Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

Longhorn barons, a vanished breed

It was said at one time that there were more cattle on the range with Rabb's "Bow and Arrow" brand than all the cattle owned by Richard King and Mifflin Kenedy.
   John Rabb was what the cowboys called a "range pirate," meaning a cattleman with a big herd and small land holdings. He began ranching in Nueces County in 1857. He moved here on the advice of his cousin, the pistol-packing horse-trader, Sally Skull. Rabb bought enough land for his ranch house at Banquete and built a town house on the bluff in Corpus Christi in 1859 (the Merriman-Bobys house in Heritage Park).
   After the Civil War, Rabb began driving cattle to Kansas. When he died in 1872, he left his widow 100 acres of land and 10,000 cattle on the open range. Martha Rabb knew the open range wouldn't last. She began buying land and enclosing it with cypress planks. She feared that Glidden's barbed wire, "Texas silk," would cause wounds on cattle that would lead to screw-worms. She bought 3,600 acres in 1873 for 60 cents an acre and steadily added to her ranch. She smoked cigarillos and always had a box of them at hand. She was nicknamed "the cattle queen of Texas."
   After Martha Rabb married "Parson" C. M. Rogers in 1884, he convinced her to sell the ranch and move to Austin. She sold the ranch to D. C. Rachal and Henry Scott. Rachal's ranch headquarters was at White Point, across Nueces Bay. After buying Rabb's ranch, his holdings in Nueces County stretched from Clarkwood to Banquete, Driscoll to the Nueces River. In 1885, during the Great Die-Up, Rachal sold the ranch to his friends, Jerry and Robert Driscoll. This oil-rich land made an immense fortune for the Driscoll family.
   George Reynolds was another immigrant attracted by Kinney's agents. He came here from Oxfordshire, England, in 1854. He worked as a cowhand around Nuecestown until he got a homestead on Agua Dulce Creek shortly after the Civil War. Reynolds established Palo Ventana Ranch in what is today Jim Wells County, south of Martin Culver's Rancho Perdido. When Reynolds died in 1897, his ranch covered 47,000 acres.
   A few miles east of Ventana was John Wade's ranch in northeastern Jim Wells. Wade's place was the old Mann Ranch, owned by Corpus Christi's William Mann._The Wade Ranch covered 48,000 acres, stretching from Orange Grove to the Nueces River. Wade, also an Englishman, married Sarah Beynon, whose father operated a livery stable in Corpus Christi and ran a stage line to Brownsville. Wade in later years began to grow watermelons; railroad switchmen called the Wade siding "Sandia," Spanish for watermelon.
   John Wesley Scott came to Nueces County in 1857 and bought a ranch, which he called Rancho Seco. Scott, a close friend of Richard King, died in the yellow fever epidemic in 1867.
   Scott's ranch became part of the holdings of Banquete cattleman W.W. Wright, who moved to Nueces County from Mississippi in 1858. His nickname was "W6" because that was his cattle brand. The Wright homestead at Rancho Seco was sometimes called Wrightsville by local citizens.
   S. G. (Sylvanus Gerard) Miller operated a ferry on the Nueces River. His ranch in the Nueces Valley, in southeastern Live Oak County, was where Lake Corpus Christi is today. Miller angered his neighbors when he put up a mesquite fence for 15 miles across his land, forcing travelers to go around.
   Nicholas Bluntzer, from Alsace, Germany, who was once an Indian scout for Robert E. Lee, began ranching in the Santa Margarita area on the Nueces River in 1859. He died on May 9, 1901.
   There were others, such as: Archie "Cow" Clark, so-called because he owned so many cattle; Frank Byler, a stockman in the Banquete area; Pat Dunn, who had the oddest ranch in Texas, on Padre Island, where longhorns wandered along the tide line, supplementing their diet with sand crabs; Cornelius Clay Cox, who started "El Colimal" ranch in 1856; and Juan Vela, who had a big ranch on the Nueces River near the old town of Lagarto.
   The era of the longhorn cattleman was short-lived. It reached its apex in this area with the Rabbs and Rachals, the Driscolls, Wrights, Elliffs, Dobies and others of their breed. Like their longhorns, they were tough, sinewy, and wonderfully adapted to the thorny environment of South Texas. We will not see their kind again.
   (Sources: Caller-Times archives; "Pathfinders of Texas" by Mrs. Frank DeGarmo; "Sixty Years in the Nueces Valley" by Mrs. S. J. Miller; "Lagarto, A Collection of Memories" by Hattie Mae Hinnant New; an account of H.A. Gilpin by Ruth Dodson; a thesis on Rancho Perdido by Sister Mary Anne Roddy; and research by Bill Sayger in "A Live Oak County Rememberancer.")
   (Murphy Givens can be reached by phone at 886-4315 or by e-mail at givensm@caller.com.)
  
  

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