Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

Wednesday, May 10, 2000

The Cattle Queen of Texas

Pistol-packing Sally Skull moved to Banquete in 1852 and convinced her cousin John Rabb that this was the place for him. Rabb began cattle ranching in the western part of Nueces County in 1857. His operation grew until he became one of the biggest cattlemen in South Texas.
   Rabb ran his cattle under the Bow and Arrow brand on the open range. He bought one tract of land and built a house on it near Banquete. In 1859, he built a house on the bluff in Corpus Christi so his children could attend school. (Now restored, it's the Merriman-Bobys House in Heritage Park.)
   John Rabb died, at age 46, in 1872. He left his widow Martha (Regan) a herd of 10,000 cattle, running on the open range, and 100 acres.
   Martha Rabb took over her husband's cattle empire at a dangerous time when South Texas was filled with rustlers and outlaws and cross-border raids were frequent. The endemic violence led many cattlemen to sell out. Martha could see the end of the open range coming and knew the land would become more valuable. As others began to sell, she began to buy.
   She bought one tract of 3,600 acres in 1873 for 60 cents an acre. Two years later, after the famous Nuecestown Raid, she added many thousands of acres to her holdings until she had built up one of the largest ranches in this area. She became known as "The Cattle Queen of Texas.''
   Her pasture was enclosed by 30 miles of fence made of Louisiana pine and cypress posts and it took a fence rider two days to ride it. It was ridden twice a week along an ever-deepening trail. (Robstown sits inside what used to be a corner of Martha's pasture.)
   She built a new home on the bluff in Corpus Christi called Magnolia Mansion. (It was later bought by Mifflin Kenedy for his son, John G. It was located where the Cathedral sits today.)
   While Martha was the boss, she had help from her three sons, Dock, Frank and Lee, until Lee was killed. The story of Lee Rabb's murder was told by John Dunn in "Perilous Trails of Texas.'' He said Lee had taken a girl to a dance in Petronila and while Rabb and his date were sipping coffee, a man slipped up to the window and shot Rabb in the back, killing him instantly. The shooter escaped on Rabb's horse.
   "Some say that he was caught up with and killed on the banks of the Rio Grande and dumped into the river, but the know-it-alls say he was never caught,'' Dunn wrote. "However, he was missing at all the elections since."
   Lee's killing led to the legend that Martha Rabb offered a reward of $50 in gold for every pair of "Mexican ears" brought to her. That tale is repeated in J. Frank Dobie's "A Vaquero of the Brush Country.'' It's also told in "Foreigners in Their Native Land" by David Weber, who says that Lee's friends, in an orgy of revenge, killed "about 40 innocent Mexicans." There's more fiction than fact behind these tall tales.
   Not long after this, Martha met and married her second husband, C.M. Rogers, a Methodist minister from Austin. She sold her ranch in 1884 to D.C. Rachal and a partner. The sale included the stipulation that she could run her cattle on the land until she could sell.
   A story was told later by Mrs. P.A. Hunter, daughter of D. C. Rachal, who said her husband was sent to manage the Rabb ranch and they lived in the ranch house on the banks of the Agua Dulce. She said Mrs. Rabb came to oversee the sale of her cattle. "She would get up on the fence to watch the branding and selling of stock, all the time talking business to the buyers . . . She smoked cigars, and carried a box of them around with her.''
   Mrs. Hunter said Martha and son Frank became estranged after her second marriage. Frank did not share her enthusiasm for the Rev. Rogers and relations were sundered after the parson took a portrait of Martha's first husband John, sitting on his horse, and had it hung in the outhouse. Mrs. Hunter said Frank would vanish when Martha and the parson came to the ranch. Frank later married the daughterof rancher Mifflin Kenedy.
   Martha Rabb died a few years later in Austin, her wealth reportedly dissipated by Rev. Rogers. The Rabb land that was sold to D.C. Rachal was sold two years later, in the middle of a drought, to the Driscoll brothers and became the basis for one of the largest fortunes in South Texas.
   (Sources other than those mentioned in the text include Caller-Times archives and the Caller-Times "Centennial Journey" story on John and Martha Rabb.)
  

---

  © 2000 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved.