Home Bonnie Patrick Kris Paige Wade
by Samuel F. Aitchison, 1941, brother of Janet Elizabeth Aitchison
Patrick (Walker Thomson) and I left Liverpool, England, on November 10th, 1883, on the S.S. Nevada. It was an eight day boat but we had a very stormy passage and did not arrive in New York till the 14th day, being six days over due which caused much anxiety and worry to both of our families, as there was no radio or other means of communication at that time till the boat arrived at her destination.
We stayed for several days in New York and then started for Texas, breaking the trip twice, in Washington, and New Orleans to see the sights. When we arrived in San Antonio, Patrick left me at the Menger Hotel and went down to Lytle to see his partners, Lytle and McDaniel on their ranch.
I was much interested in all I saw of San Antonio. The buildings were mostly one story high and all had grass thatched roofs and most of the walls were adobe. The streets were in bad condition and full of holes. There was a street car line powered by two mules, one in front and the other between the rails. I don't think the town was incorporated at that time, although they claimed a population of 30,000, and it was a common sight to see burros and cows strolling along the streets. Commerce Street was the main business center, all offices and the best stores were on it. There was a beer garden and dancing pavilion at San Pedro Springs reached by trolley: from San Pedro to Houston Street was a mesquite brush thicket.
The toughest part of town was the street running up to the Missouri Pacific depot. It was all saloons with gambling halls attached. Still, one could go all through them with pockets full of money in perfect safety.
I think life and property was safer at that time than it has been since 1914 and the First World War because no one was held up and roll robbed in the early days, which is a common occurrence at the present day. Nearly all the murders took place in the gambling halls and dance halls. I liked San Antonio from the start. I found the people very civil and obliging and never laughed at a greenhorn's silly questions. San Antonio was illuminated with coal gas and the plant was just put in before I arrived. I was amused at the big placards a foot square hanging from each gas burner reading, "Don't blow out the gas. It is dangerous".
Patrick came back from the Lytle Ranch after three days but had to go to Austin on business, so I decided to go out alone to the Willow Ranch because I was anxious to get to my destination. Patrick saw me off on the train for Spofford and told me to yell "Candalario" as soon as the train stopped at Darling. Candalario was the boy who went to the train for the mail every day.
I hunted up the conductor of the Eagle Pass train and told him to put me off at Darling. After the train started, the conductor came along and informed me that Robert Thomson was on the train and going to Darling, and pointed him out to me. Robert had changed much since I knew him in Aberdeen. Here was a man with a long 45 cal. pistol and a belt full of cartridges strapped to his waist and a Stetson hat with a very broad rim and wearing blue overalls.
When we arrived at Darling, Robert had a horse staked behind the section house. It was two miles to the Willow Ranch. The Mexicans called the ranch "La Posta" because the stagecoaches formerly changed horses there.
Robert insisted I ride the horse, and he walked to the ranch. It was two o'clock in the morning when we arrived and went to bed. I was introduced to all the boys the next morning; Walter Mundel, Hohn Droleau, Billy Weigh who was store and bookkeeper, Billy Stephany, Uncles Charley and Jamie, Mrs. Burdett who was cook and housekeeper, and her husband who was the hostler.
The horses were herded day and night. The remuda consisted of 200 horses and mules. I can never forget my first breakfast on the ranch. It consisted of oatmeal, mutton chops, fried potatoes, and hot cakes served with black molasses, and the way the boys tucked it in. You never saw such appetites.
Immediately after breakfast the boys mounted their horses and left for their respective duties all over the ranch and did not return till evening on account of the long distances they had to go. There was only a light lunch at the ranch eaten by the bookkeeper and any one who happened to come along.
After Patrick came home, he took me down to Eagle Pass and introduced me to his personal friends and the leading citizens. Eagle Pass was a typical frontier town of that time. The streets were full of holes and there were no sidewalks. The last house in town looking East towards the Railway Depot was the Yarington residence where the Eagle Hotel now stands on Main Street and from there to the Railway Depot was a mesquite thicket, also the Convent was a long way out of town in the mesquite brush.
They were building the railway into Mexico and there were about 200 men, all Americans, "tough lot," constructing the railway bridge across the Rio Grande. There were five or six saloons on Main Street, all with dance halls and gambling joints attached, except the Fesman Saloon, which was considered a gentleman's resort because he catered to the best citizens and would not stand for a rough house. Eagle Pass was considered a pretty tough spot at this time because there were no extradition laws between the United States and Mexico. If anyone committed a crime in either country and got across the Rio Grande, he was immune from the law and could not be arrested, hence all the rough element on the dodge in Eagle Pass.
Every man carried a 44 or 45 long barreled six shooter and belt full of cartridges round his waist and never went out without them.
There were no luxuries and very few conveniences. No water works, light, or sewer systems. There was a brigade of burro carts, which carried all the water from the river to you, backyard. The muddy water had to settle before it could be used.
The married men did all the family shopping for groceries and meat after breakfast each morning. They all carried a basket and went out on foot.
I found native Texans very ignorant and suspicious till they know you. After that you got along splendidly. The men only shaved once a week and the barbers called Saturday shaving day and would not cut your hair on that day. Towards the end of the week, bankers, lawyers, and doctors with their half-inch of beard looked more like tramps than professional men.
There were two hotels in town, The Dolch and Fitch. The Dolch Hotel was the oldest and was patronized by practically all the ranchmen in the county. Mrs. Dolch ran the Hotel and her husband, Louis, took care of the livery stable. Mrs. Dolch was a wonderful old lady and called all us young fellows "her boys" and she mothered us like her own sons. The Fitch Hotel catered mostly to the transient or out of town trade.
There was one bank in Eagle Pass at the time, Simpson's, and Mr. Watkins, Mrs. Buckley's father, was the cashier. Silver currency was about the only money in circulation. Paper money or bills only got here by people coming from the northern states.
When cattle or sheep buyers came to a ranch to do business, they brought the money with them in silver dollars in sacks hung from the horn of their saddles. When they came in they dumped the sacks of money in the corner of a room, took off their six shooters and threw them on top of the money, and from then on they were your guests and you were responsible for them and their money.
DeBona and Riddle were the leading merchants. DeBona had most of the ranchmen's trade. Riddle was mostly wholesale and he did a big business as a broker between Eagle Pass and Mexico.
All ranch bills were sent out and paid only twice a year. Bills were paid by the sheepmen after each wool clip was sold and cattlemen paid after their yearlings and steers were sold.
The legal interest for money was 12 percent, and that was what you had to pay at the banks in Eagle Pass and San Antonio. Grazing land for sheep cost 1 1/2 cents per acre for a year and shepherds were paid 12 Mexican pesos and provisions per month. Wool brought from 25 to 30 cents per pound, sold through commission houses in San Antonio. J. L. Lytle and Co. got a higher price because Patrick sold the wool on the ranch direct to the mills at Fall River and Boston, saving commission, storage and insurance.
Patrick let the mills know when he would start shearing and they sent wool experts to stay at the ranch during shearing and after the lambs were sheared, some of them bought the clip. It amused me to hear Patrick and a buyer haggling over an eighth of a cent per pound. This happened frequently. An eighth of a cent is quite an item on a 200,000 pound clip.
After I got better acquainted with the people, I made a tour all round the neighboring ranches, and was always saying the wrong thing and getting into trouble. For example, one day I called on Rosie McNelly, who later became Mrs. Gus Black, and when I got off my horse I was limping and she asked me what the trouble was. I told her that I fell and hurt my leg a few days before. After a while, Mr. Rufus Mangum, Hal Mangum's youngest brother who happened to be there, asked me to come out on the porch and have a smoke and he gave me a lecture for saying I hurt my leg. He said it was very improper and vulgar because legs were never mentioned here. You must call it your limb.
About this time, a Scotch Society was being formed in Dallas. They called it a clan and they sent two Scotch pipers to San Antonio, in full Scottish regalia to try and get some members to join. They had hardly left the hotel when they were arrested by a policeman and taken to court, charged for being indecently dressed and showing their bare knees. Of course they were discharged. The Judge explained to the policeman that they were Scotchmen and in full ancient native dress. One often read in the papers about women and girls being arrested and fined for wearing pants on the streets. The Judge called it masquerading as men.
The early Texans were very straight laced and probably as bad as the Puritans. Like all young countries, it was full of Jim Crow laws, which were never enforced over a few months at a time. Probably the greatest change in Texas the last sixty years is in the weather. The winters are now mild and the northers hardly ever last over a day or day and a half, while formerly they blew hard for three days and left a cold freezing spell for a week. At that time it rained three times as much as it does at the present day and many of the creeks ran during the winter months and some of the creeks had springs which ran after a wet fall till the hot weather started.
There was a big spring about a quarter of a mile below the broken tank in the Olmos Pasture under the bluff which sometimes ran for months in the winter. At that time there were no fences, tanks, or wells in the area and the only water supply for stock were the water holes on the creeks. There were no weather bureaus or radio at that time to warn stockmen of impending storms, but the Army operated meteorological bureau in Washington that was very reliable and kept the Army posts all over the U.S. informed of storm predictions. Soldiers, generally, Sergeants, were sent out from Fort Duncan on horseback to inform the ranches all over Maverick County of the impending storm and to rush their stock to shelter. The first cold northers of the year generally started the first week of October.
In the eighties no one dreamed of traveling on the road or riding the range after the first of November without carrying his overcoat along. Nowadays you frequently see in the newspapers or hear someone making fun of the Texas blue northers and speaking of them as legend or myth. The blue norther derives its name from the fact that a little black cloud suddenly appeared on the horizon in the north and in an hour it developed into a big steel blue cloud that struck with fifty mile an hour winds and rain and sleet which froze as it hit the ground and in increasing fury through the second day, it blew itself out about sundown on the third day.
The following was my worst experience: In January of 1885, W.A. Lyall, who was working for John Burke and me at the time, and I made a trip to Uvalde. Lyall drove the wagon and I was on horseback. We went to bring back a load of provisions. We spent two days in town and on the third day decided to come home. Mr. Piper, the leading merchant, and some others advised us not to go, because they were expecting a norther, the temperature being up in the nineties, hot and sultry, but I was impatient to get home to the Chacon. We started after dinner and arrived close to the Nueces River crossing in the early evening. We met an old wagon freighter there called Simpson, who I knew. Simpson asked me where we were going to camp for the night and I told him we intended to camp about a half mile on the other side of the river up on the high ground to get away from mosquitoes.
Simpson said, "Don't do it, boys, that would be dangerous because there is every indication that we will have a bad norther before morning. Make your camp down in the river bottom in the live oak mott and up against the high bluff." We followed his advice and made everything sung in camp, fed the mules and horse, and tied them up. Sheltered from the north by the bluff, after supper we made up our beds under the wagon. We had lots of blankets and hay on top of them. We had about gone to sleep when Lyall said, "Listen, here she comes." The next minute it was on us, first rain, and then hail and sleet and fine snow, accompanied by a terrific freezing wind.
Lyall and I dived under the blankets and covered our heads. We had a good waterproof sheet over us and were quite comfortable but could not get any sleep on account of the wind whistling through the live oak trees and branches being torn off. We did not get up when daylight came but a 10 o'clock, the horse and mules started to whine from the cold, so we got up and fed them and rubbed them down till we got the ace off their hair and then tied blankets on them. After eating our breakfast, we rushed back to bed, the only place where we could keep warm.
All this time, the wind was increasing in intensity and by now it was blowing a perfect hurricane and our mustaches were covered with ice from our breath freezing. On the morning of the third day, the sleet and rain quit and the sun came out and the wind died down but it was still freezing hard. We broke camp and hit the road for home. We slept at the Friedly Ranch that night and got home to the Chacon the following day. We found the cook alone and he told us that John Burke, Gus Black and J.K. Burr formed a search party and were hunting for us. We missed them because Lyall and I left the Eagle Pass and Uvalde road at Friedly Ranch for a shorter trail to the Chacon.
In a few days we got our mail from town and read in the papers about the damage done by the storm. A whole cow outfit died from exposure in the Pan Handle country, including seven men, a man was frozen to death in the Piedras Negras jail and hundreds of cattle died.
During the eighties the old timer kept referring to the Great Blizzard of 1873, which was the worst storm in Texas within the memory of the oldest people, when the temperature went down below zero and took an appalling loss of life; and property, which almost wiped out the livestock business.
By 1890, Eagle Pass was considered the most desirable town on the border to live in because the people were more refined and talented. It had the Mesquite Club, a musical club, and one of the best brass bands in Texas, conducted by the late Pasqual DeBona; also the Dramatic Club was a great success. By this time the extradition law was in force and this eliminated the criminals and rough elements from the northern states from passing through Texas on their flight from justice to Mexico.