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. William 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 Gus 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.
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, Delaware, 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, then 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. In a 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:
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 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 Gus 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, Delaware, 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, then 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. In a 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 TacticsLike 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."
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
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.James T. Padgitt, West Texas Historical Association Year Book, October, 1958
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.
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