head. His address is Paint Rock. Mr. Andrews says tell you he took your advice as how to approach the Captain in a trade, so he went for him Red Hot and talked fast and sold his jack to the Captain.
Jim House, at the Trigger, got robbed. Two men came to the store about dark. House was at supper. They went up to his house and called for him, said they wanted to buy corn. Jim went down and traded them some $2.50 worth. He suspicioned them and slipped $55.00 down his pants. One of them pulled down a six shooter on Jim and told him to hold up his hands; Jim's pistol caught in his pocket. They took his pistol and he gave up his money, some $12.00. Jim told them to leave some change in the drawer; they left $1.50. Told Jim to take a seat by the stove while they looked over the store. Each took one pair boots, fine hat, shirt and underclothing, and ten boxes of sardines, dressed in the store and left their old ones. Said they could not live at home and that was the way they made their living. They talked some time and was going to tie Jim, but Jim promised not to leave the store. They locked Him in and told Jim they would leave his key and pistol up on the hill. They asked Jim for his gun. Jim told him to take it. They took a box of cartridges, remarking they might have occasion to do some shooting tomorrow.
Ridge Goodman has just arrived, says the I. C. cattle will be here at Davidson's pens tonight. Hetler (the fence builder) has not returned from Brownwood.
Incidentally, Jim House [Howze], connected with the Trigger story, later became the sheriff of Concho County.
About three weeks later John Doss sent Colonel Day another report from the Day Ranch:
After my regards would say the trail outfit got in this evening, except Tolbert, Will Doss and Wilkerson, who stopped off at Ft. Griffin and Coleman.
The horses all look bad. They say they lost fourteen head on the way back. Harry is going to Austin and can give you full particulars. Johnnie Glenn is going back up the trail 75 miles from here to look for six horses they lost. We are having cold weather with four inches of snow on the ground. Stock looks bad with some few dieing. We will have to feed the horses that came back, as they would not get through the winter. The OOZ stock looks bad and we occasionally find a dead calf.
The fence is all in good fix. J. T. Hoch is looking after the north string and I the south string, when it is so I can get out.
Today is the first day that any work has been done by Hetler's fence building crew since Monday week on account of weather. Last Saturday they cut posts up on Grape Creek. He is putting posts around the Hogue Farm and making a fence.
I wish you would come up. I think it would be to your interest.
In the same mail came a letter postmarked at Paint Rock from Ridge Goodman, a cow buyer who frequently purchased cattle for Day on a commission basis. Goodman informed him that he was looking around to see what one's and two's could be put up for that spring, but that grade was very scarce and hard to get and it was quite likely that it would take several months of buying a few here and a few there to get a herd together. He further remarked that the I. C. outfit had gone to the head of the San Saba to winter and that most of the cattle in the country had drifted south and were with the I. C. outfit.
When little Willie Mable Day was one month old the Days were making plans to leave Austin as soon as the mother and baby were able to travel. One of their grandmothers, Mrs. F. P. Doss, on January 17, revealed their plans in the following letter:
Mabel married Col W. H. Day, a citizen of Austin for the past 20 years. He is a stockman and has a pasture of 47,000 acres fenced with wire and has 10,000 head of cattle in it. We are going to move out there next week as he thinks it best to be out there. He drives every summer. The ranch is in Coleman County twenty-five miles from Coleman City.
Will Doss brought the "traveling she-bang" down to Austin and moved Mrs. Day, little Willie, and Mrs. Doss to the Ranch. Colonel Day sent word to Goodman to contract the I. C. yearlings and two year olds and to buy any others he could find. On February 4, Day was on his way to Kansas City to borrow money with which to finance the proposed drive and to feel out the market. He had very little cash on hand as he had been using every available dollar to make down payments on lands that were being added to his ranch. His lawyer, W. T. Simms, and McCord and Lindsey, of Coleman, as well as W. Von Rosenberg and Lawrence and Edwards, his Austin land agents, were all buying whatever land that came on the market in the Day Ranch area. W. T. Simms had Colonel Day's power of attorney for the purpose of acting for him in land purchases and that spring he acquired many thousands of acres for his client at from fifty cents to a dollar an acre.
On April 1 Colonel Day and his boys had rounded up the Grape Creek Pasture and for several days had been branding and working cattle on the relatively level, open country immediately in front of the Rock House. After a long, hard day on horseback, he found no difficulty in going to sleep that night. In the middle of the night he suddenly awoke and immediately realized there was something wrong with the herd that had been bedded for the night not far from the house. He hurriedly pulled on his clothes and ran to the yard gate where he jumped on a night horse left saddled there for such emergencies. It was now apparent that something had stampeded the herd and he pushed his horse to full speed to rush to the aid of the few cowboys standing their tour of the night watch. Somewhere in the darkness the Colonel's horse stepped into a prairie dog hole and wildly spilled himself and rider. The horn of the saddle hit Day squarely in the stomach severely injuring him internally.
After a few days he felt some better and was up and around. For the next several weeks he suffered from his stomach, but not thinking it of much consequence, he deferred seeking medical aid until the symptoms of his case assumed a grave aspect. When Dr. D. B. Currie, a local physician, told him his case was dangerous, he requested that Dr. James Johnson, who had been his physician when he lived in Denison, be called in council. When Dr. Johnson arrived, he found that the stomach injury had resulted in gangrene and human skill could not save the patient.
On the afternoon of his death the Colonel expressed no desire to live for himself, but he said he would like to live a few years longer to place his business in a secure position for his wife and infant child. Before his death he told his wife the details of his business and instructed her to take over.
At eight o'clock in the evening on June 14, 1881, a Cattle King of Texas died as the results of injuries received in line of duty.
Following the death of her husband, Mrs. Mable Day took personal charge of the Day Ranch and assumed the responsibility of paying off the $117,000 claims and debts against the estate. At a time when women were unwelcome in the business world, she developed into the most outstanding business woman of her period in Texas. She refinanced her business by organizing a $200,000 Kentucky corporation known as the Day Cattle Ranch Company, in which she retained the controlling stock and management. In 1885 she was running 9,000 cattle on the Day Ranch. She lost over a hundred miles of fence in the fence cutting war of 1883. Although heavily in debt, she survived when Cattle Kings went broke all around her. In 1889, when she married Captain Joseph C. Lea, "The Father of Roswell," she was mentioned by the press of Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico as "The Cattle Queen of Texas." In New Mexico, she started what is now New Mexico Military Institute in her Roswell home. [Captain J. C. Lea Letters, March 9, 1891, and others undated. In personal possession of James T. Padgitt, Coleman, Texas.] She wound up her life by colonizing over five hundred families on the Day Ranch in Coleman County, Texas.
The Southwest Historical Quartery
April, 1950
Mrs. Mabel Day and the Fence Cutters
The Fence Cutting War of the 1880's was destined to bring no great credit to the State of Texas. Rather, it was later to be frowned upon as the most serious epoch of civil conflict in Texas history.
When it struck, it spread like chain lightning all along the Texas frontier where barbed wire had found a new home. And like an earthquake it shook the entire state, reaping untold destruction of personal property. Its reverberations were felt on Wall Street and other financial centers of the nation. But, while fence cutting occurred in over half the state's organized counties, the bitterest feelings were expressed with nippers and Winchesters on or near the Texas frontier.
The cattle boom of the early eighties, the offering for sale of the public school lands, and the inflow of capital following on the heels of an aggressive railroad building program touched off a tremendous speculation in Texas lands.
Prior to this time large and small fortunes were made on the free grass of the open range. Senator Terrell made a forceful example of this in a speech before the Texas Senate in January, 1884. He said, "Bud Driskill of Austin, owner of eight hundred cattle in 1873, but no land, estimated his wealth in 1884 at $800,000 all produced on free grass of the state for which he paid no taxes. And Mr. J. L. Driskill is only one of many who made such remarkable fortunes on free range grass."
The introduction of barbed wire and its growing acceptance in the early eighties marked the beginning of an economic change that the Texas frontiersman found hard to digest. There was a resentment against fencing the open range from the beginning. And numerous attempts were made to have the state legislature declare the erection of the barbed wire fence illegal.
But it was the drought in the summer of 1883 that jolted him into reality. During that extended period of no rainfall, in which the nomadic cow and sheep man saw his overstocked range wither and die and found his stock slowly starving around soupy bog holes, the free grass man slowly awoke to the realization he was being crowded out by the far-sighted stockman who had bought and was fencing his land.
With the absence of any laws governing building or cutting fences, the leathery frontiersman, long accustomed to taking the law into his own hands, struck and ripped the barbed wire fence out by the roots.
When it started, fence cutting spread like an epidemic. It grew quickly into such proportions that fences were being destroyed for countless reasons, quite often influenced by personal animosity. Fences were suffering all over Texas, but the three principal centers of destruction were in Jack, Wise, and Clay Counties in the north, Coleman County in the center, and Frio in the south.
On September 13, three days before heavy rains broke the extreme drought, the Austin Weekly Statesman reported, "Wire fence cutting has at last commenced in Coleman County. Several pasture fences were cut last night, one among them was the pasture fence of R. S. Bowen, which was utterly ruined."
This paper deals with fence cutting on the ranch of Mrs. Mabel Day, a courageous widow of Coleman County. It was a goodly ranch that her husband (killed in an accident) had left her but involved in debt. The plucky young woman determined to refinance the debts and carry on the ranch operations after the style of her late husband. To do this she sought capital in the East just at the time the fence cutting mania got under way in her area.
On September 27, 1883, Mabel Day wrote to her friend and adviser J. M. Booth:
When Colonel J. M. Booth returned home on October 7th and learned that Mabel's fence was being cut to pieces he lost no time in writing her:
Coleman City was a trail town, the county seat, and barely had four hundred citizens. Up and down both sides of its hundred-foot-wide street were its business houses of rawhide lumber sandwiched between its half-dozen saloons and gambling halls. Upstairs over the Blue Front Saloon was a dance hall, from which could be heard fiddle music and coarse laughter of women at any hour of the day or night when trail outfits were passing through.
From April until late in the fall hundreds of steer and mixed herds slowly drifted north through Coleman to find a market at Dodge. During the height of the season, Coleman merchants, with eyes cut for business, kept full-time riders hired to go out and welcome incoming trail outfits. They were ambassadors of good will with saddle bags well stocked with sample refreshments and a come-on that made every trail hand feel the urge to check in with Madge Barker and her girls over the Blue Front.
During the excitement over the fences, the Blue Front became wire cutting headquarters and did a good business. During the day the town was full. Around the salons everyone whiled away his time drinking and gambling. But along towards sundown the town would gradually become empty and stay that way until just before sunup when small parties of men would ride in on lathered horses to fall in their rolls at the wagon yard for a few hours' sleep.
Mahoney was visited every night, because those opposed to fences just naturally liked cutting the Yankee's fence. Besides, Mahoney was a man with a personality no one seemed to appreciate. And, unfortunately, his fence was conveniently close to town. When they got tired of working on Mahoney, the night riders would pay Lee Shield a visit or drop down to whack on R.H. Overall's wire. Then they would be out several days at a time when down on the river to see after the Vaughn, Starkweather and Day pastures.
When the news that Mabel Day had formed a two hundred thousand dollar cattle corporation with Kentucky capitalists reached the fence cutters, they seemed to lose interest in everything but Day wire.
One morning before the town was awake cutters posted the following notice on the streets of Coleman:
Mabel Day answered this paper attack—that ammunition fit her own guns. She sent her reply to the Coleman Voice and it was later published in the Tom Green Times with an editor's preface:
And a clipping from an unknown paper also speaks of Mabel's new trouble:
With shootings, stealing and cattle rustling, Ben Pittman, Sheriff of Coleman County, had his hands full. For once he was glad that the hunting down of "legitimate outlaws", such as horse thieves, took up his entire time. Public opinion was so widely divided on the fence issue that he felt it was a matter the sheriff's department would do well to give a wide berth.
The statue books contained no law on fence cutting. Destruction of private property was looked upon as merely a misdemeanor. He pointed out that his hands were full hunting down outlaws and felons in the strictest sense of the word, but made it plain that he would be more than willing to discharge the duties of his office by serving papers on anyone wantonly destroying private property if any one would swear out a complaint against a specifically known fence cutter.
But everyone was like John Jones. When Colonel J. E. McCord, head of the local law and order league, asked him to go and find the exact parties cutting wire and report back, Jones replied, "I love to live too well to do that."
And the sheriff was right. His hands were full. He was on constant call dealing with rustlers. Only a week after Coleman's fence cutting war started the sheriffs of Coleman, San Saba, McCullouch and Concho counties and all their deputies were called to southwestern Coleman County where the corners of the four counties met to investigate the wholesale brand burning of cattle, which was reported in progress at that point by an organized body of lawless men. Although the cattle having their brands burned could be identified, it was reported the owners were afraid to claim them.
No sooner had the sheriff returned to Coleman than he had to double back to investigate a shooting. The Austin Weekly Statesman carrying a Coleman date line reported:
A few days after the news of the shooting reached Mabel, she heard that Abe was hiding out in one of her cow camps. She sent Will Doss over to get Abe. After listening to his account of the shooting, Mabel said, "Abe, there's no law against a man shooting in self defense. From what you've told it was either kill or get killed and that's not illegal in this country."
"I shore did hate it, Miss Mabel," said Abe soberly, "but it was forced on me."
She looked into the young man's clean face and said, "Well, I've got something forced on me—this fence cutting. And it's going to mean my ruin if I don't do something about it. I'm short handed while delivering my cattle, I can't spare a man to ride my fences."
"There're shore wreckin Vaughn's at Trickam," said Abe. Mabel studied Abe carefully as she asked, "Did you really shoot that man twice before he hit the ground?"
Abe grinned.
"I can use a man who can handle a gun. I've sent into Coleman for new six-shooters and Winchesters for everybody. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll go your bond if you'll stay and help me through this emergency. And I'll see you get a good lawyer when your case comes up."
"It's a deal. You and Colonel Day have been mighty good to me."
"I want you to stay on that fence day and night. I know it's asking a lot of one man to ride a hundred miles of fence, but maybe I can hire some hands to help."
Winchesters and riders was not the only thing Mabel did to try to protect her property. It was quite apparent she could no longer look to the local law enforcement agencies, but there were the Rangers. Colonel Booth had Governor Ireland's ear and she wrote to her friend for help.
Unfortunately she soon had to leave the ranch for Austin, but shortly after her arrival there she heard from Booth, who was at Decatur:
After General King left Coleman he made a detailed written report to Governor Ireland:
Mabel, of course, never saw the Adjutant General's report to Governor Ireland, but shortly after the Rangers left Coleman she wrote to Colonel Booth:
Booth replied:
The Kentucky capitalists were sufficiently impressed with the "Cattle Queen" and her ranch and cattle to invest their money in the Day Cattle Company. This venture only brought a temporary respite to Mabel Day, however.
After her return from Austin where details of the Cattle Company were agreed upon Mabel Day came back to Coleman and met her sheepman neighbor, H. R. Starkweather, who looked worried. It was after supper at the Florence Hotel before she had a chance to speak to him privately.
"How's fence cutting?" asked Mabel.
"It's ruined me," answered Starkweather, a small man who wore a shortly clipped mustache and had one bad eye. "Before this fence cutting started I had nine thousand as good a ewes as you ever saw in this country. But one of those free grass sheepmen drove a herd of scabbies onto my range and nearly every ewe I owned died of the sheep scab. That was last summer. I went to Chicago to borrow money with which to restock my range. The morning I walked into the bank my banker showed me the morning paper."
Starkweather pulled a worn newspaper clipping from his bill fold and handed it to Mabel.
She accepted the paper, but only read the headlines—she knew the rest.
"Hell Breaks Loose In Texas! Wire cutters destroy 500 miles of fence in Coleman County." Mabel looked up at her friend.
He said, "I left Chicago empty handed and now I'm broke. I doubt if I'll be able to save fifteen hundred acres of my ranch."
"Why Mr. Starkweather, there's ten thousand acres in your pasture," exclaimed Mabel rather shocked. "Has the fence cutting let up any?"
Starkweather shook his head.
The next day when Mabel arrived at the Rock House she was sick. She found that they had cut the wire between every post in her New Pasture and now there was an opening in the Old Pasture. She sat down and wrote a letter to the Coleman Voice:
A few days later she wrote to Colonel Booth:
Late in January, while Mabel and Will Doss were on hand in Austin, Johnnie Glenn returned from the Trap with the mail. While Willie Day, Mabel's daughter, now three, played with her bottle dolls in the front yard, Grandma Doss sat in the Rock House reading her mail of the Day Ranch.
She opened one from Johnny Doss, now married and running a cross-roads store near Bermuda, Alabama and read:
Enclosed in the same envelope was a note from Johnnie's wife:
Down in Austin many recommendations were made to the Legislature in how to put an end to the fence cutting troubles, some of which were rather extreme, such as shooting the fence cutter on sight. One legislator thought seriously of presenting a bill in the Legislature to build a Chinese Wall around Coleman County, put all the fence cutters inside it, and furnish them with wire fences and nippers, and tell them to wade in. As the fence cutters preferred to do their work at night, the plan was to propose stretching a great awning over the county, paint it black to represent night, and cut holes in it to represent stars. They would then be able to cut all the time and they would all die of sheer exhaustion from the lack of sleep.
But after a month of hard work the Legislature passed a common sense law which assessed a penalty of from one to five years imprisonment for cutting fence. And when the lawless fence cutter realized he had something more than a few individual ranchmen to contend with, the Fence Cutting War of 1883 came to an end quickly.
[Mr. Padgitt is a grandson of Mrs. Day's and has written this paper chiefly from her correspondence in his possession.—The Editor.]
West Texas Historical Association Year Book
October, 1950
The Fence Cutting War of the 1880's was destined to bring no great credit to the State of Texas. Rather, it was later to be frowned upon as the most serious epoch of civil conflict in Texas history.
When it struck, it spread like chain lightning all along the Texas frontier where barbed wire had found a new home. And like an earthquake it shook the entire state, reaping untold destruction of personal property. Its reverberations were felt on Wall Street and other financial centers of the nation. But, while fence cutting occurred in over half the state's organized counties, the bitterest feelings were expressed with nippers and Winchesters on or near the Texas frontier.
The cattle boom of the early eighties, the offering for sale of the public school lands, and the inflow of capital following on the heels of an aggressive railroad building program touched off a tremendous speculation in Texas lands.
Prior to this time large and small fortunes were made on the free grass of the open range. Senator Terrell made a forceful example of this in a speech before the Texas Senate in January, 1884. He said, "Bud Driskill of Austin, owner of eight hundred cattle in 1873, but no land, estimated his wealth in 1884 at $800,000 all produced on free grass of the state for which he paid no taxes. And Mr. J. L. Driskill is only one of many who made such remarkable fortunes on free range grass."
The introduction of barbed wire and its growing acceptance in the early eighties marked the beginning of an economic change that the Texas frontiersman found hard to digest. There was a resentment against fencing the open range from the beginning. And numerous attempts were made to have the state legislature declare the erection of the barbed wire fence illegal.
But it was the drought in the summer of 1883 that jolted him into reality. During that extended period of no rainfall, in which the nomadic cow and sheep man saw his overstocked range wither and die and found his stock slowly starving around soupy bog holes, the free grass man slowly awoke to the realization he was being crowded out by the far-sighted stockman who had bought and was fencing his land.
With the absence of any laws governing building or cutting fences, the leathery frontiersman, long accustomed to taking the law into his own hands, struck and ripped the barbed wire fence out by the roots.
When it started, fence cutting spread like an epidemic. It grew quickly into such proportions that fences were being destroyed for countless reasons, quite often influenced by personal animosity. Fences were suffering all over Texas, but the three principal centers of destruction were in Jack, Wise, and Clay Counties in the north, Coleman County in the center, and Frio in the south.
On September 13, three days before heavy rains broke the extreme drought, the Austin Weekly Statesman reported, "Wire fence cutting has at last commenced in Coleman County. Several pasture fences were cut last night, one among them was the pasture fence of R. S. Bowen, which was utterly ruined."
This paper deals with fence cutting on the ranch of Mrs. Mabel Day, a courageous widow of Coleman County. It was a goodly ranch that her husband (killed in an accident) had left her but involved in debt. The plucky young woman determined to refinance the debts and carry on the ranch operations after the style of her late husband. To do this she sought capital in the East just at the time the fence cutting mania got under way in her area.
On September 27, 1883, Mabel Day wrote to her friend and adviser J. M. Booth:
I have, however, a new trouble. My fence is being cut all to pieces in the south side. Over five miles already destroyed and still Governor Ireland (your friend) publicly encourages fence cutting. I'd sooner the friends would come and burn my house down than cut my fence. I own all the lands within its enclosure and if I want to let 'Northern Capitalists' come and make fortunes in a few months or years, it is my affair—not Governor Irelands.
It does not matter to me whether these men to whom I have sold live in Texas or not, just so I am satisfied with the price they pay me. But I think it a shame the property cannot be protected. My fence cost $240 per mile ($24,000). But the cost of the fence is nothing. My grass is excellent. The cattle from the outside are taking possession.
I have not enough hands for this emergency and cannot get them. Am so busy delivering cattle on the contract, which makes it hard on me just now.
I start Saturday for Austin. Wish you were going down also. You might convince the Governor for me that he has acted unwisely in publishing his letter just at this time. This fence cutting may be my ruin, as those Kentucky men are trembling anyway. And I fear they will back out sure enough now.
When Colonel J. M. Booth returned home on October 7th and learned that Mabel's fence was being cut to pieces he lost no time in writing her:
I know that you will be grateful that our little crowd arrived home safely without accident or incident of note. We never saw a train robber, rustler or fence cutter during the trip.
I found your letter awaiting me on my return. I hope our friend the Governor does not entertain the view you in your letter seem to attribute to him. While it may appear that he has manifested a 'masterly inactivity' in this matter, yet I am fully convinced that he is not only anxious on the subject, but will do all in his power to suppress wire cutting. I enclose copy of resolutions adopted at Post Oak last Thursday by a committee of pasture men and wire cutters which I hope will end the trouble in this section.
If possible I will have to be in Austin after some depositions to be used in a law suit in Denton. I hope you will still be there if it does not conflict with your business affairs. I hope also that the parties with whom you are trading will not fly the track. The energy and management manifested by you in this affair deserves success. Very few women and I might add the fewest number of men could have overcome the obstacles and difficulties you have been forced to combat. The character of individuality which outstrips the persistent partisan opposition of wealthy, influential, as well as unscrupulous, opponents will always succeed sooner or later.
And should your Kentucky trade be broken up by the wire cutters, I am sure your inventive genius will be able to cope with the new difficulty. The fence trouble will certainly be of brief duration. As Secretary of the House of Representatives, I have information of a semi-official character that the legislature will be convened about the 20th of November, when it is to be hoped the difficult problem will be solved. After which I confidently hope to see another boom inaugurated, in which event the price of cattle will again appreciate.
I have been opposed to the convening of the legislature in an extra session, thinking it unnecessary, until your fence was destroyed. I now think when people will descend so low in the scale of humanity as to wantonly destroy property under such circumstances, nothing but legislation of a very positive character and a rigid enforcement of the law will avail in the suppression of such lawlessness. I am hopeful, law and order once restored, that you will again witness the same prosperity which prevailed for a year or two before fence cutting was inaugurated. In which event, you will hardly be much damaged if your Kentucky trade does fail, provided they will permit you to keep the money advanced you until you can bridge over your present exigencies—which they evidently will do under all the circumstances.
Coleman City was a trail town, the county seat, and barely had four hundred citizens. Up and down both sides of its hundred-foot-wide street were its business houses of rawhide lumber sandwiched between its half-dozen saloons and gambling halls. Upstairs over the Blue Front Saloon was a dance hall, from which could be heard fiddle music and coarse laughter of women at any hour of the day or night when trail outfits were passing through.
From April until late in the fall hundreds of steer and mixed herds slowly drifted north through Coleman to find a market at Dodge. During the height of the season, Coleman merchants, with eyes cut for business, kept full-time riders hired to go out and welcome incoming trail outfits. They were ambassadors of good will with saddle bags well stocked with sample refreshments and a come-on that made every trail hand feel the urge to check in with Madge Barker and her girls over the Blue Front.
During the excitement over the fences, the Blue Front became wire cutting headquarters and did a good business. During the day the town was full. Around the salons everyone whiled away his time drinking and gambling. But along towards sundown the town would gradually become empty and stay that way until just before sunup when small parties of men would ride in on lathered horses to fall in their rolls at the wagon yard for a few hours' sleep.
Mahoney was visited every night, because those opposed to fences just naturally liked cutting the Yankee's fence. Besides, Mahoney was a man with a personality no one seemed to appreciate. And, unfortunately, his fence was conveniently close to town. When they got tired of working on Mahoney, the night riders would pay Lee Shield a visit or drop down to whack on R.H. Overall's wire. Then they would be out several days at a time when down on the river to see after the Vaughn, Starkweather and Day pastures.
When the news that Mabel Day had formed a two hundred thousand dollar cattle corporation with Kentucky capitalists reached the fence cutters, they seemed to lose interest in everything but Day wire.
One morning before the town was awake cutters posted the following notice on the streets of Coleman:
Down with monopolies. They can't exist in Texas and especially in Coleman County. Away with your foreign capitalists. The range and soil of Texas belongs to the heroes of the South. No monopolies, and don't tax us to school the nigger. Give us homes as God intended and not gates to churches and towns and schools. Above all, give us water for our stock.
Mabel Day answered this paper attack—that ammunition fit her own guns. She sent her reply to the Coleman Voice and it was later published in the Tom Green Times with an editor's preface:
FENCE CUTTING
Speaking of fence-cutting the Tom Green Times says:
It is more to the interest of the workingman to keep up the good name of his section even than the large land owner. Take our town, for example. Skilled workmen in some trades are commanding $5 per day; shepherds $20 and $25 a month; cowboys $30 and $35. Supposed a spirit of lawlessness was to come over this section and property became insecure, how long would this state of things last? No norther ever brought down the thermometer so suddenly as prices would fall off, and trade would decline. We doubtless need a fence law, and most assuredly the next legislature will enact one, but until then it is policy to compromise in every instance or seek a legal remedy. This article is written in no spirit of self laudation, but the people of Tom Green have set an example that may be followed to advantage. The free range men have been fair and just; the large land holders, with few exceptions, kind and accommodating. Gentlemen, is not our way the best?
Upon this same engrossing subject of complaint, fence-cutting, Mrs. Mabel Day, who, on account of her very large interests involved in the cattle business, may be regarded as a "Cattle Queen," addresses the following interesting letter to the Coleman Voice:Mr. Editor: Dear Sir—Having heard from several that Governor Ireland encouraged fence cutting by a recent letter, I felt quite anxious to read that letter, which I have had the pleasure of doing, and find it to my satisfaction that our Governor does not encourage any such outlawry, but aims to denounce certain sensational letters that are being sent from Texas to other states.
It is true he shows in some instances where the wire cutters have had plausible excuses, as was the case in Northern Texas, where foreign capitalists had enclosed large bodies of land which they had bought or leased, and to which others had as much right as they; but this does not argue that Governor Ireland approves of fence cutting, as has been indulged in this county. Here we own the lands enclosed. I can speak at least for myself. Within my pasture there are only two tracts of land owned by other parties—Messrs. Gann and Cleveland, and I have these gentlemen to say whether I have cut off any of their legal rights or privileges.
For my part I think the men (?) who destroyed five miles of my fence last week could have with as much justice burnt my house. I do not want to be understood as complaining as 'law not enforced.' I cannot expect lawful protection until I can designate the guilty parties. This cannot be done as they prefer the dead hours of the night for the accomplishment of their dark deeds. It is my pleasure to show that none of those 'plausible excuses' which Governor Ireland presents are applicable in the case of my pasture. Those men, who found it to their interest to cut my fence, cannot quiet their guilty conscience with any of these excuses.
1. Although my fence is a nuisance, according to Governor Ireland, it was not the business of those men to remove it, but of the civil authorities to cause me to do so.
2. As before mentioned, I have bought or leased all lands within my enclosure except those previously mentioned. Hence no one has any right to grass or water except by my consent.
3. I have not to my knowledge annoyed either of the parties who own land in my pasture; but they enjoy their full privilege, and are on amicable terms with me.
4. I have gates on all main roads through my pasture; and have not complained of parties tying down the wire so that they could pass over any portion of my fence—only request such parties to untie the wires so that stock could not pass out or in until my fence rider could get around to repair it. Have not even complained of certain 'gaps' which have proved quite a nuisance to me. Here I request to add that I intend as soon as possible to put in gates for the convenience of those who have recently requested them.
It is true that I have recently sold a half interest in my cattle to gentlemen who do not live in the state of Texas. I regard their engaging in this business as great an accommodation to me as a benefit to them, and don't begrudge them the money I believe and hope they will make here in the next five years.
It was my intention two weeks ago on my return to my ranch to immediately prepare me a permanent home in this country; but, since I have seen my property destroyed without a cause, I defer my action in this manner.
I would like to address a question to the stockmen of this section. Is there no recourse for us in this matter? Should you, as business and law abiding men, adopt any plan to protect your property I would beg to be considered as one among you.Yours respectfully,
Mrs. Mabel Day.
And a clipping from an unknown paper also speaks of Mabel's new trouble:
FENCE CUTTING
The Coleman County fence cutters might have had gallantry enough to have let Mrs. Day's wire fence alone. She may be rich, but she is a woman and that ought to go a long ways with true men.—Gazette.
The average fence cutter has very little respect for anybody or anything; and so far as gallantry is concerned he never heard of such a word. He who wantonly destroys the property of his neighbor, be he man or woman, is not a 'true man'.
Those men who destroyed Mrs. Day's fence were outlaws in the fullest sense of the word. They first cut ten miles of her fence, and posted a notice to her on the gate post, that if she put that fence up, there would be the largest coroners inquest in that pasture ever held in Texas. She attempted to rebuild the fence; thinking she had the right to do so, since all the land in the pasture belonged to her; when seventy armed men, with their faces blackened, went in open broadlight and destroyed all the balance of her pasture.
Talk about such men possessing gallantry, or talk about them being 'true men'. A true man could hardly live and breathe the same atmosphere that such fiends in human shape breathe.
The Coleman County fence cutters, we suppose, are about on a par with the great majority of fence cutters.
The chief fence cutter in this country was considered as the 'boss' and seemed to be running everything pretty well his own way until he stole McCreight's cotton and skipped the country. He was said to have been the leader and since his flight from the country, we have heard of no more fence cutting in that section. His conduct caused those thoughtless boys, who were following his leadership, to stop and think about what they were doing—and there could be but little doubt but what much fence cutting has been done by thoughtless boys, who have followed the leadership of older heads.
With shootings, stealing and cattle rustling, Ben Pittman, Sheriff of Coleman County, had his hands full. For once he was glad that the hunting down of "legitimate outlaws", such as horse thieves, took up his entire time. Public opinion was so widely divided on the fence issue that he felt it was a matter the sheriff's department would do well to give a wide berth.
The statue books contained no law on fence cutting. Destruction of private property was looked upon as merely a misdemeanor. He pointed out that his hands were full hunting down outlaws and felons in the strictest sense of the word, but made it plain that he would be more than willing to discharge the duties of his office by serving papers on anyone wantonly destroying private property if any one would swear out a complaint against a specifically known fence cutter.
But everyone was like John Jones. When Colonel J. E. McCord, head of the local law and order league, asked him to go and find the exact parties cutting wire and report back, Jones replied, "I love to live too well to do that."
And the sheriff was right. His hands were full. He was on constant call dealing with rustlers. Only a week after Coleman's fence cutting war started the sheriffs of Coleman, San Saba, McCullouch and Concho counties and all their deputies were called to southwestern Coleman County where the corners of the four counties met to investigate the wholesale brand burning of cattle, which was reported in progress at that point by an organized body of lawless men. Although the cattle having their brands burned could be identified, it was reported the owners were afraid to claim them.
No sooner had the sheriff returned to Coleman than he had to double back to investigate a shooting. The Austin Weekly Statesman carrying a Coleman date line reported:
A shooting affray occurred at Trickam, in this county, last night, between a saloon keeper who formerly worked on the Day Ranch, named Abe Pendleton and a Cattle King by the name of Tom Hayes. It seems that ill feelings have existed between the parties for some months. Last night Hayes walked into Pendleton's saloon and ordered drinks for him and Pendleton. While in the act of drinking, he drew his six shooter and commenced firing at Pendleton. It appears Pendleton was looking for foul play. He had a pistol at hand with which he returned the fire, shooting Hayes in the head the first shot, the second shot taking effect in the right breast. Hayes fired only one shot and missed. As soon as Hayes fell, Pendleton left and has not since been heard from.
A few days after the news of the shooting reached Mabel, she heard that Abe was hiding out in one of her cow camps. She sent Will Doss over to get Abe. After listening to his account of the shooting, Mabel said, "Abe, there's no law against a man shooting in self defense. From what you've told it was either kill or get killed and that's not illegal in this country."
"I shore did hate it, Miss Mabel," said Abe soberly, "but it was forced on me."
She looked into the young man's clean face and said, "Well, I've got something forced on me—this fence cutting. And it's going to mean my ruin if I don't do something about it. I'm short handed while delivering my cattle, I can't spare a man to ride my fences."
"There're shore wreckin Vaughn's at Trickam," said Abe. Mabel studied Abe carefully as she asked, "Did you really shoot that man twice before he hit the ground?"
Abe grinned.
"I can use a man who can handle a gun. I've sent into Coleman for new six-shooters and Winchesters for everybody. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll go your bond if you'll stay and help me through this emergency. And I'll see you get a good lawyer when your case comes up."
"It's a deal. You and Colonel Day have been mighty good to me."
"I want you to stay on that fence day and night. I know it's asking a lot of one man to ride a hundred miles of fence, but maybe I can hire some hands to help."
Winchesters and riders was not the only thing Mabel did to try to protect her property. It was quite apparent she could no longer look to the local law enforcement agencies, but there were the Rangers. Colonel Booth had Governor Ireland's ear and she wrote to her friend for help.
Unfortunately she soon had to leave the ranch for Austin, but shortly after her arrival there she heard from Booth, who was at Decatur:
I wrote your brother as promised to confer fully with General King, our Adjutant General, who I suppose is in Coleman. However, I have seen no published account of his arrival there.
I wrote General King as a special favor to render what aid in his power in the protection needed, which he would render I am satisfied without the request.
I think it would be a good plan for you to tell the Governor about the threats made on you and who you think the cutters are. When he learns the facts he may give General King some definite instructions in the matter.
The cutting has taken fresh impetus in this section [Decatur], and even the calf pastures are not allowed to escape. The officers here are bending every effort to ferret them out. The grand jury, which meets here next week, will investigate the matter in this county fully.
After General King left Coleman he made a detailed written report to Governor Ireland:
The military force, the only visible potential force the Governor has directly at his command, is wisely made subservient to the civil authorities; and the Rangers, although an active force, constantly in the field, cannot be beyond the law in the performance of duty, and must act in conjunction with local officers and under authority, in any particular case, derived from the local courts.
A detachment was sent to Hamilton County for special service in breaking up the unlawful killing of sheep, and others to Clay, Jack and Coleman Counties to assist in keeping the peace and preventing bloodshed between owners of fences and those suspected of cutting said fences.
While in North Texas on this business (Clay, Hunt, Wise and Tarrant counties) a telegram from your office reached me directing that I go at once to Coleman County and take Rangers with me to prevent a threatened outbreak in that county.
Wherever I went I found public sentiment in favor of the fence cutting.
On receipt of the order heretofore mentioned, I started at once to Coleman County and directed Captain McMurray, Co. B Frontier Battalion, to join me at the county seat with a part of his company. I reached Coleman several days ahead of Captain McMurray and found District Court in session, many people in town, some excitement among them on this fence question, and various rumors and reports of fence cutting and sheep killing, and threats of bloodshed, burnings and etc. I mingled freely among all classes of the people, and, while I found a strong, deep-seated, and openly expressed hostility among the larger portion to big pastures and wire fences, I soon discovered that there was no real foundation for apprehending any organized outbreak or contest with arms between pasture men and fence cutters, and that, personally, the most friendly feeling existed between many of the owners of pastures and those who openly opposed large pastures, and who thus gave encouragement to those who were lawlessly and secretly cutting down and destroying these enclosures.
Individual cases there were in which ill feelings had been engendered, and from which feuds might arise, but were confined to the persons immediately concerned, and the great body of the people in town and from the country were as good-natured, frank and friendly, and manifested as little sympathy with or encouragement of a blood-thirsty disposition on this all absorbing question as could be looked for in the most orderly community.
The same real or assumed causes for opposition to big pastures and wire fences were as active and potent here as in other sections I have visited, and some that were local had served to give increased vigor to the lawless fence cutters, and to create the impression abroad that immediate and wholesale bloodshed was impending in this county between armed and organized pasture men and their supporters on one side, and desperate law defying bands of fence cutters on the other. This proved to be untrue, and I was assured by the sheriff of the county that he needed no assistance outside of his own subordinates and the willing citizens, to arrest any violator of the law that could be found; and it was the opinion of the district judge and attorney, the county officials and citizens generally, including many of the owners of big pastures, that there was not the slightest danger of a resort to arms over this matter in any organized form.
A good reason for this belief existed in the fact that to the public, or to the officials, there was not a known fence cutter in the county. When I proposed to get the people together in a public meeting, and obtain their views on this question, most of the pasture men, while freely admitting that public sentiment was against their system of pasturage, and this giving encouragement to fence cutting, yet they did not believe that any responsible man could be found who would stand up in public meeting and voice the sentiments of the absent and unknown fence cutter.
I succeeded in getting a large meeting of the citizens during the day at the court house, but owing to the pressure of court business, no one but myself found opportunity to speak at this meeting. It was therefore adjourned until night, when a number of speeches were made, and both sides of the question had zealous and earnest advocates.
These objections are to large bodies of land being owned, or owned and fenced by individuals or corporations, as opposed to the true spirit of our government, and as directly and necessarily in the way of progress, settlement and lasting prosperity of any county or community, and subversive of the best interests, social, pecuniary, educational, moral and political of the poorer classes of citizens, who make the bulk of the population. Next, that this system serves to produce the two undesirable extremes of social and political life—a small number of rich and a large number of very poor people, with the constant increase of the class and cast distinction between them; ease, luxury, idleness, indifference and haughty disdain on the part of the wealthy few; and ignorance, poverty and practical enslavement and loss of self respect on the part of the great body of poor people, accompanied by a crying spirit of obsequious humility, or a secret nursing of an angry discontent.
Mabel, of course, never saw the Adjutant General's report to Governor Ireland, but shortly after the Rangers left Coleman she wrote to Colonel Booth:
I suppose I ought to thank you for your efficient efforts in getting General King to Coleman. But I am sorry to know his going did not help me any. I have been informed that his going (that is the result of his being there) was worse than if he had not gone.
He had about ten Rangers with him. But that made no difference, since he refused to do anything, because the civil authorities could not say they had been unable to arrest these cutters.
I cannot make complaint against an unknown party. General King said some one reported to the Governor that they were fighting and robbing out there and that he must say he found it perfectly quiet and peaceful.
The cutters had just cut ten more miles of my fence, as well as many miles elsewhere in the county. My fence rider rode up on them. There were about seventy of them and all had blacked their faces. They retained him 'till they got through. This was in open day. They say no fence will remain.
This matter probably hurts me more than anyone else in the State, since my trade may be affected by it. I wish you had business in Austin from the 4th to the 10th of next month. These Kentucky men will be here then. I have no one to talk to them for me, while there are several here who will do all they can against me. I believe you have enough sympathy for me to do a kindness if you could. I look for them on the 4th.
Booth replied:
Your favor of October twenty-eighth received this morning and in reply will say that creeks never get too high, the nights too dark, or the distance too great to keep me from aiding a friend when needed—especially a friend I value so highly as I do you.
I will be in Austin if possible next Monday evening. Our District Court is in session and I have some old chronic cases, which I am anxious to have tried. I may get them tried this week. If not, I will try to get them set for some time two weeks off, which will leave me free next week.
Mr. Greathouse, the President of our Decatur National Bank, who is also largely interested in cattle and land, and who lived in Kentucky, will likely be with me. He may be able to put in some good word, since he believes the fence cutting is only transitory and can't last long.
Our grand jury (Wise County) will investigate the wire cutting in this county this week. We hope to have the whole batch indicted. We have great hope of breaking up the gang in this county. In Jack County quite a number have been arrested and will be tried in a few days.
I am sorry General King did so little while in Coleman. In my dispatch to him, I used this language, "There is trouble anticipated with the wire cutters at the pasture of Mrs. Day in Coleman County, and the Governor desires you go there at once with troops."
I saw Capt. McMurray of the Rangers the other day. He said the Rangers could do but little good there. He thinks that it is the result, in a measure, of personal animosity toward you, or how they can reconcile it to their conscience to destroy your property because they dislike someone else. It is hard to imagine how anyone can hold personal animosity. If the man who saw and was detained by the seventy disguised fence cutters could distinguish any of them, he should at once file complaint and have them arrested. I do hope there will be a cessation of this character of lawlessness until after the legislature meets. If you can only close your trade, I feel confident that the prevailing pastime will not be indulged in much longer. Such things always end in a row among the perpetrators, which will be the case among the wire cutters.
If possible I will be on hand Monday evening and will be at your command to serve your interest to the best of my ability any way you may desire.
The Kentucky capitalists were sufficiently impressed with the "Cattle Queen" and her ranch and cattle to invest their money in the Day Cattle Company. This venture only brought a temporary respite to Mabel Day, however.
After her return from Austin where details of the Cattle Company were agreed upon Mabel Day came back to Coleman and met her sheepman neighbor, H. R. Starkweather, who looked worried. It was after supper at the Florence Hotel before she had a chance to speak to him privately.
"How's fence cutting?" asked Mabel.
"It's ruined me," answered Starkweather, a small man who wore a shortly clipped mustache and had one bad eye. "Before this fence cutting started I had nine thousand as good a ewes as you ever saw in this country. But one of those free grass sheepmen drove a herd of scabbies onto my range and nearly every ewe I owned died of the sheep scab. That was last summer. I went to Chicago to borrow money with which to restock my range. The morning I walked into the bank my banker showed me the morning paper."
Starkweather pulled a worn newspaper clipping from his bill fold and handed it to Mabel.
She accepted the paper, but only read the headlines—she knew the rest.
"Hell Breaks Loose In Texas! Wire cutters destroy 500 miles of fence in Coleman County." Mabel looked up at her friend.
He said, "I left Chicago empty handed and now I'm broke. I doubt if I'll be able to save fifteen hundred acres of my ranch."
"Why Mr. Starkweather, there's ten thousand acres in your pasture," exclaimed Mabel rather shocked. "Has the fence cutting let up any?"
Starkweather shook his head.
The next day when Mabel arrived at the Rock House she was sick. She found that they had cut the wire between every post in her New Pasture and now there was an opening in the Old Pasture. She sat down and wrote a letter to the Coleman Voice:
Day's Ranch
November 19, 1883
To Whom It May Concern:
I wish to submit to your consideration the following request. It would oblige me more than you can realize if you will not cut any more of the fence around my 'old' pasture 'till after the legislature when I will abide by its regulation of this trouble between your interests and mine.
I am not a man who can go with my cattle as they drift this winter, and hence as a woman I ask that you leave me at least my 'old' pasture. I wish also to inform you of the exact extent of my ownership in this ranch. Everyone knows that my husband's estate was greatly in debt, and I was obliged to sell one half of the cattle for cash to pay this indebtedness off.
Now the men who bought this did not buy any of the land—only leased one half of it. Myself and little child owns the land and one half of the cattle. These men will not come here. I am to live here and run it myself.
Thinking you may find it to your pleasure and convenience to oblige me, I am,Yours respectfully,
Mrs. Mabel Day.
A few days later she wrote to Colonel Booth:
I am so discouraged I don't know what to do. I have about made up my mind to sell my interests and that of my child and brother in this country and move away.
They are still chopping on my fence. Have cut six miles since my return. Made my fence rider help them all night at the point of a Winchester. This last cutting ruined all my pastures as they had already destroyed my New and Little pastures. Now the Old has a six mile outlet. I am so sorry of this as it will be impossible to hold the cattle now. I do hope you will use your influence in the Legislature to do away with fence cutters. Brother is just starting to town, hence I am in great haste. See you in Austin in January.
Late in January, while Mabel and Will Doss were on hand in Austin, Johnnie Glenn returned from the Trap with the mail. While Willie Day, Mabel's daughter, now three, played with her bottle dolls in the front yard, Grandma Doss sat in the Rock House reading her mail of the Day Ranch.
She opened one from Johnny Doss, now married and running a cross-roads store near Bermuda, Alabama and read:
Well, Ma, [Mabel's mother], I guess you are worrying over the trouble the fence cutters have caused as much or more than anyone. Me thinks I see you tonight reading the daily papers, and ever anxious to know what the leather head legislators at Austin are going to do. I see from the papers, the famous Terrell Bill was defeated. I am fearful that they will pass off their time complimenting and indorsing Governor Ireland and do nothing to prevent the fence cutters from their midnight work.
I am fearful that Sister is having her fence repaired too soon. I think it best to have waited 'till she could get protection. I would not live out west under the present state of affairs for all the grass in the country. Unless I was alone (single footed), then I might be induced to join a club of one and my motto would be 'Dead Men Tell No Tales.' Ha! Ha!
Well, Ma, I know you are worried almost to death by the fence cutters. Please do not let it worry you. Just remember the old saying, 'Them that has must lose, and them that hasn't can't lose.' I know it is hard to have one's property destroyed, but under the circumstances 'tis better to linger along for awhile and let the law rule. I glory in Mabel, only I think I would have used a little more discretion than to have said I will do so and so the next time the fence is cut. Tell Sister Mabel, while I would love to be with her, I am really glad I am not under the circumstances.
Enclosed in the same envelope was a note from Johnnie's wife:
We receive many papers from you stating what is going on in the Capitol City. I trust the present legislature will pass necessary laws to give you all protection, both in life and property. Mr. Doss says should fence cutting be made a felony, it will avail nothing, unless more Rangers and detectives are put on the frontier. He says the detectives should have the power to decoy the fence cutters, into cutting the fence, and then and there use the shot gun warrant. I tell Mr. Doss 'tis very nice to express himself in such language when out of shot gun distance.
Down in Austin many recommendations were made to the Legislature in how to put an end to the fence cutting troubles, some of which were rather extreme, such as shooting the fence cutter on sight. One legislator thought seriously of presenting a bill in the Legislature to build a Chinese Wall around Coleman County, put all the fence cutters inside it, and furnish them with wire fences and nippers, and tell them to wade in. As the fence cutters preferred to do their work at night, the plan was to propose stretching a great awning over the county, paint it black to represent night, and cut holes in it to represent stars. They would then be able to cut all the time and they would all die of sheer exhaustion from the lack of sleep.
But after a month of hard work the Legislature passed a common sense law which assessed a penalty of from one to five years imprisonment for cutting fence. And when the lawless fence cutter realized he had something more than a few individual ranchmen to contend with, the Fence Cutting War of 1883 came to an end quickly.
[Mr. Padgitt is a grandson of Mrs. Day's and has written this paper chiefly from her correspondence in his possession.—The Editor.]
West Texas Historical Association Year Book
October, 1950
The Name That Caused a Killing
Colonel William H. Day lost his life in 1881 from injuries received when his horse fell on him at a roundup. He was shaping up a herd to drive over the Kansas trail. His ranch consisted of more than a hundred sections of land in the south end of Coleman County, Texas, and was stocked with something like 8,000 cattle branded D A Y n the left side.
At that time my father owned a small ranch which was entirely surrounded by the Day property. Contrary to what some writers would have us believe, there was no indication that every big outfit wanted to gobble up the little ones by running the owner off the land. Mutual trust and friendly relations prevailed between them more often than not.
After the Colonel's death Mrs. Day operated the ranch for several years. She eventually decided to cut it into smaller units and lease them out for grazing. The first undertaking was to liquidate the livestock and she hired my father to take charge of the outfit and close out the cattle.
Among the dozen or more cowboys coming under his supervision was William Utley. He was a hard working, lyal and personable young man of twenty-one years who had many friends. Along with his good qualities, he had some bad ones. He drank too much at times and was inclined to become boisterous while under the influence. And, as one of his friends put it, "He was stubborn as a snubbin' post."
During the interval between the death of Colonel Day and my father's close connection with the outfit, the Santa Fe Railroad had extended its line through Coleman. This put an end to the long and tedious trail drives to the north for cattlemen in that area. In the process of disposing of the D A Y cattle, my father shaped up a herd and drove it to Coleman in September, 1888, for shipment to market. Will Utley was one of the cowboys making the trip.
The herd arrived at the shipping pens near noon. After a hurried dinner at the chuckwagon which was camped on the creek less than a mile away, they began loading cattle into the cars. It was near sundown when the work was completed. Father then escorted all the men—including the cook—into town. He treated them to a drink in the saloon and then, in order to give them a change from chuckwagon grub, he paid for their supper at the hotel. From then on, they were on their own.
Our family lived in the south part of town. My father went home, bathed, shaved, ate a bite and went to bed. The cowboys sought relaxation in a different way. It had been a long time since they had been in town and they made the most of it. Besides giving the saloons a fair share of their patronage, they took in every place that offered fun and entertainment. A passenger train was due in town at eleven o'clock that night and that was an event not to be overlooked. They rode out to the depot as the saying went, "too see the cyars come in."
The train was late that night. While waiting for its arrival, some loud and rough horseplay took place on the platform between a few of the cowboys and local rowdies. The night station agent, Charles C. Harris, came outside to stop the disturbance. He got into a hot argument with Bill Utley. Threats were made by both and, during the exchange, Harris called Utley a bad name. That name may have been passable and accepted by railroad men—but not by cowboys—not in those days anyhow. It was a fighting word—and nothing less. A man who would take it was judged a coward and deserved the insult.
"Take that back!" Utley stormed. Ht lunged toward the depot agent, but was caught and held by two of his companions. "Take that back—or I'll kill you!"
"I won't take anything back!" Harris replied in kind. "When you're ready, the road's open. You're nothing but a windy blowhard!"
"He's got a gun, Bill," Utley's friend, Bud Bishop, whispered in his ear. "You won't have a chance with him."
"All right!" Utley replied. "You've got a gun. I"ll get one too—and I"ll be back!" he finished as he shook himself loose from the restraining arms and made for his horse.
Again, contrary to what some writers of Western fiction make out, cowboys did not go around weighted down with six-guns hanging from their hips. Utley had no gun and if any of his companions had one, nobody offered to give it to him. Instead, they tried to talk him out of his intention to settle things with Harris at gun-point. They knew at the same time that their talk was wasted; if Bill got his hands on any kind of weapon that night, he would surely try to kill Harris.
While Utley failed to get a gun from any of his friends, he knew where to find one. He had been in our house at various times, and he had seen my father's Winchester leaning in a corner of his bedroom. One door of the room opened onto the front porch. Father was in there alone and asleep when Utley knocked and identified himself. As a matter of course, he was invite inside.
As he entered, he struck a match and lit a lamp. Then he told my father that he wanted to borrow his Winchester to go out with the local butcher and help him slaughter a beef.
"Not at this time of night," my father countered. "you want that gun for something else—and I want to know what it is. You can't have it unless you tell me. And besides," he added, "there aren't any cartridges for it."
Utley walked to the corner and picked up the gun. He worked the loading lever back and forth and one—and only one—loaded shell fell out. "That is enough for me," he remarked as he retrieved the cartridge and hurried out the door, ignoring my father's command to return the gun. Apparently, he was not as confident that one cartridge would serve his purpose as he had said, for he went to the home of the local hardware dealer who lived near our house and tried to get him to go down and open up the store and sell him a box of cartridges. The dealer refused.
"I didn't think he wo uld take the gun over my objection," my father stated. "Then when I saw that he was going to take it anyhow, I couldn't get to him in time."
The reason Father could not get to Utley in time to try to stop him by force was plainly visible. His right leg was off between the knee and ankle and he walked on a wooden leg. "The gun was in a far corner of the room from my bed and before I could get my wooden leg and put it on, he had darted outside. I heard the sound of two horses leaving."
My father felt sure that Utley was already into—or was about to get into—some kind of trouble. He dressed, caught and saddled a horse, and rode into town. He could not find any of the Day cowboys or anyone else who could tell him anything about Bill Utley. He then rode to the camp and found plenty of excitement there. Bud Bishop had come in only a few minutes ahead of him and had told the story.
The cowboys had become irritated with Utley for his refusal to listen to reason and had left him to his own devices. They ended their spree for the night by going back to camp. Only Bud Bishop, Utley's closest friend, stayed with him. He waited outside our house while Utley procured the gun. He was with him at the hardware dealer's house and he stayed with him until the last.
When they returned to the railroad station, the train had come and gone. There was no one outside the depot and the night agent, Harris, and the Negro handy man, Henry Clements, were about to close the station for the night. Failing in his last attempt to stop Utley in his wild rashness, Bishop sat on his horse and watched.
"Come out! Come out, you ———!" and Utley called Harris the same name that Harris had called him earlier. "Come out and bring your gun! I've got mine!" he shouted.
In spite of Utley's threat and the pleading of Henry Clements, Harris accepted the dare. He walked out the door onto the depot platform with his pistol in hand. He didn't have the ghost of a chance. Passing from light into darkness, he was temporarily blinded. Even if there had been a light outside, he would have been at a disadvantage.
Utley was waiting for him with the hammer of his gun cocked back over that single cartridge. One shot and that was all. The cowboy had made good his declaration that he needed only one cartridge. Harris sank to his knees but he rallied long enough to take two random shots at Utley as he ran for his horse. The agent collapsed after that and died before morning.
Utley mounted his horse and rode away into the night. It was the last time Bud Bishop or anyone else in Coleman County was to see him for a long time to come. My father never saw—nor did he ever want to see—his gun again.
The crime of horse theft could not be added to the crime of murder for Utley had planned to take some time off for a visit to friends and he had brought along his own horse for that purpose. He was riding him that night.
The sheriff's first act was to round up the Day cowboys for questioning. He later released all but Bud Bishop whom he held in jail for several days as a possible accomplice. Eventually Bishop was able to convince the authorities that his only part in the affair was that of a peace-maker trying to prevent a tragedy.
The sheriff made a diligent search for the fleeing Utley but failed to pick up his trail. Even so, as the saying goes, "he still had an ace in the hole." It was well known that Utley was in love with a daughter of a former Coleman County resident who had moved to the Plains country. Whether or not the sheriff knew that a French policeman had ever uttered the phrase, he employed the "French doctrine of cherchez la femme—"find the woman."
He wrote to the sheriff of Lubbock County giving him Utley's description with the suggestion that he would undoubtedly show there sometime. His hunch was correct. After wandering over parts of West Texas and New Mexico, Utley did appear at the home of his sweetheart. He was place under arrest and the Coleman County sheriff made the 200-mile trip there and back and returned him for trial.
The trial was short and decisive. It was not difficult to secure a conviction of first degree murder. Taking into account the various movements of the accused and the elapsed time between the first quarrel and actual commission of the crime, it was no trouble for the prosecution to prove premeditation. The plea of self defense entered by Utley's attorney was ruled out by the court. His previous good reputation, and the fact that Harris had a gun in his hand when he came out of the depot saved him from the gallows. As it was, he was sentenced to serve a life term in the penitentiary.
It was an odd and unbelievable combination of circumstances—all related in a way—that provoked and ruled this unfortunate affair from the beginning to its disastrous end. It looked as though fate took a hand and guided the two principal characters to their destiny. The case hinged upon and developed under a series of events. Some things were due to happen, but did not. On the other hand, there were things which would not happen under ordinary circumstances, but they did. A switch or change in any of them would have averted the killing.
In the first place, if the train had been on time that night, the disturbance on the depot platform would not have come about. If there had been no cartridges for my father's gun—like he thought—it is doubtful that Utley could have got his hands on another that night. If the train had been only thirty minutes late instead of forty, the station would have been closed and dark and Harris would have been gone when Utley and Bishop returned, If Harris had stayed in the depot like Henry Clements begged him to do, it is not likely that Utley would have come in after him. Even if he had, the odds would have been reversed and he would have had the same advantage inside that Utley had, outside. And, the prime factor of it all, was the mistake Charles Harris made when he called Bill Utley a s.o.b.
Walter Gann
Frontier Times
May, 1964
Colonel William H. Day lost his life in 1881 from injuries received when his horse fell on him at a roundup. He was shaping up a herd to drive over the Kansas trail. His ranch consisted of more than a hundred sections of land in the south end of Coleman County, Texas, and was stocked with something like 8,000 cattle branded D A Y n the left side.
At that time my father owned a small ranch which was entirely surrounded by the Day property. Contrary to what some writers would have us believe, there was no indication that every big outfit wanted to gobble up the little ones by running the owner off the land. Mutual trust and friendly relations prevailed between them more often than not.
After the Colonel's death Mrs. Day operated the ranch for several years. She eventually decided to cut it into smaller units and lease them out for grazing. The first undertaking was to liquidate the livestock and she hired my father to take charge of the outfit and close out the cattle.
Among the dozen or more cowboys coming under his supervision was William Utley. He was a hard working, lyal and personable young man of twenty-one years who had many friends. Along with his good qualities, he had some bad ones. He drank too much at times and was inclined to become boisterous while under the influence. And, as one of his friends put it, "He was stubborn as a snubbin' post."
During the interval between the death of Colonel Day and my father's close connection with the outfit, the Santa Fe Railroad had extended its line through Coleman. This put an end to the long and tedious trail drives to the north for cattlemen in that area. In the process of disposing of the D A Y cattle, my father shaped up a herd and drove it to Coleman in September, 1888, for shipment to market. Will Utley was one of the cowboys making the trip.
The herd arrived at the shipping pens near noon. After a hurried dinner at the chuckwagon which was camped on the creek less than a mile away, they began loading cattle into the cars. It was near sundown when the work was completed. Father then escorted all the men—including the cook—into town. He treated them to a drink in the saloon and then, in order to give them a change from chuckwagon grub, he paid for their supper at the hotel. From then on, they were on their own.
Our family lived in the south part of town. My father went home, bathed, shaved, ate a bite and went to bed. The cowboys sought relaxation in a different way. It had been a long time since they had been in town and they made the most of it. Besides giving the saloons a fair share of their patronage, they took in every place that offered fun and entertainment. A passenger train was due in town at eleven o'clock that night and that was an event not to be overlooked. They rode out to the depot as the saying went, "too see the cyars come in."
The train was late that night. While waiting for its arrival, some loud and rough horseplay took place on the platform between a few of the cowboys and local rowdies. The night station agent, Charles C. Harris, came outside to stop the disturbance. He got into a hot argument with Bill Utley. Threats were made by both and, during the exchange, Harris called Utley a bad name. That name may have been passable and accepted by railroad men—but not by cowboys—not in those days anyhow. It was a fighting word—and nothing less. A man who would take it was judged a coward and deserved the insult.
"Take that back!" Utley stormed. Ht lunged toward the depot agent, but was caught and held by two of his companions. "Take that back—or I'll kill you!"
"I won't take anything back!" Harris replied in kind. "When you're ready, the road's open. You're nothing but a windy blowhard!"
"He's got a gun, Bill," Utley's friend, Bud Bishop, whispered in his ear. "You won't have a chance with him."
"All right!" Utley replied. "You've got a gun. I"ll get one too—and I"ll be back!" he finished as he shook himself loose from the restraining arms and made for his horse.
Again, contrary to what some writers of Western fiction make out, cowboys did not go around weighted down with six-guns hanging from their hips. Utley had no gun and if any of his companions had one, nobody offered to give it to him. Instead, they tried to talk him out of his intention to settle things with Harris at gun-point. They knew at the same time that their talk was wasted; if Bill got his hands on any kind of weapon that night, he would surely try to kill Harris.
While Utley failed to get a gun from any of his friends, he knew where to find one. He had been in our house at various times, and he had seen my father's Winchester leaning in a corner of his bedroom. One door of the room opened onto the front porch. Father was in there alone and asleep when Utley knocked and identified himself. As a matter of course, he was invite inside.
As he entered, he struck a match and lit a lamp. Then he told my father that he wanted to borrow his Winchester to go out with the local butcher and help him slaughter a beef.
"Not at this time of night," my father countered. "you want that gun for something else—and I want to know what it is. You can't have it unless you tell me. And besides," he added, "there aren't any cartridges for it."
Utley walked to the corner and picked up the gun. He worked the loading lever back and forth and one—and only one—loaded shell fell out. "That is enough for me," he remarked as he retrieved the cartridge and hurried out the door, ignoring my father's command to return the gun. Apparently, he was not as confident that one cartridge would serve his purpose as he had said, for he went to the home of the local hardware dealer who lived near our house and tried to get him to go down and open up the store and sell him a box of cartridges. The dealer refused.
"I didn't think he wo uld take the gun over my objection," my father stated. "Then when I saw that he was going to take it anyhow, I couldn't get to him in time."
The reason Father could not get to Utley in time to try to stop him by force was plainly visible. His right leg was off between the knee and ankle and he walked on a wooden leg. "The gun was in a far corner of the room from my bed and before I could get my wooden leg and put it on, he had darted outside. I heard the sound of two horses leaving."
My father felt sure that Utley was already into—or was about to get into—some kind of trouble. He dressed, caught and saddled a horse, and rode into town. He could not find any of the Day cowboys or anyone else who could tell him anything about Bill Utley. He then rode to the camp and found plenty of excitement there. Bud Bishop had come in only a few minutes ahead of him and had told the story.
The cowboys had become irritated with Utley for his refusal to listen to reason and had left him to his own devices. They ended their spree for the night by going back to camp. Only Bud Bishop, Utley's closest friend, stayed with him. He waited outside our house while Utley procured the gun. He was with him at the hardware dealer's house and he stayed with him until the last.
When they returned to the railroad station, the train had come and gone. There was no one outside the depot and the night agent, Harris, and the Negro handy man, Henry Clements, were about to close the station for the night. Failing in his last attempt to stop Utley in his wild rashness, Bishop sat on his horse and watched.
"Come out! Come out, you ———!" and Utley called Harris the same name that Harris had called him earlier. "Come out and bring your gun! I've got mine!" he shouted.
In spite of Utley's threat and the pleading of Henry Clements, Harris accepted the dare. He walked out the door onto the depot platform with his pistol in hand. He didn't have the ghost of a chance. Passing from light into darkness, he was temporarily blinded. Even if there had been a light outside, he would have been at a disadvantage.
Utley was waiting for him with the hammer of his gun cocked back over that single cartridge. One shot and that was all. The cowboy had made good his declaration that he needed only one cartridge. Harris sank to his knees but he rallied long enough to take two random shots at Utley as he ran for his horse. The agent collapsed after that and died before morning.
Utley mounted his horse and rode away into the night. It was the last time Bud Bishop or anyone else in Coleman County was to see him for a long time to come. My father never saw—nor did he ever want to see—his gun again.
The crime of horse theft could not be added to the crime of murder for Utley had planned to take some time off for a visit to friends and he had brought along his own horse for that purpose. He was riding him that night.
The sheriff's first act was to round up the Day cowboys for questioning. He later released all but Bud Bishop whom he held in jail for several days as a possible accomplice. Eventually Bishop was able to convince the authorities that his only part in the affair was that of a peace-maker trying to prevent a tragedy.
The sheriff made a diligent search for the fleeing Utley but failed to pick up his trail. Even so, as the saying goes, "he still had an ace in the hole." It was well known that Utley was in love with a daughter of a former Coleman County resident who had moved to the Plains country. Whether or not the sheriff knew that a French policeman had ever uttered the phrase, he employed the "French doctrine of cherchez la femme—"find the woman."
He wrote to the sheriff of Lubbock County giving him Utley's description with the suggestion that he would undoubtedly show there sometime. His hunch was correct. After wandering over parts of West Texas and New Mexico, Utley did appear at the home of his sweetheart. He was place under arrest and the Coleman County sheriff made the 200-mile trip there and back and returned him for trial.
The trial was short and decisive. It was not difficult to secure a conviction of first degree murder. Taking into account the various movements of the accused and the elapsed time between the first quarrel and actual commission of the crime, it was no trouble for the prosecution to prove premeditation. The plea of self defense entered by Utley's attorney was ruled out by the court. His previous good reputation, and the fact that Harris had a gun in his hand when he came out of the depot saved him from the gallows. As it was, he was sentenced to serve a life term in the penitentiary.
It was an odd and unbelievable combination of circumstances—all related in a way—that provoked and ruled this unfortunate affair from the beginning to its disastrous end. It looked as though fate took a hand and guided the two principal characters to their destiny. The case hinged upon and developed under a series of events. Some things were due to happen, but did not. On the other hand, there were things which would not happen under ordinary circumstances, but they did. A switch or change in any of them would have averted the killing.
In the first place, if the train had been on time that night, the disturbance on the depot platform would not have come about. If there had been no cartridges for my father's gun—like he thought—it is doubtful that Utley could have got his hands on another that night. If the train had been only thirty minutes late instead of forty, the station would have been closed and dark and Harris would have been gone when Utley and Bishop returned, If Harris had stayed in the depot like Henry Clements begged him to do, it is not likely that Utley would have come in after him. Even if he had, the odds would have been reversed and he would have had the same advantage inside that Utley had, outside. And, the prime factor of it all, was the mistake Charles Harris made when he called Bill Utley a s.o.b.
Walter Gann
Frontier Times
May, 1964
The City Slicker
I invite you to join me in thumbing an old scrap book of a most attractive young woman who was earning her living teaching the piano at Sherman, Texas, in the year of 1878. She was Miss Mabel Doss, my grandmother, later to become known from the Rio Grande to New York City as "The Cattle Queen of Texas".
Miss Mabel, in addition to being an accomplished musician, was a born entertainer. She had the knack of a general in managing a throng of pleasant company. The ease and grace with which she dispensed happiness all around her was an innate quality long to serve this future cattle-woman, as one would check a hat for the evening. Her personality captivated those about her. This partially accounts for the kindly feeling of respect and admiration that all Sherman society held for that young woman.
As I turn the fading yellow pages I find an article from the Sherman Daily Courier of Tuesday, August 13, 1878, and I start reading:
And while Bannerton was giving his attention to the readings from Shakespeare and his varied social endeavors, the several young men's organizations of Sherman were mapping plans for a big Fourth of July celebration.
There was Fowler's Battery, the recently organized Sherman Hook and Ladder Company, Doll Joiner's Brass Band, and the celebrated Sam Houston Fire Company Number One. The muster rolls of these four organizations wrote the "Blue Book" of Sherman society in 1878.
Keeping in line with the rapid growth of that young North Texas railroad town, Sam Houston Fire Company Number One had recently ordered a new fire steam engine. It would be delivered in time to be on display during the Natal Day celebration. There was still, however, a matter of several hundred dollars yet to be subscribed on the engine.
With the endorsement of the other civic organizations, Sam Houston Fire Company Number One was sponsoring a popularity contest, which was not only designed to elect the Natal Day Queen, but had the ulterior motive of cancelling the debt against the modern new steam pumper at the rate of twenty-five cents per vote. Six of the most popular young ladies of Sherman had been selected as candidates for Queen: Misses Dixie Cooks, Belle Richards, Emma Goode, Mary Brown, Belle Light and Mabel Doss.
An early report on the voting gave Mabel Doss 88 votes, Dixie Cooke 30, Belle Richards 10, and five votes each to Emma Goode, Belle Light and Mary Brown. While the contest had two objectives, the citizens soon lost sight of the monetary angle and settled down in earnest to select a queen to reign over the city on the Fourth. Excitement, especially among the younger set, ran exceedingly high. With only two days left before the contest closed, the Sherman Daily Register reported Miss Mabel in the lead.
Some of Mabel's more zealous friends were talking sure victory and venturing suitable maids of honor to serve at her court. Something would not let Mabel assume such confidence, but inwardly she had a burning desire to be Queen—to ride on that beautifully decorated float with The Gate City Guards of nearby Denison marching as her guard of honor—to preside in all her majesty at the picnic grounds.
Just two hours before the Register went to press Mabel received a note from on the paper that she was leading the two runners up by well over one hundred votes and for the first time relaxed and accepted the congratulations of her friends. But when the paper hit the street, Mabel's friends were dumbfounded to learn that another young lady had been selected Queen by popular vote. The Register went on to say that as a result of the contest the balance due on the steam fire engine had been over subscribed and that two hundred and ten dollars of the amount had been paid in Mexican silver pesos.
Also, the column announcing the arrival and departures on the daily train reported the return of the father of the Queen-elect from a business trip in Mexico.
And the paper went further to announce: "Mr. E. T. Bannerton, one of our more popular young attorneys, has been favored with the pleasant honor of crowning the Queen of the Natal Day, on the Fourth, and delivering an appropriate address to Her Majesty on the occasion."
Mabel's loss of the contest through the last minute appearance on the scene of a certain bag of Mexican pesos had the effect of crystallizing her popularity in the hearts of her many Sherman friends. That evening Mabel's friends converged on her boarding house, the Continental Hotel, for the purpose of surprising her with a token of their high regard and friendship. A few friends who had been apprised of the affair, especially the ladies, gathered at the hotel a short time before, and were engaged in chatting pleasantly, when a large squad of the leading young business men suddenly made their appearance under the veranda, headed by Bellebaum's string band, and after discoursing some sweet music, entered the house to present an elegant gold watch and chain.
No sooner had they taken possession of the hospital premises of Mr. and Mrs. McKinney, than J. P. Dicks, of the Brinkley House, with another squad of citizens, headed by Doll Joiner's brass band, invaded the gallery, and treated Mabel Doss, the queen of the evening, and her happy guests to a rousing serenade, after which Mr. Dicks and party entered the premises and joined the happy throng.
The watch and chain, which are of pure gold and elegant and artistic in finish, costing one hundred and fifty dollars, was then presented by the chairman, Mr. Goodrich, with the following very neat speech:
With a moist eye, Mabel responded in a plain, impressive and impromptu manner as follows.
While Mabel was not successful in winning the recent contest, she now had the satisfaction of knowing that the vote cast for her was of general character giving expression to a kindly feeling of respect and admiration for her. She was indeed queen in the hearts of her many Sherman friends.
In another part of town that evening a very pleasant party of young men, the enthusiastic admirers of the young lady who that afternoon had been selected to preside over the patriotic gathering during the ceremonies of the Fourth, were giving her a delightful serenade. Mr. E. T. Bannerton in behalf of the company of young men made a pleasant little speech announcing the victory. The Queen's father responded in behalf of his daughter in a short and happy speech. He accepted the honor modestly and thanked the young men for their warm expression of friendship.
Back at the Continental Mabel's company were giving themselves over to the pleasure of the hour. There were toasts, with appropriate responses by Major William Levy, Captain Peters, of the Daily Register, J. P. Dicks and Mr. Maguire of the Daily Courier. There was nothing artificial about the expressions of friendship that gained utterance in that large and happy company. Everything came from the heart, and Mabel could not but feel flattered by the generous sentiments that were so unsparingly lavished upon her. She moved among her company with an air of pleasant but humble modesty, which becomes one who is the recipient of merited applause from ardent friends.
There was feasting, and dancing, and wine, and "all went merry as a marriage-bell," until about one o'clock in the morning.
The following day Mr. Maguire reporting the party for the Daily Courier had this to say, "The writer knows whereof he speaks, and means all that there is in the language when he says that the young gentlemen have done themselves the honor of tendering this testimonial to the worth, the genius and accomplishments of Miss Mabel Doss."
Those who awoke early at Sherman on the morning of the Fourth felt their spirits go suddenly down as dark and threatening clouds met their first glimpse from the window. Fowler's Battery did noble service in ushering in the Natal Day. The angry clouds were answered in thunder tones from the field piece, echoing through every street and byway of Sherman, and sending a thrill of patriotism through every citizen.
Fortunately the clouds began clearing away about eight and people from the country started gathering in by the hundreds from every direction. The streets were thronged by nine o'clock. The plaza and business streets were so densely packed with carriages, wagons and horsemen, that locomotion was very difficult indeed. Flags were fluttering from the business houses and the whole scene presented one of lively and cheerful interest.
At ten o'clock the procession formed just below the engine house on South Travis Street headed by Doll Joiner's band. Then followed the queen's float, headed by her gaily and handsomely caparisoned Herald, R. A. Nesbit. The float was constructed in the form of a five-pointed star to represent the Lone Star State. It was beautifully decorated with evergreens and emblematic national colors and was drawn by four splendid black horses. Occupying an elevated position in the center rode the elegantly attired Queen, carrying herself with easy grace and dignity. The points of the star were occupied by Her Majesty's maids of honor, all charmingly arrayed and reflecting the smiling grace of their Queen with becoming dignity.
Following the Queen, the Gate City Guards of neighboring Denison, commanded by Lieutenant W. S. Lowe, served as guard of honor to the Queen and presented a splendid appearance in their snappy uniforms. Following the guard came the newly organized Sherman Hook and Ladder Company in their tasty uniforms, a splendid looking body of young men. Visiting firemen from Paris, Marshall and Denison came next. Then followed the handsome fire company, Sam Houston Number One, presenting a splendid spectacle in their clean blue uniforms. These were followed by the hose carts, and the magnificent new fire steamer of that company. Fowler's Battery followed, it would seem, as a guard of honor to the prize new piece of fire fighting equipment.
One of the handsomest features of the procession was the float of Messrs. Crenshaw and Jackson, agents for the St. John sewing machine. The float was gorgeously decorated with many colors, and was drawn by six gaily caparisoned horses. Under a canopy over the float, a handsomely decorated sewing machine stood in bold relief. A placard swinging over the machine saying, "I am King."
Following these were vehicles of every description filled with people, and swarms of citizens on horseback and on foot, forming a procession of several thousand souls. After marching through some of the principal streets, the procession took up a line of march to the picnic grounds.
Mabel's disappointment over being out maneuvered by a bag of Mexican pesos was somewhat cushioned by the timely arrival of a note from Colonel William H. Day revealing his plans to be in Sherman for the Fourth. Bill Day of Austin, without a doubt, was one of cattle kingdom's most eligible bachelors. During the winter of 1877 he had formed a warm attachment for Miss Doss while he was at neighboring Denison carrying out experiments with packing and icing down beef for shipment to the East in improvised railway refrigerator cars. He was a mature and handsome man, a graduate in engineering of Cumberland University, and a cattle operator whose range was anywhere a Texas longhorn ate grass from Texas into Canada. As a drover of eighteen years standing, Day was known as a quick trader. He thoroughly knew his business, which permitted speedy judgment and fast transactions. He could merely glance at a Texas steer and quickly judge its margin on the Kansas market. His excellent character, manner, and bearing, as well as his recognized knowledge of the trade instilled confidence in all with whom he dealt.
He had written from Austin that he would be in Sherman and true to his word he was on hand, as a note to Miss Mabel Doss dated Sherman, Texas, July 4, 1878 will testify;
Then the bachelor cattleman followed with a poem. This product of his pen would not likely win a prize, but it has the tone of ardor and sincerity. One verse reads:
Colonel Day and Miss Doss joined the happy throng marching on the picnic grounds to hear the long and flowery coronation speech of Mr. E. T. Bannerton, which was couched in the choicest language. After dwelling at length on our body politic and leaning heavily on Plato and his associate Greek philosophers, Bannerton extolled the heavenly virtues of all womanhood. Finally he turned to address the Queen as follows:
The reply of Her Majesty after being crowned was worthy of the honor so worthily conferred on that popular young lady. Her father followed with a short, impromptu speech, after which dinner was announced. The great crowd of visitors and citizens retired to shady places to open their lunch baskets and satisfy the inner man.
The Queen and her Maids of Honor, visiting firemen, the military, the gun clubs, and the members of other organizations were conducted to a well laden table of substantials and luxuries prepared expressly for them by the Sam Houston Fire Company.
The leading feature of the afternoon was the shooting at glass balls by the Sherman and McKinney gun clubs for a handsome prize of a silver pitcher, waiter and two goblets. Over fifteen hundred people witnessed McKinney take the honors.
The Sherman Clippers walked away with the ball game. But the mud, caused by a very heavy shower during the late afternoon prevented the hose cart racing and a trial of the steam fire engine on the square.
In the evening there was a splendid display of fire works on the square, and a grand ball in the large upper rooms of the court house, which was participated in by several hundred people until the early hours of the morning.
Later that morning the Sherman Daily Register had this to say: "At the fireman's ball last night the event of the evening was the entrance of Miss Mabel Doss into the brightly lighted hall. A murmur ran through the room which soon grew into a rapturous outburst of applause in which everybody joined. Miss Doss was dressed in an elegant white satin, a la princess, with rose colored sash draped with elegant flowers."
And now, while the dashing, the chivalrous, the gifted E. T. Bannerton was winning his triumphs in the social and fashionable circles of Sherman, he was not making much headway as a lawyer. He was not much sought after by those having business in the courts. His receipts being consequently light, his manner of life and habits depleted rather suddenly his not over-plethoric purse. But by assumed familiarity with may of those who were regarded as the solid men of Sherman, he managed to make a favorable impression on some of the shop men, whom he victimized to a greater or less extent.
The brilliant career of this gallant of Sherman's fashionable society was destined to an early termination. For some days past suspicions had been whispered about that Bannerton might possibly be sailing under false colors and was not the model young man that fond mamas thought him to be.
Bannerton, learning from some source that he stood upon the threshold of exposure, hastily picked up his gripsack, and giving out that he would be out of town for a few days, boarded the ten-thirty eastern train. Scarcely had the train departed before it was pretty generally known throughout the city what a great imposter and scoundrel he was.
The following day the Daily Register, the Daily Courier and a correspondent for the Police Gazette went to work on Bannerton.
I quote from one of the local papers:
After he fled Peoria because of attempted forgery, the rascal almost married the daughter of a rich widow in San Francisco before her mother discovered his true character. His devious trail then led to Salt Lake City, where he preached in the Mormon tabernacle for a season, thence on to Virginia City, Montana, where his trail was lost until it was discovered in Sherman.
The impact of his career and exposure in Sherman is described by the editor:
West Texas Historical Association Year Book
October, 1954
I invite you to join me in thumbing an old scrap book of a most attractive young woman who was earning her living teaching the piano at Sherman, Texas, in the year of 1878. She was Miss Mabel Doss, my grandmother, later to become known from the Rio Grande to New York City as "The Cattle Queen of Texas".
Miss Mabel, in addition to being an accomplished musician, was a born entertainer. She had the knack of a general in managing a throng of pleasant company. The ease and grace with which she dispensed happiness all around her was an innate quality long to serve this future cattle-woman, as one would check a hat for the evening. Her personality captivated those about her. This partially accounts for the kindly feeling of respect and admiration that all Sherman society held for that young woman.
As I turn the fading yellow pages I find an article from the Sherman Daily Courier of Tuesday, August 13, 1878, and I start reading:
About three months ago, a young man some thirty-five years of age, who gave his name as E. T. Bannerton, and claimed to hail from the state of New York, made his appearance in Sherman, and after a few days spent looking around the city, expressed himself so well pleased with our young people that he should take up his permanent abode in our city. He accordingly hung out his shingle as an attorney at law, and being a gentleman of good personal appearance, considerable culture, and pleasing manners and address, he soon ingratiated himself into the favor and association of our best people.
Representing himself as unmarried, Bannerton soon became a bright and shining light among the young society people, and was especially popular with the young ladies of the city. Indeed, if reports be true, he had not been there two months before he had made propositions of marriage to two or three of the most accomplished and popular of the city belles.
Among his other pretentions, Bannerton assumed to be the possessor of considerable histrionic talent, and on two different occasions attempted with only passable success readings from Shakespeare at the Opera House. It is rumored that Mr. Bannerton came to Sherman to organize the Republican party, and marshall forces for a victorious contest in the near future.
Bannerton flourished, however. No gay party of young society people was complete without the presence of the charming, the fascinating, the irresistible young attorney.
And while Bannerton was giving his attention to the readings from Shakespeare and his varied social endeavors, the several young men's organizations of Sherman were mapping plans for a big Fourth of July celebration.
There was Fowler's Battery, the recently organized Sherman Hook and Ladder Company, Doll Joiner's Brass Band, and the celebrated Sam Houston Fire Company Number One. The muster rolls of these four organizations wrote the "Blue Book" of Sherman society in 1878.
Keeping in line with the rapid growth of that young North Texas railroad town, Sam Houston Fire Company Number One had recently ordered a new fire steam engine. It would be delivered in time to be on display during the Natal Day celebration. There was still, however, a matter of several hundred dollars yet to be subscribed on the engine.
With the endorsement of the other civic organizations, Sam Houston Fire Company Number One was sponsoring a popularity contest, which was not only designed to elect the Natal Day Queen, but had the ulterior motive of cancelling the debt against the modern new steam pumper at the rate of twenty-five cents per vote. Six of the most popular young ladies of Sherman had been selected as candidates for Queen: Misses Dixie Cooks, Belle Richards, Emma Goode, Mary Brown, Belle Light and Mabel Doss.
An early report on the voting gave Mabel Doss 88 votes, Dixie Cooke 30, Belle Richards 10, and five votes each to Emma Goode, Belle Light and Mary Brown. While the contest had two objectives, the citizens soon lost sight of the monetary angle and settled down in earnest to select a queen to reign over the city on the Fourth. Excitement, especially among the younger set, ran exceedingly high. With only two days left before the contest closed, the Sherman Daily Register reported Miss Mabel in the lead.
Some of Mabel's more zealous friends were talking sure victory and venturing suitable maids of honor to serve at her court. Something would not let Mabel assume such confidence, but inwardly she had a burning desire to be Queen—to ride on that beautifully decorated float with The Gate City Guards of nearby Denison marching as her guard of honor—to preside in all her majesty at the picnic grounds.
Just two hours before the Register went to press Mabel received a note from on the paper that she was leading the two runners up by well over one hundred votes and for the first time relaxed and accepted the congratulations of her friends. But when the paper hit the street, Mabel's friends were dumbfounded to learn that another young lady had been selected Queen by popular vote. The Register went on to say that as a result of the contest the balance due on the steam fire engine had been over subscribed and that two hundred and ten dollars of the amount had been paid in Mexican silver pesos.
Also, the column announcing the arrival and departures on the daily train reported the return of the father of the Queen-elect from a business trip in Mexico.
And the paper went further to announce: "Mr. E. T. Bannerton, one of our more popular young attorneys, has been favored with the pleasant honor of crowning the Queen of the Natal Day, on the Fourth, and delivering an appropriate address to Her Majesty on the occasion."
Mabel's loss of the contest through the last minute appearance on the scene of a certain bag of Mexican pesos had the effect of crystallizing her popularity in the hearts of her many Sherman friends. That evening Mabel's friends converged on her boarding house, the Continental Hotel, for the purpose of surprising her with a token of their high regard and friendship. A few friends who had been apprised of the affair, especially the ladies, gathered at the hotel a short time before, and were engaged in chatting pleasantly, when a large squad of the leading young business men suddenly made their appearance under the veranda, headed by Bellebaum's string band, and after discoursing some sweet music, entered the house to present an elegant gold watch and chain.
No sooner had they taken possession of the hospital premises of Mr. and Mrs. McKinney, than J. P. Dicks, of the Brinkley House, with another squad of citizens, headed by Doll Joiner's brass band, invaded the gallery, and treated Mabel Doss, the queen of the evening, and her happy guests to a rousing serenade, after which Mr. Dicks and party entered the premises and joined the happy throng.
The watch and chain, which are of pure gold and elegant and artistic in finish, costing one hundred and fifty dollars, was then presented by the chairman, Mr. Goodrich, with the following very neat speech:
Miss Mabel—As a token of the high esteem in which you are held by all who know you, especially the friends in whose behalf I now speak, allow me to present this watch and chain.
They are of gold, which like the friendship of the givers, will never rust or corrode by age or neglect. Through years to come, may each click of the little wheels of the watch remind you that the mainspring of noble action is not money or its influence.
It is in the heart, Miss Mabel, that you are queen, and from the heart we honor you.
Accept this gift, therefore, as a pledge of our immutable admiration for you—as a free and kindly expression of the high regard for your queenly virtues and noble example to all women.
With a moist eye, Mabel responded in a plain, impressive and impromptu manner as follows.
Mr. Goodrich and gentlemen—I accept this beautiful and valuable present with a heart full of thanks and gratitude. Surely I must attribute this presentation more to your kind and partial generosity than to any merit of my own; hence I do especially appreciate the friendship and regard which prompted this happy occasion and of which this (the watch) is a marked demonstration.
This precious memento shall ever be kept with even greater fidelity than that with which the miser guards his gold. Although I may fail to express in proper language my gratitude, ever remember, gentlemen, that I sincerely wish each and every one of you, may be fully rewarded by the Dispenser of all Good.
While Mabel was not successful in winning the recent contest, she now had the satisfaction of knowing that the vote cast for her was of general character giving expression to a kindly feeling of respect and admiration for her. She was indeed queen in the hearts of her many Sherman friends.
In another part of town that evening a very pleasant party of young men, the enthusiastic admirers of the young lady who that afternoon had been selected to preside over the patriotic gathering during the ceremonies of the Fourth, were giving her a delightful serenade. Mr. E. T. Bannerton in behalf of the company of young men made a pleasant little speech announcing the victory. The Queen's father responded in behalf of his daughter in a short and happy speech. He accepted the honor modestly and thanked the young men for their warm expression of friendship.
Back at the Continental Mabel's company were giving themselves over to the pleasure of the hour. There were toasts, with appropriate responses by Major William Levy, Captain Peters, of the Daily Register, J. P. Dicks and Mr. Maguire of the Daily Courier. There was nothing artificial about the expressions of friendship that gained utterance in that large and happy company. Everything came from the heart, and Mabel could not but feel flattered by the generous sentiments that were so unsparingly lavished upon her. She moved among her company with an air of pleasant but humble modesty, which becomes one who is the recipient of merited applause from ardent friends.
There was feasting, and dancing, and wine, and "all went merry as a marriage-bell," until about one o'clock in the morning.
The following day Mr. Maguire reporting the party for the Daily Courier had this to say, "The writer knows whereof he speaks, and means all that there is in the language when he says that the young gentlemen have done themselves the honor of tendering this testimonial to the worth, the genius and accomplishments of Miss Mabel Doss."
Those who awoke early at Sherman on the morning of the Fourth felt their spirits go suddenly down as dark and threatening clouds met their first glimpse from the window. Fowler's Battery did noble service in ushering in the Natal Day. The angry clouds were answered in thunder tones from the field piece, echoing through every street and byway of Sherman, and sending a thrill of patriotism through every citizen.
Fortunately the clouds began clearing away about eight and people from the country started gathering in by the hundreds from every direction. The streets were thronged by nine o'clock. The plaza and business streets were so densely packed with carriages, wagons and horsemen, that locomotion was very difficult indeed. Flags were fluttering from the business houses and the whole scene presented one of lively and cheerful interest.
At ten o'clock the procession formed just below the engine house on South Travis Street headed by Doll Joiner's band. Then followed the queen's float, headed by her gaily and handsomely caparisoned Herald, R. A. Nesbit. The float was constructed in the form of a five-pointed star to represent the Lone Star State. It was beautifully decorated with evergreens and emblematic national colors and was drawn by four splendid black horses. Occupying an elevated position in the center rode the elegantly attired Queen, carrying herself with easy grace and dignity. The points of the star were occupied by Her Majesty's maids of honor, all charmingly arrayed and reflecting the smiling grace of their Queen with becoming dignity.
Following the Queen, the Gate City Guards of neighboring Denison, commanded by Lieutenant W. S. Lowe, served as guard of honor to the Queen and presented a splendid appearance in their snappy uniforms. Following the guard came the newly organized Sherman Hook and Ladder Company in their tasty uniforms, a splendid looking body of young men. Visiting firemen from Paris, Marshall and Denison came next. Then followed the handsome fire company, Sam Houston Number One, presenting a splendid spectacle in their clean blue uniforms. These were followed by the hose carts, and the magnificent new fire steamer of that company. Fowler's Battery followed, it would seem, as a guard of honor to the prize new piece of fire fighting equipment.
One of the handsomest features of the procession was the float of Messrs. Crenshaw and Jackson, agents for the St. John sewing machine. The float was gorgeously decorated with many colors, and was drawn by six gaily caparisoned horses. Under a canopy over the float, a handsomely decorated sewing machine stood in bold relief. A placard swinging over the machine saying, "I am King."
Following these were vehicles of every description filled with people, and swarms of citizens on horseback and on foot, forming a procession of several thousand souls. After marching through some of the principal streets, the procession took up a line of march to the picnic grounds.
Mabel's disappointment over being out maneuvered by a bag of Mexican pesos was somewhat cushioned by the timely arrival of a note from Colonel William H. Day revealing his plans to be in Sherman for the Fourth. Bill Day of Austin, without a doubt, was one of cattle kingdom's most eligible bachelors. During the winter of 1877 he had formed a warm attachment for Miss Doss while he was at neighboring Denison carrying out experiments with packing and icing down beef for shipment to the East in improvised railway refrigerator cars. He was a mature and handsome man, a graduate in engineering of Cumberland University, and a cattle operator whose range was anywhere a Texas longhorn ate grass from Texas into Canada. As a drover of eighteen years standing, Day was known as a quick trader. He thoroughly knew his business, which permitted speedy judgment and fast transactions. He could merely glance at a Texas steer and quickly judge its margin on the Kansas market. His excellent character, manner, and bearing, as well as his recognized knowledge of the trade instilled confidence in all with whom he dealt.
He had written from Austin that he would be in Sherman and true to his word he was on hand, as a note to Miss Mabel Doss dated Sherman, Texas, July 4, 1878 will testify;
When upon the occasion of the presentation of a gold watch and chain from her numerous friends, one who arrived too late to participate....
Then the bachelor cattleman followed with a poem. This product of his pen would not likely win a prize, but it has the tone of ardor and sincerity. One verse reads:
Then why need you wish for a heaven to move
From its place in the skies above you,
While your heaven is here, a life of love,
Surrounded by those who love you.
Colonel Day and Miss Doss joined the happy throng marching on the picnic grounds to hear the long and flowery coronation speech of Mr. E. T. Bannerton, which was couched in the choicest language. After dwelling at length on our body politic and leaning heavily on Plato and his associate Greek philosophers, Bannerton extolled the heavenly virtues of all womanhood. Finally he turned to address the Queen as follows:
And now, fair lady, recognizing these truths, and as a representative of the members of Sam Houston Fire Company of this city, as well as this other company of good citizens, before your noble court and in this public presence, I proclaim you Queen of these festivities. As some bright star of beauty, that rests upon the dark canopy of night, environed by a company of sister stars, making in all a constellation of beauty rare and bright, we hail thee and thy maids.
The reply of Her Majesty after being crowned was worthy of the honor so worthily conferred on that popular young lady. Her father followed with a short, impromptu speech, after which dinner was announced. The great crowd of visitors and citizens retired to shady places to open their lunch baskets and satisfy the inner man.
The Queen and her Maids of Honor, visiting firemen, the military, the gun clubs, and the members of other organizations were conducted to a well laden table of substantials and luxuries prepared expressly for them by the Sam Houston Fire Company.
The leading feature of the afternoon was the shooting at glass balls by the Sherman and McKinney gun clubs for a handsome prize of a silver pitcher, waiter and two goblets. Over fifteen hundred people witnessed McKinney take the honors.
The Sherman Clippers walked away with the ball game. But the mud, caused by a very heavy shower during the late afternoon prevented the hose cart racing and a trial of the steam fire engine on the square.
In the evening there was a splendid display of fire works on the square, and a grand ball in the large upper rooms of the court house, which was participated in by several hundred people until the early hours of the morning.
Later that morning the Sherman Daily Register had this to say: "At the fireman's ball last night the event of the evening was the entrance of Miss Mabel Doss into the brightly lighted hall. A murmur ran through the room which soon grew into a rapturous outburst of applause in which everybody joined. Miss Doss was dressed in an elegant white satin, a la princess, with rose colored sash draped with elegant flowers."
And now, while the dashing, the chivalrous, the gifted E. T. Bannerton was winning his triumphs in the social and fashionable circles of Sherman, he was not making much headway as a lawyer. He was not much sought after by those having business in the courts. His receipts being consequently light, his manner of life and habits depleted rather suddenly his not over-plethoric purse. But by assumed familiarity with may of those who were regarded as the solid men of Sherman, he managed to make a favorable impression on some of the shop men, whom he victimized to a greater or less extent.
The brilliant career of this gallant of Sherman's fashionable society was destined to an early termination. For some days past suspicions had been whispered about that Bannerton might possibly be sailing under false colors and was not the model young man that fond mamas thought him to be.
Bannerton, learning from some source that he stood upon the threshold of exposure, hastily picked up his gripsack, and giving out that he would be out of town for a few days, boarded the ten-thirty eastern train. Scarcely had the train departed before it was pretty generally known throughout the city what a great imposter and scoundrel he was.
The following day the Daily Register, the Daily Courier and a correspondent for the Police Gazette went to work on Bannerton.
I quote from one of the local papers:
BEAUTIFUL BANNERTON BOUNCED
To Be or Not to Be; That is the Question.
He Didn't Know Whether He'd be Bannerton, Walton or Bonner!
The late high-toned Bannerton—E. T. Bannerton, Esq.—who came to Sherman with a great flourish of trumpets, proclaiming his determination to revolutionize society, reorganize the political elements, and knock the bottom out of the legal tub of Sherman, has left us never to return. He left suddenly. He stood not on the order of his going, but went, and went quickly!
It seems that this Bannerton, who has managed to ingratiate himself into some of Sherman's best society, and who has been made the pet by many who will be loath to own even a passing acquaintance with "the brilliant young lawyer," now, has a wife and child living at Xenia, Ohio.
Four years ago he married the daughter of Judge Barlow, a distinguished citizen of Xenia, Ohio, under, it is supposed, assumed name E. S. B. Walton. Shortly after, the slippery Walton deserted his wife and located in Wichita, Kansas, but did not remain there long. Shortly after his departure from Wichita, a letter was received there offering a reward of fifty dollars for his arrest, but for what cause we have not been able to learn. From Wichita he went to Peoria, Illinois, and there ingratiated himself into the good graces of leading citizens, who assisted him to a position in one of the banks, and afterwards helped him fit up an elegant law office, on the same order of the one he established here. He spread a full sail in society, and occupied the position of President of the Young Men's Christian Association. During his residence in Peoria he borrowed money from every friend who was kind enough to extend that courtesy.
After he fled Peoria because of attempted forgery, the rascal almost married the daughter of a rich widow in San Francisco before her mother discovered his true character. His devious trail then led to Salt Lake City, where he preached in the Mormon tabernacle for a season, thence on to Virginia City, Montana, where his trail was lost until it was discovered in Sherman.
The impact of his career and exposure in Sherman is described by the editor:
His exposure here falls like a clap of thunder upon a clear day upon the people who have befriended him, many of whom are left in the lurch to the tune of various snug little sums of money, clothing, board bills, etc.
A lady of this city, the wife of one of our leading business men, met our hero one evening in company, and thought she recognized him as the fellow who had married the daughter of Judge Barlow, who was a very intimate friend of hers, and a neighbor during her residence in Xenia, Ohio. Reflection over the matter, led to an investigation, and the result is before our readers.
A full history of this intriguing, oily villain up to the time of his location in Montana, accompanied by his photograph, was forwarded to the lady referred to, and her husband was quietly waiting for instructions how to proceed in the matter, when our breezy Walton, alias Major Bonner, alias E. T. Bannerton, received an inkling that some of his villainy has been discovered, and suddenly he had important business in Chicago.
The gay and festive Lothario left for the north on the 10:30 train this morning, promising however to return shortly. Meanwhile his "bosom friends" have levied on his effects, and in a few days there will be a sale of toilet articles, including several works on theology, Greek philosophy, and an elegant collection of Shakespeare.
West Texas Historical Association Year Book
October, 1954
The Padgitts and Saddle Leather
Texans were riding Padgitt saddles before Hood took command of the Texas Brigade at Richmond. And in the years following Hood's defeat, saddle leather brought fame to the name of Padgitt in Texas.
In those days when the horse and the mule ruled the economy of Texas, the Padgitts and their business enjoyed a romance that is typical of the Lone Star State. In the days of the cowboy a Padgitt saddle was the pride of every man who rode the range. And it is an even bet that you could have found the "Bucking Bronco" stamped on a piece of leather in every cow camp in Texas.
The Texas frontiersman had to have confidence in himself, his horse and his equipment. And without question no single piece of equipment has ever been more highly prized by the man on the range than a fine stock saddle especially designed to fit his particular need.
When the Anglo-American pioneer rode into Texas on a flat Morgan tree, the new Texan was quick to recognize the advantage of the Spanish rigged saddle. He learned from the Mexican the use of the lariat and how to snub a mustang to the horn of a Mexican saddle. But the exposed rawhide covering of the Mexican tree was prone to crack in the sun and chafe the rider's seat. So, the Texan began covering his saddle with leather, progressing gradually from the "skeleton rig" of Mexico to the half rig, then to the three-quarter, and finally to the full rigged saddle as we know it today. And though changes were slow in design and appointments, it was not long before a set type of Texas saddle came into being.
Before the outbreak of the Civil War the Texan had already changed the broad Mexican horn to one with a narrow stem and small apple shaped cap. The tree, the most popular being the Yorktown, designed by a German at Yorktown, Texas, was draped with a removable leather housing, with a hole cut out for the horn and a slit for the cantle, slipped over the seat like a "mother hubbard"—which was the name given to that type of saddle. The narrow wooden stirrups were covered with leather, and a double rig and fenders to the stirrups leathers had been added. The Texas saddle had definitely lost its Mexican appearance. And that was the kind of saddle the Padgitt brothers saw on the backs of ponies when they arrived in Houston in 1854.
Earlier that summer, James R. Padgitt, the son of John O. Padgitt of Fairfax, Virginia, left his Gallatin, Tennessee home for Texas. He loaded his family and household goods on a flat boat on the Cumberland River for Nashville, where upon arrival his boys had their first glimpse of a steam ship. There he booked passage for himself and his wife, Mary Jane Bond, and his four sons, Bob, Tom, Clint [Grandfather of the author of this article.—Editor.] and Jess on the Steamship Eclipse sailing for New Orleans. After journey to Galveston on the Steamship Mexico City, and by bayou boat to Houston.
Upon his departure from Gallatin he had promised his brothers and brothers-in-law that upon his arrival in Texas he would write them about the new country and the advisability of their following him to Texas, which is evidenced by the following letter:
To D. [avid] Padgitt,
Dear Brother and Sister and children:
The time has come for me to right to you all once more as I feel it my Dewtey to do So as well as my privilege. I will now inform you Dear Brother that We are all well at this time and hope when This letter comes to hand that it will find you all well and doing well and on your way to heaven. I will say to you as one that has witness this fact that it is mouch easer to serve God in the States than it is here. you noe that this State, to wit texas, is one of the 36 States Which wee fought for in 44, But it is on the out side. per haps I have not seD anof on this Subject for this time to let you noe that I do not like this part of texas. If I noe my Self I am onest and I would not Right to you That I did like when I did not. I noe That this is a new country and it has got A great deal to do. and I noe that you and E. Padgitt and N. Robertson and H. fleetwood and H. Harlow has got about twenty-five children And how meney more you will have God noes and that all want to Bee rich in money, negroes or lands.
Well I will now tell you that I cant right as mouch as I wood for the mail is all most reddey to start. I will say, however, that I will promise you and prove true to my trust that I am a good judge of some things if I fail in some. I could give you as much detail of the production of our country if I had time. But you must excuse me for this time on this point.
I will now inform you that on yesterday was a week ago there was two men that had had some grudge against eachother for some time. These men's names was Davis and Bates. Davis was a brave man and it was proven in court by a host of witnesses that Davis requested Bates time after time to go with him out in the street or in a perary and shoot with him till one or the other was kild. Bates did not except of this request and he wated a time and about Sunday or Saturday last Bates went into the Houston Haule [Hall] and asked Mr. Davis to walk out on the pavement and talk with him. As soon as he got Davis outside of the house, Bates drew a pistol and shot Davis theru the neck. Davis lived one day and night and the pore fellow died and went to hell no dought, if there is such a place and I don't dout that atall myself. There is more people that deserves the punishment of hell and the power of the Supreme Being here than I ever saw.
And I do believe that there is more men and women that will go to hell from texas than any one state in the world. And I will give you my opinion about texas. It has all ways bin overrated. And any man that has got a home in tennessee so as to keep the shuriff off of them, I would say to them to stay thare, for this is one of the outside States and there is more —— here than you ever saw and the half of them is worse than hogs.
Well, David, you must not think that I am sick of texas yet, tho I don't like this part. There is plenty of good land here. I am doing right well. I am getting two dollars per day building a house and that is right good wages. The sun is very hot here indeed.
You must tell Lucinda and James Robberson I received their letter this day dated the 30 of July and I was glad to hear from all, but sorry to hear that you all had bin so sick. We are all well at this time. Tell James Robberson and Lewcinda that I will right to them soon. You must give my compliments to all of my friends. Tell them that I think I will live to see them again. But if we should never meet again on earth, let us try to meet beyeand the grave where wee will peart no more. Right me word how you feel on that subject. As to my part, I feel my chances was sarter bad some times and some times right good.
Tell Durritt [W. Durrett Padgitt, the writer's brother, a Methodist preacher, living in Kentucky.] that Bob and Tom is going to school and is learning fast. Bob is syphrn and Tom is reading in the first reader.
So no more at present. But remember your brother until death.
James Padgitt
Two months after the above letter, the dreaded Yellow Jack swept Houston. Although it was not determined until 1901 that the mosquito transmitted the fatal disease, the citizens of Houston in 1854 had already grown to associate the transmission of yellow fever with the night air—the favorite time for swarms of mosquitos to rise from nearby stagnant bayous and descend on the town. They were convinced that the heavy atmosphere of an oppressive summer night was poison. Consequently, people, urged by a city ordinance, would file out of their houses at night to kindle huge bonfires composed of tar barrels furnished by the city in a frantic effort to smoke and drive out the "foul air". This gave the town considerable relief by repelling the malaria carriers back into the swamps.
At the height of the epidemic James Padgitt and his eldest son, Bob, died. The following March Sallie was born. And less than four years later, in 1859, yellow fever returned to claim the mother and orphan the four remaining children—Tom, 12, Clint, 9, Jess, 7, and Sallie, 3.
The eldest of four children, little Tom found himself head of the orphaned household when he was 12. What he did to solve that problem was indicative of how he was to rise later to wealth and prominence. He hired a negro woman to look after his little brother and sister and taking Clint with him set out to rustle food for his family by seeking odd jobs in Houston.
A few months later a Tennessee uncle, Tom Bond, appeared upon the scene. Tom Bond was a saddle maker by trade, and opened up shop in Houston. There was a big demand for stock saddles and every saddle and harness maker in Texas had more than he could do. Houston was booming. Prior to the rail roads, everything moved in and out of Texas through the gulf ports. And although these young Padgitts always felt that Tom Bond treated them poorly as children, it was partly offset by the kindnesses shown them by his wife, Aunt Lote, and the fact that he put the two older boys to work at the bench, making it possible for them to earn a living. And thus Tom and Clint Padgitt became apprentice saddle makers in Texas in 1859.
As head of the family, Tom handled their meager finances. He was fired with a Horatio Alger desire of getting ahead in the world. In order to save expenses he persuaded his uncle to permit him and his little family to sleep in the shop. He saved every penny above bare necessities. In later years the music of a circus calliope would invariably bring a lump to Tom Padgitt's throat, as it would take him back to his childhood and the night a circus showed in Houston. He could see himself stretched out on his work bench pallet crying himself to sleep, being torn to pieces by a childhood desire to go to the circus while his hand in his pocket clutched the few dollars he had saved and was determined to keep.
Tom and Clint had barely learned to string a saddle when the Civil War took Houston by storm. The great grandsons of the old Spanish war saddle were in demand and men by the dozens swarmed into Tom Bond's saddle shop clamoring for saddles and leather equipment with which to fight the Yankees. Tom Bond and his two apprentices worked from sun-up to sun-down cutting and shaping bridles, saddles, gun scabbards, saddle bags and all the countless leather tools of war. And all the time Tom and Clint heard nothing but the talk of war and certain quick victories. The "mosquito" that transmits the will of men to fight bit the Padgitt boys repeatedly. It is no wonder that before daylight one morning the two Padgitt boys "stole" a mule and ran away to join the army. They were too young to be accepted and when Tom Bond found them, he persuaded them to return home where they spent the war making saddles and harness in the Confederate arsenal at Houston.
When Galveston fell into the hands of the Federal forces in October 1862, William Richardson, editor of the Galveston News, moved his paper to Houston. Jess, too young to work with his other brothers, sold the Galveston News on the streets of Houston. This paper was the forerunner of the present Dallas News, and later in 1885, when Jess helped finance the organization of the Dallas paper, he recalled as a Houston news boy having watched the old paper slide off a press powered by a horse on a tread mill. He said, "The Galveston News was printed on brown wrapping paper, and sometimes on dark green, pale blue, or bright pink paper, but always there was some sort of paper and it contained news."
At the close of the war, Tom and Clint again joined Tom Bond in the harness and saddle business. But the entire South was bankrupt including the ten railroads that had started construction in Texas before the war. It was five years before any of them were able to resume construction or new ones undertaken, except the Houston and Texas Central, which again began construction.
Times were exceptionally hard with Tom Bond when Tom, the eldest Padgitt, boarded the H. & T. C. for its Bryan terminus July 11, 1867. The Padgitt brothers agreed that the time had come for them to strike out on their own. The day Tom Padgitt left Houston he gave each of his brothers and sister $375 in gold which was their equal share of the money that he had been saving since he was twelve. He said, "This will give each of us a start in life, since I am the oldest, I'll take Sallie with me."
Tom Padgitt knew that railroad building meant heavy teamster work and that teamster contractors wore out a lot of harness. So, at 21, with a few tools and some leather, he opened up shop at the end of the line to serve the construction crews. That summer Clint, then only seventeen, took a job as possibly the first "News-butch" on the H. & T. C. running from Houston to Bryan. With this step, the Padgitts joined that famous historical group of pioneer business men called terminal merchants who followed the "Central" into the ever-receding frontier to build Dallas and the other cities along the route of the H. & T. C.
In 1869 Clint joined Tom in business. Bryan was still a rough labor camp and their shop was next door to a saloon over which was a hotel. One evening they went up stairs to wash up for supper when "hell broke loose" downstairs. A group of drunken teamsters took it upon themselves to shoot the place up, and whizzing bullets started splintering the pine boards under foot. When things quieted down the two Padgitts found themselves jumping up and down in the middle of a nearby bed trying to get the soap out of their eyes.
A family story attributes the breadth of Bryan's main street to Clint Padgitt, for it was he who had insisted that it be layed out wide enough to accommodate the turning of a team of twelve oxen.
As the H. & T. C. moved north Tom went with the road, first to Hearne, then to Calvert, Kosse, Groesbeck and Corsicana. During this period he operated his business in a prefabricated shack that could be moved with the road, working at the bench by day and often sleeping on it at night, but always priding himself as being among the first to open up at each successively new terminus.
In 1870 both Tom and clint married Bryan girls. Clint, operating the store at Bryan, married Mary Elizabeth Britton and together started a family of six sons. Tom, following the "Central", married Amanda Hucherson and a year later a daughter Buna, was born. While Tom Padgitt outlived three wives, he said he could never forget Amanda. She was his base woman. The woman who really stuck by him while he was struggling to build his business. He said that she would hold the lantern while he worked at night and then throw a buffalo robe over the bench where they would sleep.
Tom watched the Waco and Northwetern Railroad (the Waco Tap) branch out from the H. & T. C. at Bremond and go up the Brazos toward Waco. When the line arrived there in 1872, so did Tom Padgitt. He decided Waco was the place for him. At that point was the steel suspension bridge, said to have been the longest in the world at that time, and the only bridge across the Brazos. Waco was also on the Texas extension of the Chishold Cattle Trail. And while the bulk of the east-west freighting sought the bridge over the Brazos, cowboys were fording thousands of cattle across the river at Waco, and cowboys rode Texas saddles. Tom sold his Corsicana store to his youngest brother, Jess, who was then operating at Groesbeck, and opened up on Bridge Street on the corner of the public square one block from the bridge. Soon his reputation as a top saddle maker spread up and down the trail from Abilene, Kansas, to the Rio Grande.
While Tom Padgitt's business mushroomed from the moment he arrived in Waco, it was there he suffered his greatest loss. In 1876 Amanda Padgitt died following child birth. Fortunately, his sister, Sallie, was there to take charge of his household, which was a small cottage on Jefferson Street, then a country lane.
In 1878 Tom Padgitt handed Uncle Ike, his colored drayman, a note to be delivered to Miss Kate Ross, which read, "May I call on you tonight at eight? I mean business," signed, Tom Padgitt. As his note indicates, Tom Padgitt was a man of few words. That night he proposed.
Miss Kate Ross was the daughter of the famous Texas Ranger and Indian fighter, Captain Shapley P. Ross, and the sister of another Indian fighter of note, L. S. Ross, who with the backing of Tom Padgitt was later to become Governor of Texas. Miss Ross, who was the first white child born in McLennan County, took her problem to her father. She had to decide between Tom Padgitt and another man who was pressing his case. Captain Ross answered, "Tom Padgitt, of course. I'd rather take him with a shirt tail full of rocks, than have the other man with a barrel full of money." So Tom and Kate were married.
It was a far cry from the shack-like store that he opened over eighty years ago on Bridge Street to the imposing building he later erected at his final location on the corner of Fifth and Franklin Streets, for Tom Padgitt prospered as Waco grew. The name of Tom Padgitt Company became famous all over the United States, Canada and Mexico, and he finally developed a good trade with Central and South America.
William Cody (Buffalo Bill) chose Tom Padgitt to supply his wild west show with all of its saddles, harness and leather goods. Other leather houses were clamoring for the contract and competition was keen. By timing himself just right, Tom made a gaudy bright red saddle pad, the type Indians preferred to ride in lieu of saddle, and sent the sample as a present to the Chief of Buffalo Bill's Indians. Over night every Indian in the show was lobbying for Tom Padgitt and demanding one of those bright red saddle pads. There was nothing for Buffalo Bill to do but award Tom the contract.
Like the Indians, many other famous people demanded Padgitt saddles. For years, Tom made saddles for Will Rogers. The last saddle he bought in Waco was during the prohibition era, and as a courtesy to Will Rogers, Tom did some of the finishing work on the saddle himself. That day, Camilla Padgitt, a daughter-in-law, stepped into Tom's office where he and Will Rogers were talking saddles. Will noticed her eyeing a rather suspicious quart sized looking package under his arm and smiled. He took the package in the other hand and dropped it on the floor. With a Will Rogers grin, he ducked his head and said, "It's only a rope."
While Tom was setting up shop in Waco, Clint of Bryan and Jess of Corsicana were also busy making saddles. Jess, who died in 1948, at the age of 97, often recalled that all the towns up and down the H. & T. C. were wide open to gambling houses and saloons. The crack of the drover's whip as ox wagons rumbled up the street, wild pistol shots and the clank of cowboy spurs were regular accompaniments of the days and nights. In Grosebeck some of the bullets came too close to suit him. His shop was next door to a gambling house. Especially at night, forty-five caliber bullets frequently whizzed through flimsy pine walls and across his shop. Since he also slept in his shop, he regularly made his bed on the floor behind kegs of trace chains so he could wake up healthy in the morning.
In the jump from Corsicana, Jess arrived in Dallas behind the H. & T. C., in 1874. A year later, his older brother, Clint, closed his Bryan store and joined him in Dallas and thus, Padgitt Brothers was established in Dallas while that city was a roaring frontier town of flimsy shacks, board sidewalks, and boggy streets built around the court house square. Padgitt Brothers first location was in a newly constructed two story brick building on the west side of the square. There, wagons often mired in the boggy streets and drivers sometimes were pitched from their seats as wheels fell into deep chug holes.
Freighters who brought wagon trains of buffalo hides from Fort Griffin to Dallas stayed to buy supplies and gadgets either made in Dallas or hauled in by the iron horse. Padgitt Brothers styled its business on a sign over the front door as "Manufacturers and Wholesalers of Horse Collars, Harness and Saddlery Goods," and soon Dallas became the wholesale point for a vast area. Many a hard-to-please ranchman came to Dallas to buy a Padgitt saddle, for a Padgitt saddle had already become the pride of the range rider, and for many it remains so today.
In early day Dallas, Clint and Jess Padgitt followed a pattern of business that would seem peculiar in these times. They would arise before day, go to the wagon yards and other places where visitors could be found to solicit business from cattlemen, freighters and frontier merchants. By 6:30 A. M. they would be at home for breakfast and then return to the store for a ten hour day of serving customers. After a later supper, they would join their three employees at the factory to help them turn out pistol holsters, or whatever was on order until ten or eleven at night.
Their trade mark was "Bronco Brand", which pictured a Buffalo Bill type cowboy with goatee and buckskin clothes casually riding a Padgitt saddle a-top the hurricane deck of a bucking bronco.
With the square literally jammed with freight wagons, its sidewalks and stores crowded with buyers from the great territory to the west, business was brisk. A forty dollar saddle would sell as fast as it could be made. There was also a big demand for harness from the freighters and teamsters supplying the Texas frontier with Dallas merchandise.
When Padgitt Brothers came out with a new saddle, one with llama hair covered pockets draping the back of the cantle, their business boomed and they had to seek larger quarters. They moved east to a site near the present location of E. M. Kahn & Co. Next they moved to the site later to be occupied by the old Slaughter Building, for which they paid $5,000. They spent $33,000 developing this location and in the boom of the late eighties they sold that location for $110,000—trebling their money. They put this into the present five story home of Padgitt Brothers Company at 1020 Commerce Street. The two brothers thought they had provided room for all the expanding they could ever do, but were to learn differently. By 1900 they had to build a six story factory building adjacent to their property on Jakson Street, as well as to spread out on Commerce Street with space to show their extensive line of buggies and carriages.
The firm became of age in 1900 when it was incorporated as Padgitt Brothers Company, Manufacturers, Jobbers and Wholesalers of leather goods. Clint Padgitt, the business leader of the firm became its president. On June 1, 1900, he gave his six sons fifty shares each in the company and took them in as partners in the business, requesting that in case of his death "his brother Jess be made president and general manager of the business as long as he lives and wishes the position." Within a few years Jess Padgitt's sons joined the firm and are still operating the business. At an early date the firms of Padgitt Brothers Company and Tom Padgitt Company of Waco divided up the Southwest, and thus during their many successful years of business never interfered with each other's territory.
On August 30, 1900, Clint wrote, "We are having a good trade, business is rushing, and it keeps us humping to keep up. Had the biggest month in July of this year that we have ever had since we have been in business—something over $97,000."
By 1908 Dallas became known as the greatest saddle market in the world. There were at least three other pioneer leather manufacturers there beside the Padgitts. They were G. H. Schoellkopf, E. O. Tennison and Charlie Steinman. The system of mass production had found its place beside the old time work bench, for between 1900 and 1908 the leading manufacturers were individually turning out around two hundred sets of harness a day at from $13.50 to $35.00 per set wholesale. Padgitt Brothers Company kept a stock of five hundred saddles in its show rooms at all times. Dallas boasted in those boom years that more leather was cut there than any other town in the country. It was reported that enough leather was cut to bring in five million dollars annually to the industry. The typical scene in a general store in the Southwest was groceries on the right, clothing on the left, hardware to the rear, and Padgitt horse collars hanging from the rafters.
The Harness Herald, the leatherman's trade publication in 1909, referred to Clint Padgitt as the dean of the leather trade in America. It went on to say, "So potent is he as a force in the saddlery trade that his ability and influence is recognized all over the country."
That same year leather lost one of its strong men, for Clint Padgitt died on his sixtieth birthday. Jess Padgitt took over as President and General Manager. Like his older brother, he was an excellent business man, although even more conservative.
He once said, "As a young man I lost two dollars playing poker. I never played the game again, for I could see there was nothing in it for me."
Between 1914 and 1918 the harness and saddlery industry reached its peak in Dallas, where factories devoted their output to the needs of the military, the emphasis at the time being on harness for ambulances and gun carriages. When it fell the lot of Padgitt Brothers Company to turn out the government's medical pack saddle, Jess immediately sensed that the pack then in use was a clumsy and unnecessarily bunglesome affair. He designed an entirely new model, which was accepted by the government and named "The Texas Medical Pack Saddle." And Jess Padgitt produced them by the thousands during the war.
After World War I the output of automobiles and tractors increased and the advent of mass production in the saddle and harness business went into eclipse.
With the passing of Tom Padgitt in 1926 and with Jess closing the historic chapter of the leather trade in Texas at the age of 97, the story of the early day Texas saddle maker came to an end.
West Texas Historical Association Year Book
October, 1953
Texans were riding Padgitt saddles before Hood took command of the Texas Brigade at Richmond. And in the years following Hood's defeat, saddle leather brought fame to the name of Padgitt in Texas.
In those days when the horse and the mule ruled the economy of Texas, the Padgitts and their business enjoyed a romance that is typical of the Lone Star State. In the days of the cowboy a Padgitt saddle was the pride of every man who rode the range. And it is an even bet that you could have found the "Bucking Bronco" stamped on a piece of leather in every cow camp in Texas.
The Texas frontiersman had to have confidence in himself, his horse and his equipment. And without question no single piece of equipment has ever been more highly prized by the man on the range than a fine stock saddle especially designed to fit his particular need.
When the Anglo-American pioneer rode into Texas on a flat Morgan tree, the new Texan was quick to recognize the advantage of the Spanish rigged saddle. He learned from the Mexican the use of the lariat and how to snub a mustang to the horn of a Mexican saddle. But the exposed rawhide covering of the Mexican tree was prone to crack in the sun and chafe the rider's seat. So, the Texan began covering his saddle with leather, progressing gradually from the "skeleton rig" of Mexico to the half rig, then to the three-quarter, and finally to the full rigged saddle as we know it today. And though changes were slow in design and appointments, it was not long before a set type of Texas saddle came into being.
Before the outbreak of the Civil War the Texan had already changed the broad Mexican horn to one with a narrow stem and small apple shaped cap. The tree, the most popular being the Yorktown, designed by a German at Yorktown, Texas, was draped with a removable leather housing, with a hole cut out for the horn and a slit for the cantle, slipped over the seat like a "mother hubbard"—which was the name given to that type of saddle. The narrow wooden stirrups were covered with leather, and a double rig and fenders to the stirrups leathers had been added. The Texas saddle had definitely lost its Mexican appearance. And that was the kind of saddle the Padgitt brothers saw on the backs of ponies when they arrived in Houston in 1854.
Earlier that summer, James R. Padgitt, the son of John O. Padgitt of Fairfax, Virginia, left his Gallatin, Tennessee home for Texas. He loaded his family and household goods on a flat boat on the Cumberland River for Nashville, where upon arrival his boys had their first glimpse of a steam ship. There he booked passage for himself and his wife, Mary Jane Bond, and his four sons, Bob, Tom, Clint [Grandfather of the author of this article.—Editor.] and Jess on the Steamship Eclipse sailing for New Orleans. After journey to Galveston on the Steamship Mexico City, and by bayou boat to Houston.
Upon his departure from Gallatin he had promised his brothers and brothers-in-law that upon his arrival in Texas he would write them about the new country and the advisability of their following him to Texas, which is evidenced by the following letter:
Houston, Texas
August the 20, 1854
August the 20, 1854
To D. [avid] Padgitt,
Dear Brother and Sister and children:
The time has come for me to right to you all once more as I feel it my Dewtey to do So as well as my privilege. I will now inform you Dear Brother that We are all well at this time and hope when This letter comes to hand that it will find you all well and doing well and on your way to heaven. I will say to you as one that has witness this fact that it is mouch easer to serve God in the States than it is here. you noe that this State, to wit texas, is one of the 36 States Which wee fought for in 44, But it is on the out side. per haps I have not seD anof on this Subject for this time to let you noe that I do not like this part of texas. If I noe my Self I am onest and I would not Right to you That I did like when I did not. I noe That this is a new country and it has got A great deal to do. and I noe that you and E. Padgitt and N. Robertson and H. fleetwood and H. Harlow has got about twenty-five children And how meney more you will have God noes and that all want to Bee rich in money, negroes or lands.
Well I will now tell you that I cant right as mouch as I wood for the mail is all most reddey to start. I will say, however, that I will promise you and prove true to my trust that I am a good judge of some things if I fail in some. I could give you as much detail of the production of our country if I had time. But you must excuse me for this time on this point.
I will now inform you that on yesterday was a week ago there was two men that had had some grudge against eachother for some time. These men's names was Davis and Bates. Davis was a brave man and it was proven in court by a host of witnesses that Davis requested Bates time after time to go with him out in the street or in a perary and shoot with him till one or the other was kild. Bates did not except of this request and he wated a time and about Sunday or Saturday last Bates went into the Houston Haule [Hall] and asked Mr. Davis to walk out on the pavement and talk with him. As soon as he got Davis outside of the house, Bates drew a pistol and shot Davis theru the neck. Davis lived one day and night and the pore fellow died and went to hell no dought, if there is such a place and I don't dout that atall myself. There is more people that deserves the punishment of hell and the power of the Supreme Being here than I ever saw.
And I do believe that there is more men and women that will go to hell from texas than any one state in the world. And I will give you my opinion about texas. It has all ways bin overrated. And any man that has got a home in tennessee so as to keep the shuriff off of them, I would say to them to stay thare, for this is one of the outside States and there is more —— here than you ever saw and the half of them is worse than hogs.
Well, David, you must not think that I am sick of texas yet, tho I don't like this part. There is plenty of good land here. I am doing right well. I am getting two dollars per day building a house and that is right good wages. The sun is very hot here indeed.
You must tell Lucinda and James Robberson I received their letter this day dated the 30 of July and I was glad to hear from all, but sorry to hear that you all had bin so sick. We are all well at this time. Tell James Robberson and Lewcinda that I will right to them soon. You must give my compliments to all of my friends. Tell them that I think I will live to see them again. But if we should never meet again on earth, let us try to meet beyeand the grave where wee will peart no more. Right me word how you feel on that subject. As to my part, I feel my chances was sarter bad some times and some times right good.
Tell Durritt [W. Durrett Padgitt, the writer's brother, a Methodist preacher, living in Kentucky.] that Bob and Tom is going to school and is learning fast. Bob is syphrn and Tom is reading in the first reader.
So no more at present. But remember your brother until death.
Two months after the above letter, the dreaded Yellow Jack swept Houston. Although it was not determined until 1901 that the mosquito transmitted the fatal disease, the citizens of Houston in 1854 had already grown to associate the transmission of yellow fever with the night air—the favorite time for swarms of mosquitos to rise from nearby stagnant bayous and descend on the town. They were convinced that the heavy atmosphere of an oppressive summer night was poison. Consequently, people, urged by a city ordinance, would file out of their houses at night to kindle huge bonfires composed of tar barrels furnished by the city in a frantic effort to smoke and drive out the "foul air". This gave the town considerable relief by repelling the malaria carriers back into the swamps.
At the height of the epidemic James Padgitt and his eldest son, Bob, died. The following March Sallie was born. And less than four years later, in 1859, yellow fever returned to claim the mother and orphan the four remaining children—Tom, 12, Clint, 9, Jess, 7, and Sallie, 3.
The eldest of four children, little Tom found himself head of the orphaned household when he was 12. What he did to solve that problem was indicative of how he was to rise later to wealth and prominence. He hired a negro woman to look after his little brother and sister and taking Clint with him set out to rustle food for his family by seeking odd jobs in Houston.
A few months later a Tennessee uncle, Tom Bond, appeared upon the scene. Tom Bond was a saddle maker by trade, and opened up shop in Houston. There was a big demand for stock saddles and every saddle and harness maker in Texas had more than he could do. Houston was booming. Prior to the rail roads, everything moved in and out of Texas through the gulf ports. And although these young Padgitts always felt that Tom Bond treated them poorly as children, it was partly offset by the kindnesses shown them by his wife, Aunt Lote, and the fact that he put the two older boys to work at the bench, making it possible for them to earn a living. And thus Tom and Clint Padgitt became apprentice saddle makers in Texas in 1859.
As head of the family, Tom handled their meager finances. He was fired with a Horatio Alger desire of getting ahead in the world. In order to save expenses he persuaded his uncle to permit him and his little family to sleep in the shop. He saved every penny above bare necessities. In later years the music of a circus calliope would invariably bring a lump to Tom Padgitt's throat, as it would take him back to his childhood and the night a circus showed in Houston. He could see himself stretched out on his work bench pallet crying himself to sleep, being torn to pieces by a childhood desire to go to the circus while his hand in his pocket clutched the few dollars he had saved and was determined to keep.
Tom and Clint had barely learned to string a saddle when the Civil War took Houston by storm. The great grandsons of the old Spanish war saddle were in demand and men by the dozens swarmed into Tom Bond's saddle shop clamoring for saddles and leather equipment with which to fight the Yankees. Tom Bond and his two apprentices worked from sun-up to sun-down cutting and shaping bridles, saddles, gun scabbards, saddle bags and all the countless leather tools of war. And all the time Tom and Clint heard nothing but the talk of war and certain quick victories. The "mosquito" that transmits the will of men to fight bit the Padgitt boys repeatedly. It is no wonder that before daylight one morning the two Padgitt boys "stole" a mule and ran away to join the army. They were too young to be accepted and when Tom Bond found them, he persuaded them to return home where they spent the war making saddles and harness in the Confederate arsenal at Houston.
When Galveston fell into the hands of the Federal forces in October 1862, William Richardson, editor of the Galveston News, moved his paper to Houston. Jess, too young to work with his other brothers, sold the Galveston News on the streets of Houston. This paper was the forerunner of the present Dallas News, and later in 1885, when Jess helped finance the organization of the Dallas paper, he recalled as a Houston news boy having watched the old paper slide off a press powered by a horse on a tread mill. He said, "The Galveston News was printed on brown wrapping paper, and sometimes on dark green, pale blue, or bright pink paper, but always there was some sort of paper and it contained news."
At the close of the war, Tom and Clint again joined Tom Bond in the harness and saddle business. But the entire South was bankrupt including the ten railroads that had started construction in Texas before the war. It was five years before any of them were able to resume construction or new ones undertaken, except the Houston and Texas Central, which again began construction.
Times were exceptionally hard with Tom Bond when Tom, the eldest Padgitt, boarded the H. & T. C. for its Bryan terminus July 11, 1867. The Padgitt brothers agreed that the time had come for them to strike out on their own. The day Tom Padgitt left Houston he gave each of his brothers and sister $375 in gold which was their equal share of the money that he had been saving since he was twelve. He said, "This will give each of us a start in life, since I am the oldest, I'll take Sallie with me."
Tom Padgitt knew that railroad building meant heavy teamster work and that teamster contractors wore out a lot of harness. So, at 21, with a few tools and some leather, he opened up shop at the end of the line to serve the construction crews. That summer Clint, then only seventeen, took a job as possibly the first "News-butch" on the H. & T. C. running from Houston to Bryan. With this step, the Padgitts joined that famous historical group of pioneer business men called terminal merchants who followed the "Central" into the ever-receding frontier to build Dallas and the other cities along the route of the H. & T. C.
In 1869 Clint joined Tom in business. Bryan was still a rough labor camp and their shop was next door to a saloon over which was a hotel. One evening they went up stairs to wash up for supper when "hell broke loose" downstairs. A group of drunken teamsters took it upon themselves to shoot the place up, and whizzing bullets started splintering the pine boards under foot. When things quieted down the two Padgitts found themselves jumping up and down in the middle of a nearby bed trying to get the soap out of their eyes.
A family story attributes the breadth of Bryan's main street to Clint Padgitt, for it was he who had insisted that it be layed out wide enough to accommodate the turning of a team of twelve oxen.
As the H. & T. C. moved north Tom went with the road, first to Hearne, then to Calvert, Kosse, Groesbeck and Corsicana. During this period he operated his business in a prefabricated shack that could be moved with the road, working at the bench by day and often sleeping on it at night, but always priding himself as being among the first to open up at each successively new terminus.
In 1870 both Tom and clint married Bryan girls. Clint, operating the store at Bryan, married Mary Elizabeth Britton and together started a family of six sons. Tom, following the "Central", married Amanda Hucherson and a year later a daughter Buna, was born. While Tom Padgitt outlived three wives, he said he could never forget Amanda. She was his base woman. The woman who really stuck by him while he was struggling to build his business. He said that she would hold the lantern while he worked at night and then throw a buffalo robe over the bench where they would sleep.
Tom watched the Waco and Northwetern Railroad (the Waco Tap) branch out from the H. & T. C. at Bremond and go up the Brazos toward Waco. When the line arrived there in 1872, so did Tom Padgitt. He decided Waco was the place for him. At that point was the steel suspension bridge, said to have been the longest in the world at that time, and the only bridge across the Brazos. Waco was also on the Texas extension of the Chishold Cattle Trail. And while the bulk of the east-west freighting sought the bridge over the Brazos, cowboys were fording thousands of cattle across the river at Waco, and cowboys rode Texas saddles. Tom sold his Corsicana store to his youngest brother, Jess, who was then operating at Groesbeck, and opened up on Bridge Street on the corner of the public square one block from the bridge. Soon his reputation as a top saddle maker spread up and down the trail from Abilene, Kansas, to the Rio Grande.
While Tom Padgitt's business mushroomed from the moment he arrived in Waco, it was there he suffered his greatest loss. In 1876 Amanda Padgitt died following child birth. Fortunately, his sister, Sallie, was there to take charge of his household, which was a small cottage on Jefferson Street, then a country lane.
In 1878 Tom Padgitt handed Uncle Ike, his colored drayman, a note to be delivered to Miss Kate Ross, which read, "May I call on you tonight at eight? I mean business," signed, Tom Padgitt. As his note indicates, Tom Padgitt was a man of few words. That night he proposed.
Miss Kate Ross was the daughter of the famous Texas Ranger and Indian fighter, Captain Shapley P. Ross, and the sister of another Indian fighter of note, L. S. Ross, who with the backing of Tom Padgitt was later to become Governor of Texas. Miss Ross, who was the first white child born in McLennan County, took her problem to her father. She had to decide between Tom Padgitt and another man who was pressing his case. Captain Ross answered, "Tom Padgitt, of course. I'd rather take him with a shirt tail full of rocks, than have the other man with a barrel full of money." So Tom and Kate were married.
It was a far cry from the shack-like store that he opened over eighty years ago on Bridge Street to the imposing building he later erected at his final location on the corner of Fifth and Franklin Streets, for Tom Padgitt prospered as Waco grew. The name of Tom Padgitt Company became famous all over the United States, Canada and Mexico, and he finally developed a good trade with Central and South America.
William Cody (Buffalo Bill) chose Tom Padgitt to supply his wild west show with all of its saddles, harness and leather goods. Other leather houses were clamoring for the contract and competition was keen. By timing himself just right, Tom made a gaudy bright red saddle pad, the type Indians preferred to ride in lieu of saddle, and sent the sample as a present to the Chief of Buffalo Bill's Indians. Over night every Indian in the show was lobbying for Tom Padgitt and demanding one of those bright red saddle pads. There was nothing for Buffalo Bill to do but award Tom the contract.
Like the Indians, many other famous people demanded Padgitt saddles. For years, Tom made saddles for Will Rogers. The last saddle he bought in Waco was during the prohibition era, and as a courtesy to Will Rogers, Tom did some of the finishing work on the saddle himself. That day, Camilla Padgitt, a daughter-in-law, stepped into Tom's office where he and Will Rogers were talking saddles. Will noticed her eyeing a rather suspicious quart sized looking package under his arm and smiled. He took the package in the other hand and dropped it on the floor. With a Will Rogers grin, he ducked his head and said, "It's only a rope."
While Tom was setting up shop in Waco, Clint of Bryan and Jess of Corsicana were also busy making saddles. Jess, who died in 1948, at the age of 97, often recalled that all the towns up and down the H. & T. C. were wide open to gambling houses and saloons. The crack of the drover's whip as ox wagons rumbled up the street, wild pistol shots and the clank of cowboy spurs were regular accompaniments of the days and nights. In Grosebeck some of the bullets came too close to suit him. His shop was next door to a gambling house. Especially at night, forty-five caliber bullets frequently whizzed through flimsy pine walls and across his shop. Since he also slept in his shop, he regularly made his bed on the floor behind kegs of trace chains so he could wake up healthy in the morning.
In the jump from Corsicana, Jess arrived in Dallas behind the H. & T. C., in 1874. A year later, his older brother, Clint, closed his Bryan store and joined him in Dallas and thus, Padgitt Brothers was established in Dallas while that city was a roaring frontier town of flimsy shacks, board sidewalks, and boggy streets built around the court house square. Padgitt Brothers first location was in a newly constructed two story brick building on the west side of the square. There, wagons often mired in the boggy streets and drivers sometimes were pitched from their seats as wheels fell into deep chug holes.
Freighters who brought wagon trains of buffalo hides from Fort Griffin to Dallas stayed to buy supplies and gadgets either made in Dallas or hauled in by the iron horse. Padgitt Brothers styled its business on a sign over the front door as "Manufacturers and Wholesalers of Horse Collars, Harness and Saddlery Goods," and soon Dallas became the wholesale point for a vast area. Many a hard-to-please ranchman came to Dallas to buy a Padgitt saddle, for a Padgitt saddle had already become the pride of the range rider, and for many it remains so today.
In early day Dallas, Clint and Jess Padgitt followed a pattern of business that would seem peculiar in these times. They would arise before day, go to the wagon yards and other places where visitors could be found to solicit business from cattlemen, freighters and frontier merchants. By 6:30 A. M. they would be at home for breakfast and then return to the store for a ten hour day of serving customers. After a later supper, they would join their three employees at the factory to help them turn out pistol holsters, or whatever was on order until ten or eleven at night.
Their trade mark was "Bronco Brand", which pictured a Buffalo Bill type cowboy with goatee and buckskin clothes casually riding a Padgitt saddle a-top the hurricane deck of a bucking bronco.
With the square literally jammed with freight wagons, its sidewalks and stores crowded with buyers from the great territory to the west, business was brisk. A forty dollar saddle would sell as fast as it could be made. There was also a big demand for harness from the freighters and teamsters supplying the Texas frontier with Dallas merchandise.
When Padgitt Brothers came out with a new saddle, one with llama hair covered pockets draping the back of the cantle, their business boomed and they had to seek larger quarters. They moved east to a site near the present location of E. M. Kahn & Co. Next they moved to the site later to be occupied by the old Slaughter Building, for which they paid $5,000. They spent $33,000 developing this location and in the boom of the late eighties they sold that location for $110,000—trebling their money. They put this into the present five story home of Padgitt Brothers Company at 1020 Commerce Street. The two brothers thought they had provided room for all the expanding they could ever do, but were to learn differently. By 1900 they had to build a six story factory building adjacent to their property on Jakson Street, as well as to spread out on Commerce Street with space to show their extensive line of buggies and carriages.
The firm became of age in 1900 when it was incorporated as Padgitt Brothers Company, Manufacturers, Jobbers and Wholesalers of leather goods. Clint Padgitt, the business leader of the firm became its president. On June 1, 1900, he gave his six sons fifty shares each in the company and took them in as partners in the business, requesting that in case of his death "his brother Jess be made president and general manager of the business as long as he lives and wishes the position." Within a few years Jess Padgitt's sons joined the firm and are still operating the business. At an early date the firms of Padgitt Brothers Company and Tom Padgitt Company of Waco divided up the Southwest, and thus during their many successful years of business never interfered with each other's territory.
On August 30, 1900, Clint wrote, "We are having a good trade, business is rushing, and it keeps us humping to keep up. Had the biggest month in July of this year that we have ever had since we have been in business—something over $97,000."
By 1908 Dallas became known as the greatest saddle market in the world. There were at least three other pioneer leather manufacturers there beside the Padgitts. They were G. H. Schoellkopf, E. O. Tennison and Charlie Steinman. The system of mass production had found its place beside the old time work bench, for between 1900 and 1908 the leading manufacturers were individually turning out around two hundred sets of harness a day at from $13.50 to $35.00 per set wholesale. Padgitt Brothers Company kept a stock of five hundred saddles in its show rooms at all times. Dallas boasted in those boom years that more leather was cut there than any other town in the country. It was reported that enough leather was cut to bring in five million dollars annually to the industry. The typical scene in a general store in the Southwest was groceries on the right, clothing on the left, hardware to the rear, and Padgitt horse collars hanging from the rafters.
The Harness Herald, the leatherman's trade publication in 1909, referred to Clint Padgitt as the dean of the leather trade in America. It went on to say, "So potent is he as a force in the saddlery trade that his ability and influence is recognized all over the country."
That same year leather lost one of its strong men, for Clint Padgitt died on his sixtieth birthday. Jess Padgitt took over as President and General Manager. Like his older brother, he was an excellent business man, although even more conservative.
He once said, "As a young man I lost two dollars playing poker. I never played the game again, for I could see there was nothing in it for me."
Between 1914 and 1918 the harness and saddlery industry reached its peak in Dallas, where factories devoted their output to the needs of the military, the emphasis at the time being on harness for ambulances and gun carriages. When it fell the lot of Padgitt Brothers Company to turn out the government's medical pack saddle, Jess immediately sensed that the pack then in use was a clumsy and unnecessarily bunglesome affair. He designed an entirely new model, which was accepted by the government and named "The Texas Medical Pack Saddle." And Jess Padgitt produced them by the thousands during the war.
After World War I the output of automobiles and tractors increased and the advent of mass production in the saddle and harness business went into eclipse.
With the passing of Tom Padgitt in 1926 and with Jess closing the historic chapter of the leather trade in Texas at the age of 97, the story of the early day Texas saddle maker came to an end.
West Texas Historical Association Year Book
October, 1953
American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940 by Clint Padgitt
My grandfather was Captain Shapley P. Ross. In 1849 he built a cabin on the bank of the Brazos river near Waco Spring. He and other of the older members of the family told me as a boy of the things the people did in the pioneer days.
My grandfather was in bed with the measles about the year 1850, as well as I recall, when one day a band of Comanche Indians was seen coming to the house. My grandfather told my grandmother that the Indians would probably kill him and take her and the two little boys captives, and if they did, for her to take a cloth with her and tear pieces of it off and drop them [as?] they went along, and the settlers would find them and possibly find her. The chief came to the door and started in, but when he saw grandfather lying there in bed with the measles broken out on his face the Indian was afraid of him, and did not come in. He told grandmother that they wanted beef and watermelons, and to send the boys to show them where the beef and melons were. The boys went with the Indians, and their parents never expected to see them alive again, but they came back all right. The Indians took the meat and melons and went on without molesting the family any further. The Indians were superstitious about sick people and of course knew enough to know that what grandfather had they might get and spread it through the tribe.
About twenty-five years later grandfather was at the Dallas Fair, and saw a band of Indians which were there on exhibition. When he came to them, one of them spoke to him and told him that he remembered his as the sick man, that it was his band which had come to grandfather's house that day. The Indian told him that they admired the boys very much for their bravery in going with the Indians.
In the early Fifties my grandfather killed a Comanche Chief known as Bigfoot, who was one of the greatest chiefs of that tribe and the most powerful one at the time of his death. The story of the fight during which grandfather killed the chief is told in Wilbarger's Indian Depredations in Texas. About two years after the fight one evening when Placedore, a former chief of the [Tonkawa?] tribe, and who was a faithful friend of grandfathers; was sitting on the front porch a Comanche came to the house and said he wished to see Captain Ross. Placedore told him to leave, that Captain Ross did not wish to see him. The Comanche then said, "I am a brother of Bigfoot, who Captain Ross killed. My brother was a very great man, but Captain Ross killed him, and he is a greater man, then, than my brother. I wish to live with Captain Ross because he is a great man." Placedore again told him to leave, that they did not want him there. Captain Ross came up then. Placedore said not to allow the Comanche to stay, that he meant treachery and would probably kill the captain. The Comanche said he would prove that he would be faithful. He went to a mesquite tree growing in the yard and cut a thorn three or four inches long. He took a fold of his flesh over his stomach and thrust the thorn through it, then with his knife out off the ends of the thorn. Placedore and grandfather knew then that the Comanche would be faithful as that was the Indian way of proving loyalty. He was allowed to remain, and stayed with grandfather ten years. I do not now remember the Comanche's name. This occurred about the year 1855.
My mother, Kate Ross was supposed to be the first white girl born in Waco. My uncle, Robert S. Ross, was thought the first white child born in McLennan county. He was born under a tree on what is now the Price Standifer farm, before the cabin grandfather was building was completed.
I remember my mother telling me that when she was a little girl, in the early Fifties, great herds of buffalo would come to Waco, which was then only a village of scattered houses among fields of corn and other crops. The buffalo would come toward Waco from the north on their migration to the south, and would, if not turned, go right through the village and the fields and destroy all the crops. When the buffalo were seen coming the alarm would be given by shouting, "Here come the buffalo", and ringing a bell. Then all the people would stop what they were doing and go north of the town in their wagons and make a line of the wagons around the town. They would take guns, dishpans and anything else they could make a noise with, and turn the buffalo around the town and the crops. Then for a day or two the men would shoot what buffalo they wanted for their winter supply of meat.
There was a flat-bottomed steamboat called the "Katie Ross" after my mother, which ran up and down the Brazos from Waco carrying supplies to settlements along the river. This was about 1860. I don't remember who it was owned the steamboat.
Along during the Seventies men who were [fleet?] of foot would go from settlement to settlement and challenge anybody to a footrace, and those racers and the people of the settlements would bet on the races. One of these men was called Deerfoot, which was probably a nickname, as he was very fast and had beaten every man who ran against him. He and the men with him come to Waco and said they had $2,500 in gold which they would bet that Deerfoot could beat any man in Waco. The citizens made up a purse of $2,500, to bet on a man they considered could beat Deerfoot. All this money, $5,000, was piled on a blanket. The Waco man way outran Deerfoot. After that the man from Waco ran other races and always won.
There used to be a racetrack in the Seventies where Oakwood cemetery now stands. There are still in trees in and the cemetery rings which were used for tying horses. Lots of people now wonder what those rings were for. In 1875 there was a man wanted to make a record for the shortest time carrying mail twenty miles by riding around the racetrack. He wore out the horse he started with, then he used all his horses one after another, and then the people got so interested in seeing him make a record that they took their horses from their wagons and buggies and also let have their saddle horses to ride so he could break the record.
My grandfather was Captain Shapley P. Ross. In 1849 he built a cabin on the bank of the Brazos river near Waco Spring. He and other of the older members of the family told me as a boy of the things the people did in the pioneer days.
My grandfather was in bed with the measles about the year 1850, as well as I recall, when one day a band of Comanche Indians was seen coming to the house. My grandfather told my grandmother that the Indians would probably kill him and take her and the two little boys captives, and if they did, for her to take a cloth with her and tear pieces of it off and drop them [as?] they went along, and the settlers would find them and possibly find her. The chief came to the door and started in, but when he saw grandfather lying there in bed with the measles broken out on his face the Indian was afraid of him, and did not come in. He told grandmother that they wanted beef and watermelons, and to send the boys to show them where the beef and melons were. The boys went with the Indians, and their parents never expected to see them alive again, but they came back all right. The Indians took the meat and melons and went on without molesting the family any further. The Indians were superstitious about sick people and of course knew enough to know that what grandfather had they might get and spread it through the tribe.
About twenty-five years later grandfather was at the Dallas Fair, and saw a band of Indians which were there on exhibition. When he came to them, one of them spoke to him and told him that he remembered his as the sick man, that it was his band which had come to grandfather's house that day. The Indian told him that they admired the boys very much for their bravery in going with the Indians.
In the early Fifties my grandfather killed a Comanche Chief known as Bigfoot, who was one of the greatest chiefs of that tribe and the most powerful one at the time of his death. The story of the fight during which grandfather killed the chief is told in Wilbarger's Indian Depredations in Texas. About two years after the fight one evening when Placedore, a former chief of the [Tonkawa?] tribe, and who was a faithful friend of grandfathers; was sitting on the front porch a Comanche came to the house and said he wished to see Captain Ross. Placedore told him to leave, that Captain Ross did not wish to see him. The Comanche then said, "I am a brother of Bigfoot, who Captain Ross killed. My brother was a very great man, but Captain Ross killed him, and he is a greater man, then, than my brother. I wish to live with Captain Ross because he is a great man." Placedore again told him to leave, that they did not want him there. Captain Ross came up then. Placedore said not to allow the Comanche to stay, that he meant treachery and would probably kill the captain. The Comanche said he would prove that he would be faithful. He went to a mesquite tree growing in the yard and cut a thorn three or four inches long. He took a fold of his flesh over his stomach and thrust the thorn through it, then with his knife out off the ends of the thorn. Placedore and grandfather knew then that the Comanche would be faithful as that was the Indian way of proving loyalty. He was allowed to remain, and stayed with grandfather ten years. I do not now remember the Comanche's name. This occurred about the year 1855.
My mother, Kate Ross was supposed to be the first white girl born in Waco. My uncle, Robert S. Ross, was thought the first white child born in McLennan county. He was born under a tree on what is now the Price Standifer farm, before the cabin grandfather was building was completed.
I remember my mother telling me that when she was a little girl, in the early Fifties, great herds of buffalo would come to Waco, which was then only a village of scattered houses among fields of corn and other crops. The buffalo would come toward Waco from the north on their migration to the south, and would, if not turned, go right through the village and the fields and destroy all the crops. When the buffalo were seen coming the alarm would be given by shouting, "Here come the buffalo", and ringing a bell. Then all the people would stop what they were doing and go north of the town in their wagons and make a line of the wagons around the town. They would take guns, dishpans and anything else they could make a noise with, and turn the buffalo around the town and the crops. Then for a day or two the men would shoot what buffalo they wanted for their winter supply of meat.
There was a flat-bottomed steamboat called the "Katie Ross" after my mother, which ran up and down the Brazos from Waco carrying supplies to settlements along the river. This was about 1860. I don't remember who it was owned the steamboat.
Along during the Seventies men who were [fleet?] of foot would go from settlement to settlement and challenge anybody to a footrace, and those racers and the people of the settlements would bet on the races. One of these men was called Deerfoot, which was probably a nickname, as he was very fast and had beaten every man who ran against him. He and the men with him come to Waco and said they had $2,500 in gold which they would bet that Deerfoot could beat any man in Waco. The citizens made up a purse of $2,500, to bet on a man they considered could beat Deerfoot. All this money, $5,000, was piled on a blanket. The Waco man way outran Deerfoot. After that the man from Waco ran other races and always won.
There used to be a racetrack in the Seventies where Oakwood cemetery now stands. There are still in trees in and the cemetery rings which were used for tying horses. Lots of people now wonder what those rings were for. In 1875 there was a man wanted to make a record for the shortest time carrying mail twenty miles by riding around the racetrack. He wore out the horse he started with, then he used all his horses one after another, and then the people got so interested in seeing him make a record that they took their horses from their wagons and buggies and also let have their saddle horses to ride so he could break the record.
History of Central and Western Texas.
William H. Ross, a brother of the late Governor L. S. Ross, was born at Waco, Texas, in 1853, son of Shapley Prince and Catharine H. (Fulkerson) Ross.
Shapley Prince Ross was one of the notable pioneers of Texas. He was of Scotch descent and was born and reared in Kentucky. After spending some years on the northwestern frontier, he moved, in 1839, from Benton's Port, Iowa, to Texas, and first settled at old Washington, in Washington county, one of the capitals of Texas. Subsequently he went to Austin, where he entered the United States army, and was a soldier in the war with [Mexico. Previously to this, however, about 1840, he had moved his family to Milam county and established their home where Cameron now stands. He laid out the town of Waco and built the first house in Waco, which still stands. His daughter, Mrs. Kate Ross Padgitt, wife of Thomas Padgitt, was the first white child born there. Mr. Ross was identified with all the early warfare against the Indians in Texas, both as a soldier in the United States army and as a member of the Texas Rangers. In the latter he was associated with Rip Ford in service in northwestern Texas, and later was appointed Indian agent for the government at Fort Belknap. About 1859, resigning from this position, he returned to his home at Waco, where he spent the rest of his life. He died here, September 21, 1889. He was of the typical Scotch clansman build, over six feet high and well proportioned, and was strong both physically and mentally. Among his children, one son, Lawrence Sullivan Ross, deceased, figured prominently for many years and won high honor in Texas. Two sons and two daughters are still living, namely, the subject of this sketch and Robert S., of Waco, and Mrs. Thomas Padgitt, also of Waco, and Mrs. Margaret V. Harris, of Dallas. The latter and her sister Mary had a double wedding at Waco in 1849, and they were the first white women to be married in Waco.
William H. Ross was reared in Waco. As a boy he accompanied his father to Fort Belknap, which was in the heart of the bloodiest scenes enacted during the Indian wars in Texas, and had many experiences with the red men. In 1870 he went with a party, of which his brother, L. S. Ross, was a member, to California, and remained there for several years, during which time, while in Los Angeles, he learned the printer's trade. Returning to Texas, he opened a job office at Waco, and later conducted an evening paper, the Reporter. Subsequently he bought the Advance, combined the two, and for a short time issued the Daily Reporter-Advance.
He was burned out in 1876, after which he went to Young county and turned his attention to farming. To him belongs the distinction of having built the first cotton gin in Young county. In 1880 he became a traveling salesman, in the employ of the Padgitt firm of Waco, large wholesale dealers in harness and saddlery, and for twenty-four years in this capacity he covered the territory comprising Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. At last, wishing to leave the road, he moved his family to Fort Worth and established his permanent home in this city. That was in 1906. Here he has since been engaged in the real estate business as a member of the firm of Ross & Blanton. Mrs. Ross was formerly Miss Elizabeth Denison, of Waco, Texas. They have seven children, namely; Mrs. Gipson Williams, Misses Hallie and Margaret Ross, Mrs. Frances Ferris, William, Shapley and Josephine Ross.
Mr. Ross' brother, the late Lawrence Sullivan Ross, familiarly called "Sul" Ross, was one of the distinguished citizens of Texas. He was born at Benton's Port, Iowa, in 1838, and was quite small when his parents came to this state. He was educated in Baylor University at Waco and in Weslevan University at Florence, Alabama. In 1858 he returned from the latter institution, being prompted by a desire to take part in the conflict against the Indians, who were then becoming very hostile in northwestern Texas. He assembled a company of one hundred and twenty-five men and hastened to the support of Major Van Dorn, who was leading the Second United States Cavalry against the Comanches; and, with Van Dorn, played a prominent part in the battle of Wichita, in which both he and Van Dorn were wounded. After his recovery young Ross went back to Florence and resumed his studies in the university, and graduated in 1859. Returning home and still anxious to fight, he joined the Texas Rangers. He was elected captain, and in 1860.
With a company of sixty rangers, in an action at the head of Pease river, he severely defeated the Comanches, killing Peta Nocona, the last of the great Comanche chiefs, and capturing all the effects of the red men, including a captive white woman, Cynthia Ann Parker (mother of Quanah Parker), who had been stolen by the Comanches in 1836 and had become the wife of an Indian chief. This woman was restored to civilization. For his achievement in this engagement he was by Governor Houston made aide-de-camp, with the rank of colonel.
In 1861 he entered the Confederate service as a private in Company G, Sixth Texas Cavalry, his company being commanded by his brother, Captain (later Colonel) P. F. Ross. Soon afterward Sullivan Ross was made a major in this regiment, and in May, 1862, was elected its colonel.
Following... distinguished services in turning back, while at the head of... a thousand men, a force of over ten thousand Union soldiers on a raid just after the battle of Corinth, Mississippi, Colonel Ross was, on October 3, 1863, on the recommendation of General Joseph E. Johnston, made a brigadier-general, in which capacity he served till the close of the war.
In 1875 General Ross was elected sheriff of McLennan county, Texas, and was a member of the Texas Constitutional Convention which was held that year. He was a member of the state senate from 1881 to 1883, and in 1886 was elected governor. To this high office he was re-elected in 1888, and early in 1891, on retiring from the governor's chair, he was made president of the A. and M. College, he being the first to occupy that position, which he held until the time of his death. He married Elizabeth D. Tinsley, of Waco, and they became the parents of seven children: Mervin (deceased), Florine, Lawrence S., Harvey R., Frank, Bessie and Neville.
Early Day Coleman
At Camp Colorado ninety years ago my grandfather, Colonel William H. Day, enlisted in Company B, 1st Texas Mounted Riflemen, Confederate Army. Eleven years ago I followed in his footsteps by marching away to war with an infantry company made up one hundred per cent of Coleman County volunteers. And like my grandfather, after the war I returned to Coleman to spend the rest of my days.
Last fall the City of Coleman celebrated its Diamond Anniversary and seventy-five years ago some of those present at the celebration had witnessed the establishment of the county seat in Coleman. Mrs. Mary Wood, George McNamara, Mrs. Emily Minix, A. T. Scroggins, John Jones and possibly one or two others present could have told you first hand what Coleman City looked like in 1876. It must have been a sad looking sight from the open flaps of their tents pitched along Hords Creek from where they could see a few rawhide lumber buildings being thrown up to outline the beginning of Main Street.
The father of Coleman was Col. R. J. Clow, who gave the county 160 acres of his headright as a location for the county seat. This grant of land had been given him in recognition for his services as a soldier in the Texas Revolution and as a prisoner of war in the black dungeons of Perote Prison near Mexico City, where he and several hundred other Texas soldiers, including his brother-in-law, Samuel A. Maverick, were incarcerated during the war.
Coleman was at first an embryo town, but it was soon to assume a place of importance, because it was on the Western Trail—the greatest cattle trail of all times that ran from Matamoros, Mexico to Dodge City, Kansas. There wasn't a strand of barbed wire in the State of Texas and nothing but wide open range between Coleman and the North Pole. There was, of course, a store at Trickham, a settlement around the abandoned fort at Camp Colorado, possibly a cabin or two at Santa Anna Mountain and a few scattered cow camps and nesters. But Coleman quickly mushroomed as a trail town. Up and down both sides of its hundred-foot-wide streets were its business houses, including a buffalo hide house, all sandwiched between a dozen saloons and gambling halls. Upstairs over a saloon at the present J. C. Penney location was a sort of dance hall, from which could be heard fiddle music and of course laughter of men and women at any hour of the day or night when trail outfits were passing through And I have been told that at times in the spring of the year the dust of twelve trail herds advancing on Coleman could be counted at one time from a point of vantage on the hill west of town.
Two years after the establishment of Coleman City the state of Texas placed the public school lands on the market for sale. Prior to this time large and small fortunes were made on the free grass of the open range, cattle being the only industry on the Texas Frontier. Senator Terrell made a forceful example of this in a speech before the Texas Senate in January, 1884. He was referring to one time Coleman County rancher. He said, "J. L. Driskill of Austin, owner of eight hundred cattle in 1873, but no land, estimated his wealth in 1884 to be $800,000 all produced on free grass of the state of Texas for which he paid no taxes. And Mr. Driskill is only one of many who made such remarkable fortunes on free range grass."
With the public lands being introduced for sale, a new economic period was soon to sweep Coleman County. Col. Day was the first local ranchman to buy and fence his land, because in 1878 he purchased a large tract in the southwest part of the county and the following year began fencing thousands of acres of his newly acquired lands. Others were soon to follow his example and a map of Coleman County published in 1883 shows at least 14 large ranches to have been bought and fenced in Coleman County. They were owned by S. O. Cotton & Brothers, J. D. Davidson, C. A. Childs, Bowen, McCord and Lindsey, R. H. Bowen, R. H. Overall, Cushenberry, G. W. Mahoney, Adam T. Brown, R. H. Starkweather, L. L. Shield, J. L. Vaughn, and W. H. Day.
In order to inject a flavor of the times I would like to read to you a letter written by a young Coleman County bride in 1879: [Written by Mrs. Mabel Day, the author's grandmother.—The Editor.]
"My Husband,
"Col. Day is building a fence around his pasture, which when done will contain forty thousand acres of land. It is a beautiful country, rolling prairie, covered with good grass, interspersed with timber, through which are beautiful little streams of running water and cool springs.
"We have a good stone house with four rooms and a front porch, a smoke house full of hams, breakfast bacon, flour meal, dried apples, beans, golden and maple syrup by the barrel, splendid pickles, canned corn, tomatoes, grapes, blackberries, strawberries, sugar, coffee and catsup. I believe that is all we have to eat except cheese and maple sugar, which I keep in my room for my own use. Col. Day shipped his provisions from Austin, one of the nearest railroad points. We get a nice mutton or goat every once in a while or a hind quarter of beef. Then the boys bring in a deer occasionally and every evening some quail or a turkey—have plenty of wild game.
"I have but one neighbor, Mrs. Gatlin, who lives seven miles from me. She spent the day with me day before yesterday. She is a splendid woman; has lived here but two years. I wish you could see her house. It is made of poles stuck straight up and down covered with boards. That is a paradise compared to the other houses in this country, most of which are dug outs. All these people who live here are good hearted, but wholly uneducated. Col. Day got me a guitar to bring with me instead of a piano and they call it a music box and think it very large. What would they think, could they see a piano?
"There are deer, antelope, a few panthers, plenty of snakes, centipedes, tarantulas, wolves, prairie dogs, and polecats out here, so, you see, if I get up a music class out here they will have to be my pupils.
"Col. Day and I are going to Coleman City tomorrow, which is thirty miles north of the ranch, so I stayed home today to write my letters. Here comes a wagon. Who can it be? Well, what do you think! Old. Mr. Cresswell, the only man for forty miles who has a garden and he has a good one, he has brought over twenty-five watermelons, a sack of string beans, and some nice fresh tomatoes with his compliments to the 'Old Boss' and his boys. Ha, Ha, he forgot me, but that is all O.K. I'll just quit my letter a moment and try one of these melons all the same.
"I'll have to send these melons to the boys. They camp where they are at work, as it is so far to come home. It is eleven miles from the house to the far side of the pasture.
"Do you wonder I weigh one hundred forty-five pounds? I wish you were here with me. I'll venture you'll never complain again. What do you say, Myrt? Come out and ranch it a while. I'd dance on my head to see you coming. Come to Ft. Worth on the cars, then stage to Brownwood, and I'll meet you there with our "traveling she-bang". Col. Day got it in St. Louis. It is nice, cost $373.00, has three seats in it. They can be let down and a bed fixed in it like a sleeping car. We can cook and eat in it, if the weather is raining.
"Can't you come? Let me hear from you, if you will allow me to still be your friend, and I'll promise to do better in the future. Address me at Trap Post Office, Rich Coffee, Texas. It is a little town at the Trap Crossing on the ranch."
By 1883 the T. & P. Railroad had built as far west as Baird, Texas, which then became the shipping point for Coleman County. Prior to that time all freight was hauled overland in wagons from such points as Ft. Worth, Round Rock or Austin. On the reverse side of most of the material recently wrecked from the court house erected in 1884 is written in bold hand writing—William Cameron and Company, Baird, Texas.
And by 1883 the introduction of barbed wire and its growing acceptance marked the beginning of an economic change that the Texas frontiersman found hard to digest. There was a resentment against fencing the open range from the beginning. And numerous attempts were made to have the state legislature declare the erection of the barbed wire fence illegal. Then came the fence-cutting epidemic. [See James T. Padgitt, "Mrs. Mable Day and the Fence Cutters." Year Book, 1950, pp. 51 ff.—The Editor.] In January, 1884, the legislature in special session passed a common sense law which assessed a penalty of from one to five years imprisonment for cutting a fence. And when the lawless fence cutter realized he had something more than a few individual ranchmen to contend with, the Fence Cutting War of 1883 came to an end quickly, leaving Coleman County's fences cut between every post.
With the coming of the barbed wire fence, the offering for sale of the public school lands, a cattle boom in the early eighties, and the inflow of capital following the heels of an aggressive railroad building program which reached Coleman County in 1886, there was a touch off of a tremendous speculation in Texas lands. Hundreds of people moved into Coleman County and towns sprung up along the railroad such as Talpa and Valera. Santa Anna, which had been established before the coming of the railroad quickly grew to be a town of wide county importance in its own right.
For the next ten or fifteen years, however, Coleman County remained strictly a ranching country cut up into relatively large pastures. During this period the county was passing into private ownership and being fenced up.
It was not until after 1900 that we witness another economic change. At that time the county went into a colonization period in which the large ranches were gradually broken up and sold out in small farm homesteads. During this period train loads of emigrants came into Coleman County to purchase farm homes and grow cotton. It was during this period that the small county towns such as Burkett, Echo, Novice, Glen Cove, Voss, Leeday, Gouldbusk, and other villages came into being.
It was not until the depression of 1932 that the county witnessed another violent change, with hundreds of farm families quitting the farm and moving to town. The County then became converted into one vast stock farming area in which by diversification rural Coleman County has become established on the soundest economic footing it has experienced in its entire history.
Coleman is a great county among this family of counties in our State, because the life blood and honest sweat of thousands of our forbearers has gone into it to make it so.
[From a paper read on the occasion of the celebration of the Coleman County Diamond Jubilee.]
West Texas Historical Association Year Book
October, 1952
At Camp Colorado ninety years ago my grandfather, Colonel William H. Day, enlisted in Company B, 1st Texas Mounted Riflemen, Confederate Army. Eleven years ago I followed in his footsteps by marching away to war with an infantry company made up one hundred per cent of Coleman County volunteers. And like my grandfather, after the war I returned to Coleman to spend the rest of my days.
Last fall the City of Coleman celebrated its Diamond Anniversary and seventy-five years ago some of those present at the celebration had witnessed the establishment of the county seat in Coleman. Mrs. Mary Wood, George McNamara, Mrs. Emily Minix, A. T. Scroggins, John Jones and possibly one or two others present could have told you first hand what Coleman City looked like in 1876. It must have been a sad looking sight from the open flaps of their tents pitched along Hords Creek from where they could see a few rawhide lumber buildings being thrown up to outline the beginning of Main Street.
The father of Coleman was Col. R. J. Clow, who gave the county 160 acres of his headright as a location for the county seat. This grant of land had been given him in recognition for his services as a soldier in the Texas Revolution and as a prisoner of war in the black dungeons of Perote Prison near Mexico City, where he and several hundred other Texas soldiers, including his brother-in-law, Samuel A. Maverick, were incarcerated during the war.
Coleman was at first an embryo town, but it was soon to assume a place of importance, because it was on the Western Trail—the greatest cattle trail of all times that ran from Matamoros, Mexico to Dodge City, Kansas. There wasn't a strand of barbed wire in the State of Texas and nothing but wide open range between Coleman and the North Pole. There was, of course, a store at Trickham, a settlement around the abandoned fort at Camp Colorado, possibly a cabin or two at Santa Anna Mountain and a few scattered cow camps and nesters. But Coleman quickly mushroomed as a trail town. Up and down both sides of its hundred-foot-wide streets were its business houses, including a buffalo hide house, all sandwiched between a dozen saloons and gambling halls. Upstairs over a saloon at the present J. C. Penney location was a sort of dance hall, from which could be heard fiddle music and of course laughter of men and women at any hour of the day or night when trail outfits were passing through And I have been told that at times in the spring of the year the dust of twelve trail herds advancing on Coleman could be counted at one time from a point of vantage on the hill west of town.
Two years after the establishment of Coleman City the state of Texas placed the public school lands on the market for sale. Prior to this time large and small fortunes were made on the free grass of the open range, cattle being the only industry on the Texas Frontier. Senator Terrell made a forceful example of this in a speech before the Texas Senate in January, 1884. He was referring to one time Coleman County rancher. He said, "J. L. Driskill of Austin, owner of eight hundred cattle in 1873, but no land, estimated his wealth in 1884 to be $800,000 all produced on free grass of the state of Texas for which he paid no taxes. And Mr. Driskill is only one of many who made such remarkable fortunes on free range grass."
With the public lands being introduced for sale, a new economic period was soon to sweep Coleman County. Col. Day was the first local ranchman to buy and fence his land, because in 1878 he purchased a large tract in the southwest part of the county and the following year began fencing thousands of acres of his newly acquired lands. Others were soon to follow his example and a map of Coleman County published in 1883 shows at least 14 large ranches to have been bought and fenced in Coleman County. They were owned by S. O. Cotton & Brothers, J. D. Davidson, C. A. Childs, Bowen, McCord and Lindsey, R. H. Bowen, R. H. Overall, Cushenberry, G. W. Mahoney, Adam T. Brown, R. H. Starkweather, L. L. Shield, J. L. Vaughn, and W. H. Day.
In order to inject a flavor of the times I would like to read to you a letter written by a young Coleman County bride in 1879: [Written by Mrs. Mabel Day, the author's grandmother.—The Editor.]
"My Husband,
"Col. Day is building a fence around his pasture, which when done will contain forty thousand acres of land. It is a beautiful country, rolling prairie, covered with good grass, interspersed with timber, through which are beautiful little streams of running water and cool springs.
"We have a good stone house with four rooms and a front porch, a smoke house full of hams, breakfast bacon, flour meal, dried apples, beans, golden and maple syrup by the barrel, splendid pickles, canned corn, tomatoes, grapes, blackberries, strawberries, sugar, coffee and catsup. I believe that is all we have to eat except cheese and maple sugar, which I keep in my room for my own use. Col. Day shipped his provisions from Austin, one of the nearest railroad points. We get a nice mutton or goat every once in a while or a hind quarter of beef. Then the boys bring in a deer occasionally and every evening some quail or a turkey—have plenty of wild game.
"I have but one neighbor, Mrs. Gatlin, who lives seven miles from me. She spent the day with me day before yesterday. She is a splendid woman; has lived here but two years. I wish you could see her house. It is made of poles stuck straight up and down covered with boards. That is a paradise compared to the other houses in this country, most of which are dug outs. All these people who live here are good hearted, but wholly uneducated. Col. Day got me a guitar to bring with me instead of a piano and they call it a music box and think it very large. What would they think, could they see a piano?
"There are deer, antelope, a few panthers, plenty of snakes, centipedes, tarantulas, wolves, prairie dogs, and polecats out here, so, you see, if I get up a music class out here they will have to be my pupils.
"Col. Day and I are going to Coleman City tomorrow, which is thirty miles north of the ranch, so I stayed home today to write my letters. Here comes a wagon. Who can it be? Well, what do you think! Old. Mr. Cresswell, the only man for forty miles who has a garden and he has a good one, he has brought over twenty-five watermelons, a sack of string beans, and some nice fresh tomatoes with his compliments to the 'Old Boss' and his boys. Ha, Ha, he forgot me, but that is all O.K. I'll just quit my letter a moment and try one of these melons all the same.
"I'll have to send these melons to the boys. They camp where they are at work, as it is so far to come home. It is eleven miles from the house to the far side of the pasture.
"Do you wonder I weigh one hundred forty-five pounds? I wish you were here with me. I'll venture you'll never complain again. What do you say, Myrt? Come out and ranch it a while. I'd dance on my head to see you coming. Come to Ft. Worth on the cars, then stage to Brownwood, and I'll meet you there with our "traveling she-bang". Col. Day got it in St. Louis. It is nice, cost $373.00, has three seats in it. They can be let down and a bed fixed in it like a sleeping car. We can cook and eat in it, if the weather is raining.
"Can't you come? Let me hear from you, if you will allow me to still be your friend, and I'll promise to do better in the future. Address me at Trap Post Office, Rich Coffee, Texas. It is a little town at the Trap Crossing on the ranch."
By 1883 the T. & P. Railroad had built as far west as Baird, Texas, which then became the shipping point for Coleman County. Prior to that time all freight was hauled overland in wagons from such points as Ft. Worth, Round Rock or Austin. On the reverse side of most of the material recently wrecked from the court house erected in 1884 is written in bold hand writing—William Cameron and Company, Baird, Texas.
And by 1883 the introduction of barbed wire and its growing acceptance marked the beginning of an economic change that the Texas frontiersman found hard to digest. There was a resentment against fencing the open range from the beginning. And numerous attempts were made to have the state legislature declare the erection of the barbed wire fence illegal. Then came the fence-cutting epidemic. [See James T. Padgitt, "Mrs. Mable Day and the Fence Cutters." Year Book, 1950, pp. 51 ff.—The Editor.] In January, 1884, the legislature in special session passed a common sense law which assessed a penalty of from one to five years imprisonment for cutting a fence. And when the lawless fence cutter realized he had something more than a few individual ranchmen to contend with, the Fence Cutting War of 1883 came to an end quickly, leaving Coleman County's fences cut between every post.
With the coming of the barbed wire fence, the offering for sale of the public school lands, a cattle boom in the early eighties, and the inflow of capital following the heels of an aggressive railroad building program which reached Coleman County in 1886, there was a touch off of a tremendous speculation in Texas lands. Hundreds of people moved into Coleman County and towns sprung up along the railroad such as Talpa and Valera. Santa Anna, which had been established before the coming of the railroad quickly grew to be a town of wide county importance in its own right.
For the next ten or fifteen years, however, Coleman County remained strictly a ranching country cut up into relatively large pastures. During this period the county was passing into private ownership and being fenced up.
It was not until after 1900 that we witness another economic change. At that time the county went into a colonization period in which the large ranches were gradually broken up and sold out in small farm homesteads. During this period train loads of emigrants came into Coleman County to purchase farm homes and grow cotton. It was during this period that the small county towns such as Burkett, Echo, Novice, Glen Cove, Voss, Leeday, Gouldbusk, and other villages came into being.
It was not until the depression of 1932 that the county witnessed another violent change, with hundreds of farm families quitting the farm and moving to town. The County then became converted into one vast stock farming area in which by diversification rural Coleman County has become established on the soundest economic footing it has experienced in its entire history.
Coleman is a great county among this family of counties in our State, because the life blood and honest sweat of thousands of our forbearers has gone into it to make it so.
[From a paper read on the occasion of the celebration of the Coleman County Diamond Jubilee.]
West Texas Historical Association Year Book
October, 1952
Captain Joseph C. Lea, the Father of Roswell
Captain Joseph Calloway Lea, known throughout New Mexico as the father of Roswell, had a most interesting life.
He was born in Cleveland, Tennessee, on November 8, 1841. His father, Dr. Pleasant John Graves Lea, was also a native of Tennessee, of Virginia ancestry. The Captain's mother, Lucinda Calloway Lea, was from the North and of Yankee background. The Leas are descendants of one of three brothers who came from England to America in the early days. The orthography of the name was changed, one branch using the spelling Leigh another Lee, and the one from which the Captain is descended, Lea.
In 1847 Dr. Lea moved with his wife, seven children and slaves to Jackson County, Missouri, where he became the owner of a fine farm, containing about 1000 acres. He was one of the first settlers to make his home on the Kansas border on the high land back from the unhealthful Missouri River. There he farmed and practiced medicine. The town of Lee's Summit was named for him, but in later years the Missouri Pacific Railroad twisted the name and the spelling was never corrected.
Joe Lea, the one we are discussing, attended the neighborhood school, with his four brothers and two sisters and his three cousins, Cole, Bob and Jim Younger, who lived on an adjoining farm. Joe Lea had finished the common school course before he and his brothers, Tom, Frank and Alf, went across the plains to Colorado, in 1860.
On this trip he was in charge of a large train of freight wagons. It was quite a trying experience for a young man of nineteen, as it was his first business venture and the Indians were numerous along the route. In Colorado he engaged in freighting, lumbering and prospecting. His life was not at all monotonous, for the many Arapahoes and Cheyennes in that country seemed to take a great interest in prospectors and miners. While in that country he visited Denver and Boulder, which were then mere shanty towns. Finally he settled on a ranch, where he remained until he was called home because of the death of his father, in the spring of 1862.
During Joe Lea's two years absence from home, old factional animosities between the abolitionists of Kansas and the slave holders in Missouri had burst into a bloody sectional border war. Jayhawkers and Redlegs from Jim Lane's army of Lawrence, Kansas, viciously attacked the settlements in western Missouri, raiding and looting, carrying off negroes and stock, burning farm homes, and even hanging and killing old men. With the Missourians retaliating in kind, conditions around Lee's Summit had so deteriorated that Mrs. Lea and her two daughters had long since left Missouri for the safety of her parent's home in the North.
Dr. Lea's life then became almost intolerable. Until the Civil War had cleft Missouri into two factions, Dr. Lea, a prominent physician of the community, was held in high esteem by all. The fact that Mrs. Lea was a Yankee made him suspect among the Southern sympathizers of that section, and because of his birth and being a slave holder he was Southern to all others.
On night, in the spring of 1862, a band of Kansas Redlegs appeared at his front gate, ostensibly to ask road directions. They called for him to come out; and as he stepped through the door, they shot him down without provocation, killed the only slave remaining on the place, and left the house in flames, after looting all the furniture.
In spite of what they found on their return from Colorado, Frank and Joe Lea, who were then eighteen and twenty years respectively, hoped to remain neutral. But it was impossible to do so, because the Northern sympathizers in that part of the country regarded them as Rebels.
One day, as the two Lea boys were gathering corn in their father's field, a squad of Kansas border soldiers came along and arrested them. The next day they found themselves being lined up with eighteen others before a firing squad. They recognized the officer in charge as a boyhood friend. When he stepped in front of them he whispered, "You both duck and run like hell." In the confusion that followed, the Lea boys escaped.
They soon found refuge in Quantrill's guerilla band. There they were welcomed by many neighborhood friends, including John Jarrette, Frank James and their three cousins, Cole, Bob and Jim Younger. They had all seen homes burned and close kin murdered by outlaw bands of Kansas Jayhawkers.
Soon, Joe Lea's every passion became subservient to that of revenge. He quickly completed the school of the bushwhacker and evolved a seasoned guerilla fighter; and under Quantrill, the greatest of all guerilla chieftains, he became a fearless leader of bushmen. He possessed extraordinary resources and cunning. From Quantrill he learned to count the cost of everything, figure the odds, retreat often rather than fight and be worsted, but always to strike back with fury, fight desparately and kill everything.
In 1863 Quantrill with 448 men retaliated against excesses committed by the Kansas forces by burning 185 buildings and killing 140 people of Lawrence, Kansas. Because 6000 Federal Troops were hot on his trail, he disbanded his guerillas for the winter and retired behind the Confederate lines into Louisiana, with 150 of his men.
General Kirby Smith, commanding the Rebel army in Louisiana, soon notified the guerilla band that they could not join his army, nor would they be allowed to remain in Louisiana. Quantrill withdrew into Texas and set up winter camp on Mineral Creek, some fifteen miles northwest of the town of Sherman. At this camp dissension arose and the disintegration of the guerilla band began.
The headquarters of the Louisiana state government was then at Shreveport and Henry W. Allen was the chief executive. He heard of Kirby Smith's refusal to allow the men of Quantrill's command to become soldiers in the regular army or remain in the state and he sent for them himself and requested they join the state scouting service and be under his immediate control. Quantrill declined the invitation, but a number of his followers, among them John Jarette, Frank and Jesse James and the Younger Brothers, accepted the offer of Governor Allen. This group elected as their captain one of their number, Joseph C. Lea.
Captain Lea was a young man as desperate as any. He knew nothing of fear and had been in many a close encounter on the Kansas border. He was a powerful man, well over six feet tall, built from the ground up, had a wild dashing air that always distinguished him in any company, and had a face altogether more pleasing than disagreeable.
The place of rendezvous for this company of state scouts was Carroll Parish, about twenty-five miles from the Mississippi River, directly across from Vicksburg. Before the war this country had been in a high state of cultivation, but the neglect of the rive levees had made it subject to inundations. For many miles in every direction much of the land was covered with water a great portion of the year. A good class of people lived there. Many of them had been wealthy planters and the owners of a large number of slaves. It was one of the richest portions of the state, being in the center of the great cotton belt of the South.
Captain Lea and his followers had no trouble finding friends and abettors, and that too, among the most respectable people of the community. There were two little towns in the parish, Floyd and Delhi. At these two hamlets and in their vicinity the guerillas made their homes. They came and went without let or hindrance, and were always full of money. Joe Lea, Frank and Jesse James and John Jarrett stopped with a planter named Dickson. He, above all others of the parish, was confidential friend of the guerillas.
They were all active, well built men, of that dashing, reckless air that captures the hearts of women. They kept the community in a state of perpetual excitement and enthusiasm. They made sad havoc among wives and maidens. While Lea's men were resting between forays, it was one round of revelry. Every night there was a party or ball at the house of some planter. The guerillas were the lions of all these occasions. They sported the most gaudy dress, flourished the finest pistols and rode the finest horses. They were the only heroes the people there could have with them. To the negroes they were a terror. In fact, they were supreme in the mastery of Carroll Parish.
As was the fashion with the Missouri guerillas, they dressed in Federal uniforms whenever they were on one of their frequent raids behind the enemy lines. By waylaying Federal supply trains and couriers servicing front line troops, they kept the lines of communication and supply in a constant state of fear and turmoil. The Yankees could not tell friend from foe, and thus disguised Lea and his raiders decoyed hundreds of Yankee soldiers into the jaws of death. They would completely wipe out the enemy, taking his money and horses. They kept on hand at all times a large supply of government mules, harness, wagons and various sorts of military supplies. There was no quarter given and certain death if captured.
Captain Lea was well known to the Union army operating in Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee, and was the subject of frequent Federal dispatches between the General Headquarters of New Orleans and Memphis.
The first message to be found of record was dispatched to General Davis who was then occupying Morgan's Ferry, Louisiana.
That following day General Lawler sent a similar message to General Headquarters at New Orleans warning that Captain Lea might strike the river lower down.
But Lea, who possessed the same extraordinary resources and cunning of his former leader, did not turn up where the enemy most suspected. He had learned to travel a multitude of long roads rather than a short one once too often. He was next reported across the Mississippi River deep behind the enemy lines northeast of Vicksburg.
On this foray, Lea no doubt troubled the Federal commissary and made himself felt in other ways, because on December 21st Major General E. R. S. Camby, commanding at New Orleans, sent a somewhat urgent request to Major General N. J. T. Dana, at Memphis, Tennessee:
General Dana, commanding the Department of Mississippi with headquarters at Memphis, replied on December 28th.
It is hard to say whether General Dana carried out his expedition against Lea, but if he was supplied with the required cavalry it may well be assumed that he did. If he did attempt the expedition, it did no good, because Lea, who was accustomed to being driven from the flanks of one column, only to appear in the rear of another was still in the field for two months after General Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox on April 9, 1865.
Captain Lea's value as a fearless field commander was finally recognized by General Kirby Smith who gave him a battlefield promotion to full colonel in the Confederate Army in the early months of 1854. But to those who accompanied him on numbers of gallant charges and to his close and personal friends, he was always known affectionately as Captain Lea.
While the clouds of war were hovering over the remnants of the Confederacy, still holding out in Louisiana and Texas, General Shelby and General Kirby Smith asked Lea to go with them and make a union with Maximilian in Mexico.
But Captain Lea, who had suffered all manner of hardships, had been tried in the most trying places, and who had not cared much whether he lived or died, had seen all he wanted of war. Unlike some of his contemporaries who had learned to live on plunder, he took off his side arms, and was never again known to wear a gun. Thomas Calloway, a Yankee uncle, soon interceded for Captain Lea, through his personal friendship with President Andrew Johnson and secured for the Captain a full pardon for his part in the rebellion. And from that moment on he dedicated his life to the support of law and order and good will toward his fellow man.
Lea soon left Louisiana for Georgia where he obtained a quarter interest in the contract to rebuild the Georgia and Central Railroad, which had been destroyed by Sherman on his march to the sea. In 1867 he married Mrs. Douglas Burbridge, but her death some four years later left him a widower. He became engaged in cotton planting in Mississippi and in 1875 he married the daughter of Major W. W. Wildy of Yazoo County. Soon thereafter they moved to Colfax County, New Mexico, where Lea went into the sheep and cattle business and a son, Wildy, was born.
In the fall of 1877, Captain Lea with his family and entourage, consisting of employees and sheep and cattle, drifted his flocks into the Pecos Valley, and by the following year he had acquired the two adobe buildings and several hundred acres of land that comprised the town of Roswell, Lincoln County, New Mexico. Lincoln County was the largest, most isolated and wildest county in the United States in 1877.
Although the arrival of Captain Lea happened to fall just a few days before the killing of John H. Turnstall that triggered the Lincoln County War, in which Billy The Kid figured so prominently, he refused from the start to be drawn into the feud. He is said to have announced to both groups of belligerents that when he felt like doing any fighting, he would do it on his own hook—in the meanwhile they could settle their difficulties to suit themselves. Such a positive declaration enabled him to preserve neutrality throughout the months of confusion and excitement of the Lincoln County War.
Captain Lea was not content with the feuding and fighting that was going on in the Lincoln section of the county and he did what he could to end the strife. He realized that if the feud was not checked and order restored Lincoln County could never be developed. The prospects had been dismaying, but he was of the stuff that sticks it out no matter what the difficulties. It did not daunt him that John Chisum, who had been the mainstay of the Pecos Valley in a business way, had determined to leave for a more peaceful location. Captain Lea's mind was fully made up to develop Roswell, his privately owned community, into what might be an example of law and order to the surrounding country, which had an utter disregard for law or life. With the withdrawal of Chisum, he naturally assumed the position of leadership.
He sent for Billy the Kid, the most notorious outlaw of the region, and said to him in no uncertain terms, "Bonney, if I ever catch you here in Roswell cutting up any of your capers, I'll take my Winchester and fill you full of holes." Billy the Kid laughed and replied, "All right Cap'in, I'll sure leave this place alone. I promise you I won't cut up any capers in your Roswell." And the Kid kept his word.
Shortly thereafter a drunken cowboy knifed a man in front of Captain Lea's store. He was promptly arrested and brought before a Justice of the Peace, who fined him $2.50.
This is the first instance of record of law being enforced in the Pecos Valley.
During the late summer and early fall of 1878, Lincoln County was in an even more desperate plight, than when the Lincoln County War was in its most active state. Where there had been two factions, each with some claim to acting in behalf of law and order, now appeared several aggregations of outlaws and desperate characters, roaming at will over the country and making no pretense to motives other than a selfish greed and a desire to fatten off the spoils. The Mexican communities especially suffered at the hands of these terrorizers. The result was that the entire country became panic stricken.
Whether it was Captain Lea's reputation that he had tried to leave behind the Yankee lines, or his warm and friendly smile that was backed up by steel gray eyes that a gunman couldn't face, the many outlaw gangs that had assumed command of southeastern New Mexico left Lea and his town strictly alone.
The outlaws and professional rustlers, however, were in full charge of the country, even to the outskirts of the Captain's little cowtown village. They were driving off sizeable bunches of cattle, holding up the stage from Las Vegas and robbing the United States mail. Even Captain Lea had been held up in his buckboard and had his Winchester taken from him.
Captain Lea, however, was determined to see this thing out. He was an ambitious man with unlimited vision. To Lea it was clear that the day was coming when Roswell would be a booming railroad town and fortunes would be made there by men of courage and imagination. The pictures that he tried to paint were hard to visualize, because, first, there must be some semblance of peace and order.
It was Captain Lea's inducement that brought Pat Garrett into Lincoln County and got him to take up valuable land near Roswell. This made it possible for the Roswell section to furnish the county with a useful and successful candidate for the office of sheriff. During his term of office, Pat Garett and his deputy, John W. Poe, who succeeded him in office, shot and killed Billy the Kid and killed, captured, or ran out of Lincoln County the backbone of the lawless element.
Captain Lea's character and reputation throughout Lincoln County had made for him a host of friends. Lea, now a county commissioner, an influential merchant at Roswell and a successful cattleman, had become practically the new boss of the county. Leaving his store in the hands of Ash Upson, the postmaster at Roswell, he spent much of his time locating water rights and expanding his cattle business.
With the coming of the big cattle boom of the early Eighties, Lea interested H. K. Thurber in joining him in carving out a cattle empire in New Mexico. Thurber, a wealthy New York wholesale grocer, steamship owner, and owner of the Thurber-Arbuckle Coffee Company, was a man of seemingly unlimited means. Together they organized the Lea Cattle Company, in which Mr. Thurber invested $500,000 in cattle and put up $250,000 to secure further lands with water rights. Under the management of Captain Lea they were running between thirty and fifty thousand cattle west of the Pecos to include the Captain Mountains and many miles to the west.
On a cattle buying trip to Texas in 1885, Captain Lea became fascinated with a young widow, who was known throughout that state as the Cattle Queen of Texas. Mrs. Mabel Day was the only unattached woman in the entire state who ran cattle on a large spread and could talk the language of cattle kings. She owned and operated the largest ranch ever to be put under fence in Coleman County.
Captain Lea pressed his case for four years and finally in 1889 they were married. Mrs. Mabel Day Lea left her ranch in charge of her brother, Will Doss, and with her nine year old daughter, Willie Day, moved to Roswell.
Mrs. Lea arrived in Lincoln County at a point which might be considered the beginning of the colonization period of the Pecos Valley. Roswell was still nothing but a cow trail with six houses on what was called main street, with about six more scattered about the prairie, with nothing but trails connecting.
However, things were beginning to develop in the Pecos Valley. Lincoln County was still the largest and most isolated county in the United States. It was over 200 miles from corner to corner and still contained some of the wildest of the west. But the railroad, which had reached Pecos and El Paso, was building from the former city toward Roswell. Some of the Captain's dreams had begun to materialize. Charles Eddy, man of nerve and imagination, the type that Captain Lea had spoken of, had thrown up a tent city, to be later known as Carlsbad, in the path of the oncoming railroad. He was strictly an idea man, an incurable promoter, who for the next twenty years was to be identified with men willing to pour millions of risk capital into his many irrigation, mining and railroad schemes, which eventually were to make him a millionaire.
Charles Eddy had a great respect and admiration for Captain Lea. He confided in a letter to Mrs. Lea before her marriage:
When the Leas arrived in Roswell, horse drawn graders were marking off the streets surveyed out by the Captain's brother, Alfred E. Lea, who was the founder of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Nothing else had happened in Roswell, but things were at a turning point.
In Bancroft's History of New Mexico, published in 1889, the only reference to Roswell was: "Roswell is regarded as the prospective site of an important agricultural center." The magic through which this might be accomplished seemed to be irrigation. Several irrigation companies were organized to take the waters from the mountains to the west flowing through the Hondo, but it was not until the discovery of artesian water, in January 1891, that Bancroft's predictions became a reality.
When Mrs. Lea, who was a graduate of Hocker Female College of Lexington, Kentucky, set up housekeeping in the original adobe house of Roswell, there was not a public school in operation in the entire Territory of New Mexico.
Captain and Mrs. Lea, who were absent from Roswell much of their time during the fall of 1889, looking after their separate interests, expressed a growing concern for the education of their three children, Willie Day, Wildy and Ella Lea. During the Christmas holidays of 1890, Mrs. Lea persuaded Colonel Robert S. Goss, Commandant of Cadets of Fort Worth University, to come to Roswell to look over the prospects or organizing a military school there, with the idea in mind of providing some form of adequate schooling for the Territory. After much persuasion and financial backing of Captain Lea and other interested parties in Roswell and the surrounding territory, Colonel Goss started Goss Military Institute in the other original adobe house in Roswell on September 3, 1891. This was the beginning of what is now New Mexico Military Institute. This school became one of Captain Lea's obsessions and he was continued as regent of the school until his death.
Captain Lea's ambition for Roswell as a great railroad point was finally reached on October 10, 1894, when with great celebration the train arrived there.
Southeastern New Mexico during this period had experienced a phenomenal growth. Captain Lea, who had "led the home builders to Roswell" had seen hundreds of families settle in the Pecos Valley to take up newly developed irrigated farm lands.
Up until 1898 Captain Lea and the other eighteen cow outfits that were running over thirty thousand head, plus countless other smaller operators up and down the Pecos Valley, had survived their ups and downs. But in that year something happened that is still known as the big "die out" along the Pecos River. Everybody was wiped out by blizzard and drouth. H. K. Thurber's cattle empire folded with the drouth and the accompanying money panic.
Captain Lea's empire collapsed with that of H. K. Thurber and he withdrew, as he had done many times under Yankee attack, this time to the bounds of his original holdings at Roswell. These would yet make him rich, so thought the Captain.
With the repeated efforts of the Hondo irrigation project and the artesian discoveries, to put the Pecos Valley under water, Roswell and its territory continued to grow. The settlers that continued to flow into the Pecos Valley were of Anglo-Saxon origin and a good class of people that were to develop a culture of their own.
By 1990 Roswell was boasting a population of 2000 and felt itself ready to become a city. In 1903 it assumed the status of a municipality and held its first city election. The Father of Roswell, Captain J. C. Lea, was elected mayor. In his only campaign speech he said, "I would rather be elected the mayor of Roswell, than be the governor of New Mexico."
The people of Roswell still love Captain Lea. A county was named for him. At New Mexico Military Institute they have a Lea Hall. And though when Captain Lea died in 1904, he only had one dollar in the bank, because his banker would not let him over draw, he still owned the town of Roswell and still resides there in the memories of many people.
West Texas Historical Association Year Book
October, 1959
Captain Joseph Calloway Lea, known throughout New Mexico as the father of Roswell, had a most interesting life.
He was born in Cleveland, Tennessee, on November 8, 1841. His father, Dr. Pleasant John Graves Lea, was also a native of Tennessee, of Virginia ancestry. The Captain's mother, Lucinda Calloway Lea, was from the North and of Yankee background. The Leas are descendants of one of three brothers who came from England to America in the early days. The orthography of the name was changed, one branch using the spelling Leigh another Lee, and the one from which the Captain is descended, Lea.
In 1847 Dr. Lea moved with his wife, seven children and slaves to Jackson County, Missouri, where he became the owner of a fine farm, containing about 1000 acres. He was one of the first settlers to make his home on the Kansas border on the high land back from the unhealthful Missouri River. There he farmed and practiced medicine. The town of Lee's Summit was named for him, but in later years the Missouri Pacific Railroad twisted the name and the spelling was never corrected.
Joe Lea, the one we are discussing, attended the neighborhood school, with his four brothers and two sisters and his three cousins, Cole, Bob and Jim Younger, who lived on an adjoining farm. Joe Lea had finished the common school course before he and his brothers, Tom, Frank and Alf, went across the plains to Colorado, in 1860.
On this trip he was in charge of a large train of freight wagons. It was quite a trying experience for a young man of nineteen, as it was his first business venture and the Indians were numerous along the route. In Colorado he engaged in freighting, lumbering and prospecting. His life was not at all monotonous, for the many Arapahoes and Cheyennes in that country seemed to take a great interest in prospectors and miners. While in that country he visited Denver and Boulder, which were then mere shanty towns. Finally he settled on a ranch, where he remained until he was called home because of the death of his father, in the spring of 1862.
During Joe Lea's two years absence from home, old factional animosities between the abolitionists of Kansas and the slave holders in Missouri had burst into a bloody sectional border war. Jayhawkers and Redlegs from Jim Lane's army of Lawrence, Kansas, viciously attacked the settlements in western Missouri, raiding and looting, carrying off negroes and stock, burning farm homes, and even hanging and killing old men. With the Missourians retaliating in kind, conditions around Lee's Summit had so deteriorated that Mrs. Lea and her two daughters had long since left Missouri for the safety of her parent's home in the North.
Dr. Lea's life then became almost intolerable. Until the Civil War had cleft Missouri into two factions, Dr. Lea, a prominent physician of the community, was held in high esteem by all. The fact that Mrs. Lea was a Yankee made him suspect among the Southern sympathizers of that section, and because of his birth and being a slave holder he was Southern to all others.
On night, in the spring of 1862, a band of Kansas Redlegs appeared at his front gate, ostensibly to ask road directions. They called for him to come out; and as he stepped through the door, they shot him down without provocation, killed the only slave remaining on the place, and left the house in flames, after looting all the furniture.
In spite of what they found on their return from Colorado, Frank and Joe Lea, who were then eighteen and twenty years respectively, hoped to remain neutral. But it was impossible to do so, because the Northern sympathizers in that part of the country regarded them as Rebels.
One day, as the two Lea boys were gathering corn in their father's field, a squad of Kansas border soldiers came along and arrested them. The next day they found themselves being lined up with eighteen others before a firing squad. They recognized the officer in charge as a boyhood friend. When he stepped in front of them he whispered, "You both duck and run like hell." In the confusion that followed, the Lea boys escaped.
They soon found refuge in Quantrill's guerilla band. There they were welcomed by many neighborhood friends, including John Jarrette, Frank James and their three cousins, Cole, Bob and Jim Younger. They had all seen homes burned and close kin murdered by outlaw bands of Kansas Jayhawkers.
Soon, Joe Lea's every passion became subservient to that of revenge. He quickly completed the school of the bushwhacker and evolved a seasoned guerilla fighter; and under Quantrill, the greatest of all guerilla chieftains, he became a fearless leader of bushmen. He possessed extraordinary resources and cunning. From Quantrill he learned to count the cost of everything, figure the odds, retreat often rather than fight and be worsted, but always to strike back with fury, fight desparately and kill everything.
In 1863 Quantrill with 448 men retaliated against excesses committed by the Kansas forces by burning 185 buildings and killing 140 people of Lawrence, Kansas. Because 6000 Federal Troops were hot on his trail, he disbanded his guerillas for the winter and retired behind the Confederate lines into Louisiana, with 150 of his men.
General Kirby Smith, commanding the Rebel army in Louisiana, soon notified the guerilla band that they could not join his army, nor would they be allowed to remain in Louisiana. Quantrill withdrew into Texas and set up winter camp on Mineral Creek, some fifteen miles northwest of the town of Sherman. At this camp dissension arose and the disintegration of the guerilla band began.
The headquarters of the Louisiana state government was then at Shreveport and Henry W. Allen was the chief executive. He heard of Kirby Smith's refusal to allow the men of Quantrill's command to become soldiers in the regular army or remain in the state and he sent for them himself and requested they join the state scouting service and be under his immediate control. Quantrill declined the invitation, but a number of his followers, among them John Jarette, Frank and Jesse James and the Younger Brothers, accepted the offer of Governor Allen. This group elected as their captain one of their number, Joseph C. Lea.
Captain Lea was a young man as desperate as any. He knew nothing of fear and had been in many a close encounter on the Kansas border. He was a powerful man, well over six feet tall, built from the ground up, had a wild dashing air that always distinguished him in any company, and had a face altogether more pleasing than disagreeable.
The place of rendezvous for this company of state scouts was Carroll Parish, about twenty-five miles from the Mississippi River, directly across from Vicksburg. Before the war this country had been in a high state of cultivation, but the neglect of the rive levees had made it subject to inundations. For many miles in every direction much of the land was covered with water a great portion of the year. A good class of people lived there. Many of them had been wealthy planters and the owners of a large number of slaves. It was one of the richest portions of the state, being in the center of the great cotton belt of the South.
Captain Lea and his followers had no trouble finding friends and abettors, and that too, among the most respectable people of the community. There were two little towns in the parish, Floyd and Delhi. At these two hamlets and in their vicinity the guerillas made their homes. They came and went without let or hindrance, and were always full of money. Joe Lea, Frank and Jesse James and John Jarrett stopped with a planter named Dickson. He, above all others of the parish, was confidential friend of the guerillas.
They were all active, well built men, of that dashing, reckless air that captures the hearts of women. They kept the community in a state of perpetual excitement and enthusiasm. They made sad havoc among wives and maidens. While Lea's men were resting between forays, it was one round of revelry. Every night there was a party or ball at the house of some planter. The guerillas were the lions of all these occasions. They sported the most gaudy dress, flourished the finest pistols and rode the finest horses. They were the only heroes the people there could have with them. To the negroes they were a terror. In fact, they were supreme in the mastery of Carroll Parish.
As was the fashion with the Missouri guerillas, they dressed in Federal uniforms whenever they were on one of their frequent raids behind the enemy lines. By waylaying Federal supply trains and couriers servicing front line troops, they kept the lines of communication and supply in a constant state of fear and turmoil. The Yankees could not tell friend from foe, and thus disguised Lea and his raiders decoyed hundreds of Yankee soldiers into the jaws of death. They would completely wipe out the enemy, taking his money and horses. They kept on hand at all times a large supply of government mules, harness, wagons and various sorts of military supplies. There was no quarter given and certain death if captured.
Captain Lea was well known to the Union army operating in Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee, and was the subject of frequent Federal dispatches between the General Headquarters of New Orleans and Memphis.
The first message to be found of record was dispatched to General Davis who was then occupying Morgan's Ferry, Louisiana.
Hq. U. S. Forces
Morganza, La.
October 20, 1864
Morganza, La.
October 20, 1864
. . . . I am informed that a Captain Lee, with 100 men of Quantrill's band, dressed in Federal uniforms, has made application to the officer commanding confederate forces at Simsport [La.] to be permitted to cross to this side of the Atchafalaya. He refused permission and threatened to fire on them in case they should attempt to cross, as General Smith and the Confederate authorities regard them as outlaws. If you capture any of these men and trouble the commissary for rations for them I shall certainly quarrel with you.
M. K. Lawler
Brig. Gen., Commanding
Brig. Gen., Commanding
That following day General Lawler sent a similar message to General Headquarters at New Orleans warning that Captain Lea might strike the river lower down.
But Lea, who possessed the same extraordinary resources and cunning of his former leader, did not turn up where the enemy most suspected. He had learned to travel a multitude of long roads rather than a short one once too often. He was next reported across the Mississippi River deep behind the enemy lines northeast of Vicksburg.
Hq. Mil Div. of Mississippi
Office of the Chief Signal Officer
New Orleans, La.
Nov. 25, 1864
Office of the Chief Signal Officer
New Orleans, La.
Nov. 25, 1864
Lt. Col. C. T. Christiensen, Asst. Adjutant General,
Military Division of W. Mississippi,
New Orleans, La.
. . . . Captain Lee (guerilla) was at Trinity, on Black River with 500 men, mostly deserters from Harrison's Brigade, and paroled prisoners. . . .
A.M. Jackson,
2nd Lt. Signal Corps, U. S. Army.
2nd Lt. Signal Corps, U. S. Army.
On this foray, Lea no doubt troubled the Federal commissary and made himself felt in other ways, because on December 21st Major General E. R. S. Camby, commanding at New Orleans, sent a somewhat urgent request to Major General N. J. T. Dana, at Memphis, Tennessee:
Sir: I wish you as soon as possible to organize an expedition for the purpose of driving off the guerilla and partisan bands under Harrison and Lee that now infest the upper parishes of Louisiana between the Washita and Mississippi Rivers, and desire that you will organize a force for that purpose as soon as possible. If you need it, some cavalry can be sent to you from the Department of the Gulf. General Reynolds will be instructed to make a demonstration from Pine Bluff [Arkansas] to distract the attention of the rebels from your movement. You can communicate directly with General Reynolds and arrange the time of your operation.
General Dana, commanding the Department of Mississippi with headquarters at Memphis, replied on December 28th.
I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the cipher dispatch of the Major General commanding the division, dated 21st inst. As is already known to him, all the cavalry of this command is absent, and I consider it necessary to wait its return before making the expedition spoken of, both for the force required and the officers to command it. In my opinion, to make a thorough work, 2000 or 2500 cavalry will be required, and as that now absent will probably be well used up on its return, I ought to be supplied with 1000 effective re-enforcements. I would recommend that that number be held in readiness for my call, but not sent here until called for, as it is better they should not ascend the river higher than the point where it is decided to rendezvous and make a landing.
I have been contemplating a movement in that district since early October, but the necessary detachments of force frm Vicksburg and Natchez to General Reynolds in that month, and the expeditions against the Mississippi Central and Mobile and Ohio Railroads have unavoidably delayed it. I can easily drive Harrison and Lee almost anywhere, but they will immediately return on our retirement. I will at once communicate with General Reynolds on the subject, and will notify him in full of my plans when I am ready to act. . . . .
It is hard to say whether General Dana carried out his expedition against Lea, but if he was supplied with the required cavalry it may well be assumed that he did. If he did attempt the expedition, it did no good, because Lea, who was accustomed to being driven from the flanks of one column, only to appear in the rear of another was still in the field for two months after General Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox on April 9, 1865.
Captain Lea's value as a fearless field commander was finally recognized by General Kirby Smith who gave him a battlefield promotion to full colonel in the Confederate Army in the early months of 1854. But to those who accompanied him on numbers of gallant charges and to his close and personal friends, he was always known affectionately as Captain Lea.
While the clouds of war were hovering over the remnants of the Confederacy, still holding out in Louisiana and Texas, General Shelby and General Kirby Smith asked Lea to go with them and make a union with Maximilian in Mexico.
But Captain Lea, who had suffered all manner of hardships, had been tried in the most trying places, and who had not cared much whether he lived or died, had seen all he wanted of war. Unlike some of his contemporaries who had learned to live on plunder, he took off his side arms, and was never again known to wear a gun. Thomas Calloway, a Yankee uncle, soon interceded for Captain Lea, through his personal friendship with President Andrew Johnson and secured for the Captain a full pardon for his part in the rebellion. And from that moment on he dedicated his life to the support of law and order and good will toward his fellow man.
Lea soon left Louisiana for Georgia where he obtained a quarter interest in the contract to rebuild the Georgia and Central Railroad, which had been destroyed by Sherman on his march to the sea. In 1867 he married Mrs. Douglas Burbridge, but her death some four years later left him a widower. He became engaged in cotton planting in Mississippi and in 1875 he married the daughter of Major W. W. Wildy of Yazoo County. Soon thereafter they moved to Colfax County, New Mexico, where Lea went into the sheep and cattle business and a son, Wildy, was born.
In the fall of 1877, Captain Lea with his family and entourage, consisting of employees and sheep and cattle, drifted his flocks into the Pecos Valley, and by the following year he had acquired the two adobe buildings and several hundred acres of land that comprised the town of Roswell, Lincoln County, New Mexico. Lincoln County was the largest, most isolated and wildest county in the United States in 1877.
Although the arrival of Captain Lea happened to fall just a few days before the killing of John H. Turnstall that triggered the Lincoln County War, in which Billy The Kid figured so prominently, he refused from the start to be drawn into the feud. He is said to have announced to both groups of belligerents that when he felt like doing any fighting, he would do it on his own hook—in the meanwhile they could settle their difficulties to suit themselves. Such a positive declaration enabled him to preserve neutrality throughout the months of confusion and excitement of the Lincoln County War.
Captain Lea was not content with the feuding and fighting that was going on in the Lincoln section of the county and he did what he could to end the strife. He realized that if the feud was not checked and order restored Lincoln County could never be developed. The prospects had been dismaying, but he was of the stuff that sticks it out no matter what the difficulties. It did not daunt him that John Chisum, who had been the mainstay of the Pecos Valley in a business way, had determined to leave for a more peaceful location. Captain Lea's mind was fully made up to develop Roswell, his privately owned community, into what might be an example of law and order to the surrounding country, which had an utter disregard for law or life. With the withdrawal of Chisum, he naturally assumed the position of leadership.
He sent for Billy the Kid, the most notorious outlaw of the region, and said to him in no uncertain terms, "Bonney, if I ever catch you here in Roswell cutting up any of your capers, I'll take my Winchester and fill you full of holes." Billy the Kid laughed and replied, "All right Cap'in, I'll sure leave this place alone. I promise you I won't cut up any capers in your Roswell." And the Kid kept his word.
Shortly thereafter a drunken cowboy knifed a man in front of Captain Lea's store. He was promptly arrested and brought before a Justice of the Peace, who fined him $2.50.
This is the first instance of record of law being enforced in the Pecos Valley.
During the late summer and early fall of 1878, Lincoln County was in an even more desperate plight, than when the Lincoln County War was in its most active state. Where there had been two factions, each with some claim to acting in behalf of law and order, now appeared several aggregations of outlaws and desperate characters, roaming at will over the country and making no pretense to motives other than a selfish greed and a desire to fatten off the spoils. The Mexican communities especially suffered at the hands of these terrorizers. The result was that the entire country became panic stricken.
Whether it was Captain Lea's reputation that he had tried to leave behind the Yankee lines, or his warm and friendly smile that was backed up by steel gray eyes that a gunman couldn't face, the many outlaw gangs that had assumed command of southeastern New Mexico left Lea and his town strictly alone.
The outlaws and professional rustlers, however, were in full charge of the country, even to the outskirts of the Captain's little cowtown village. They were driving off sizeable bunches of cattle, holding up the stage from Las Vegas and robbing the United States mail. Even Captain Lea had been held up in his buckboard and had his Winchester taken from him.
Captain Lea, however, was determined to see this thing out. He was an ambitious man with unlimited vision. To Lea it was clear that the day was coming when Roswell would be a booming railroad town and fortunes would be made there by men of courage and imagination. The pictures that he tried to paint were hard to visualize, because, first, there must be some semblance of peace and order.
It was Captain Lea's inducement that brought Pat Garrett into Lincoln County and got him to take up valuable land near Roswell. This made it possible for the Roswell section to furnish the county with a useful and successful candidate for the office of sheriff. During his term of office, Pat Garett and his deputy, John W. Poe, who succeeded him in office, shot and killed Billy the Kid and killed, captured, or ran out of Lincoln County the backbone of the lawless element.
Captain Lea's character and reputation throughout Lincoln County had made for him a host of friends. Lea, now a county commissioner, an influential merchant at Roswell and a successful cattleman, had become practically the new boss of the county. Leaving his store in the hands of Ash Upson, the postmaster at Roswell, he spent much of his time locating water rights and expanding his cattle business.
With the coming of the big cattle boom of the early Eighties, Lea interested H. K. Thurber in joining him in carving out a cattle empire in New Mexico. Thurber, a wealthy New York wholesale grocer, steamship owner, and owner of the Thurber-Arbuckle Coffee Company, was a man of seemingly unlimited means. Together they organized the Lea Cattle Company, in which Mr. Thurber invested $500,000 in cattle and put up $250,000 to secure further lands with water rights. Under the management of Captain Lea they were running between thirty and fifty thousand cattle west of the Pecos to include the Captain Mountains and many miles to the west.
On a cattle buying trip to Texas in 1885, Captain Lea became fascinated with a young widow, who was known throughout that state as the Cattle Queen of Texas. Mrs. Mabel Day was the only unattached woman in the entire state who ran cattle on a large spread and could talk the language of cattle kings. She owned and operated the largest ranch ever to be put under fence in Coleman County.
Captain Lea pressed his case for four years and finally in 1889 they were married. Mrs. Mabel Day Lea left her ranch in charge of her brother, Will Doss, and with her nine year old daughter, Willie Day, moved to Roswell.
Mrs. Lea arrived in Lincoln County at a point which might be considered the beginning of the colonization period of the Pecos Valley. Roswell was still nothing but a cow trail with six houses on what was called main street, with about six more scattered about the prairie, with nothing but trails connecting.
However, things were beginning to develop in the Pecos Valley. Lincoln County was still the largest and most isolated county in the United States. It was over 200 miles from corner to corner and still contained some of the wildest of the west. But the railroad, which had reached Pecos and El Paso, was building from the former city toward Roswell. Some of the Captain's dreams had begun to materialize. Charles Eddy, man of nerve and imagination, the type that Captain Lea had spoken of, had thrown up a tent city, to be later known as Carlsbad, in the path of the oncoming railroad. He was strictly an idea man, an incurable promoter, who for the next twenty years was to be identified with men willing to pour millions of risk capital into his many irrigation, mining and railroad schemes, which eventually were to make him a millionaire.
Charles Eddy had a great respect and admiration for Captain Lea. He confided in a letter to Mrs. Lea before her marriage:
I am confident that your life here will be a happy one, for Captain Lea is one of the best men I ever knew. His character and reputation is excelled by none. He is very kind hearted, liberal and generous to a fault, extremely popular and has a host of friends. He is a large land owner in Lincoln County and stands as high as any man in the Territory among business men.
When the Leas arrived in Roswell, horse drawn graders were marking off the streets surveyed out by the Captain's brother, Alfred E. Lea, who was the founder of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Nothing else had happened in Roswell, but things were at a turning point.
In Bancroft's History of New Mexico, published in 1889, the only reference to Roswell was: "Roswell is regarded as the prospective site of an important agricultural center." The magic through which this might be accomplished seemed to be irrigation. Several irrigation companies were organized to take the waters from the mountains to the west flowing through the Hondo, but it was not until the discovery of artesian water, in January 1891, that Bancroft's predictions became a reality.
When Mrs. Lea, who was a graduate of Hocker Female College of Lexington, Kentucky, set up housekeeping in the original adobe house of Roswell, there was not a public school in operation in the entire Territory of New Mexico.
Captain and Mrs. Lea, who were absent from Roswell much of their time during the fall of 1889, looking after their separate interests, expressed a growing concern for the education of their three children, Willie Day, Wildy and Ella Lea. During the Christmas holidays of 1890, Mrs. Lea persuaded Colonel Robert S. Goss, Commandant of Cadets of Fort Worth University, to come to Roswell to look over the prospects or organizing a military school there, with the idea in mind of providing some form of adequate schooling for the Territory. After much persuasion and financial backing of Captain Lea and other interested parties in Roswell and the surrounding territory, Colonel Goss started Goss Military Institute in the other original adobe house in Roswell on September 3, 1891. This was the beginning of what is now New Mexico Military Institute. This school became one of Captain Lea's obsessions and he was continued as regent of the school until his death.
Captain Lea's ambition for Roswell as a great railroad point was finally reached on October 10, 1894, when with great celebration the train arrived there.
Southeastern New Mexico during this period had experienced a phenomenal growth. Captain Lea, who had "led the home builders to Roswell" had seen hundreds of families settle in the Pecos Valley to take up newly developed irrigated farm lands.
Up until 1898 Captain Lea and the other eighteen cow outfits that were running over thirty thousand head, plus countless other smaller operators up and down the Pecos Valley, had survived their ups and downs. But in that year something happened that is still known as the big "die out" along the Pecos River. Everybody was wiped out by blizzard and drouth. H. K. Thurber's cattle empire folded with the drouth and the accompanying money panic.
Captain Lea's empire collapsed with that of H. K. Thurber and he withdrew, as he had done many times under Yankee attack, this time to the bounds of his original holdings at Roswell. These would yet make him rich, so thought the Captain.
With the repeated efforts of the Hondo irrigation project and the artesian discoveries, to put the Pecos Valley under water, Roswell and its territory continued to grow. The settlers that continued to flow into the Pecos Valley were of Anglo-Saxon origin and a good class of people that were to develop a culture of their own.
By 1990 Roswell was boasting a population of 2000 and felt itself ready to become a city. In 1903 it assumed the status of a municipality and held its first city election. The Father of Roswell, Captain J. C. Lea, was elected mayor. In his only campaign speech he said, "I would rather be elected the mayor of Roswell, than be the governor of New Mexico."
The people of Roswell still love Captain Lea. A county was named for him. At New Mexico Military Institute they have a Lea Hall. And though when Captain Lea died in 1904, he only had one dollar in the bank, because his banker would not let him over draw, he still owned the town of Roswell and still resides there in the memories of many people.
West Texas Historical Association Year Book
October, 1959
Early History of New Mexico Military Institute
New Mexico Military Institute may well trace its history to an event that took place in southwestern Coleman County, Texas. There a wedding was in progress in the large rock room of the Day Ranch headquarters on April 29, 1889. Mrs. Mabel Day, the Cattle Queen of Texas, widow of the late Col. W. H. Day, was being married to Captain Joseph C. Lea, who is known as the father of Roswell, New Mexico.
When the ceremony was over, Mabel turned to face a room filled with cowboy witnesses and said, "I feel this is the greatest trade I have ever made and I believe I have made a good one. It beats cattle at $30 per head, although some of my old beaux don't think so." She turned and kissed Captain Lea, and they all laughed and filed into the south room to cut the wedding cake.
Out behind the house a circle of cowboys passed a jug of whiskey, while Mabel's brother, Will Doss, helped her nine year old daughter, Willie Day, and the two negro servants, George and Mattie, into a large ranch hack loaded with suitcases. The heavy baggage had been sent by wagon to the railroad at Talpa the day before.
Not long after George and his passengers had left, Captain Lea and Mabel shook hands around and put whip to the team in double buggy harness in order to make the Santa Fe, fifteen miles to the north. The Leas changed at Fort Worth to the T & P for Pecos, Texas, a town still one hundred and sixty-five miles by stage coach from their future home at Roswell. Captain Lea's town had the distinction of being the most isolated place in the country, as it was farther from the railroad than any town in the United States in 1889.
At Pecos the bed rolls and baggage were loaded into a wagon to be driven by George and the rest of them climbed into a large ranch hack with the driver's seat high up in front, from where Captain Lea managed the team with Willie Day holding onto the seat beside him.
On their way through Pecos, Mabel looked up to see Guss Lee, a rather short but stocky yellow negro, excitedly run across the street, jump on the hack, and stick his grinning face inside the slowly moving vehicle. Gus, a former chef at the Continental Hotel, had cooked Mabel's wedding dinner when and Colonel W. H. Day were married ten years before at Sherman, Texas.
"Gus," exclaimed Mabel, astonished, but happy to see the negro. "Where on earth are you going?"
"Wherever you're going, Miss Mabel," replied Gus, who soon took the reins from Captain Lea and drove them out of town, up the Pecos River. It was not long until Mattie suggested that she and Willie Day trade places, and finally the two negroes broke into song and were sitting a little closer high up there in front.
Mabel took good care of her negroes. She especially liked George Hubbard, who she thought was a little bit "off", but was a good worker and could do anything. He was a splendid washer and ironer, could attend to horses and carriage, cook and cowboy. He was full of music, could play the piano, banjo, guitar and sing the most comical songs you've ever heard. He was a huge man and a good rider. During much of her eight years as a widow, Mabel had kept George riding the north string of Day fence so he could conveniently drop over to Talpa at mail time for letters from her many admirers. And now with Gus, "The Best Chef in Texas," her retinue of servants was complete.
The third afternoon they arrived at the embryo tent city of Eddy, Lincoln County, New Mexico (Now Carlsbad) to be welcomed by Charles B. Eddy, who insisted on their staying with him for the night.
Charles Eddy, an energetic and distinguished looking bachelor, a man of nerve and imagination, wore a shortly clipped but full mustache and beard that parted in the middle and slightly curved at the outer edges. He was strictly an idea man, an incurable promoter, who for the next twenty years was to be identified with men willing to pour millions of dollars of risk capital into his many irrigation, mining and railroad schemes throughout southeastern New Mexico, eventually to make him a millionaire. He had just launched his first brain child, soon to bring the wealthy James J. Hagerman from retirement to see his project through. It was the development of the lower Pecos Valley around the town of Eddy, and the construction of the Pecos Valley Railroad then building from Pecos toward the New Mexico line.
Charles Eddy must have reassured Mabel in words similar to the ones he had written her on the eve of her wedding.
The Leas were on the road at daybreak the next morning with three days ahead of them before reaching Roswell, their town lying in the heart of Lincoln County on the flat desert plain of the mid-Pecos Valley.
Lincoln was the largest county in the United States. It took in the entire southwestern one-fourth of the Territory and with little effort could swallow Connecticut, Delawar, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and then take a big bit out of Vermont. It was nearly four times the size of the land area of Massachusetts alone. Square in shape, two hundred miles would fall short of the distance from one corner of the county to the next. Much of the county was more than three hard days horseback to the sheriff at Lincoln, the county seat. The eastern half was hot, flat desert country of scant rainfall through which the Pecos River slowly flowed south to the Texas line; while in the west ten and twelve thousand foot peaks of the Rocky Mountains formed a chain from which small, cold mountain streams rushed to feed the thirsty Pecos.
The last census of 1880 revealed a population of only 2500 in all that vast region, 2300 of whom were native born Mexicans and Indians, living mostly in the more seasonable mountain country to the west, where high altitude moisture, from daily summer afternoon thunderstorms, and winter snows provided a more bountiful livelyhood for man and beast. The Anglos, attracted by the lawless land of millions of acres of free public domain, were made up of outlaws fleeing the wrath of the Texas Rangers and some brave and honorable cowmen and cowboys who drifted in with vast herds of Texas cattle to grow up with the country.
There was no county in the West where a man had to be quicker with a gun or with a smile than Lincoln County in 1880. The "Whites" were a rough lot and many a Mexican mother kept order among her children by threatening, "The Tejanos will get you if you don't watch out." There was such an objectionable element coming in, it is no wonder the Lincoln County War, in which Billy the Kid figured so prominently, broke out in the late Seventies, and the Pecos Valley was the scene of the Kid's most daring adventures.
To escape the severe winters of Colfax County in northern New Mexico, Captain Lea drifted his sheep into the Pecos Valley in 1877. The following year, during the heat of the Lincoln County War, a few days after "The Three Day Fight" at Lincoln, he acquired the only adobe store and residence at Roswell from Marion Turner, who was too involved in the Lincoln County trouble to be comfortable.
After taking possession of the premises, Captain Lea sent to Charles Illfeld at Las Vegas for a stock of merchandise and established a mercantile business at the old stand under the name of Lea, Bonney & Co. He sold his sheep and went into the cattle business, running his stock up the Hondo and North Spring Rivers west of town. In the wake of Lincoln County trouble, riffraff, drifters and outlaws joined in small bands to continue the rustler's war in their own way. Honest citizens could not count on a long lease on life and the cattle and mercantile business was in no way secure.
In November 1880, John S. Chisum, known as the "Pecos Valley Cattle King," and Captain Lea got together. Although they did not see eye to eye on many things, they agreed that the cattle rustling must be stopped. The killings of two years before had subsided, but Billy the Kid's band and other gangs of outlaws were stealing the country blind, with a ready outlet for stolen beef to unscrupulous agents with government Indian contracts around Fort Stanton. Cattle thieves were particularly active in the Roswell area.
George Kimbrell, appointed sheriff in 1879 when Sheriff Peppin threw in his star, was unsuccessful in dealing with the outlawry. John Chisum knew a man, Pat F. Garrett of Fort Sumner, who he thought could handle the situation, and that day Chisum and Lea agreed to run Garrett for sheriff on the law and order ticket. Garrett failed to carry the mountain country to the west, but was elected sheriff of Lincoln County. During his term of office, Pat Garrett and his deputy, John W. Poe, shot and killed Billy the Kid, and together the two officers killed, captured and ran out of Lincoln County the last of the lawless element. The remaining cattlemen realized the folly of stealing from one another and began a period of operation on the open range in which there was peace and cooperation in everything, with the exception of an occasional dispute over water rights.
Water is and always has been the major problem of the Pecos Valley. When Mabel Lea arrived in New Mexico, he who owned the water owned Lincoln County. During the cattle boom of the Eighties Captain Lea interested H. K. Thurber, a wealthy wholesale grocer of New York, in New Mexico. Together they organized the Lea Cattle Company in which Mr. Thurber invested $500,000 in cattle and put up $250,000 to secure lands with water rights. Under the management of Captain Lea, they were running between thirty and fifty thousand cattle west of the Pecos and into the Capitan Mountains. During that period there were eighteen other such cow outfits and countless smaller operators in Lincoln County.
In spite of Charles B. Eddy's opinion expressed in 1885 that it is the want of water that makes New Mexico the worst place on the face of the earth for small settlers to go, the Pecos Valley in 1889 marked the beginning of a colonization period. Where water had been diverted from mountain streams and spread over the land through small private irrigation systems, it had been proved that the level, rich soil could grow anything.
With the promotional fever of Charles Eddy's schemes for irrigation, land and town developments supplementing the excitement of the railroad advancing on the Pecos Valley, new people were coming in to take up lands and settle on desert claims, free for the filing. It was only a matter of time, so the promoters said, when water would be made to flow over thousands of acres along the Pecos and its tributaries.
The Pecos Valley, isolated from the rest of the Territory, would draw its increasing population from Texas and the other states, gradually to develop a life of its own, quite separate and apart from the Spanish dominated culture of the territory to the north and west.
At the first sight of Roswell, Mattie broke down and cried, saying, "What and where will we go next?" As George Hubbard tied up the team in front of Captain Lea's story and a half adobe house, he exclaimed under his breath to Mattie, "Well, I thought we were going to something. Lord, if I'd known we were coming to something like this, I'd never left Texas."
Roswell was nothing but a cow trail with six houses on what they called main street and about six more scattered about on the prairie with nothing but trails connecting. Roswell was a pitiful sight in Mattie's own words.
Willie Day, who had known few childhood playmates, was delighted to meet Captain Lea's 12 year old son, Wildy, the first white child born at Roswell, and his nine year old daughter, Ella. The two girls soon became inseparable friends, as they were the same age.
The Leas settled down to house keeping. Will Doss was managing Mabel's affairs on her Texas ranch and Captain Lea appreciated a good home, although the affairs of the Lea Cattle Company kept him on the move. They lived in the story and a half house and had their kitchen and dining room in the adobe store building next door. Captain Lea had another adobe house on the same block, but it was occupied by the Frank Lesnet family. Gus did the cooking and Mattie the laundry and housekeeping.
The children attended school in an adobe building on the banks of the Hondo about a half mile south of the village. Four years before, Miss Lina Tucker had gone out among the cowboys and collected sufficient money to build the first school building in Roswell. By 1890 the town had grown to 343 people. Chaves County had been designated on paper to serve the area around Roswell, but was yet unorganized, and still had but one school house and that in Roswell, serving a county of three thousand inhabitants. No other school functioned in eastern New Mexico. There was not a public school in the entire state as no Territorial educational institutions were in existence, except on paper.
Purely a piece of paper was the ineffective statute of 1889 passed by the territorial legislature setting out the qualifications for a teacher in New Mexico, which read, "That hereafter in the Territory no person who can not read and write sufficiently to keep his own record in either the English or the Spanish languages shall be eligible to be elected or appointed to hold the office of school teacher, school director," and several other offices.
By the fall of 1889 Captain and Mrs. Lea, who were absent from Roswell much of the time looking after their separate interests, indicated a growing concern over the education of their children. The first instrument of record on this subject was written by H. K. Thurber of New York to Captain Lea, "In regard to donating the sixteen acres for the university, I approve of it if you think it the best thing to do and I leave it up to you. I do not want to have that called the 'Thurber University.' I think it would be a great mistake. It should be 'The Roswell University of Chaves County.' Then the title explains itself; it advertises the town." The Leas were thinking, but as yet a solution was not at hand.
On March 21, 1890, Captain Lea wrote his wife, who was on a business trip to her Texas ranch. "I am determined to put Wildy somewhere to be trained. I shall put him first in a convent until he is subdued and then later in a military school. I think you and I fully agree that he has to be placed entirely under strangers and out of the cowboy atmosphere. Meet me at the Pickwick Hotel in Fort Worth about April 1st."
Within two weeks Wildy Lea was enrolled in the Junior Preparatory Department of Fort Worth University under the firm discipline of Colonel Robert S. Goss, Commandant of Cadets.
During her frequent trips to Texas on business of the Day Cattle Ranch Co., Mrs. Lea visited Wildy at Fort Worth, where she became well acquainted with Colonel Goss, who had a master's degree from Kentucky Military Institute. Mabel, who was also a college graduate with considerable teaching experience, was impressed with his capacity for leadership and his superior work in youth development. To say the least, he had done a marvelous job on Wildy.
Later that fall, during Wildy's second term at Fort Worth University, Mrs. Lea approached colonel Goss with the idea of starting a Military school at Roswell. He apparently gave the subject little thought until the Christmas holidays were at hand when both the Captain and Mrs. Lea appeared in Fort Worth insisting that he spend Christmas with them in Roswell and look over the field. Colonel Goss, who was a bachelor with no definite plans for Christmas, accepted their invitation and accompanied them to New Mexico.
Colonel Goss enjoyed his Christmas in Roswell. The new County of Chaves with Roswell as the County Seat, with a new court house, was now organized and operational. One of the first official acts of the new political subdivision was to build a school house, a 3-room $5,000 brick building, and the first public school to be erected in the Territory of New Mexico. It was in this building at Christmas that Colonel Goss entertained a large audience by rendering a number of well known recitations and seized the opportunity to publicly applaud the Leas and their continued efforts for better educational facilities for their area. The Leas' ambitions were taking shape.
Even those in Santa Fe were hopeful. Governor Prince in addressing the opening of the 29th Territorial Legislature in January, said, "If we are to be kept in a Territorial condition, Congress should at least give us immediate possession of our school lands." And a note received in Roswell from Senator G. A. Richardson at Santa Fe stated that the prospects were good for the passage of a good school law that session.
The day before Colonel Goss was to return to Fort Worth with Wildy Lea and three new recruits for Fort Worth Military Academy, the first artesian well in eastern New Mexico was drilled in the town of Roswell. The discovery of an inexhaustible supply of flowing artesian water in the mid-Pecos Valley touched off a development boom soon to see thousands of fertile acres put under irrigation.
Where there had been the original store established by Captain Lea, when the gun smoke was clearing from the streets of Lincoln, now there seemed to be countless business houses springing up all over Roswell. In addition to the original store, now operated by Smith Lea, the Captain's cousin, under the name of Poe, Lea and Cosgrove, Jaffa, Prager & Co., and Williamson & Saunders had put in general merchandise stores. The town could now boast of a doctor, a saloon, a seed and feed house, livery stable, daily mail service, lumber yard, building contractor, newspaper, photographer, and a hotel; and M. Whitman was in the process of moving his stock of general merchandise in from the town of White Oaks over west of the Capitan Mountains.
In spite of the potentialities claimed for Roswell by Captain Lea, the prospects for a military school to be located in the most isolated town in the United States looked very dim to Colonel Goss when he returned to Fort Worth. But after repeated visits of Mrs. Lea in Fort Worth and a lengthy correspondence from the Captain, Colonel Goss finally accepted the challenge. At the close of school that June he resigned his position at Fort Worth University and went to Roswell.
Earlier that year when plans for the school were taking shape Mabel, after much persuasion, had talked the Captain into placing their adobe house, they occupied by the Lesnets, and five acres of land at the disposal of Colonel Goss. On June 22, 1891, thirty-six citizens of Chaves County subscribed a total of $1330 for the purpose of building a dormitory, study hall and plank fence for The Goss Military Institute, the same to be erected at once, and finally all to be removed to the permanent building site of said academy at Seventh and Main.
A board of advisers was appointed, consisting of Captain Lea, John W. Poe, Edward A. Cahoon, Nathan Jaffa, William Prager, and G. A. Richardson, to assist Colonel Goss in drafting and executing the plans for a school plant to be ready to receive fifty boarding students by September. Colonel Goss did a masterful job in assembling a strong faculty and publicizing the new institute throughout the Territory and parts of Texas. Ina prospectus of the school he said, "If you want your boy managed, send him to Goss; if not keep him at home."
The Goss Military Institute opened September 3rd with thirty-eight bodies and a female department of twenty with an annual fee of three hundred dollars for boarders and ninety dollars for day students. The cadets, outfitted in West Point gray, came from various parts of the Territory and from as far east in Texas as Fort Worth.
The original plant was unimposing but adequate. The Lea house of adobe near the entrance to the grounds was used as a reception room, infirmary, and bachelor quarters for Colonel Goss. To the rear was the main building, a long unpainted frame structure running east and west, which provided the class rooms and dormitory facilities. Nearby was an old adobe building which had been converted into a kitchen and mess hall. To the rear of the main building was the pride and joy of G.M.I. It was a 14' x 25' building sitting squarely across a flowing irrigation ditch, which housed and enclosed a swimming pool, chin deep, according to Wildy Lea. Goss Military Institute boasted that but one other school in the United States had a natatorium, and that a smaller one. A circular artesian fountain surrounded by a lawn set in cottonwoods added some dignity to the campus, which was backed up in the rear by spacious parade and drill grounds. In a small orchard could be found the zoological gardens housing a black eagle. Mattie did the laundry and Gus presided over the kitchen.
The greatest accomplishment of Colonel Goss, however, was his excellent faculty there assembled. He had turned one outstanding resource of New Mexico to his advantage. Among his faculty were well trained teachers seeking the curative powers of a high, dry climate.
In addition to Colonel Goss, who had a B. S. and an M. A. degree from Kentucky Military Institute, his staff consisted of the following able professors:
Like many present day under-endowed institutions of learning, Goss Military Institute soon fell into financial difficulties that were to plague Colonel Goss as long as he remained in Roswell. On October 3rd he wrote Captain Lea, "The school is doing fine, but no money. The people cannot pay, it seems, but we are living. If I can in any way hold up this year, I will be all right next. But I will get through somehow."
On October 16th Colonel Goss wrote to Mabel, "I pause to tell you what I hear in the next room—some fifteen small girls in voice culture. If you could hear the sound that rings in the air, you would not—could not think that this is Roswell, New Mexico. Oh! How I am fighting for the good work. If my health will only last me to the end."
"I am thinking of leaving for a trip of some four weeks to Lincoln, White Oaks, Fort Stanton and the ranches. I must get out and secure some ten more boarders for January 1st. I must have that much money to run me through." And on October 16th he was writing Mrs. Lea asking desperately for $1000.
From the viewpoint of colonel Goss, Goss Military Institute had from its inception been a personal affair, with himself as the personality. Captain Lea, however, entertained a radically different idea. The school to him was an institution for the good of Roswell and the development of the Territory.
Captain Lea took his case to Antonio Joseph, Territorial Representative in Washington, who replied March 15th, "I made a strong fight before the Committee on the Territories for the Goss Military Institute, but lost it. The Committee opposed all grants of public lands, except to state institutions. If Goss Military Institute was now under the control of the Territory, there would not be much trouble to secure a grant of land for it, but under existing circumstances it cannot be secured." That was final as far as Captain Lea was concerned. Goss Military Institute had to be recognized by the Territorial government to secure outside financial assistance.
The following fall Goss Military Institute started its second year. During the summer Colonel Goss had traveled extensively throughout New Mexico and Texas interesting new students in the school. Sixty students enrolled the first day with prospects for 100. Captain J. E. Edington arrived to teach Latin, Greek and mathematics, and Miss Julia Fitch replaced Professor Quinn in the Department of Music. Soon Miss Fitch and Colonel Goss were married.
The matter of adequate endowment for the success of the institute was still paramount in Captain Lea's mind. He presented a bill to Albert B. Fall and James F. Hinkle, who represented Roswell in the Territorial legislature, for Territorial recognition of Goss Military Institute. He got in his buggy, drove to Lincoln and took Ex-Governor George Curry to Santa Fe, where they together lobbied for its passage.
When Hinkle submitted the bill to Fall, the latter took the bill and crossed off Goss and substituted New Mexico Military Institute saying, "Now that bill will pass." And it did, but the legislature allowed no appropriation during that session. Changing the name offended Colonel Goss and at the close of school he resigned his place and went to Albuquerque.
Captain Edington assumed leadership of New Mexico Military Institute until the summer of 1895 when the national depression and terrible drought forced its closing.
Finally after the approval of a bond issue by Congress to insure the territorial school a permanent plant, and the appropriation of 50,000 acres of public lands for the support of the school, New Mexico Military Institute again opened its doors in 1898 at its present location on the hill overlooking Roswell.
On April 8, 1902, the student body of New Mexico Military Institute dedicated the first issue of the student publication, The Bronco, to Captain Joseph C. Lea. He immediately wrote to his wife at her Texas ranch:
West Texas Historical Association Year Book
October, 1958
New Mexico Military Institute may well trace its history to an event that took place in southwestern Coleman County, Texas. There a wedding was in progress in the large rock room of the Day Ranch headquarters on April 29, 1889. Mrs. Mabel Day, the Cattle Queen of Texas, widow of the late Col. W. H. Day, was being married to Captain Joseph C. Lea, who is known as the father of Roswell, New Mexico.
When the ceremony was over, Mabel turned to face a room filled with cowboy witnesses and said, "I feel this is the greatest trade I have ever made and I believe I have made a good one. It beats cattle at $30 per head, although some of my old beaux don't think so." She turned and kissed Captain Lea, and they all laughed and filed into the south room to cut the wedding cake.
Out behind the house a circle of cowboys passed a jug of whiskey, while Mabel's brother, Will Doss, helped her nine year old daughter, Willie Day, and the two negro servants, George and Mattie, into a large ranch hack loaded with suitcases. The heavy baggage had been sent by wagon to the railroad at Talpa the day before.
Not long after George and his passengers had left, Captain Lea and Mabel shook hands around and put whip to the team in double buggy harness in order to make the Santa Fe, fifteen miles to the north. The Leas changed at Fort Worth to the T & P for Pecos, Texas, a town still one hundred and sixty-five miles by stage coach from their future home at Roswell. Captain Lea's town had the distinction of being the most isolated place in the country, as it was farther from the railroad than any town in the United States in 1889.
At Pecos the bed rolls and baggage were loaded into a wagon to be driven by George and the rest of them climbed into a large ranch hack with the driver's seat high up in front, from where Captain Lea managed the team with Willie Day holding onto the seat beside him.
On their way through Pecos, Mabel looked up to see Guss Lee, a rather short but stocky yellow negro, excitedly run across the street, jump on the hack, and stick his grinning face inside the slowly moving vehicle. Gus, a former chef at the Continental Hotel, had cooked Mabel's wedding dinner when and Colonel W. H. Day were married ten years before at Sherman, Texas.
"Gus," exclaimed Mabel, astonished, but happy to see the negro. "Where on earth are you going?"
"Wherever you're going, Miss Mabel," replied Gus, who soon took the reins from Captain Lea and drove them out of town, up the Pecos River. It was not long until Mattie suggested that she and Willie Day trade places, and finally the two negroes broke into song and were sitting a little closer high up there in front.
Mabel took good care of her negroes. She especially liked George Hubbard, who she thought was a little bit "off", but was a good worker and could do anything. He was a splendid washer and ironer, could attend to horses and carriage, cook and cowboy. He was full of music, could play the piano, banjo, guitar and sing the most comical songs you've ever heard. He was a huge man and a good rider. During much of her eight years as a widow, Mabel had kept George riding the north string of Day fence so he could conveniently drop over to Talpa at mail time for letters from her many admirers. And now with Gus, "The Best Chef in Texas," her retinue of servants was complete.
The third afternoon they arrived at the embryo tent city of Eddy, Lincoln County, New Mexico (Now Carlsbad) to be welcomed by Charles B. Eddy, who insisted on their staying with him for the night.
Charles Eddy, an energetic and distinguished looking bachelor, a man of nerve and imagination, wore a shortly clipped but full mustache and beard that parted in the middle and slightly curved at the outer edges. He was strictly an idea man, an incurable promoter, who for the next twenty years was to be identified with men willing to pour millions of dollars of risk capital into his many irrigation, mining and railroad schemes throughout southeastern New Mexico, eventually to make him a millionaire. He had just launched his first brain child, soon to bring the wealthy James J. Hagerman from retirement to see his project through. It was the development of the lower Pecos Valley around the town of Eddy, and the construction of the Pecos Valley Railroad then building from Pecos toward the New Mexico line.
Charles Eddy must have reassured Mabel in words similar to the ones he had written her on the eve of her wedding.
I am confident that your life here will be a happy one, for Captain Lea is one of the best men I ever knew. His character and reputation is excelled by none. He is very kind hearted, liberal and generous to a fault, extremely popular and has a host of friends. He is a large land owner in Lincoln County and stands as high as any man in the Territory among business men. I have known him many years and can say he is true and honorable in every sense of the word. And may I welcome you to New Mexico. Our valley is fast settling up with a pleasant class of people and I am sure you will be delighted with our climate.
The Leas were on the road at daybreak the next morning with three days ahead of them before reaching Roswell, their town lying in the heart of Lincoln County on the flat desert plain of the mid-Pecos Valley.
Lincoln was the largest county in the United States. It took in the entire southwestern one-fourth of the Territory and with little effort could swallow Connecticut, Delawar, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and then take a big bit out of Vermont. It was nearly four times the size of the land area of Massachusetts alone. Square in shape, two hundred miles would fall short of the distance from one corner of the county to the next. Much of the county was more than three hard days horseback to the sheriff at Lincoln, the county seat. The eastern half was hot, flat desert country of scant rainfall through which the Pecos River slowly flowed south to the Texas line; while in the west ten and twelve thousand foot peaks of the Rocky Mountains formed a chain from which small, cold mountain streams rushed to feed the thirsty Pecos.
The last census of 1880 revealed a population of only 2500 in all that vast region, 2300 of whom were native born Mexicans and Indians, living mostly in the more seasonable mountain country to the west, where high altitude moisture, from daily summer afternoon thunderstorms, and winter snows provided a more bountiful livelyhood for man and beast. The Anglos, attracted by the lawless land of millions of acres of free public domain, were made up of outlaws fleeing the wrath of the Texas Rangers and some brave and honorable cowmen and cowboys who drifted in with vast herds of Texas cattle to grow up with the country.
There was no county in the West where a man had to be quicker with a gun or with a smile than Lincoln County in 1880. The "Whites" were a rough lot and many a Mexican mother kept order among her children by threatening, "The Tejanos will get you if you don't watch out." There was such an objectionable element coming in, it is no wonder the Lincoln County War, in which Billy the Kid figured so prominently, broke out in the late Seventies, and the Pecos Valley was the scene of the Kid's most daring adventures.
To escape the severe winters of Colfax County in northern New Mexico, Captain Lea drifted his sheep into the Pecos Valley in 1877. The following year, during the heat of the Lincoln County War, a few days after "The Three Day Fight" at Lincoln, he acquired the only adobe store and residence at Roswell from Marion Turner, who was too involved in the Lincoln County trouble to be comfortable.
After taking possession of the premises, Captain Lea sent to Charles Illfeld at Las Vegas for a stock of merchandise and established a mercantile business at the old stand under the name of Lea, Bonney & Co. He sold his sheep and went into the cattle business, running his stock up the Hondo and North Spring Rivers west of town. In the wake of Lincoln County trouble, riffraff, drifters and outlaws joined in small bands to continue the rustler's war in their own way. Honest citizens could not count on a long lease on life and the cattle and mercantile business was in no way secure.
In November 1880, John S. Chisum, known as the "Pecos Valley Cattle King," and Captain Lea got together. Although they did not see eye to eye on many things, they agreed that the cattle rustling must be stopped. The killings of two years before had subsided, but Billy the Kid's band and other gangs of outlaws were stealing the country blind, with a ready outlet for stolen beef to unscrupulous agents with government Indian contracts around Fort Stanton. Cattle thieves were particularly active in the Roswell area.
George Kimbrell, appointed sheriff in 1879 when Sheriff Peppin threw in his star, was unsuccessful in dealing with the outlawry. John Chisum knew a man, Pat F. Garrett of Fort Sumner, who he thought could handle the situation, and that day Chisum and Lea agreed to run Garrett for sheriff on the law and order ticket. Garrett failed to carry the mountain country to the west, but was elected sheriff of Lincoln County. During his term of office, Pat Garrett and his deputy, John W. Poe, shot and killed Billy the Kid, and together the two officers killed, captured and ran out of Lincoln County the last of the lawless element. The remaining cattlemen realized the folly of stealing from one another and began a period of operation on the open range in which there was peace and cooperation in everything, with the exception of an occasional dispute over water rights.
Water is and always has been the major problem of the Pecos Valley. When Mabel Lea arrived in New Mexico, he who owned the water owned Lincoln County. During the cattle boom of the Eighties Captain Lea interested H. K. Thurber, a wealthy wholesale grocer of New York, in New Mexico. Together they organized the Lea Cattle Company in which Mr. Thurber invested $500,000 in cattle and put up $250,000 to secure lands with water rights. Under the management of Captain Lea, they were running between thirty and fifty thousand cattle west of the Pecos and into the Capitan Mountains. During that period there were eighteen other such cow outfits and countless smaller operators in Lincoln County.
In spite of Charles B. Eddy's opinion expressed in 1885 that it is the want of water that makes New Mexico the worst place on the face of the earth for small settlers to go, the Pecos Valley in 1889 marked the beginning of a colonization period. Where water had been diverted from mountain streams and spread over the land through small private irrigation systems, it had been proved that the level, rich soil could grow anything.
With the promotional fever of Charles Eddy's schemes for irrigation, land and town developments supplementing the excitement of the railroad advancing on the Pecos Valley, new people were coming in to take up lands and settle on desert claims, free for the filing. It was only a matter of time, so the promoters said, when water would be made to flow over thousands of acres along the Pecos and its tributaries.
The Pecos Valley, isolated from the rest of the Territory, would draw its increasing population from Texas and the other states, gradually to develop a life of its own, quite separate and apart from the Spanish dominated culture of the territory to the north and west.
At the first sight of Roswell, Mattie broke down and cried, saying, "What and where will we go next?" As George Hubbard tied up the team in front of Captain Lea's story and a half adobe house, he exclaimed under his breath to Mattie, "Well, I thought we were going to something. Lord, if I'd known we were coming to something like this, I'd never left Texas."
Roswell was nothing but a cow trail with six houses on what they called main street and about six more scattered about on the prairie with nothing but trails connecting. Roswell was a pitiful sight in Mattie's own words.
Willie Day, who had known few childhood playmates, was delighted to meet Captain Lea's 12 year old son, Wildy, the first white child born at Roswell, and his nine year old daughter, Ella. The two girls soon became inseparable friends, as they were the same age.
The Leas settled down to house keeping. Will Doss was managing Mabel's affairs on her Texas ranch and Captain Lea appreciated a good home, although the affairs of the Lea Cattle Company kept him on the move. They lived in the story and a half house and had their kitchen and dining room in the adobe store building next door. Captain Lea had another adobe house on the same block, but it was occupied by the Frank Lesnet family. Gus did the cooking and Mattie the laundry and housekeeping.
The children attended school in an adobe building on the banks of the Hondo about a half mile south of the village. Four years before, Miss Lina Tucker had gone out among the cowboys and collected sufficient money to build the first school building in Roswell. By 1890 the town had grown to 343 people. Chaves County had been designated on paper to serve the area around Roswell, but was yet unorganized, and still had but one school house and that in Roswell, serving a county of three thousand inhabitants. No other school functioned in eastern New Mexico. There was not a public school in the entire state as no Territorial educational institutions were in existence, except on paper.
Purely a piece of paper was the ineffective statute of 1889 passed by the territorial legislature setting out the qualifications for a teacher in New Mexico, which read, "That hereafter in the Territory no person who can not read and write sufficiently to keep his own record in either the English or the Spanish languages shall be eligible to be elected or appointed to hold the office of school teacher, school director," and several other offices.
By the fall of 1889 Captain and Mrs. Lea, who were absent from Roswell much of the time looking after their separate interests, indicated a growing concern over the education of their children. The first instrument of record on this subject was written by H. K. Thurber of New York to Captain Lea, "In regard to donating the sixteen acres for the university, I approve of it if you think it the best thing to do and I leave it up to you. I do not want to have that called the 'Thurber University.' I think it would be a great mistake. It should be 'The Roswell University of Chaves County.' Then the title explains itself; it advertises the town." The Leas were thinking, but as yet a solution was not at hand.
On March 21, 1890, Captain Lea wrote his wife, who was on a business trip to her Texas ranch. "I am determined to put Wildy somewhere to be trained. I shall put him first in a convent until he is subdued and then later in a military school. I think you and I fully agree that he has to be placed entirely under strangers and out of the cowboy atmosphere. Meet me at the Pickwick Hotel in Fort Worth about April 1st."
Within two weeks Wildy Lea was enrolled in the Junior Preparatory Department of Fort Worth University under the firm discipline of Colonel Robert S. Goss, Commandant of Cadets.
During her frequent trips to Texas on business of the Day Cattle Ranch Co., Mrs. Lea visited Wildy at Fort Worth, where she became well acquainted with Colonel Goss, who had a master's degree from Kentucky Military Institute. Mabel, who was also a college graduate with considerable teaching experience, was impressed with his capacity for leadership and his superior work in youth development. To say the least, he had done a marvelous job on Wildy.
Later that fall, during Wildy's second term at Fort Worth University, Mrs. Lea approached colonel Goss with the idea of starting a Military school at Roswell. He apparently gave the subject little thought until the Christmas holidays were at hand when both the Captain and Mrs. Lea appeared in Fort Worth insisting that he spend Christmas with them in Roswell and look over the field. Colonel Goss, who was a bachelor with no definite plans for Christmas, accepted their invitation and accompanied them to New Mexico.
Colonel Goss enjoyed his Christmas in Roswell. The new County of Chaves with Roswell as the County Seat, with a new court house, was now organized and operational. One of the first official acts of the new political subdivision was to build a school house, a 3-room $5,000 brick building, and the first public school to be erected in the Territory of New Mexico. It was in this building at Christmas that Colonel Goss entertained a large audience by rendering a number of well known recitations and seized the opportunity to publicly applaud the Leas and their continued efforts for better educational facilities for their area. The Leas' ambitions were taking shape.
Even those in Santa Fe were hopeful. Governor Prince in addressing the opening of the 29th Territorial Legislature in January, said, "If we are to be kept in a Territorial condition, Congress should at least give us immediate possession of our school lands." And a note received in Roswell from Senator G. A. Richardson at Santa Fe stated that the prospects were good for the passage of a good school law that session.
The day before Colonel Goss was to return to Fort Worth with Wildy Lea and three new recruits for Fort Worth Military Academy, the first artesian well in eastern New Mexico was drilled in the town of Roswell. The discovery of an inexhaustible supply of flowing artesian water in the mid-Pecos Valley touched off a development boom soon to see thousands of fertile acres put under irrigation.
Where there had been the original store established by Captain Lea, when the gun smoke was clearing from the streets of Lincoln, now there seemed to be countless business houses springing up all over Roswell. In addition to the original store, now operated by Smith Lea, the Captain's cousin, under the name of Poe, Lea and Cosgrove, Jaffa, Prager & Co., and Williamson & Saunders had put in general merchandise stores. The town could now boast of a doctor, a saloon, a seed and feed house, livery stable, daily mail service, lumber yard, building contractor, newspaper, photographer, and a hotel; and M. Whitman was in the process of moving his stock of general merchandise in from the town of White Oaks over west of the Capitan Mountains.
In spite of the potentialities claimed for Roswell by Captain Lea, the prospects for a military school to be located in the most isolated town in the United States looked very dim to Colonel Goss when he returned to Fort Worth. But after repeated visits of Mrs. Lea in Fort Worth and a lengthy correspondence from the Captain, Colonel Goss finally accepted the challenge. At the close of school that June he resigned his position at Fort Worth University and went to Roswell.
Earlier that year when plans for the school were taking shape Mabel, after much persuasion, had talked the Captain into placing their adobe house, they occupied by the Lesnets, and five acres of land at the disposal of Colonel Goss. On June 22, 1891, thirty-six citizens of Chaves County subscribed a total of $1330 for the purpose of building a dormitory, study hall and plank fence for The Goss Military Institute, the same to be erected at once, and finally all to be removed to the permanent building site of said academy at Seventh and Main.
A board of advisers was appointed, consisting of Captain Lea, John W. Poe, Edward A. Cahoon, Nathan Jaffa, William Prager, and G. A. Richardson, to assist Colonel Goss in drafting and executing the plans for a school plant to be ready to receive fifty boarding students by September. Colonel Goss did a masterful job in assembling a strong faculty and publicizing the new institute throughout the Territory and parts of Texas. Ina prospectus of the school he said, "If you want your boy managed, send him to Goss; if not keep him at home."
The Goss Military Institute opened September 3rd with thirty-eight bodies and a female department of twenty with an annual fee of three hundred dollars for boarders and ninety dollars for day students. The cadets, outfitted in West Point gray, came from various parts of the Territory and from as far east in Texas as Fort Worth.
The original plant was unimposing but adequate. The Lea house of adobe near the entrance to the grounds was used as a reception room, infirmary, and bachelor quarters for Colonel Goss. To the rear was the main building, a long unpainted frame structure running east and west, which provided the class rooms and dormitory facilities. Nearby was an old adobe building which had been converted into a kitchen and mess hall. To the rear of the main building was the pride and joy of G.M.I. It was a 14' x 25' building sitting squarely across a flowing irrigation ditch, which housed and enclosed a swimming pool, chin deep, according to Wildy Lea. Goss Military Institute boasted that but one other school in the United States had a natatorium, and that a smaller one. A circular artesian fountain surrounded by a lawn set in cottonwoods added some dignity to the campus, which was backed up in the rear by spacious parade and drill grounds. In a small orchard could be found the zoological gardens housing a black eagle. Mattie did the laundry and Gus presided over the kitchen.
The greatest accomplishment of Colonel Goss, however, was his excellent faculty there assembled. He had turned one outstanding resource of New Mexico to his advantage. Among his faculty were well trained teachers seeking the curative powers of a high, dry climate.
In addition to Colonel Goss, who had a B. S. and an M. A. degree from Kentucky Military Institute, his staff consisted of the following able professors:
Captain D. H. Clark, United States Army, Retired, United States Military Academy, Commandant of Cadets and Professor of Military Science and Tactics
Nelson G. Howard, A. B., Harvard University, Physical Culture and Languages
M. L. Quinn, A. M., University of Berlin, Music
J. W. Butcher, M. A., Hill's Commercial College, Dallas, Stenography, Typewriting and Business
Miss A. E. Hassen, M. L., Washington Female Seminary (Former President of the Baltimore Seminary), in charge of female and preparatory departments
Edwin Rowlands, Tutor, North Wales, the British Isles
Like many present day under-endowed institutions of learning, Goss Military Institute soon fell into financial difficulties that were to plague Colonel Goss as long as he remained in Roswell. On October 3rd he wrote Captain Lea, "The school is doing fine, but no money. The people cannot pay, it seems, but we are living. If I can in any way hold up this year, I will be all right next. But I will get through somehow."
On October 16th Colonel Goss wrote to Mabel, "I pause to tell you what I hear in the next room—some fifteen small girls in voice culture. If you could hear the sound that rings in the air, you would not—could not think that this is Roswell, New Mexico. Oh! How I am fighting for the good work. If my health will only last me to the end."
"I am thinking of leaving for a trip of some four weeks to Lincoln, White Oaks, Fort Stanton and the ranches. I must get out and secure some ten more boarders for January 1st. I must have that much money to run me through." And on October 16th he was writing Mrs. Lea asking desperately for $1000.
From the viewpoint of colonel Goss, Goss Military Institute had from its inception been a personal affair, with himself as the personality. Captain Lea, however, entertained a radically different idea. The school to him was an institution for the good of Roswell and the development of the Territory.
Captain Lea took his case to Antonio Joseph, Territorial Representative in Washington, who replied March 15th, "I made a strong fight before the Committee on the Territories for the Goss Military Institute, but lost it. The Committee opposed all grants of public lands, except to state institutions. If Goss Military Institute was now under the control of the Territory, there would not be much trouble to secure a grant of land for it, but under existing circumstances it cannot be secured." That was final as far as Captain Lea was concerned. Goss Military Institute had to be recognized by the Territorial government to secure outside financial assistance.
The following fall Goss Military Institute started its second year. During the summer Colonel Goss had traveled extensively throughout New Mexico and Texas interesting new students in the school. Sixty students enrolled the first day with prospects for 100. Captain J. E. Edington arrived to teach Latin, Greek and mathematics, and Miss Julia Fitch replaced Professor Quinn in the Department of Music. Soon Miss Fitch and Colonel Goss were married.
The matter of adequate endowment for the success of the institute was still paramount in Captain Lea's mind. He presented a bill to Albert B. Fall and James F. Hinkle, who represented Roswell in the Territorial legislature, for Territorial recognition of Goss Military Institute. He got in his buggy, drove to Lincoln and took Ex-Governor George Curry to Santa Fe, where they together lobbied for its passage.
When Hinkle submitted the bill to Fall, the latter took the bill and crossed off Goss and substituted New Mexico Military Institute saying, "Now that bill will pass." And it did, but the legislature allowed no appropriation during that session. Changing the name offended Colonel Goss and at the close of school he resigned his place and went to Albuquerque.
Captain Edington assumed leadership of New Mexico Military Institute until the summer of 1895 when the national depression and terrible drought forced its closing.
Finally after the approval of a bond issue by Congress to insure the territorial school a permanent plant, and the appropriation of 50,000 acres of public lands for the support of the school, New Mexico Military Institute again opened its doors in 1898 at its present location on the hill overlooking Roswell.
On April 8, 1902, the student body of New Mexico Military Institute dedicated the first issue of the student publication, The Bronco, to Captain Joseph C. Lea. He immediately wrote to his wife at her Texas ranch:
I was so surprised to find a little book or magazine dedicated to me by the school with my picture and a little biographical sketch of my life, which I have not read yet. I only saw the picture and headlines and immediately mailed it to you.
It was certainly a surprise to me that anyone here would give me any credit, now since the school has got to be a credit to the town and all of New Mexico is proud of the Institution. Many others are clamoring for the credit of it. But you are the one who done the most to start it and to get Goss to come to Roswell and lay the foundation. It is certainly true that I got the legislature to pass the bill making it a Territorial Institution. That is sure. And it is further true that the school was at that time dead beyond resurrection and never would have been anything from that time on if it had not been made a Territorial school and placed under Territorial auspices.
It is now acknowledged to be the leading school of all New Mexico. It has now got so far along that it will rank right up with the very best in all the southwest in a very few years, unless some very bad management occurs.
West Texas Historical Association Year Book
October, 1958
The Millers and Early Day Banking In Belton
Six weeks after I was born in Bell County, Texas, I was present at a trade between my parents and the late J. Z. Miller, Jr., in the Belton National Bank, and I knew Mr. Miller intimately for a period of nearly fifty years.
J. Z. Miller, Jr., has been one of the outstanding financiers of our time. From a start as office boy, janitor and handyman in the Miller Brothers private bank at Belton, in 1880, he rose to become the Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and a power in financial circles throughout the entire country.
The following is a brief narrative taken from a lengthy document prepared by him in 1929. This narrative reveals some interesting facts pertinent to nineteenth century merchandising and banking in Texas.
Merchandising and Banking With Shot Bags
In December, 1865, W. A. Miller left Montpelier, in Bastrop County, and went to Belton, in Bell County, then a village of about 200 people.
Upon his arrival at Belton, Miller formed a partnership with Don A. Chamberlin to do a general mercantile business at Belton and in its trade territory. For a while the operations of Miller and Chamberlin were quiet and uneventful. The country was unsettled and disturbed and had not recovered from the effects of the Civil War. Bell County was sparsely settled and had a population of less than 4,000. Salado, on the Salado River, nine miles south of Belton, was the only other community in the county large enough to be classed as a village. Its population was about 100. Most of the country's rural population settled along the streams where wood and water could be had. Small farms in the "bottoms" and valleys were cleared and fenced "stake and rider" fashion, with rails split on the ground.
Farming was conducted on a small scale. Nearly all farmers had a few horses and cattle, some had larger herds.
It was the age of free grass. Everybody's live stock grazed over the open country, a large part of which was Public Domain and Mexican Land Grants. County boundaries were indefinite and almost unknown.
On September 1, 1868 J. Z. Miller, who had been a Lieutenant Colonel in the 17th Texas Infantry during the war, joined the firm at Belton. Prior to the secession of Texas, J. Z. had been associated with his brother, W. A. Miller, in farming and the handling of merchandise for the sparsely settled neighborhood of Montpelier, which they had named for their home town in Kentucky.
The Articles of Agreement creating the firm of Miller, Chamberlin & Company did not contemplate banking, but the firm did advertise to do business of that nature. Its banking department, however, existed in name only. It was simply an advertising expediency and was mainly to attract attention to the firm's mercantile activities, add dignity to and give the firm a little more prestige—especially with incoming settlers.
The firm had no separate banking organization, with separate books and special employees. All transactions of a banking nature were recorded in the mercantile books, along with items involving boots, calico, coffee and other merchandise.
Deposits were not solicited; few were offered and fewer still accepted. The firm's customers, especially those living in the country districts, were furnished "shot bags" in which the customers put their gold and silver, the only money in circulation at the time. Each bag, tagged with the owner's name, was received and laid away in the firm's safe. The bags were handed out when the owners called for them, to draw from or add to the contents of their bags. After such changes were made by the customers, without aid or observation of any members or employee of the firm, the customer would hand the bags back to be laid away again in the safe. It is remarkable that during the whole existence of the firm and the hundreds of changes in such "bag deposits" there never arose a single controversy regarding the contents of any bag.
The firm handled for its customers such checks as were brought into the country by seasonal buyers of horses and cattle. Occasionally some of the "newcomers" from other states would have what little capital they possessed in shape of drafts. The firm was glad to handle these items as they supplied exchange which was used in making payment for merchandise purchased in Galveston, New Orleans and the East.
The store building, a long and narrow two story structure, was situated on the north side of the public square. The 13 x 25 foot space occupied by the office and vault was along the west wall. On the opposite wall was an old-fashioned fireplace providing the only heat in the entire building. A little farther to the rear was the stairway to the second floor. At the rear of both floors space was reserved for receiving incoming merchandise and the storage and shipment of buffalo and cow hides, wool, pecans, wheat, tallow and other produce purchased from the settlers. The clerks slept in a room at the front of the second floor. A light well, enclosed by banisters under a skylight roof, served the office. An inside well provided the only source of water supply.
The conduct of the firm's business was extremely crude. There was little or no system in selling the merchandise, in making charges against customers who had charge accounts, and accounting for the cash received from cash sales. While the goods were marked with a cost price and a sale price, every clerk used his own discretion in making reductions in the sale price, and frequently accepted a lower amount offered by the customer.
Each salesman had an individual cash drawer located near the front of the store. The salesman, however, was not required to put the cash into the drawer simultaneously with the sale if he was some distance from the cash drawer. He simply carried the funds in his pocket until he happened to be near his cash drawer. A busy salesman would at times have a half day's sales in his pockets. No tickets nor any kind of check was made of sales.
No merchandise account was kept and hence at no time did the books reflect the amount of merchandise, bought, sold or on hand. Only at irregular periods were inventories made and the value of merchandise on hand known. Even after such inventories were made no entries were made in the books of the concern for future reference. The firm did not keep a liability record of its indebtedness for merchandise. The merchandise was of the nature at that time in demand by farmers and small stockraisers of moderate means, and by ranchers having larger herds located as far west as Brown County, northwest as Eastland County, and southwest as Burnet and Llano counties. The merchandise was not classified nor kept in order. Goods of the same class and kind would frequently be found in different parts of the store. Each salesman had "the run" of the store. He would sell or try to sell the customer hair restorer, "made while you wait" of olive and bergamoy oils, liver pills and Ayers cherry pectoral; brogan shoes, slickers and chewing tobacco; rifles, chair parts, logwood, sheep dip, saddle bags, etc., right through his list with little or no system of assembling, wrapping or charging the items to the customer's account, recording the amount of goods sold, or accounting for the cash receiving for them. Unfortunately, for the success of the business, very few of the clerks had much education or "schooling," as it was called. Practically all were without previous training or experience in business or merchandising.
In spite of the crude frontier methods of merchandising, the firm of Miller, Chaimberlin & Company was looked upon as a very large concern in comparison with the half-dozen small, more or less specialized, stocks of goods carried in one-story buildings by others pretending to do a mercantile business in the little town. In those days, the number of saloons, gambling halls, and tenpin alleys in Belton was more than double the number of legitimate business concerns.
The firm established branches in Davilla, in Milam County, at Moffattown and at Hamilton, a new county seat, in what was then the northwest frontier and frequently subject to Indian raids. These branch ventures proved to be unprofitable and were discontinued.
Bell County and Belton
The population of Bell County increased, but "times were hard" and farmers and stock raisers did not prosper during the panic of 1873. Cattle and horses were not in demand and prices were very low. The enormous ranches of South Texas were better organized to sell and deliver large herds of cattle and horses to northern buyers than were the small cattlemen of Bell County. Cotton was expensive to raise and market. For a period it was taxed 3 cents per pound by the United States Government and the price at which it had to be sold was not profitable to the farmers.
Fully two-thirds of the goods sold by the firm were sold on credit. The customers were scattered over the vast territory composing Bell, Coryell, Falls, Milam, Williamson, Burnet, McLennan, Bosque, Lampasas, Hamilton and Brown counties. The firm sustained a few severe losses and many smaller ones by being unable to collect from customers. In a few cases land was acquired, although its possession added but little value to the firm's assets, as raw land produced no revenue and was hard to sell at any price.
At the time of its formation, the firm contemplated the partnership to continue only to July 1, 1870, but did, in fact, continue until April 14, 1874. Just prior to that date, Harvey J. Chaimberlin, a brother of Don A. Chaimberlin, moved to Belton and induced his brother Don to join him in a new commercial business. This brought about the dissolution of Miller, Chaimberlin & Company. So at the time the firm dissolved, difficulty was experienced in liquidating its indebtedness. It was two years after the dissolution before all debts were paid.
Belton in the mid-eighteen seventies had grown to be a town of about 1200; the County had a population of nearly 14,000. The citizenship, on the average, was much improved. Small communities had sprung up in every part of the County. Some attention was being given to roads and bridges. A splendid iron bridge now spanned the Leon River at Hill Crossing on the Austin-Belton-Waco military road. It was built by the Belton Bridge Company of which W. A. Miller was a dominant factor. Silas Baggett, H. C. Denny, J. Q. Allen, Elisha Embree and "Miller, Chaimberlin & Company," were among the stockholders.
Prior to the construction of this bridge, Dred Hill operated a ferry at this crossing when the water was high.
Within 200 yards of the east bank of the Leon River, opposite the old Hill Crossing, stands the large elm tree under which the three Commissioners, appointed in 1854 by the County Organization Committee to locate the county seat, held their first and only meeting. Three locations were considered: one on the Dred Hill farm where the Committee was meeting; one near the confluence of the Leon, Salado and Lampasas Rivers, now known as Three Forks; and the third on Nolan Creek about 1 ½ miles west of the confluence of Nolan Creek and the Leon River. The third suggestion was selected. Its central position and easy access to wood and water appealed to the Commissioners. Mrs. Matilda F. Connell, owner of the Matilda F. Connell League (an original Mexican grant), donated 100 acres for the townsite, which was called Nolanville, the county seat of Bell County. During the year 1856, the Commissioners Court changed the name of the town from Nolanville to Belton.
A New Partnership
On April 14, 1874, W. A. and J. Z. Miller formed a partnership under the name of Miller Brothers to carry on a general mercantile business, and also a banking business. The announcement to do a banking business was not a solicitation of deposits, nor were deposits at this time expected as there was little or no idle money in the county and interest rates ranged from 2% to 5% a month. The announcement and offer to do a banking business was simply a notification that the firm contemplated and was prepared to handle the checks and drafts received by citizens of the county from time to time for horses, cattle, farm products and those brought in by new settlers, just as their predecessors had done. Occasionally, however, there were some small deposits made by customers. The records of these transactions were kept in the mercantile books.
The banking end was carried on in that manner until about January 1, 1875, when a new partnership was formed by William A. Miller, J. Z. Miller and John Q. Allen under the firm name of Miller Brothers & Company, to do a banking business, with Mr. Allen in charge as manager. The capital of this new firm was $10,000, all contributed by Mr. Allen, and upon which he was to get interest at the rate of 10% payable annually, and one-half of the net profits in lieu of salary for his personal services as manager. Neither of the other partners, William A. Miller nor J. Z. Miller, contributed any capital. After charging the expense account with the annual interest on the capital furnished by Mr. Allen the net profits were to be divided ½ to Miller Brothers (Merchants). No charge was made for rent of office and vault space. Mr. Allen made no charge for his personal services. Both firms occupied the same office and vault, situated about the middle of the storeroom occupied by Miller Brothers for mercantile purposes. Each concern was an entity and had its own set of books. There was little banking business done at that time as we now think of such institutions. The total deposits at the end of 1876 did not exceed $5,000. The revenue came in part from small loans from $25 to $250 to townspeople and settlers, but mostly from the purchase of vendors' lien notes from land owners whose lands had suddenly greatly increased in value and had become marketable.
Most of the land in Bell County consisted of large Mexican grants and had been held for years by the first removed from the original grantees from the Mexican Government, or by their heirs. Land in the northeast quadrant of Bell County—had but little value as there was no economical way to fence it. Land between Troy and Eddy was sold for one dollar per acre by the firm, in 1875.
On December 23, 1875, the death of W. A. Miller occurred. He had been the active manager of all commercial activities of all the firms of which he had been a member.
After the death of W. A. Miller the affairs of Miller Brothers, Merchants, and their interest in the firm of Miller Brothers & Company, Bankers, were in the hands of J. Z. Miller, the surviving partner. The death of W. A. Miller did not bring about the dissolution of the firms in which he was partner. His estate was represented by his brother, J. Z. Miller, Executor, and his widow, Amanda P. Miller, Executrix, of his last will. The operation from 1874 to the latter part of 1879 was uneventful until the disastrous fire of 1879.
The north side of the Public Square of Belton, except one building, was destroyed at 2 A. M. Thursday morning, September 27, 1879. The important mercantile firms of Belton occupied the buildings destroyed. The building occupied by Miller Brothers, Merchants, and Miller Brothers & Company, Bankers, was among those burned. The firm lost merchandise worth $15,000 to $20,000. There was no insurance. The merchandise carried out of the building represented $5,000 to $7,500. This merchandise was moved from the streets to the store of Ray & Elliott, dealers in gents' furnishing goods, who occupied the second story of the Allen Building, the only building which did not burn.
The fire occurred at the most inopportune time. The fall stock had just been received. The last invoice for the new boots and shoes arrived the afternoon before the fire. The accounts receivable were at the maximum, as cotton was starting to market and collections from farmers had just begun. The first bale of cotton on the market at Belton in 1879 was September 18th, the very day Colonel J. Z. Miller returned from the eastern markets. Joezach Miller, the 16 year old son of W. A. Miller had accompanied his uncle to New York and Boston on that trip. It required exactly 100 hours to reach New York City from Belton. The trip to Waco, the nearest railroad point, required an entire day's buggy ride. There were no Pullmans running in Texas. They were available from St. Louis but were little patronized, certainly not by country merchants from small Texas towns, hence it is easy to imagine Colonel Miller and his nephew sitting up nights during the trip to and from New York.
The fire burned around the vault all day Thursday. Timbers, merchandise and bins of wheat fed the flames. A downpour of rain Thursday night extinguished the fire, but caused great anxiety for fear that the sudden change of temperature would crack the vault and ruin the books and records, as well as the private papers of many customers left for safe keeping.
Early Sunday morning an improvised plankway was laid from the front of the building to the vault. The combination worked on first effort and the door opened without much difficulty. The contents of the vault were found to be intact, only slightly smoked, and the great anxiety felt during the past three days was allayed.
Sunday afternoon, about three o'clock, J. Z. Miller and J. Q. Allen had a meeting, somewhat by accident, in front of the residence of W. J. Long on East Street where the Belton Hotel is now located. Joezach Miller was present at this meeting and although only 16, took a small part in the discussion which ensued.
J. Q. Allen announced that he wished to discontinue the banking business, dissolve the firm and wind up its affairs. The banking business, he argued, had not been profitable during the five years the firm of Miller Brothers & Company had been in business, and in his opinion there was no good reason to suppose banking would ever pay in Bell County.
Colonel Miller showed great surprise at the attitude assumed by Mr. Allen. He called Mr. Allen's attention to the progress the bank had make during each of the last three years, increasing deposits and larger turnover; explained that the town and county were increasing in population and wealth; that the farmers had made considerable headway in paying for their lands, mostly purchased from none-resident owners; and present owners were improving their farms and ranches; that wire was available and coming into more general use for fencing; that the products of the farms and ranches were increasing at a rapid rate—all which promised increased deposits; that each of these factors would benefit banking and in time make that business more profitable than the mercantile or any other commercial venture, especially as the firm then had and would probably continue to have the only bank in the county.
Mr. Allen was obdurate! His state of mind and his determination to discontinue the business could not be changed. As Colonel Miller had the problem of guiding the destiny of the mercantile firm so as to avoid financial embarrassment, he was compelled to accede to Mr. Allen's wishes. Next morning, Monday, another meeting was held, Colonel Miller, Mr. Allen and Joezach Miller being present. It was decided to begin liquidation by paying off the depositors as rapidly as they could be reached.
Isaac H. Layton, the bank's clerk, bookkeeper and general man (he would be called a cashier now) was ill, and for that reason Joezach Miller was selected to assist Mr. Allen with details of the bank. They were not voluminous.
The deposits were approximately $15,000; about one third belonged to townspeople; the balance to people in the county and the trade territory tributary to Belton.
Monday afternoon a list of all local depositors was prepared. Beginning early Tuesday morning (October 2, 1879), Mr. Allen and Joezach Miller, with a supply of gold and silver, the only circulating medium at that time, packed in what was known as a "blue bucket," made numerous trips on that day and the next, calling from door to door on local depositors, paying the amounts due them and taking their receipts. Many of the depositors remonstrated with Mr. Allen on his decision to discontinue the bank, but to no avail. Thus ended the bank of "Miller Brothers & Company." Bell County was then without a bank and the citizens were without banking facilities of any kind.
The cash on hand, collections of some receivables, and the sale of some assets, enabled Mr. Allen to pay the depositors in full as they called for their balances. This required three or four months.
The capital, $10,000, used in the business, contributed by Mr. Allen, with several years' accrued interest thereon at the rate of 10%, remained a liability of the firm. The remaining assets of the firm were "frozen" as would be said today. They consisted of slow notes, stocks in Waco Bridge Company, Belton Bridge Company, Lampasas Bridge Company, Frontier Telegraph Company, and several parcels of land, and a few land notes. All were slow of conversion into money.
As the assets were realized upon, the proceeds were turned over to Mr. Allen as a credit on the indebtedness held by him against the firm, but so slowly were the receivables collected and the securities converted into cash (the stocks of the bridge companies turned out to be more than 50% losses), it was not until December 9, 1897, that a full settlement was made, and a net loss of about $7,500 determined. One half of this amount was paid to Mr. Allen by Miller Brothers according to the terms of the partnership. And so, the firm of Miller Brothers & Company passes into history.
Little effort was made by Miller Brothers, Merchants, to show and sell the salvaged merchandise. The small space available in the rear of the room occupied by Ray & Elliott was barely enough to store the goods, much less exhibit them. The great concern of Colonel Miller was to collect the debts due the firm and pay the indebtedness due the eastern wholesale houses from whom the burned merchandise was purchased. Several days after the fire, the firm arranged to borrow $3,000 from P. Fitzwilliams, a cotton factor, at Galveston, to meet pressing demands.
The '79 cotton was low in price and the crop poor. Farmers did the best they could but were unable to meet their obligations for supplies furnished them during the year. The firm had great difficulty in meeting its own obligations when due. Creditors were lenient, mainly because they realized the great misfortune the firm had sustained from the fire, and granted extension of a substantial amount of the firm's paper.
All through the fall and winter of '79-'80, every effort was made to convert the firm's assets into money. It required more than a year after the fire to take up the outstanding notes given for merchandise.
Within sixty or seventy days after the fire, say about December 5th, the building in the middle of the block on the north side of the Public Square in Belton, occupied by the firm at the time of the fire, had been hastily rebuilt and the salvaged merchandise moved into it and exposed for sale. The stock was so broken the disposition was extremely slow.
About January 1, 1880, Miller Brothers closed out their merchandise, amounting to about $5,000, to Ray & Elliott, who moved their own stock of gents' furnishings to the store building then occupied by Miller Brothers. For many years thereafter Ray & Elliott conducted their general mercantile business in that building.
This transaction with Ray & Elliott completely terminated all commercial activities of the then firm of Miller Brothers which had its beginning in Belton at the close of the Civil War.
J. Z. Miller continued the liquidation of the affairs of Miller Brothers, Merchants, taking when possible mortgages on future crops and on land to better secure notes carried over for customers. In a few cases the firm became the owner of lands taken for debts due it. Notwithstanding the earnest efforts put forth, the losses were large. These with the unfortunate fire loss well nigh wiped out the equities of the firm.
Miller Brothers Bankers
After discontinuing the banking business October 1, 1879, and after the sale to Ray & Elliot of the mercantile business January 1, 1880, there was a complete hiatus in the commercial activities of the Millers in Belton and elsewhere. On February 17, 1880, a new partnership was formed by J. Z. Miller and Armanda P. Miller, in her own right, under the firm name of MIller Brothers, to begin and carry on a banking business in Belton.
The formation of this new firm and the establishment of a new banking business was mainly the suggestion of Joezach Miller. At first, Colonel J. Z. Miller did not approve the idea, being so deeply concerned with the liquidation of the two firms which had but recently retired. Colonel MIller discounted the future of the banking business in Belton.
Constant urging by Joezach MIller, during the several weeks following the sale of the mercantile business and quite likely his suggestion that if he, Colonel J. Z. Miller, did not wish to re-embark in business, particularly banking, a partnership would be formed by Amanda P. Miller (to be represented by her son Joezach) and Aurelius Pruit, a capable accountant and business man who had previously married her niece. Joezach insisted that it was quite necessary for his mother to develop plans immediately as she had four children dependent upon her.
So, on February 17, 1880, Miller Brothers, Bankers, opened for business. The public was notified by small handbills printed on newsprint paper, 5 ½ x 7 inches. These hand bills were carried from door to door in the business section and from house to house in the residential section of Belton by Joezach Miller.
The bank occupied an office situated about the center of Ray & Elliott's dry goods store, with no other formality than a simple set of books, consisting of cash book and ledger. The counter checks, cheque books, letter heads, and note forms were all printed locally.
Aurelius Pruit was cashier and bookkeeper. Joezach Miller was collection clerk, office boy, janitor and handy man, for all sorts of little jobs and errands until September 1 of that year, when he left to spend a year at school in St. Louis. Colonel J. Z. Miller, as manager, directed the operation, but did not handle details.
The bank started without a dollar of capital, as all the funds realized from the assets of the retired firm of Miller Brothers, Merchants, was being applied to the liquidation of that firm's indebtedness.
Belton then had a population of about 2,500; Bell County, 20,518. There were only two banks in the county, L. Burr & Company and Miller Brothers. Deposits were small. Probably not exceeding $30,000 for both the Belton banks at the close of the year, 1880. Interest rates were high, ranging from 15% for the better class of customers to 18% or 20% for others. All loans were small, rarely over $500, except to merchants, and not exceeding $2,000 to any one of them. Exchange rates were high. From 1% to 1 ½% discount was made on exchange purchased and 1% charged on that sold. A charge of 1% was made on all collections.
The discontinuance of the L. Burr & Company bank, January 1, 1881, was a great help to Miller Brothers. Theirs was again the only bank in Bell County until January 1, 1882, when H C. Denny & Company opened a bank in the building adjoining that of Miller Brothers.
The business of the county increased. In 1881 the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad penetrated the county during the spring and summer, establishing the towns of Rogers, Heidenheimer and Temple. This opened a large area to agriculture. Those interested in the railroad purchased large ranches which were subdivided and sold to farmers. There was quite an influx of population, especially after the M. K. & T. railroad penetrated the county in the fall of the same year, and crossed the Santa Fe at Temple, which became a boom railroad town almost over night. The terminus of the Santa Fe remained at Belton for about 18 months, when it projected its road west from Belton to Ballinger and north from Temple to Fort Worth.
On September 1, 1881, Joezach MIller returned from school in St. Louis and became the bookkeeper at the bank. Aurelius Pruit remained the cashier.
During the spring of 1882, Downs Brothers opened a private bank at Temple. On September 1, 1882, B. N. Boren and R. H. Stewart of Galveston organized and opened the First National Bank at Belton. So, during the year 1882, Miller Brothers not only lost the distinction of having the only bank in Bell County but were confronted with the severe competition of three strong banks; H. C. Denny & Company and the First National Bank at Belton, and Downs Brothers at Temple.
Pruit resigned as cashier January 1, 1883, whereupon Joezach Miller became cashier and Thomas J. Herron, bookkeeper.
While the volume of business in the county greatly increased in 1883 and 1884, the increase was divided between the three competitive banks, especially after Downs Brothers nationalized in the fall of 1884.
Miller Brothers realized they were losing deposits to their competitors. About that time some notable failures of private banks over the state created a distrust of private banks, and people became generally impressed with the idea that only the national banks were safe.
The bank of Miller Brothers during the first five years had been reasonably successful as far as gross profits were concerned. It had maintained those dependent upon it despite considerable losses due to poor credits.
After much discussion between Colonel J. Z. Miller and Joezach Miller, who was now the recognized representative of his mother (Amanda P. Miller), it was decided, on December 4, 1884, to organize The Belton National Bank, with the minimum capital for National Banks at the time, $50,000.
The Comptroller of Currency granted a permit for the organization of The Belton National Bank, with J. Z. Miller, President: A. J. Harris, Vice-President; and J. Z. Miller, Jr., Cashier. The board of directors consisted of all officers and B. A. Ludlow and S. M. Ray.
The Belton National Bank opened for business on March 1, 1885. Though quite small in volume, the business of the bank was successful from the beginning. Interest rates had declined. On loans to merchants and the more important farmers and ranchers 10% was charged; on small loans, 12%, 15%, or 18%, according to the nature of the security or standing of the borrowers.
Late Christmas Eve, 1885, after the bank had closed for the day, while J. Z. Miller, Sr., and J. Z. Miller, Jr., President and Cashier, were sitting beside the old cannon stove in the center of the office, talking over the day's business, Captain A. J. Harris, Vice-President of The Belton National Bank, and, as strange as it may seem, attorney for the First National Bank, entered the office. He took from his pocket a memorandum written in pencil on the back of a used envelope and handed it to J. Z. Miller, Sr., who read it in silence and passed it to J. Z. Miller Jr. J. Z. Miller, Jr. looked it over and without a word being said made a notation at the bottom of the memorandum and handed it back to J. Z. Miller, Sr.
The paper was then returned to Captain Harris with a draft on New York for $2,500 as earnest money to bind the transaction. Captain Harris departed, returning in about 20 minutes with a receipt for the part payment written on the back of the original memorandum and signed by the President of the First National.
Early next morning, Christmas, the deed and actual possession was delivered and The Belton National Bank moved into its new location on the northeast corner of the square where it has since remained.
The business of The Belton National Bank increased slowly from year to year. Results of operation were satisfactory as the bank was conservative and followed good methods. The expense account was watched and credits were extended with so much care that losses were practically eliminated.
All went well until the panic in the summer of 1893. In July J. Z. Miller, Jr. made a trip to New York to borrow funds to carry the bank through that ordeal. It was next to impossible to get an interview with the officers of corresponding banks.
After a week in New York, spending every business hour of each day in correspondent banks' waiting rooms, hoping for an opportunity to see one of the officers, early one morning a messenger came from a little room where the bank's officers had been closeted for many days, and informed J. Z. Miller, Jr., that the cashier would see him for five minutes. The story was quickly told, the request was to borrow $30,000. Without a moment's hesitation, the cashier granted the loan; $10,000 at once, the balance, if and when absolutely needed. Fortunately only part of the remaining commitment was required. Mental anxiety was relieved. Cotton was soon on the market. Spinners and factors shipped gold from England to local banks in the farming section to pay for cotton purchased.
The panic was over but practically no deposits were made that fall. People kept their money at home. During 1894, the year following, deposits of The Belton National Bank were reduced to $75,000. They had averaged about $200,000 for several years.
Belton had but two banks from 1886 to 1900, the Belton National and H. C. Denny & Company.
On January 10, 1900, B. A. Ludlow and associates organized the Citizens National Bank of Belton with a capital of $50,000. The Citizens National gave up its National Charter July 1, 1990, and became the Citizens Bank, a private institution. It failed January 12, 1902.
On October 2, 1905, the Farmers State Bank of Belton began business with a captain of $25,000. That bank operated not quite a year. It transferred its business to the Belton National.
On February 8, 1907, the Peoples National Bank of Belton began business and that bank is still operating (1929).
The 1907 panic was handled skillfully. Since it was strictly a currency panic, The Belton National Bank followed the recommendations of the New York Clearing House and limited the amount of cash paid to each depositor. For convenience of customers, the Belton banks issued script to take the place of United States currency. Customers accepted the script without serious objections, since it was received by all merchants, banks, and individuals as real money. This condition lasted ten weeks, until unlimited withdrawals were resumed, January 15, 1908.
On June 30, 1910, W. W. James, then assistant cashier of the Belton National Bank, purchased from J. Z. Miller, Sr., J. Z. Miller, Jr., and Amanda P. Miller their interests in the bank. This rang the curtain down on forty-five years of banking services the Miller family had rendered the citizens of Bell County and its trade territory.
On July 27, 1910, J. Z. Miller, Jr. moved to Kansas City, where this former country banker there rose to the position of Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank.
West Texas Historical Association Year Book
October, 1956
Six weeks after I was born in Bell County, Texas, I was present at a trade between my parents and the late J. Z. Miller, Jr., in the Belton National Bank, and I knew Mr. Miller intimately for a period of nearly fifty years.
J. Z. Miller, Jr., has been one of the outstanding financiers of our time. From a start as office boy, janitor and handyman in the Miller Brothers private bank at Belton, in 1880, he rose to become the Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and a power in financial circles throughout the entire country.
The following is a brief narrative taken from a lengthy document prepared by him in 1929. This narrative reveals some interesting facts pertinent to nineteenth century merchandising and banking in Texas.
Merchandising and Banking With Shot Bags
In December, 1865, W. A. Miller left Montpelier, in Bastrop County, and went to Belton, in Bell County, then a village of about 200 people.
Upon his arrival at Belton, Miller formed a partnership with Don A. Chamberlin to do a general mercantile business at Belton and in its trade territory. For a while the operations of Miller and Chamberlin were quiet and uneventful. The country was unsettled and disturbed and had not recovered from the effects of the Civil War. Bell County was sparsely settled and had a population of less than 4,000. Salado, on the Salado River, nine miles south of Belton, was the only other community in the county large enough to be classed as a village. Its population was about 100. Most of the country's rural population settled along the streams where wood and water could be had. Small farms in the "bottoms" and valleys were cleared and fenced "stake and rider" fashion, with rails split on the ground.
Farming was conducted on a small scale. Nearly all farmers had a few horses and cattle, some had larger herds.
It was the age of free grass. Everybody's live stock grazed over the open country, a large part of which was Public Domain and Mexican Land Grants. County boundaries were indefinite and almost unknown.
On September 1, 1868 J. Z. Miller, who had been a Lieutenant Colonel in the 17th Texas Infantry during the war, joined the firm at Belton. Prior to the secession of Texas, J. Z. had been associated with his brother, W. A. Miller, in farming and the handling of merchandise for the sparsely settled neighborhood of Montpelier, which they had named for their home town in Kentucky.
The Articles of Agreement creating the firm of Miller, Chamberlin & Company did not contemplate banking, but the firm did advertise to do business of that nature. Its banking department, however, existed in name only. It was simply an advertising expediency and was mainly to attract attention to the firm's mercantile activities, add dignity to and give the firm a little more prestige—especially with incoming settlers.
The firm had no separate banking organization, with separate books and special employees. All transactions of a banking nature were recorded in the mercantile books, along with items involving boots, calico, coffee and other merchandise.
Deposits were not solicited; few were offered and fewer still accepted. The firm's customers, especially those living in the country districts, were furnished "shot bags" in which the customers put their gold and silver, the only money in circulation at the time. Each bag, tagged with the owner's name, was received and laid away in the firm's safe. The bags were handed out when the owners called for them, to draw from or add to the contents of their bags. After such changes were made by the customers, without aid or observation of any members or employee of the firm, the customer would hand the bags back to be laid away again in the safe. It is remarkable that during the whole existence of the firm and the hundreds of changes in such "bag deposits" there never arose a single controversy regarding the contents of any bag.
The firm handled for its customers such checks as were brought into the country by seasonal buyers of horses and cattle. Occasionally some of the "newcomers" from other states would have what little capital they possessed in shape of drafts. The firm was glad to handle these items as they supplied exchange which was used in making payment for merchandise purchased in Galveston, New Orleans and the East.
The store building, a long and narrow two story structure, was situated on the north side of the public square. The 13 x 25 foot space occupied by the office and vault was along the west wall. On the opposite wall was an old-fashioned fireplace providing the only heat in the entire building. A little farther to the rear was the stairway to the second floor. At the rear of both floors space was reserved for receiving incoming merchandise and the storage and shipment of buffalo and cow hides, wool, pecans, wheat, tallow and other produce purchased from the settlers. The clerks slept in a room at the front of the second floor. A light well, enclosed by banisters under a skylight roof, served the office. An inside well provided the only source of water supply.
The conduct of the firm's business was extremely crude. There was little or no system in selling the merchandise, in making charges against customers who had charge accounts, and accounting for the cash received from cash sales. While the goods were marked with a cost price and a sale price, every clerk used his own discretion in making reductions in the sale price, and frequently accepted a lower amount offered by the customer.
Each salesman had an individual cash drawer located near the front of the store. The salesman, however, was not required to put the cash into the drawer simultaneously with the sale if he was some distance from the cash drawer. He simply carried the funds in his pocket until he happened to be near his cash drawer. A busy salesman would at times have a half day's sales in his pockets. No tickets nor any kind of check was made of sales.
No merchandise account was kept and hence at no time did the books reflect the amount of merchandise, bought, sold or on hand. Only at irregular periods were inventories made and the value of merchandise on hand known. Even after such inventories were made no entries were made in the books of the concern for future reference. The firm did not keep a liability record of its indebtedness for merchandise. The merchandise was of the nature at that time in demand by farmers and small stockraisers of moderate means, and by ranchers having larger herds located as far west as Brown County, northwest as Eastland County, and southwest as Burnet and Llano counties. The merchandise was not classified nor kept in order. Goods of the same class and kind would frequently be found in different parts of the store. Each salesman had "the run" of the store. He would sell or try to sell the customer hair restorer, "made while you wait" of olive and bergamoy oils, liver pills and Ayers cherry pectoral; brogan shoes, slickers and chewing tobacco; rifles, chair parts, logwood, sheep dip, saddle bags, etc., right through his list with little or no system of assembling, wrapping or charging the items to the customer's account, recording the amount of goods sold, or accounting for the cash receiving for them. Unfortunately, for the success of the business, very few of the clerks had much education or "schooling," as it was called. Practically all were without previous training or experience in business or merchandising.
In spite of the crude frontier methods of merchandising, the firm of Miller, Chaimberlin & Company was looked upon as a very large concern in comparison with the half-dozen small, more or less specialized, stocks of goods carried in one-story buildings by others pretending to do a mercantile business in the little town. In those days, the number of saloons, gambling halls, and tenpin alleys in Belton was more than double the number of legitimate business concerns.
The firm established branches in Davilla, in Milam County, at Moffattown and at Hamilton, a new county seat, in what was then the northwest frontier and frequently subject to Indian raids. These branch ventures proved to be unprofitable and were discontinued.
Bell County and Belton
The population of Bell County increased, but "times were hard" and farmers and stock raisers did not prosper during the panic of 1873. Cattle and horses were not in demand and prices were very low. The enormous ranches of South Texas were better organized to sell and deliver large herds of cattle and horses to northern buyers than were the small cattlemen of Bell County. Cotton was expensive to raise and market. For a period it was taxed 3 cents per pound by the United States Government and the price at which it had to be sold was not profitable to the farmers.
Fully two-thirds of the goods sold by the firm were sold on credit. The customers were scattered over the vast territory composing Bell, Coryell, Falls, Milam, Williamson, Burnet, McLennan, Bosque, Lampasas, Hamilton and Brown counties. The firm sustained a few severe losses and many smaller ones by being unable to collect from customers. In a few cases land was acquired, although its possession added but little value to the firm's assets, as raw land produced no revenue and was hard to sell at any price.
At the time of its formation, the firm contemplated the partnership to continue only to July 1, 1870, but did, in fact, continue until April 14, 1874. Just prior to that date, Harvey J. Chaimberlin, a brother of Don A. Chaimberlin, moved to Belton and induced his brother Don to join him in a new commercial business. This brought about the dissolution of Miller, Chaimberlin & Company. So at the time the firm dissolved, difficulty was experienced in liquidating its indebtedness. It was two years after the dissolution before all debts were paid.
Belton in the mid-eighteen seventies had grown to be a town of about 1200; the County had a population of nearly 14,000. The citizenship, on the average, was much improved. Small communities had sprung up in every part of the County. Some attention was being given to roads and bridges. A splendid iron bridge now spanned the Leon River at Hill Crossing on the Austin-Belton-Waco military road. It was built by the Belton Bridge Company of which W. A. Miller was a dominant factor. Silas Baggett, H. C. Denny, J. Q. Allen, Elisha Embree and "Miller, Chaimberlin & Company," were among the stockholders.
Prior to the construction of this bridge, Dred Hill operated a ferry at this crossing when the water was high.
Within 200 yards of the east bank of the Leon River, opposite the old Hill Crossing, stands the large elm tree under which the three Commissioners, appointed in 1854 by the County Organization Committee to locate the county seat, held their first and only meeting. Three locations were considered: one on the Dred Hill farm where the Committee was meeting; one near the confluence of the Leon, Salado and Lampasas Rivers, now known as Three Forks; and the third on Nolan Creek about 1 ½ miles west of the confluence of Nolan Creek and the Leon River. The third suggestion was selected. Its central position and easy access to wood and water appealed to the Commissioners. Mrs. Matilda F. Connell, owner of the Matilda F. Connell League (an original Mexican grant), donated 100 acres for the townsite, which was called Nolanville, the county seat of Bell County. During the year 1856, the Commissioners Court changed the name of the town from Nolanville to Belton.
A New Partnership
On April 14, 1874, W. A. and J. Z. Miller formed a partnership under the name of Miller Brothers to carry on a general mercantile business, and also a banking business. The announcement to do a banking business was not a solicitation of deposits, nor were deposits at this time expected as there was little or no idle money in the county and interest rates ranged from 2% to 5% a month. The announcement and offer to do a banking business was simply a notification that the firm contemplated and was prepared to handle the checks and drafts received by citizens of the county from time to time for horses, cattle, farm products and those brought in by new settlers, just as their predecessors had done. Occasionally, however, there were some small deposits made by customers. The records of these transactions were kept in the mercantile books.
The banking end was carried on in that manner until about January 1, 1875, when a new partnership was formed by William A. Miller, J. Z. Miller and John Q. Allen under the firm name of Miller Brothers & Company, to do a banking business, with Mr. Allen in charge as manager. The capital of this new firm was $10,000, all contributed by Mr. Allen, and upon which he was to get interest at the rate of 10% payable annually, and one-half of the net profits in lieu of salary for his personal services as manager. Neither of the other partners, William A. Miller nor J. Z. Miller, contributed any capital. After charging the expense account with the annual interest on the capital furnished by Mr. Allen the net profits were to be divided ½ to Miller Brothers (Merchants). No charge was made for rent of office and vault space. Mr. Allen made no charge for his personal services. Both firms occupied the same office and vault, situated about the middle of the storeroom occupied by Miller Brothers for mercantile purposes. Each concern was an entity and had its own set of books. There was little banking business done at that time as we now think of such institutions. The total deposits at the end of 1876 did not exceed $5,000. The revenue came in part from small loans from $25 to $250 to townspeople and settlers, but mostly from the purchase of vendors' lien notes from land owners whose lands had suddenly greatly increased in value and had become marketable.
Most of the land in Bell County consisted of large Mexican grants and had been held for years by the first removed from the original grantees from the Mexican Government, or by their heirs. Land in the northeast quadrant of Bell County—had but little value as there was no economical way to fence it. Land between Troy and Eddy was sold for one dollar per acre by the firm, in 1875.
On December 23, 1875, the death of W. A. Miller occurred. He had been the active manager of all commercial activities of all the firms of which he had been a member.
After the death of W. A. Miller the affairs of Miller Brothers, Merchants, and their interest in the firm of Miller Brothers & Company, Bankers, were in the hands of J. Z. Miller, the surviving partner. The death of W. A. Miller did not bring about the dissolution of the firms in which he was partner. His estate was represented by his brother, J. Z. Miller, Executor, and his widow, Amanda P. Miller, Executrix, of his last will. The operation from 1874 to the latter part of 1879 was uneventful until the disastrous fire of 1879.
The north side of the Public Square of Belton, except one building, was destroyed at 2 A. M. Thursday morning, September 27, 1879. The important mercantile firms of Belton occupied the buildings destroyed. The building occupied by Miller Brothers, Merchants, and Miller Brothers & Company, Bankers, was among those burned. The firm lost merchandise worth $15,000 to $20,000. There was no insurance. The merchandise carried out of the building represented $5,000 to $7,500. This merchandise was moved from the streets to the store of Ray & Elliott, dealers in gents' furnishing goods, who occupied the second story of the Allen Building, the only building which did not burn.
The fire occurred at the most inopportune time. The fall stock had just been received. The last invoice for the new boots and shoes arrived the afternoon before the fire. The accounts receivable were at the maximum, as cotton was starting to market and collections from farmers had just begun. The first bale of cotton on the market at Belton in 1879 was September 18th, the very day Colonel J. Z. Miller returned from the eastern markets. Joezach Miller, the 16 year old son of W. A. Miller had accompanied his uncle to New York and Boston on that trip. It required exactly 100 hours to reach New York City from Belton. The trip to Waco, the nearest railroad point, required an entire day's buggy ride. There were no Pullmans running in Texas. They were available from St. Louis but were little patronized, certainly not by country merchants from small Texas towns, hence it is easy to imagine Colonel Miller and his nephew sitting up nights during the trip to and from New York.
The fire burned around the vault all day Thursday. Timbers, merchandise and bins of wheat fed the flames. A downpour of rain Thursday night extinguished the fire, but caused great anxiety for fear that the sudden change of temperature would crack the vault and ruin the books and records, as well as the private papers of many customers left for safe keeping.
Early Sunday morning an improvised plankway was laid from the front of the building to the vault. The combination worked on first effort and the door opened without much difficulty. The contents of the vault were found to be intact, only slightly smoked, and the great anxiety felt during the past three days was allayed.
Sunday afternoon, about three o'clock, J. Z. Miller and J. Q. Allen had a meeting, somewhat by accident, in front of the residence of W. J. Long on East Street where the Belton Hotel is now located. Joezach Miller was present at this meeting and although only 16, took a small part in the discussion which ensued.
J. Q. Allen announced that he wished to discontinue the banking business, dissolve the firm and wind up its affairs. The banking business, he argued, had not been profitable during the five years the firm of Miller Brothers & Company had been in business, and in his opinion there was no good reason to suppose banking would ever pay in Bell County.
Colonel Miller showed great surprise at the attitude assumed by Mr. Allen. He called Mr. Allen's attention to the progress the bank had make during each of the last three years, increasing deposits and larger turnover; explained that the town and county were increasing in population and wealth; that the farmers had made considerable headway in paying for their lands, mostly purchased from none-resident owners; and present owners were improving their farms and ranches; that wire was available and coming into more general use for fencing; that the products of the farms and ranches were increasing at a rapid rate—all which promised increased deposits; that each of these factors would benefit banking and in time make that business more profitable than the mercantile or any other commercial venture, especially as the firm then had and would probably continue to have the only bank in the county.
Mr. Allen was obdurate! His state of mind and his determination to discontinue the business could not be changed. As Colonel Miller had the problem of guiding the destiny of the mercantile firm so as to avoid financial embarrassment, he was compelled to accede to Mr. Allen's wishes. Next morning, Monday, another meeting was held, Colonel Miller, Mr. Allen and Joezach Miller being present. It was decided to begin liquidation by paying off the depositors as rapidly as they could be reached.
Isaac H. Layton, the bank's clerk, bookkeeper and general man (he would be called a cashier now) was ill, and for that reason Joezach Miller was selected to assist Mr. Allen with details of the bank. They were not voluminous.
The deposits were approximately $15,000; about one third belonged to townspeople; the balance to people in the county and the trade territory tributary to Belton.
Monday afternoon a list of all local depositors was prepared. Beginning early Tuesday morning (October 2, 1879), Mr. Allen and Joezach Miller, with a supply of gold and silver, the only circulating medium at that time, packed in what was known as a "blue bucket," made numerous trips on that day and the next, calling from door to door on local depositors, paying the amounts due them and taking their receipts. Many of the depositors remonstrated with Mr. Allen on his decision to discontinue the bank, but to no avail. Thus ended the bank of "Miller Brothers & Company." Bell County was then without a bank and the citizens were without banking facilities of any kind.
The cash on hand, collections of some receivables, and the sale of some assets, enabled Mr. Allen to pay the depositors in full as they called for their balances. This required three or four months.
The capital, $10,000, used in the business, contributed by Mr. Allen, with several years' accrued interest thereon at the rate of 10%, remained a liability of the firm. The remaining assets of the firm were "frozen" as would be said today. They consisted of slow notes, stocks in Waco Bridge Company, Belton Bridge Company, Lampasas Bridge Company, Frontier Telegraph Company, and several parcels of land, and a few land notes. All were slow of conversion into money.
As the assets were realized upon, the proceeds were turned over to Mr. Allen as a credit on the indebtedness held by him against the firm, but so slowly were the receivables collected and the securities converted into cash (the stocks of the bridge companies turned out to be more than 50% losses), it was not until December 9, 1897, that a full settlement was made, and a net loss of about $7,500 determined. One half of this amount was paid to Mr. Allen by Miller Brothers according to the terms of the partnership. And so, the firm of Miller Brothers & Company passes into history.
Little effort was made by Miller Brothers, Merchants, to show and sell the salvaged merchandise. The small space available in the rear of the room occupied by Ray & Elliott was barely enough to store the goods, much less exhibit them. The great concern of Colonel Miller was to collect the debts due the firm and pay the indebtedness due the eastern wholesale houses from whom the burned merchandise was purchased. Several days after the fire, the firm arranged to borrow $3,000 from P. Fitzwilliams, a cotton factor, at Galveston, to meet pressing demands.
The '79 cotton was low in price and the crop poor. Farmers did the best they could but were unable to meet their obligations for supplies furnished them during the year. The firm had great difficulty in meeting its own obligations when due. Creditors were lenient, mainly because they realized the great misfortune the firm had sustained from the fire, and granted extension of a substantial amount of the firm's paper.
All through the fall and winter of '79-'80, every effort was made to convert the firm's assets into money. It required more than a year after the fire to take up the outstanding notes given for merchandise.
Within sixty or seventy days after the fire, say about December 5th, the building in the middle of the block on the north side of the Public Square in Belton, occupied by the firm at the time of the fire, had been hastily rebuilt and the salvaged merchandise moved into it and exposed for sale. The stock was so broken the disposition was extremely slow.
About January 1, 1880, Miller Brothers closed out their merchandise, amounting to about $5,000, to Ray & Elliott, who moved their own stock of gents' furnishings to the store building then occupied by Miller Brothers. For many years thereafter Ray & Elliott conducted their general mercantile business in that building.
This transaction with Ray & Elliott completely terminated all commercial activities of the then firm of Miller Brothers which had its beginning in Belton at the close of the Civil War.
J. Z. Miller continued the liquidation of the affairs of Miller Brothers, Merchants, taking when possible mortgages on future crops and on land to better secure notes carried over for customers. In a few cases the firm became the owner of lands taken for debts due it. Notwithstanding the earnest efforts put forth, the losses were large. These with the unfortunate fire loss well nigh wiped out the equities of the firm.
Miller Brothers Bankers
After discontinuing the banking business October 1, 1879, and after the sale to Ray & Elliot of the mercantile business January 1, 1880, there was a complete hiatus in the commercial activities of the Millers in Belton and elsewhere. On February 17, 1880, a new partnership was formed by J. Z. Miller and Armanda P. Miller, in her own right, under the firm name of MIller Brothers, to begin and carry on a banking business in Belton.
The formation of this new firm and the establishment of a new banking business was mainly the suggestion of Joezach Miller. At first, Colonel J. Z. Miller did not approve the idea, being so deeply concerned with the liquidation of the two firms which had but recently retired. Colonel MIller discounted the future of the banking business in Belton.
Constant urging by Joezach MIller, during the several weeks following the sale of the mercantile business and quite likely his suggestion that if he, Colonel J. Z. Miller, did not wish to re-embark in business, particularly banking, a partnership would be formed by Amanda P. Miller (to be represented by her son Joezach) and Aurelius Pruit, a capable accountant and business man who had previously married her niece. Joezach insisted that it was quite necessary for his mother to develop plans immediately as she had four children dependent upon her.
So, on February 17, 1880, Miller Brothers, Bankers, opened for business. The public was notified by small handbills printed on newsprint paper, 5 ½ x 7 inches. These hand bills were carried from door to door in the business section and from house to house in the residential section of Belton by Joezach Miller.
The bank occupied an office situated about the center of Ray & Elliott's dry goods store, with no other formality than a simple set of books, consisting of cash book and ledger. The counter checks, cheque books, letter heads, and note forms were all printed locally.
Aurelius Pruit was cashier and bookkeeper. Joezach Miller was collection clerk, office boy, janitor and handy man, for all sorts of little jobs and errands until September 1 of that year, when he left to spend a year at school in St. Louis. Colonel J. Z. Miller, as manager, directed the operation, but did not handle details.
The bank started without a dollar of capital, as all the funds realized from the assets of the retired firm of Miller Brothers, Merchants, was being applied to the liquidation of that firm's indebtedness.
Belton then had a population of about 2,500; Bell County, 20,518. There were only two banks in the county, L. Burr & Company and Miller Brothers. Deposits were small. Probably not exceeding $30,000 for both the Belton banks at the close of the year, 1880. Interest rates were high, ranging from 15% for the better class of customers to 18% or 20% for others. All loans were small, rarely over $500, except to merchants, and not exceeding $2,000 to any one of them. Exchange rates were high. From 1% to 1 ½% discount was made on exchange purchased and 1% charged on that sold. A charge of 1% was made on all collections.
The discontinuance of the L. Burr & Company bank, January 1, 1881, was a great help to Miller Brothers. Theirs was again the only bank in Bell County until January 1, 1882, when H C. Denny & Company opened a bank in the building adjoining that of Miller Brothers.
The business of the county increased. In 1881 the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad penetrated the county during the spring and summer, establishing the towns of Rogers, Heidenheimer and Temple. This opened a large area to agriculture. Those interested in the railroad purchased large ranches which were subdivided and sold to farmers. There was quite an influx of population, especially after the M. K. & T. railroad penetrated the county in the fall of the same year, and crossed the Santa Fe at Temple, which became a boom railroad town almost over night. The terminus of the Santa Fe remained at Belton for about 18 months, when it projected its road west from Belton to Ballinger and north from Temple to Fort Worth.
On September 1, 1881, Joezach MIller returned from school in St. Louis and became the bookkeeper at the bank. Aurelius Pruit remained the cashier.
During the spring of 1882, Downs Brothers opened a private bank at Temple. On September 1, 1882, B. N. Boren and R. H. Stewart of Galveston organized and opened the First National Bank at Belton. So, during the year 1882, Miller Brothers not only lost the distinction of having the only bank in Bell County but were confronted with the severe competition of three strong banks; H. C. Denny & Company and the First National Bank at Belton, and Downs Brothers at Temple.
Pruit resigned as cashier January 1, 1883, whereupon Joezach Miller became cashier and Thomas J. Herron, bookkeeper.
While the volume of business in the county greatly increased in 1883 and 1884, the increase was divided between the three competitive banks, especially after Downs Brothers nationalized in the fall of 1884.
Miller Brothers realized they were losing deposits to their competitors. About that time some notable failures of private banks over the state created a distrust of private banks, and people became generally impressed with the idea that only the national banks were safe.
The bank of Miller Brothers during the first five years had been reasonably successful as far as gross profits were concerned. It had maintained those dependent upon it despite considerable losses due to poor credits.
After much discussion between Colonel J. Z. Miller and Joezach Miller, who was now the recognized representative of his mother (Amanda P. Miller), it was decided, on December 4, 1884, to organize The Belton National Bank, with the minimum capital for National Banks at the time, $50,000.
The Comptroller of Currency granted a permit for the organization of The Belton National Bank, with J. Z. Miller, President: A. J. Harris, Vice-President; and J. Z. Miller, Jr., Cashier. The board of directors consisted of all officers and B. A. Ludlow and S. M. Ray.
The Belton National Bank opened for business on March 1, 1885. Though quite small in volume, the business of the bank was successful from the beginning. Interest rates had declined. On loans to merchants and the more important farmers and ranchers 10% was charged; on small loans, 12%, 15%, or 18%, according to the nature of the security or standing of the borrowers.
Late Christmas Eve, 1885, after the bank had closed for the day, while J. Z. Miller, Sr., and J. Z. Miller, Jr., President and Cashier, were sitting beside the old cannon stove in the center of the office, talking over the day's business, Captain A. J. Harris, Vice-President of The Belton National Bank, and, as strange as it may seem, attorney for the First National Bank, entered the office. He took from his pocket a memorandum written in pencil on the back of a used envelope and handed it to J. Z. Miller, Sr., who read it in silence and passed it to J. Z. Miller Jr. J. Z. Miller, Jr. looked it over and without a word being said made a notation at the bottom of the memorandum and handed it back to J. Z. Miller, Sr.
Will sell our building, furniture and fixtures, and 100 shares of American Cotton Oil Trust for $10,200. Conveyance and delivery tonight. Will liquidate our deposits through you (meaning Belton National Bank) and retain our bills receivable.
December 24, 1885.
(Signed) First National Bank of Belton,
By, B. N. Boren, President
Accepted, Belton National Bank of Belton, by J. Z. Miller, Jr., Cashier.
The paper was then returned to Captain Harris with a draft on New York for $2,500 as earnest money to bind the transaction. Captain Harris departed, returning in about 20 minutes with a receipt for the part payment written on the back of the original memorandum and signed by the President of the First National.
Early next morning, Christmas, the deed and actual possession was delivered and The Belton National Bank moved into its new location on the northeast corner of the square where it has since remained.
The business of The Belton National Bank increased slowly from year to year. Results of operation were satisfactory as the bank was conservative and followed good methods. The expense account was watched and credits were extended with so much care that losses were practically eliminated.
All went well until the panic in the summer of 1893. In July J. Z. Miller, Jr. made a trip to New York to borrow funds to carry the bank through that ordeal. It was next to impossible to get an interview with the officers of corresponding banks.
After a week in New York, spending every business hour of each day in correspondent banks' waiting rooms, hoping for an opportunity to see one of the officers, early one morning a messenger came from a little room where the bank's officers had been closeted for many days, and informed J. Z. Miller, Jr., that the cashier would see him for five minutes. The story was quickly told, the request was to borrow $30,000. Without a moment's hesitation, the cashier granted the loan; $10,000 at once, the balance, if and when absolutely needed. Fortunately only part of the remaining commitment was required. Mental anxiety was relieved. Cotton was soon on the market. Spinners and factors shipped gold from England to local banks in the farming section to pay for cotton purchased.
The panic was over but practically no deposits were made that fall. People kept their money at home. During 1894, the year following, deposits of The Belton National Bank were reduced to $75,000. They had averaged about $200,000 for several years.
Belton had but two banks from 1886 to 1900, the Belton National and H. C. Denny & Company.
On January 10, 1900, B. A. Ludlow and associates organized the Citizens National Bank of Belton with a capital of $50,000. The Citizens National gave up its National Charter July 1, 1990, and became the Citizens Bank, a private institution. It failed January 12, 1902.
On October 2, 1905, the Farmers State Bank of Belton began business with a captain of $25,000. That bank operated not quite a year. It transferred its business to the Belton National.
On February 8, 1907, the Peoples National Bank of Belton began business and that bank is still operating (1929).
The 1907 panic was handled skillfully. Since it was strictly a currency panic, The Belton National Bank followed the recommendations of the New York Clearing House and limited the amount of cash paid to each depositor. For convenience of customers, the Belton banks issued script to take the place of United States currency. Customers accepted the script without serious objections, since it was received by all merchants, banks, and individuals as real money. This condition lasted ten weeks, until unlimited withdrawals were resumed, January 15, 1908.
On June 30, 1910, W. W. James, then assistant cashier of the Belton National Bank, purchased from J. Z. Miller, Sr., J. Z. Miller, Jr., and Amanda P. Miller their interests in the bank. This rang the curtain down on forty-five years of banking services the Miller family had rendered the citizens of Bell County and its trade territory.
On July 27, 1910, J. Z. Miller, Jr. moved to Kansas City, where this former country banker there rose to the position of Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank.
West Texas Historical Association Year Book
October, 1956
Pioneering In the Concho Country: Rich Coffey
The Coffey family was one of the most colorful in West Texas, and the name is still remembered with a smile by many Runnels, Concho, and Coleman County residents. "Uncle Rich" and Sara Coffey were well known among the early settlers of this area, and many of the adventures of them and their family are among the most exciting told by these settlers. Many articles have been written about the Coffeys, and the information for this paper has been collected from articles or from people who knew them personally, or whose parents remembered them. Room for error exists, but most information not confirmed by at least two sources has not been used.
Rich Coffey was a native of Georgia, where he was born February 14, 1823. Both of his parents had come from Tennessee. He grew to manhood in Georgia and married Sarah Greathouse, commonly called Sallie, on October 5, 1849. About 1855 they moved to Texas, settling in Parker County. Here, their first son, John Wright Coffey, was born on June 21, 1856. Two daughters had already been born to them. Rich was engaged in cattle raising and also did some freighting. He served under Captain Lawrence Sullivan Ross as a citizen soldier and aided in the rescue of Cynthia Ann Parker on December 18, 1860.
In 1862 Rich Coffey boldly moved his family and cattle west and established Pickettsville, the first settlement in Runnels County, near the present site of Ballinger on Elm Creek. M. L. Johnson, in his Trail Blazing, states that in the summer of 1862, he remembers driving about 700 head of cattle "into the pens at old Picketville," which he states was "merely a picket house and fence on the Colorado River near where Ballinger now stands." The name "Pickettville" came from the use of pickets cut from trees along the river to construct the enclosure. Buffaloes were plentiful, so their hides were used to cover the crude dugout homes. Along with Coffey came a number of his cowboys and their families including Nathaniel Guest, Bob and Henry Meeks, Jim Beddo, and Jack McCarthy.
Indians were numberous and were beginning to "borrow" cattle from the settlers. Trouble was brewing, and in the midst of it all Rich was about to become a father again. So he took his wife back to Weatherford and safety where on March 6, 1863, his youngest son, Fog, was born.
Rich Coffey was a large man, about six feet tall, and weighed well over 200 pounds. From pictures taken of him in his later years, it is evident that he had an unusually large frame with a thick chest and muscular shoulders. His dress before the Civil War period and just following was extremely colorful, but hardly so in the modern sense of the word. He wore a heavy buffalo robe, Indian style, with a cape to pull over his head and a buffalo tail attached to the top for decoration. After the Civil War he adopted a more civilized costume — bearskins.
On one occasion, Coffey was making a trip to Weatherford for supplies when he stopped by a little log church near Dublin, Texas. The congregation was surprised to see a large man dressed in bearskins appear and take a seat among the believers. His long, uncut hair and bearskin clothing made him look more like an animal than a human being. Animals are said to have no emotions, but as the stranger listened intently to the sermon, he was obviously touched, tears flowed down his checks. Before the sermon was over, his shoulders began to shake, and finally the congregation could hear sobs coming from the bear-like man. After the service the stranger introduced himself to Reverend John R. Northcutt, the minister. Rich Coffey, as a boy back in Georgia, had known Northcutt but had not seen him for many years. While passing through the area, he heard of a Baptist minister named Northcutt and had turned aside to see if this could be his old neighbor from Georgia. Tears of friendship often come from a big heart, and "Uncle Rich" had heart to spare.
After the birth of his youngest son, and sometime between 1865 and 1869, Rich Coffey moved his family to the mouth of the Concho River where it meets the Colorado, and established what was to become the Flat Top Ranch, or "Coffey Settlement." The ranch house was within two miles of what some scholars believe is the remains of the San Clemente Mission, established in 1664 by the Spaniards Mendoza and Lopez. It is probable, however, that neither the Coffeys nor any of the early pioneers of the area knew that the mission existed. In any case, in 1868 J. M. Hallcomb remembered that "...quite a number of families were 'forted up' at a place known in those days as Flat Top. Among those families I remember the names Rich Coffey, the Guest Brothers, Beddo Brothers, and Carden Brothers..."
The 1870 census of Coleman County showed that John Cook, a sixty-year-old stone cutter from Ireland, lived at the Coffey Ranch for a time. It is likely that this man was responsible for building part of the Coffee home which still stands today. Like many frontier homes, the house has had three stages of construction, and consists of two separate two-story rock buildings, separated by a breeze-way.
James T. Padgitt noted that when Colonel William R. Day arrived at his newly bought ranch of 22,000 acres in Coleman County, he found Rich and his family living at Flat Top Ranch.
The frontier home of the Coffeys became a welcome haven to many a weary traveler. Many travelers made their way to the Coffey home as they journeyed up the Colorado River, then west up the Concho toward the post called Fort Concho. Since the ranch house was situated at the junction of the two rivers, it was at a cross-road, north, west, and south. Many stories are told by the Texas Rangers of the aid they never failed to receive from "Uncle Rich" when in trouble. Mrs. Fog Coffey related a story about a skirmish between the Texas Rangers and some Indians in which a ranger was mortally wounded. Snow was falling, which kept the Indians from finding and killing the remainder of the lawmen. The following morning, the Rangers carried the body to the nearby Coffey home. Rich tore some boards from his own lean-tos in order to make a rude coffin so that the Ranger might be buried properly. The grave was dug, and the Ranger was buried near the Coffey home.
The customary greeting of Rich to a visitor, whether he be a stranger or a friend, was "Git down and go to stayin'!" Sometimes as many as 27 travelers dropped by at a time, but there was somehow always plenty to eat and places to sleep. He never charged anyone a penny, and refused to accept payment when it was offered. A statement that developed describing Rich's generous hospitality said, "His door was always open, his hand was ever ready, and the light in the window never grew dim." No one knows who first worded that phrase, but it accurately describes the hospitality that was never lacking at the Coffey home whether the times were good or bad.
F. S. Millard recalled working for Ike Franks on 100 acres of farm land that was leased from Rich Coffey. Frank's little girl became seriously ill, causing him to have to leave Millard with all the plowing for several weeks. Millard had to work one team of mules hard from daylight to noon, and another team from noon to dark; and still he couldn't keep up with his overload of work. Word got to "Uncle Rich" about the girl's illness and Millard's predicament. One day Rich rode up to Millard who had stopped for a short rest at noon.
Rich said, "...they tell me you plow a team too hard, and I don't want my mules worked that way." Millard, almost exhausted, began to tell how he was trying to take up the slack caused by the illness, but Rich cut him off short and said to "turn my mules loose." Dejected, the man walked home, but returned the next morning to find the entire field neatly plowed. No one at the Coffey home could imagine how the field got plowed, but Millard was sure that it was Rich's doings.
The constant danger of Indian raids made it necessary to keep alert at all times, especially during one certain time of the month known as "the light of the moon," when the Comanches usually made their invasions.
Mrs. Coffey and her daughters were often left by themselves at the ranch when the men and hired hands were away working cattle. Sallie had a small log cabin a few hundred yards from the house near the bank of the river, where she made the family's lye soap, or hung meat to be dried. On one occasion, she was building a fire under her kettle inside the cabin for soap-making when she noticed a band of Indians cross the river to her side. She sent a daughter to the ranch house to warn the children to go inside and bar the doors. Mrs. Coffey bravely remained behind, knowing that she and the children were alone at the ranch, and it would be up to her to distract the Indians as long as possible from the ranch house. She assumed that the Indians had come for horses, and seeing no men around, decided, to make a daring daylight raid. As the Indians rode nearer, she threw more wood on the fire, then waved her arms to make sure they saw her and were attracted to her rather than to the house. Indeed the Indians saw her and advanced at a high lope, by now certain no men folk were around. Mrs. Coffey rushed into the small hut and barred the stout wooden door just as the Indians converged on the hut and dismounted. Perhaps the savages were simply astounded by Mrs. Coffey's rash behavior and were curious. In any case, the Indians surrounded the hut and Sallie was trapped inside with a boiling kettle of lye water. The only opening in the hut was a small square window in the door. At last, an Indian ventured up to the small window, and for a moment, as he peered inside, exposed his entire face in the frame of the window. Mrs. Coffey calmly took a dipper of the boiling lye water and flung it squarely into the face of the invader. The Indians immediately retreated with their unfortunate comrad yelling and screaming in pain.
One day, when Rich was out alone in the fields, plowing his corn with a mule, the mule picked up the scent of Indians and bolted toward the house, leaving Rich behind, unaware of any trouble. But soon Rich caught sight of the Indians and started for the house in no less of a rush than the mule. Whoops of the Indians did much to speed both the mule and his owner along on their retreat. The yells, along with the clatter of the mule running and kicking at the plow — or what was left of it — caused Sallie to look up from her work in time to see an unusual and frightening sight: half running, and half kicking at the harness, the work mule was making for the house, snorting and creating clouds of dust. Close behind the mule, and gaining, came Rich, and right behind him, and gaining, came the Indians. Sallie ran to the door of the house, turned and shouted, "Run, Rich, Run!"
Rich passed the mule, which was becoming more and more hampered with the tangled plow lines, and at a frantic pace covered the last few hundred feet to the house and safety. He burst through the door which Sallie then barred behind him. After he recovered part of his breath, in gentle sarcasm, which most husbands learn to use, he gasped, "Sweet, you didn't think I would lay down on a race like that, did you?"
Incidents with the Comanches of this period in the early 1870's were numerous, but perhaps the most famous story dealing with one of these scrapes was published in the New York Clipper in 1873. Colonel Lewis Ginger and his Pioneer Minstrels stopped at the Coffey Ranch on their way to Fort Concho. Colonel Ginger himself said in the article that he had organized the Pioneer Minstrels which made a tour of the frontier military posts, playing for the soldiers. He relates that on this remarkable trip, he and his group were on their way to Fort Concho, which he stated "was 150 miles beyond any civilization." They arrived at the Coffey Ranch where they were welcomed by Uncle Rich and the Coffey family. The ranch appeared to be prosperous, and the buildings were heavily stockaded against Indian attacks. The Colorado River was densely wooded at the mouth of the Concho, and was the home of wild deer, turkey, and occasionally panthers and black bears. The entire group of visitors stayed at the ranch for a few days to relax, but the event they were about to experience was anything but relaxing.
On one of these evenings, Rich suggested to the Colonel that they gather up some fishing gear and venture down to a place in the river where the channel cat usually fed. Leaving the ranch house, Colonel Ginger and Rich walked a half-mile in moonlight that was so bright that their path to the river was almost as clear as it would have been in daytime. Ginger remembered "Uncle Rich" commenting that the channel cat bite fine in the moonlight. The two men soon neared the mouth of the Concho River, and Rich said, "Here, Son, is a fine place where we can get all the fish we want in no time."
The only sound was the rushing water, and Rich settled back against a tree and began to tell the colonel about how he and his sons had built up a herd, cleared the land, and had defended the land from several Indian attacks. Colonel Ginger was fascinated by the numerous encounters in which the Coffeys had narrowly escaped death. Rich was engaged in telling one of these stories when he stopped and listened. An owl had just hooted in answer to another owl on the opposite side of the river. Rich whispered, "Son, did you here them?"
The colonel calmly asked, "Do you mean those owls?"
"Son, them's no owls. They're Injuns." He then grabbed the colonel's sleeve and whispered, "Let's get out of here." Colonel Ginger had never seen an Indian, but he had heard owls, and these owls sounded harmless enough. But Rich was already making for the nearest trees, seeing that he and the colonel were in a vulnerable position, standing in the bright moonlight surrounded by Indians on three sides. Ginger, on his way to follow Coffey, was not in the least alarmed, and said that he would pick up the fish they had caught. Rich, in no Sunday school terms, said that if the colonel had any serious intention of remaining alive, he would damn the fish and run for it. By this time there were hoots on both sides of the river and Rich was leading the way to the house in a frantic run. Ginger recalled that he ran to keep up, but was not yet convinced that there was any real danger. As the sprinters made their way out of the river bottom and headed up the slope toward the house, they came through a clearing that was brightly illuminated by moonlight. An arrow whizzed between the two men, accompanied by other shots that came awfully close to finding their mark. This was indeed more than enough motivation to convince the colonel that the desperate run would be good for maintaining his health.
Upon their arrival, the Coffey family and hired hands swung into action in preparing for another fight with the Indians — a practice that was almost routine with them in those days. The Pioneer Minstrels were not much help in preparing for the attack. Paralyzed with fright, they huddled under tables or remained hidden behind whatever they could find. Soon, some thirty warriors appeared at the mouth of the Concho on the opposite side of the Colorado from the house. They shouted for awhile, then disappeared into the trees. Rich told the somewhat shaken colonel that it was only a little thieving party out for stealing horses. But Mr. Coffey was quick to add that the little sprint to the house most assuredly had saved their lives.
Colonel Lewis Ginger must have been tremendously impressed with Rich Coffey. For in an account that appeared many years after the original story in the New York Clipper, he stated:
The Coffeys were not always so lucky in their encounters with the Indians. By 1871, they had built up a sizable herd of cattle. Rich had usually sold his steers to Coggins and Parks, or to John Chisum, whose cattle wore the famous Jingle Bob and Long Rail brands. Cattle from both these outfits ranged far and wide over Coleman and Concho Counties. The cattle of Rich Coffey wore the "3+3" brand. On this occasion, Rich decided to let his own cowboys take a heard of 1,020 cattle up what was to become known as the Great Western Cattle Trail. Nathaniel Guest was in charge of the operation. John, the oldest Coffey boy, at the age of fifteen, was a regular cowhand in the crew. Bill, two years younger, wrangled the horse herd of 54 horses. The herd started the journey on June 1, 1871. Many detailed accounts have been written about the Indian battle that occurred only a few miles up the cattle trail. But to summarize the results of the ambush, John Coffey was wounded in the side by a bullet from a rifle. Dan Arnold was shot and killed instantly. Lapoleon Lemmons was captured, tortured, and scalped. Both Arnold and Lemmons were eighteen years old and had run away from their homes in Williamson County just three weeks before the cattle drive. Bill Coffey had been swimming in the creek when the Indians attacked, and had cleverly remained in the water with only his nose above the surface until dark, when he returned to the ranch naked because the Indians had stolen his clothes which he had laid beside the creek. When the rescue party arrived about dark, the Indians had looted and destroyed the cook's wagon, gathered the livestock, taken the scalps of their two victims, and had removed the bodies of their fallen comrads. The rescue party found that the entire crew had managed to escape except Arnold and Lemmons. John Coffey had held off the Indians all afternoon, then had passed out from loss of blood. The negro cook had mounted one of the four mules of the chuck wagon and had ridden toward Coleman, some twenty miles away.
A detachment of cavalry from nearby Fort Concho proved to be too slow to overtake the band of Indians as they made their escape northward. This was a surprising fact in that the Indians were hampered by having to drive some eleven hundred head of livestock. Finally, in the hills near Buffalo Gap, the Indians displayed their skill as cattle thieves. They split the herd into several groups, mixed their tracks with buffalo tracks, and disappeared into the hills. Rich Coffey requested that the army wait until the Indians tried to move the cattle from the hills to their reservation in the north, then recover at least part of the herd. The request was denied because of a shortage of supplies, and the 1,020 head of cattle and 54 horses were never seen by Rich again. He later filed a claim with the government to recover his loss, but never received a penny. A few months later, on Christmas day, the Coffeys stood at their house and watched as a large band of Indians rounded up their remaining cows and horses and drove them away. There were no cowhands available to give chase to the raiders, because the theft of the cattle herd in the spring had put the Coffeys in a financial bind. After the Christmas raid, almost all Rich Coffey had worked for for nine years was gone. To an ordinary man, this would have been a staggering financial blow. But Rich, without a word of self-pity, went to work to regain his losses. He did this by continuing with one of his side trades — freighting.
Mr. Coffey had always been interested in the freighting business. After the disasterous cattle venture, he continued to freight salt in order to make money to rebuild his herd. With six or seven wagons pulled by teams of six to twelve oxen, he made the long dangerous trip across the open plains to the salt lakes in present Crane County. Here he had the wagons loaded with salt and hauled back to barter with trading posts along the route. The remainder was taken to Weatherford, where the year's shopping was done. This trip to Weatherford usually took four to six weeks. Rich's numerous trips to the salt lakes were extremely dangerous. Of twenty-four trips, most of them ended in death for at least one of the freighters due to Indian attacks. But on these trips, Rich met a few famous people, even before the cattle loss.
For instance, in June, 1866, Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving were blazing a new trail that was to become the Goodnight-Loving Cattle Trail. On one of their return trips from New Mexico, they traveled by night and slept by day to avoid Indians. But a storm caused their pack mule with their supplies to run away. All their food and supplies were lost. So they filled their canteens at Horsehead Crossing, and set out on the long, dangerous ride across the West Texas plains. Without provisions, and with very little water, they were forced to ride day and night across the level plains. About twenty-five miles from the Concho River, they saw what appeared to be dust from an Indian party approaching on the horizon. It was useless to turn back, so the cowboys found a low place and prepared for a battle. When the strange party grew closer, they saw to their relief that it was Rich Coffey on his way to the salt lakes with a big load of watermelons. Rich stopped for a few hours, and everyone ate watermelon in the shade of the wagons. Goodnight later recalled that "Watermelons never tasted as good to me as that day."
A few years later, on another trip to the lake, Rich came across a small group of gold-seekers in distress, who were under the leadership of Jacob Schnively and William C. Dalrymple. The party had been attacked by Indians, and several were wounded. Two of the men, on their way to the Tankersley Ranch on Dove Creek for help, came upon Rich Coffey and his supply wagons. Coffey tended to the wounded, and gave them sufficient supplies for their trip back to the Tankersley Ranch.
Though he had shown generous hospitality to travelers on their way west, there was no one to help pull Rich and his family through the crisis of the stolen cattle for the simple reason that there were no neighbors who had settled close to the Coffey Ranch. This seemed to have not bothered Rich at all. In spite of his willingness to help others, and in spite of his big-hearted hospitality, the thought of neighbors bothered him. A true frontiersman, he often stated that he didn't want to hear his neighbor's rooster crow. On one occasion, a nester moved in between the Coffey Ranch and Coleman. Rich asked the county judge to have the man removed. The judge stated that nothing could be done. To this Rich replied, "I don't mind neighbors, but not in my front yard!" The nester's house was some fifteen miles away!"
During the 1880's the counties in this area were experiencing turmoil and even bloodshed due to the new barbed wire fence building and fence cutting. Mrs. Mable Day's Ranch, which lay south of the Coffey Ranch, was to be one of the worst trouble spots in the state due to the clash between the ranchers and fence cutters. After fencing came about, the ranchers were obliged to fence in their lands in order to protect their range. Rich did this, and never purchased any property other than that on which he settled. As the years passed, he recovered from his loss, though he never became wealthy. His youngest son, Fog, became one of the best-known characters of the area. Fog's adventures are rash and colorful, and he became perhaps as well-known as Rich, though this would be another story.
Rich Coffey was also remembered as a good and faithful citizen who could always be called upon to render service to organizations. As towns sprang up and people moved in, Rich did his part as a civic leader. He was a member of the first grand jury in Coleman County when the problem of "gun toting" had to be dealt with. Many of the citizens still carried side arms of some kind, though the practice was beginning to be frowned upon as being uncivilized. A trial period had been enacted by the city of Coleman to stop the carrying of guns inside the town. But the law had not yet been strictly enforced. The judge presented the problem to the jury and asked for suggestions. After a long silence, Rich Coffey spoke up and said, "Gentlemen of the jury, I...move that every man on this jury that has a gun under his coat or in his boot leg, come forward now and put it on the table. Here is mine." This brought a hearty laugh from the group, but when all the weapons had been counted, it was revealed that over half the jurymen at the very moment were carrying guns! This quickly settled the issue, and the law was not enforced at this time against "gun toters" in Coleman.
In Rich's later years he was remembered chiefly for his devoted work in the Masonic Lodge. He was fifty years old when he petitioned Brownwood Lodge Number 279 for membership. The original petition showed that he had lived on the frontier of Texas for eighteen years. At this time Brownwood was a village consisting mainly of a small store, a blacksmith shop, and an old log courthouse. It was in this old courthouse where the Masonic Lodge met. The members had to climb a wooden ladder to the second floor of the building where the meetings were held. No one was more faithful in attending the Lodge than Rich, though he had to ride horseback or muleback some fifty miles to attend. He was known to have stayed several days in Brownwood when he attended these meetings and visited with other pioneers of the area.
In 1878, Rich became a charter member of the Coleman Masonic Lodge, and was on the committee that secured the first permanent hall for Lodge meetings. In 1885 he became a charter member of Paint Rock Lodge Number 613, where he served faithfully until his death on Feb. 7, 1898. His picture is on display in the Paint Rock Lodge Room.
Perhaps no other man had as much to do with the early frontier along the lower Concho River as did Rich Coffey. His interests in pioneer ranching helped open up this area for settling and commerce, and his friendly outlook caused him to be remembered as a man who would as quickly help his neighbor as himself.
Creed Taylor, an early Texan, perhaps paid the most fitting tribute to Rich Coffey when he said, "...He was one of the bravest of the brave and his hospitality was of the old Texas quality that knew no bounds..."
Today, the Coffey Ranch is deserted. The old, two-story rock house stands like a sentinel upon the high bluff overlooking the mouth of the Concho River. Owls still hoot at night, but the Indians have long since disappeared. The windows of the old house are never brightened now at night. People refuse to live there because — strangely enough — "It's too far from civilization", which is the reason Rich Coffey chose to live there over one hundred years ago.
Bishop Powell
West Texas Historical Association Year Book
Vol. L, 1974
The Coffey family was one of the most colorful in West Texas, and the name is still remembered with a smile by many Runnels, Concho, and Coleman County residents. "Uncle Rich" and Sara Coffey were well known among the early settlers of this area, and many of the adventures of them and their family are among the most exciting told by these settlers. Many articles have been written about the Coffeys, and the information for this paper has been collected from articles or from people who knew them personally, or whose parents remembered them. Room for error exists, but most information not confirmed by at least two sources has not been used.
Rich Coffey was a native of Georgia, where he was born February 14, 1823. Both of his parents had come from Tennessee. He grew to manhood in Georgia and married Sarah Greathouse, commonly called Sallie, on October 5, 1849. About 1855 they moved to Texas, settling in Parker County. Here, their first son, John Wright Coffey, was born on June 21, 1856. Two daughters had already been born to them. Rich was engaged in cattle raising and also did some freighting. He served under Captain Lawrence Sullivan Ross as a citizen soldier and aided in the rescue of Cynthia Ann Parker on December 18, 1860.
In 1862 Rich Coffey boldly moved his family and cattle west and established Pickettsville, the first settlement in Runnels County, near the present site of Ballinger on Elm Creek. M. L. Johnson, in his Trail Blazing, states that in the summer of 1862, he remembers driving about 700 head of cattle "into the pens at old Picketville," which he states was "merely a picket house and fence on the Colorado River near where Ballinger now stands." The name "Pickettville" came from the use of pickets cut from trees along the river to construct the enclosure. Buffaloes were plentiful, so their hides were used to cover the crude dugout homes. Along with Coffey came a number of his cowboys and their families including Nathaniel Guest, Bob and Henry Meeks, Jim Beddo, and Jack McCarthy.
Indians were numberous and were beginning to "borrow" cattle from the settlers. Trouble was brewing, and in the midst of it all Rich was about to become a father again. So he took his wife back to Weatherford and safety where on March 6, 1863, his youngest son, Fog, was born.
Rich Coffey was a large man, about six feet tall, and weighed well over 200 pounds. From pictures taken of him in his later years, it is evident that he had an unusually large frame with a thick chest and muscular shoulders. His dress before the Civil War period and just following was extremely colorful, but hardly so in the modern sense of the word. He wore a heavy buffalo robe, Indian style, with a cape to pull over his head and a buffalo tail attached to the top for decoration. After the Civil War he adopted a more civilized costume — bearskins.
On one occasion, Coffey was making a trip to Weatherford for supplies when he stopped by a little log church near Dublin, Texas. The congregation was surprised to see a large man dressed in bearskins appear and take a seat among the believers. His long, uncut hair and bearskin clothing made him look more like an animal than a human being. Animals are said to have no emotions, but as the stranger listened intently to the sermon, he was obviously touched, tears flowed down his checks. Before the sermon was over, his shoulders began to shake, and finally the congregation could hear sobs coming from the bear-like man. After the service the stranger introduced himself to Reverend John R. Northcutt, the minister. Rich Coffey, as a boy back in Georgia, had known Northcutt but had not seen him for many years. While passing through the area, he heard of a Baptist minister named Northcutt and had turned aside to see if this could be his old neighbor from Georgia. Tears of friendship often come from a big heart, and "Uncle Rich" had heart to spare.
After the birth of his youngest son, and sometime between 1865 and 1869, Rich Coffey moved his family to the mouth of the Concho River where it meets the Colorado, and established what was to become the Flat Top Ranch, or "Coffey Settlement." The ranch house was within two miles of what some scholars believe is the remains of the San Clemente Mission, established in 1664 by the Spaniards Mendoza and Lopez. It is probable, however, that neither the Coffeys nor any of the early pioneers of the area knew that the mission existed. In any case, in 1868 J. M. Hallcomb remembered that "...quite a number of families were 'forted up' at a place known in those days as Flat Top. Among those families I remember the names Rich Coffey, the Guest Brothers, Beddo Brothers, and Carden Brothers..."
The 1870 census of Coleman County showed that John Cook, a sixty-year-old stone cutter from Ireland, lived at the Coffey Ranch for a time. It is likely that this man was responsible for building part of the Coffee home which still stands today. Like many frontier homes, the house has had three stages of construction, and consists of two separate two-story rock buildings, separated by a breeze-way.
James T. Padgitt noted that when Colonel William R. Day arrived at his newly bought ranch of 22,000 acres in Coleman County, he found Rich and his family living at Flat Top Ranch.
The frontier home of the Coffeys became a welcome haven to many a weary traveler. Many travelers made their way to the Coffey home as they journeyed up the Colorado River, then west up the Concho toward the post called Fort Concho. Since the ranch house was situated at the junction of the two rivers, it was at a cross-road, north, west, and south. Many stories are told by the Texas Rangers of the aid they never failed to receive from "Uncle Rich" when in trouble. Mrs. Fog Coffey related a story about a skirmish between the Texas Rangers and some Indians in which a ranger was mortally wounded. Snow was falling, which kept the Indians from finding and killing the remainder of the lawmen. The following morning, the Rangers carried the body to the nearby Coffey home. Rich tore some boards from his own lean-tos in order to make a rude coffin so that the Ranger might be buried properly. The grave was dug, and the Ranger was buried near the Coffey home.
The customary greeting of Rich to a visitor, whether he be a stranger or a friend, was "Git down and go to stayin'!" Sometimes as many as 27 travelers dropped by at a time, but there was somehow always plenty to eat and places to sleep. He never charged anyone a penny, and refused to accept payment when it was offered. A statement that developed describing Rich's generous hospitality said, "His door was always open, his hand was ever ready, and the light in the window never grew dim." No one knows who first worded that phrase, but it accurately describes the hospitality that was never lacking at the Coffey home whether the times were good or bad.
F. S. Millard recalled working for Ike Franks on 100 acres of farm land that was leased from Rich Coffey. Frank's little girl became seriously ill, causing him to have to leave Millard with all the plowing for several weeks. Millard had to work one team of mules hard from daylight to noon, and another team from noon to dark; and still he couldn't keep up with his overload of work. Word got to "Uncle Rich" about the girl's illness and Millard's predicament. One day Rich rode up to Millard who had stopped for a short rest at noon.
Rich said, "...they tell me you plow a team too hard, and I don't want my mules worked that way." Millard, almost exhausted, began to tell how he was trying to take up the slack caused by the illness, but Rich cut him off short and said to "turn my mules loose." Dejected, the man walked home, but returned the next morning to find the entire field neatly plowed. No one at the Coffey home could imagine how the field got plowed, but Millard was sure that it was Rich's doings.
The constant danger of Indian raids made it necessary to keep alert at all times, especially during one certain time of the month known as "the light of the moon," when the Comanches usually made their invasions.
Mrs. Coffey and her daughters were often left by themselves at the ranch when the men and hired hands were away working cattle. Sallie had a small log cabin a few hundred yards from the house near the bank of the river, where she made the family's lye soap, or hung meat to be dried. On one occasion, she was building a fire under her kettle inside the cabin for soap-making when she noticed a band of Indians cross the river to her side. She sent a daughter to the ranch house to warn the children to go inside and bar the doors. Mrs. Coffey bravely remained behind, knowing that she and the children were alone at the ranch, and it would be up to her to distract the Indians as long as possible from the ranch house. She assumed that the Indians had come for horses, and seeing no men around, decided, to make a daring daylight raid. As the Indians rode nearer, she threw more wood on the fire, then waved her arms to make sure they saw her and were attracted to her rather than to the house. Indeed the Indians saw her and advanced at a high lope, by now certain no men folk were around. Mrs. Coffey rushed into the small hut and barred the stout wooden door just as the Indians converged on the hut and dismounted. Perhaps the savages were simply astounded by Mrs. Coffey's rash behavior and were curious. In any case, the Indians surrounded the hut and Sallie was trapped inside with a boiling kettle of lye water. The only opening in the hut was a small square window in the door. At last, an Indian ventured up to the small window, and for a moment, as he peered inside, exposed his entire face in the frame of the window. Mrs. Coffey calmly took a dipper of the boiling lye water and flung it squarely into the face of the invader. The Indians immediately retreated with their unfortunate comrad yelling and screaming in pain.
One day, when Rich was out alone in the fields, plowing his corn with a mule, the mule picked up the scent of Indians and bolted toward the house, leaving Rich behind, unaware of any trouble. But soon Rich caught sight of the Indians and started for the house in no less of a rush than the mule. Whoops of the Indians did much to speed both the mule and his owner along on their retreat. The yells, along with the clatter of the mule running and kicking at the plow — or what was left of it — caused Sallie to look up from her work in time to see an unusual and frightening sight: half running, and half kicking at the harness, the work mule was making for the house, snorting and creating clouds of dust. Close behind the mule, and gaining, came Rich, and right behind him, and gaining, came the Indians. Sallie ran to the door of the house, turned and shouted, "Run, Rich, Run!"
Rich passed the mule, which was becoming more and more hampered with the tangled plow lines, and at a frantic pace covered the last few hundred feet to the house and safety. He burst through the door which Sallie then barred behind him. After he recovered part of his breath, in gentle sarcasm, which most husbands learn to use, he gasped, "Sweet, you didn't think I would lay down on a race like that, did you?"
Incidents with the Comanches of this period in the early 1870's were numerous, but perhaps the most famous story dealing with one of these scrapes was published in the New York Clipper in 1873. Colonel Lewis Ginger and his Pioneer Minstrels stopped at the Coffey Ranch on their way to Fort Concho. Colonel Ginger himself said in the article that he had organized the Pioneer Minstrels which made a tour of the frontier military posts, playing for the soldiers. He relates that on this remarkable trip, he and his group were on their way to Fort Concho, which he stated "was 150 miles beyond any civilization." They arrived at the Coffey Ranch where they were welcomed by Uncle Rich and the Coffey family. The ranch appeared to be prosperous, and the buildings were heavily stockaded against Indian attacks. The Colorado River was densely wooded at the mouth of the Concho, and was the home of wild deer, turkey, and occasionally panthers and black bears. The entire group of visitors stayed at the ranch for a few days to relax, but the event they were about to experience was anything but relaxing.
On one of these evenings, Rich suggested to the Colonel that they gather up some fishing gear and venture down to a place in the river where the channel cat usually fed. Leaving the ranch house, Colonel Ginger and Rich walked a half-mile in moonlight that was so bright that their path to the river was almost as clear as it would have been in daytime. Ginger remembered "Uncle Rich" commenting that the channel cat bite fine in the moonlight. The two men soon neared the mouth of the Concho River, and Rich said, "Here, Son, is a fine place where we can get all the fish we want in no time."
The only sound was the rushing water, and Rich settled back against a tree and began to tell the colonel about how he and his sons had built up a herd, cleared the land, and had defended the land from several Indian attacks. Colonel Ginger was fascinated by the numerous encounters in which the Coffeys had narrowly escaped death. Rich was engaged in telling one of these stories when he stopped and listened. An owl had just hooted in answer to another owl on the opposite side of the river. Rich whispered, "Son, did you here them?"
The colonel calmly asked, "Do you mean those owls?"
"Son, them's no owls. They're Injuns." He then grabbed the colonel's sleeve and whispered, "Let's get out of here." Colonel Ginger had never seen an Indian, but he had heard owls, and these owls sounded harmless enough. But Rich was already making for the nearest trees, seeing that he and the colonel were in a vulnerable position, standing in the bright moonlight surrounded by Indians on three sides. Ginger, on his way to follow Coffey, was not in the least alarmed, and said that he would pick up the fish they had caught. Rich, in no Sunday school terms, said that if the colonel had any serious intention of remaining alive, he would damn the fish and run for it. By this time there were hoots on both sides of the river and Rich was leading the way to the house in a frantic run. Ginger recalled that he ran to keep up, but was not yet convinced that there was any real danger. As the sprinters made their way out of the river bottom and headed up the slope toward the house, they came through a clearing that was brightly illuminated by moonlight. An arrow whizzed between the two men, accompanied by other shots that came awfully close to finding their mark. This was indeed more than enough motivation to convince the colonel that the desperate run would be good for maintaining his health.
Upon their arrival, the Coffey family and hired hands swung into action in preparing for another fight with the Indians — a practice that was almost routine with them in those days. The Pioneer Minstrels were not much help in preparing for the attack. Paralyzed with fright, they huddled under tables or remained hidden behind whatever they could find. Soon, some thirty warriors appeared at the mouth of the Concho on the opposite side of the Colorado from the house. They shouted for awhile, then disappeared into the trees. Rich told the somewhat shaken colonel that it was only a little thieving party out for stealing horses. But Mr. Coffey was quick to add that the little sprint to the house most assuredly had saved their lives.
Colonel Lewis Ginger must have been tremendously impressed with Rich Coffey. For in an account that appeared many years after the original story in the New York Clipper, he stated:
The Coffeys were not always so lucky in their encounters with the Indians. By 1871, they had built up a sizable herd of cattle. Rich had usually sold his steers to Coggins and Parks, or to John Chisum, whose cattle wore the famous Jingle Bob and Long Rail brands. Cattle from both these outfits ranged far and wide over Coleman and Concho Counties. The cattle of Rich Coffey wore the "3+3" brand. On this occasion, Rich decided to let his own cowboys take a heard of 1,020 cattle up what was to become known as the Great Western Cattle Trail. Nathaniel Guest was in charge of the operation. John, the oldest Coffey boy, at the age of fifteen, was a regular cowhand in the crew. Bill, two years younger, wrangled the horse herd of 54 horses. The herd started the journey on June 1, 1871. Many detailed accounts have been written about the Indian battle that occurred only a few miles up the cattle trail. But to summarize the results of the ambush, John Coffey was wounded in the side by a bullet from a rifle. Dan Arnold was shot and killed instantly. Lapoleon Lemmons was captured, tortured, and scalped. Both Arnold and Lemmons were eighteen years old and had run away from their homes in Williamson County just three weeks before the cattle drive. Bill Coffey had been swimming in the creek when the Indians attacked, and had cleverly remained in the water with only his nose above the surface until dark, when he returned to the ranch naked because the Indians had stolen his clothes which he had laid beside the creek. When the rescue party arrived about dark, the Indians had looted and destroyed the cook's wagon, gathered the livestock, taken the scalps of their two victims, and had removed the bodies of their fallen comrads. The rescue party found that the entire crew had managed to escape except Arnold and Lemmons. John Coffey had held off the Indians all afternoon, then had passed out from loss of blood. The negro cook had mounted one of the four mules of the chuck wagon and had ridden toward Coleman, some twenty miles away.
A detachment of cavalry from nearby Fort Concho proved to be too slow to overtake the band of Indians as they made their escape northward. This was a surprising fact in that the Indians were hampered by having to drive some eleven hundred head of livestock. Finally, in the hills near Buffalo Gap, the Indians displayed their skill as cattle thieves. They split the herd into several groups, mixed their tracks with buffalo tracks, and disappeared into the hills. Rich Coffey requested that the army wait until the Indians tried to move the cattle from the hills to their reservation in the north, then recover at least part of the herd. The request was denied because of a shortage of supplies, and the 1,020 head of cattle and 54 horses were never seen by Rich again. He later filed a claim with the government to recover his loss, but never received a penny. A few months later, on Christmas day, the Coffeys stood at their house and watched as a large band of Indians rounded up their remaining cows and horses and drove them away. There were no cowhands available to give chase to the raiders, because the theft of the cattle herd in the spring had put the Coffeys in a financial bind. After the Christmas raid, almost all Rich Coffey had worked for for nine years was gone. To an ordinary man, this would have been a staggering financial blow. But Rich, without a word of self-pity, went to work to regain his losses. He did this by continuing with one of his side trades — freighting.
Mr. Coffey had always been interested in the freighting business. After the disasterous cattle venture, he continued to freight salt in order to make money to rebuild his herd. With six or seven wagons pulled by teams of six to twelve oxen, he made the long dangerous trip across the open plains to the salt lakes in present Crane County. Here he had the wagons loaded with salt and hauled back to barter with trading posts along the route. The remainder was taken to Weatherford, where the year's shopping was done. This trip to Weatherford usually took four to six weeks. Rich's numerous trips to the salt lakes were extremely dangerous. Of twenty-four trips, most of them ended in death for at least one of the freighters due to Indian attacks. But on these trips, Rich met a few famous people, even before the cattle loss.
For instance, in June, 1866, Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving were blazing a new trail that was to become the Goodnight-Loving Cattle Trail. On one of their return trips from New Mexico, they traveled by night and slept by day to avoid Indians. But a storm caused their pack mule with their supplies to run away. All their food and supplies were lost. So they filled their canteens at Horsehead Crossing, and set out on the long, dangerous ride across the West Texas plains. Without provisions, and with very little water, they were forced to ride day and night across the level plains. About twenty-five miles from the Concho River, they saw what appeared to be dust from an Indian party approaching on the horizon. It was useless to turn back, so the cowboys found a low place and prepared for a battle. When the strange party grew closer, they saw to their relief that it was Rich Coffey on his way to the salt lakes with a big load of watermelons. Rich stopped for a few hours, and everyone ate watermelon in the shade of the wagons. Goodnight later recalled that "Watermelons never tasted as good to me as that day."
A few years later, on another trip to the lake, Rich came across a small group of gold-seekers in distress, who were under the leadership of Jacob Schnively and William C. Dalrymple. The party had been attacked by Indians, and several were wounded. Two of the men, on their way to the Tankersley Ranch on Dove Creek for help, came upon Rich Coffey and his supply wagons. Coffey tended to the wounded, and gave them sufficient supplies for their trip back to the Tankersley Ranch.
Though he had shown generous hospitality to travelers on their way west, there was no one to help pull Rich and his family through the crisis of the stolen cattle for the simple reason that there were no neighbors who had settled close to the Coffey Ranch. This seemed to have not bothered Rich at all. In spite of his willingness to help others, and in spite of his big-hearted hospitality, the thought of neighbors bothered him. A true frontiersman, he often stated that he didn't want to hear his neighbor's rooster crow. On one occasion, a nester moved in between the Coffey Ranch and Coleman. Rich asked the county judge to have the man removed. The judge stated that nothing could be done. To this Rich replied, "I don't mind neighbors, but not in my front yard!" The nester's house was some fifteen miles away!"
During the 1880's the counties in this area were experiencing turmoil and even bloodshed due to the new barbed wire fence building and fence cutting. Mrs. Mable Day's Ranch, which lay south of the Coffey Ranch, was to be one of the worst trouble spots in the state due to the clash between the ranchers and fence cutters. After fencing came about, the ranchers were obliged to fence in their lands in order to protect their range. Rich did this, and never purchased any property other than that on which he settled. As the years passed, he recovered from his loss, though he never became wealthy. His youngest son, Fog, became one of the best-known characters of the area. Fog's adventures are rash and colorful, and he became perhaps as well-known as Rich, though this would be another story.
Rich Coffey was also remembered as a good and faithful citizen who could always be called upon to render service to organizations. As towns sprang up and people moved in, Rich did his part as a civic leader. He was a member of the first grand jury in Coleman County when the problem of "gun toting" had to be dealt with. Many of the citizens still carried side arms of some kind, though the practice was beginning to be frowned upon as being uncivilized. A trial period had been enacted by the city of Coleman to stop the carrying of guns inside the town. But the law had not yet been strictly enforced. The judge presented the problem to the jury and asked for suggestions. After a long silence, Rich Coffey spoke up and said, "Gentlemen of the jury, I...move that every man on this jury that has a gun under his coat or in his boot leg, come forward now and put it on the table. Here is mine." This brought a hearty laugh from the group, but when all the weapons had been counted, it was revealed that over half the jurymen at the very moment were carrying guns! This quickly settled the issue, and the law was not enforced at this time against "gun toters" in Coleman.
In Rich's later years he was remembered chiefly for his devoted work in the Masonic Lodge. He was fifty years old when he petitioned Brownwood Lodge Number 279 for membership. The original petition showed that he had lived on the frontier of Texas for eighteen years. At this time Brownwood was a village consisting mainly of a small store, a blacksmith shop, and an old log courthouse. It was in this old courthouse where the Masonic Lodge met. The members had to climb a wooden ladder to the second floor of the building where the meetings were held. No one was more faithful in attending the Lodge than Rich, though he had to ride horseback or muleback some fifty miles to attend. He was known to have stayed several days in Brownwood when he attended these meetings and visited with other pioneers of the area.
In 1878, Rich became a charter member of the Coleman Masonic Lodge, and was on the committee that secured the first permanent hall for Lodge meetings. In 1885 he became a charter member of Paint Rock Lodge Number 613, where he served faithfully until his death on Feb. 7, 1898. His picture is on display in the Paint Rock Lodge Room.
Perhaps no other man had as much to do with the early frontier along the lower Concho River as did Rich Coffey. His interests in pioneer ranching helped open up this area for settling and commerce, and his friendly outlook caused him to be remembered as a man who would as quickly help his neighbor as himself.
Creed Taylor, an early Texan, perhaps paid the most fitting tribute to Rich Coffey when he said, "...He was one of the bravest of the brave and his hospitality was of the old Texas quality that knew no bounds..."
Today, the Coffey Ranch is deserted. The old, two-story rock house stands like a sentinel upon the high bluff overlooking the mouth of the Concho River. Owls still hoot at night, but the Indians have long since disappeared. The windows of the old house are never brightened now at night. People refuse to live there because — strangely enough — "It's too far from civilization", which is the reason Rich Coffey chose to live there over one hundred years ago.
Bishop Powell
West Texas Historical Association Year Book
Vol. L, 1974
