CARROLL, JOHN ELLISON
(1862-1942)
John Ellison Carroll, champion steer roper and rodeo pioneer, son of J.
E. and Mary Carroll, was born in San Patricio County, Texas,
on September 14, 1862.
As a young man he began working as a cowboy and trail driver in the Panhandle.
He later ranched in Oklahoma
and in Tarrant and Crockett counties, Texas,
before he and Jim Todd established the 07 Ranch in Reagan
County.
In 1912 Carroll sold his shares in the ranch and moved to Big
Lake,
where he lived for the remainder of his life. He won his first major
professional contest as a steer roper at Canadian, Texas,
in 1888 and was soon classed among the best single-steer ropers in the state.
He would challenge anybody, any time, primarily in matched contests where
earnings from side bets far exceeded contest prizes.
His chief opponent in matched roping from 1900 through 1913 was fellow
Texan Henry Clay McGonagil, whom he defeated for the
unofficial world's championship in a legendary three-day, ten-steer match in
San Antonio. Carroll set a record that still stands by roping and tying a steer
in seventeen seconds; he won $2,000. Thereafter, until he retired from
competition around 1913, he proclaimed himself the "world's champion steer
roper."
He issued postcards bearing this title and his picture alongside a
"busted" steer. Thanks to his reputation as a roper Carroll also
became a Wild West-show star and performed with such notables as Lucille Mulhall, Tom Mix, and Will Rogers between 1900 and 1910.
Carroll married Marie Wiegand Van Wert on
October 16, 1916. She died when their son, J. E. Carroll Jr., was born in 1919,
and in 1926 Carroll married Frances Wiegand McClour. He was a Methodist and a Democrat. He served as
sheriff of Reagan
County
from 1931 to 1933 and was county commissioner from 1937 until his death.
Carroll remained interested in rodeo throughout his life. During the
1930s he judged the Stamford
Cowboy Reunion Rodeo
and competed in its Oldtimers' Rodeo. He was also
president of the Texas
Cowboy Reunion Oldtimers Association in 1941. He died on April 20, 1942,
and is buried in Big
Lake Cemetery.
He was elected to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame Rodeo Division in Oklahoma
City in 1976.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Foghorn Clancy, My Fifty Years in Rodeo (San Antonio:
Naylor, 1952). Beth Day, America's
First Cowgirl: Lucille Mulhall (New York: Messner, 1955). Willard H. Porter, Who's Who in Rodeo
(Oklahoma City: Powder River, 1982). Hooper Shelton,
50 Years of a Living Legend: Texas
Cowboy Reunion and
Old-Timers Association (Stamford, Texas: Shelton, 1979). Carl L. Studer, "First Rodeo in Texas,"
Southwestern Historical Quarterly 48 (January 1945). J. L. Werst,
Jr., ed., The Reagan
County Story
(Big Lake, Texas: Reagan County Historical Survey Committee, 1974).
Mary Lou LeCompte
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EATON, NICK
T.
(ca. 1839-ca. 1895)
Nick T. Eaton, Panhandle rancher, was born about 1839 in Missouri
and appeared in the Panhandle in 1878, when he brought a herd up from the
vicinity of Fort
Griffin.
Among his hired trail drivers were George Finch, W. K. (Doc) Franz, and James
P. (Lengthy) Sutton, all of whom stayed to work on Eaton's new ranch, which he
established twenty-five miles west of the site of present Wheeler.
This ranch covered a third of Wheeler
County
and a third of Gray
County.
The headquarters, built out of cedar posts, was located on Hackberry Creek, a
tributary of McClellan Creek, six miles northwest of the locale of present McLean
near the North Fork of
the Red River. On his
range Eaton ran 3,000 head of cattle that carried his U Bar
U brand.
Finch served as the first wagon boss but became an invalid after a year
and died in 1888. He was succeeded as wagon boss by Doc Franz, who as state
surveyor for the Clay
District
had helped survey the Panhandle in 1869-73. Franz also served as range foreman.
Thomas T. McGee, later Hemphill county sheriff, was among those hired to drive
U Bar U cattle to Dodge
City.
Eaton was a charter member of the Panhandle Stock Association, formed
in Mobeetie in 1880, and served consistently on the
association's executive board. He was also on grand juries, county commissions,
and school boards. Eaton and Henry Cresswell became
partners about 1880 in a cattle enterprise in which they used a Forked
Lightning brand. Their cattle grazed on Eaton's U Bar
U range until 1889, when the partners discontinued the brand, shipped out the
cattle of that marking, and sold them.
Marvin V. Sanders, later Wheeler county sheriff, who worked for Eaton,
told of one episode in which Doc Franz and Lengthy Sutton discovered a band of
reservation Indians slaughtering some Forked Lightning steers near the U Bar U headquarters. Sutton allegedly rode eighteen miles to Fort
Elliott
in forty minutes to alert the military. Troops came to escort the Indians back
to their reservation, and the government later reimbursed Eaton and Cresswell for the cattle.
In 1885 Eaton filed an injunction against Abner
P. Blocker to try to prevent him from driving the first XIT Ranch herd across
the U Bar U rangeland to Dallam
County.
However, the case was "dismissed at cost of plaintiff."
After 1889 Eaton, who was approaching fifty, ended his bachelorhood by
marrying in Kansas City.
There he maintained a palatial mansion for his bride and commuted to his Panhandle
ranch during cattle-shipping times.
He was known among the "cowpuncher element" as an expert
"brand man," straightforward in all his dealing. Eaton reportedly
turned the U Bar U's registry over to J. P. Sutton
after 1892. Some accounts related that Eaton later committed suicide after
going broke.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Millie Jones Porter, Memory Cups of Panhandle Pioneers
(Clarendon, Texas: Clarendon Press, 1945). Pauline D. and R. L. Robertson,
Cowman's Country: Fifty Frontier Ranches in the Texas
Panhandle, 1876-1887 (Amarillo: Paramount, 1981).
H. Allen Anderson
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FRYE, HENRY
(1851-1941)
Henry Frye, rancher and Wheeler
County
pioneer, was born on October
6, 1851, in Rochelle,
Virginia,
the son of a Presbyterian minister. At age twenty-one he moved to Austin,
Texas,
where he worked as a wheat harvester. He used his earnings to buy cowboy
equipment and went to work on the Chisholm Trail.
In 1874 Frye joined William J. (Bull) Miller in herding cattle up the
trail to Kansas,
where he met Miller's thirteen-year-old daughter Lula. He married her in 1877
and left by wagon for the Texas
Panhandle.
In July 1877 the couple settled in Hemphill
County,
where they ran 200 heifers for Lula's father. They lived in a half dugout on
the Washita
River
but later built a two-room picket house, which Lula carpeted with towsacks. From the original herd of 200 head, Frye received
one-half of the increase. He registered his Campstool brand in 1880.
In 1879 he was among those who petitioned to organize Wheeler
County;
he also served as a juror. In 1882 he sold his Hemphill
County
home to Robert Moody and moved his family to a half dugout in Wheeler
County.
In 1884 he purchased about 1,000 cattle and built a two-room rock house on
Sweetwater Creek. The seven Frye children received much of their early
education at the Rock community school.
After the town of Canadian
was founded in 1887, Frye operated a mercantile store for a short time with his
brother, W. E. Frye. Although his primary interest was ranching, Frye played a
leading role in Canadian's civic and educational development. In 1897 a post
office was established at the Frye ranchhouse, with
Lula Frye as postmistress. It remained in operation until 1909.
Frye invested in more land and eventually divided the original ranch
into smaller farms. He passed the Campstool brand on to his sons Will, Tobe, and Harry, and his daughter Nellie Puryear. Frye's daughter Elizabeth and her husband, Frank
Young, bought back the land on the Washita
River
where Frye's first homestead was located.
In their later years Henry and Lula Frye moved to Sulphur, Oklahoma,
where their sons Will and Harry operated a sanatorium and bathhouse. Henry died
there on August 14,
1941, and Lula died about a year later. They were
both buried in Sulphur.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sallie B. Harris, Cowmen and Ladies: A History of Hemphill
County
(Canyon, Texas: Staked Plains, 1977). Sallie B. Harris, comp., Hide
Town
in the Texas
Panhandle: 100 Years in Wheeler
County
and Panhandle of Texas
(Hereford, Texas: Pioneer, 1968). Millie Jones Porter, Memory
Cups of Panhandle Pioneers (Clarendon, Texas: Clarendon Press, 1945).
Pauline D. and R. L. Robertson, Cowman's Country: Fifty Frontier Ranches in the
Texas
Panhandle, 1876-1887 (Amarillo: Paramount, 1981).
H. Allen Anderson
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GERLACH, GEORGE
(1863-1937)
George Gerlach, early Panhandle merchant, son
of Franz Joseph and Mary (Gilmartin) Gerlach, was born on February 8, 1863, at Virden,
Illinois.
Although he learned the stonemason's trade from his father, he felt no
attraction to it and earned his first wages by hoeing corn for fifty cents a
day.
In February 1885 he joined his brother, John J. Gerlach,
at his dugout on Horse Creek, seven miles north of the site of Canadian, Texas.
They established Gerlach Brothers
Road Ranch and Store, so named
because of its location on the Jones and Plummer Trail and near the military
route from Fort
Elliott,
and stocked it with equipment George had brought in from Larned, Kansas.
They built corrals for freighters who drove their teams along the road, cooked
meals for them, sold them merchandise, and often put them up for the night.
In the spring of 1887 the Gerlachs moved
their store, the first in Hemphill
County,
to the Panhandle and Santa Fe
Railway construction camp of Clear Creek, or Hogtown.
As the rails moved on, the town of Canadian was platted, and by the fall of
1887 the store had been moved there.
A year later George turned the store over to John and opened a
lumberyard, at which he specialized in coffins. It was said that the Gerlach brothers could "marry a man, build his home,
furnish it, supply him with groceries, dry goods, implements, and other
necessities of life, and when he no longer had need for them, bury him."
Gerlach married Dora E.
Knollenberg of Jackson, Illinois, in 1890. They had four children and lived in
Canadian, where George and his partners took over the mercantile business after
John moved to Oklahoma
to open a branch store. The original store burned in 1916, and the Gerlachs established the Canadian Hardware Company and
Everybody's Dry Goods and Clothing Store, which operated until 1925.
Their home, located on the present site of the First
Baptist Church
in Canadian, was the town's first two-story house. Gerlach
died on December 29,
1937, and was buried in the Canadian.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Margaret Moody Gerlach Papers, Barker
Texas History
Center,
University
of Texas
at Austin.
Sallie B. Harris, Cowmen and Ladies: A History of Hemphill
County
(Canyon, Texas: Staked Plains, 1977). F. Stanley [Stanley
F. L. Crocchiola], Rodeo
Town
(Canadian, Texas)
(Denver: World, 1953).
H. Allen Anderson
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GERLACH, JOHN J.
(1865-1931)
John J. Gerlach, plains pioneer, the younger
son of Franz Joseph and Mary (Gilmartin) Gerlach, was born at Virden, McCoupin County,
Illinois,
in 1865. He moved to the Texas
Panhandle in the fall of 1883 and worked for various ranches.
In November 1884 he erected a dugout in Hemphill
County
on Horse Creek, about four miles northwest of its juncture with the Canadian
River. After his brother George Gerlach joined him there in 1885, they opened their Road
Ranch and Store, which they moved to Clear Creek and then to Canadian after the
Panhandle and Santa Fe
Railway built through in 1887.
Gerlach was elected first
Hemphill county treasurer and managed the mercantile store at Canadian, which
evolved through several partnerships, until 1893, when he made the run into the
Cherokee Strip of Oklahoma.
He helped establish the town of Woodward,
Oklahoma,
and opened the Gerlach-Hopkins Mercantile there with
his partner, J. H. (Hoos) Hopkins. Gerlach's sister Capitola later joined him there. The firm
operated until 1928, when the Gerlachs sold out.
On January
14, 1894, Gerlach
married Margaret Moody, daughter of PO
Ranch owner Robert Moody. They became the parents of three children. Gerlach served as treasurer of Woodward
County
and was a member of the state banking board.
During World War I he served on the county council of defense, the coal
commission for settling difficulties of the Oklahoma
miners, and the food commission under Herbert Hoover. He died on December 16,
1931.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Margaret Moody Gerlach Papers, Barker
Texas History
Center,
University
of Texas
at Austin.
Sallie B. Harris, Cowmen and Ladies: A History of Hemphill
County
(Canyon, Texas: Staked Plains, 1977). F. Stanley [Stanley
F. L. Crocchiola], Rodeo
Town
(Canadian, Texas)
(Denver: World, 1953).
H. Allen Anderson