THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
SUBJECT: Ranch Women
INTERVIEW WITH: James & Lillian Padgitt
DATE: 19 August 1982
INTERVIEWER: Jim McNutt
TAPE I, SIDE 1
M: This is Jim McNutt speaking with Mr. James T. Padgitt and Mrs. Padgitt,...Maverick, at their home in San Antonio, Texas, Thursday, August 19, 1982. You may have heard of Amanda Burkes from Cotulla?
J: No, I haven’t.
M: Her husband...she accompanied her husband on a trail drive in 1871. And she...after he died in 1876...
J: Where did they drive to?
M: To Kansas. And I guess it was to Abilene.
J: Abilene, yeah.
M: That would have been, yeah.
J: Yeah, that was the family...
M: But...and thereafter...
J: 1871.
M: 1871. And he died in 1877, but she remained a widow the rest of her life, and she was fairly young – 36, something like that and could have remarried. She remained a widow the rest of her...well, she didn’t remarry. And managed the ranch, ran the whole thing herself thereafter, and she wrote for George W. Saunders, the Old Trail Driver - she knew him. And she wrote for J. Marvin Hunter’s book, The Trail Drivers of Texas, an autobiographical account of going up the trail.
J: Yeah.
M: And then 19...I think 20-something, the Old Trail Drivers honored her as Queen of the Cattle Trail or something. You know, there are actually a number of Cattle Queens who had either...were ranch women, who ran the ranches themselves or went up the trail. Now, what’s very interesting to me about that is that Emerson Huff, who is a fiction writer about the West, wrote a series of stories that – in the Saturday Evening Post in 1923...
J: Yeah.
M: ...called “North of 36.”
J: Yeah.
M: And he used Hunter’s book and, I think, Amanda Burke’s account, because his heroine is a woman who goes up the trail with her own herd of cattle. It’s a very loose connection there.
J: Well, there never was any such thing as that.
M: As...?
J: One woman going up the trail with her herd of cattle.
M: Well, I mean there are some accounts of it.
J: Well, now...well, now my grandmother became a widow in 1881 but she never went up the trail, but she was... The people who went up the trail after that time, but before that time my grandfather and my great-grandfather was the first persons to ever go up the trail – in 18, oh....
M: From Coleman County?
J: No, from Texas; Texas.
M: Yeah.
J: That was...that same year one other man went up the trail, the same year, not knowing – unbeknowing of each other – they were the first two people who even went up the trail. As far as I’ve ever been able...
M: Well, anyway...finished...
J: That was in 1858.
M: ’58, yeah. Anyway...
J: Now the other people went East to Florida or to, you know, in that direction...
M: Uh-huh.
J: ...before that time.
M: Yeah, there were people going to New Orleans.
J: Yeah, to New Orleans, I mean, that’s where they actually went to.
M: Yeah. But, anyway, there was a movie made, From North of 36, the book, and then there was later a remake of that movie in 1938 called The Texans.
J: Yeah.
M: And it was shot at La Mota Ranch, which was Amanda Burke’s ranch - that was after she was dead. And her great-nieces, Virginia Sturgis and Amanda Newman, who – well, actually those are their married names – this was when they were still unmarried; their name was Bell then - they doubled for Joan Bennett who was the...had the female lead in that movie. And there is a very interesting process, you know, you’ve got the history of Amanda Burkes and then you’ve got this succession of stories built on it and then later you get her relatives re-enacting her role. And you know, and a good bit of all that process is part of how we come to view ranch women.
J: Uh-huh.
M: And this particular exhibit, I would like to get that process in front if I can. But I do want to start with... with either artifacts or things relating to particular women. One of the things that your wife was telling me yesterday and that I read in your interview with Esther is that your grandmother had a traveling shebang of special remade Confederate guns that she used to go out on the range and look at the herds with, and that was sold to Buffalo Bill’s show. Well, see, that’s a very interesting thing to me because Buffalo Bill was one of the earlier people who disseminated views of the West all over the world by going around and giving, you know, shows.
J: Well, I saw his show in Pueblo, Colorado, one time.
M: Really?
J: Uh-huh.
M: What did you think of it?
J: Well, I thought it was a pretty good show. It was one of those types of shows that was not in a circus tent, it was all in the open, but they had canvas, wagon sheets, whatever you might call them, strung all the way around the ...
M: There was awnings over the grandstands?
J: No. It was all in the sun and...
M: Oh.
J: The only way you couldn’t see without paying was that...
M: Oh, I see.
J: ...because they had these – all these wagon sheets are big sheets.
L: Kind of a fence.
J: Fencing all the way around.
M: Uh. Do you have any record of that - that wagon that your grandmother had or where it went beyond that?
J: No.
M: Do you have any photographs of it?
J: No. The only thing that I happen to have - letters she wrote...
M: Uh-huh.
J: ...describing the wagon. As a matter of fact don’t you have the...
L: It’s right there on the table if you want me to get it.
J: Well, get it then. Lil...
L: Yeah?
J: Do you have that picture of her up here on the front porch – I mean on the side porch?
M: One other thing that was mentioned in the...I believe in one of your articles but also in your interview, was the letter that Mabel Day wrote - the open letter, sort of - to the fence cutters that appeared in the paper.
J: Yeah, that was the Fence Cutting War of 1883.
M: Do you have the clipping?
J: Well, I have the...that was published in the West Texas Historical Association Yearbook and I have it upstairs, but I don’t have it...
L: Do you think it’s in this article?
J: No. Now they have – wait a minute, now, it – what do you mean by it?
L: The letter you’re talking about. I mean the article.
J: Oh, we’re talking about two different...
L: This has the one about traveling to... Here’s the letter that has that.
J: But now that...Colonel Day was killed in a stampede in 1881 and this article in the...that he was talking about is ...let’s take this yearbook...
L: Here’s the paragraph about it, “Do you wonder,” - this was written to a friend...
J: I just wanted to know whether you had it.
M: Well, we have that, and I’ve seen the articles in the West Texas Historical Association Yearbook.
J: ...[inaudible].
M: The reason I was asking about the clipping is if you have the clipping as it appeared in the paper?
J: Yes. I have the clipping as it appeared in the paper.
M: Could we possibly use that in an exhibit? I mean, that would be something that people could look at in the exhibit and I could put a little card under that says, “This is Mabel Day’s letter to the guys who were cutting her fence.” And, possibly, the kinds of things we can do at the Institute is to take a clipping like that, take a photograph of it and then blow it up big and use it as a big poster.
L: That would be interesting.
M: That would be something that...
L: Maybe if you even made the clipping newspaper size that might relate in someway.
M: Uh-huh.
J: No, it wouldn’t be quite...
M: See, the thing is – my problem is – I actually have a good bit of information from articles like yours and other people about a number of women who were involved as ranchers themselves and so on. It’s very hard to find actual things that those women used or owned that you can display in a case. And you know, I can find a lot of side-saddles for instance, there’s dozens of side-saddles, but it’s not nearly as effective for kids coming to the Institute or other people to see “just a side-saddle.”
J: By the way, now, where are you planning on... I know the... What I was wanting to know, where is the...
L: This is Mabel Day here, here’s Coleman, Texas, in early ...in those days. There’s one of Mabel and her little girl.
J: Now...[inaudible] picture in there with the oil painting right there about 18...she was married.
L: Mabel Day?
J: Yes.
L: With a necklace on?
J: Yes, with the necklace on.
L: Okay, that may be here. Let’s see.
J: ...[inaudible] thing you’d be interested in is...her husband who was killed...
M: W.H.?
J: W.H. Day in 1881, I guess.
M: Now this is Mabel?
J: That’s her when my mother was 15, 16 years old.
M: This is your mother next to her?
J: Yes.
M: Oh, all right.
J: And this is my mother when she was about 16 years old. And here is the town of Coleman. Now the reason why I have all those things on that piece of paper is that...oh, fifteen years ago we had...I still am one of the members of the Texas Historical group in Coleman County.
M: Uh-huh.
J: And so I had the entire county – Coleman County was represented in Coleman - coming down to our ranch, and also over where Chisholm used to have a ranch east of there.
M: John Chisholm?
J: Yes. Those were the two places, you know, that Coleman County was important in those days.
Oral History Office
SUBJECT: Ranch Women
INTERVIEW WITH: James & Lillian Padgitt
DATE: 19 August 1982
INTERVIEWER: Jim McNutt
TAPE I, SIDE 1
M: This is Jim McNutt speaking with Mr. James T. Padgitt and Mrs. Padgitt,...Maverick, at their home in San Antonio, Texas, Thursday, August 19, 1982. You may have heard of Amanda Burkes from Cotulla?
J: No, I haven’t.
M: Her husband...she accompanied her husband on a trail drive in 1871. And she...after he died in 1876...
J: Where did they drive to?
M: To Kansas. And I guess it was to Abilene.
J: Abilene, yeah.
M: That would have been, yeah.
J: Yeah, that was the family...
M: But...and thereafter...
J: 1871.
M: 1871. And he died in 1877, but she remained a widow the rest of her life, and she was fairly young – 36, something like that and could have remarried. She remained a widow the rest of her...well, she didn’t remarry. And managed the ranch, ran the whole thing herself thereafter, and she wrote for George W. Saunders, the Old Trail Driver - she knew him. And she wrote for J. Marvin Hunter’s book, The Trail Drivers of Texas, an autobiographical account of going up the trail.
J: Yeah.
M: And then 19...I think 20-something, the Old Trail Drivers honored her as Queen of the Cattle Trail or something. You know, there are actually a number of Cattle Queens who had either...were ranch women, who ran the ranches themselves or went up the trail. Now, what’s very interesting to me about that is that Emerson Huff, who is a fiction writer about the West, wrote a series of stories that – in the Saturday Evening Post in 1923...
J: Yeah.
M: ...called “North of 36.”
J: Yeah.
M: And he used Hunter’s book and, I think, Amanda Burke’s account, because his heroine is a woman who goes up the trail with her own herd of cattle. It’s a very loose connection there.
J: Well, there never was any such thing as that.
M: As...?
J: One woman going up the trail with her herd of cattle.
M: Well, I mean there are some accounts of it.
J: Well, now...well, now my grandmother became a widow in 1881 but she never went up the trail, but she was... The people who went up the trail after that time, but before that time my grandfather and my great-grandfather was the first persons to ever go up the trail – in 18, oh....
M: From Coleman County?
J: No, from Texas; Texas.
M: Yeah.
J: That was...that same year one other man went up the trail, the same year, not knowing – unbeknowing of each other – they were the first two people who even went up the trail. As far as I’ve ever been able...
M: Well, anyway...finished...
J: That was in 1858.
M: ’58, yeah. Anyway...
J: Now the other people went East to Florida or to, you know, in that direction...
M: Uh-huh.
J: ...before that time.
M: Yeah, there were people going to New Orleans.
J: Yeah, to New Orleans, I mean, that’s where they actually went to.
M: Yeah. But, anyway, there was a movie made, From North of 36, the book, and then there was later a remake of that movie in 1938 called The Texans.
J: Yeah.
M: And it was shot at La Mota Ranch, which was Amanda Burke’s ranch - that was after she was dead. And her great-nieces, Virginia Sturgis and Amanda Newman, who – well, actually those are their married names – this was when they were still unmarried; their name was Bell then - they doubled for Joan Bennett who was the...had the female lead in that movie. And there is a very interesting process, you know, you’ve got the history of Amanda Burkes and then you’ve got this succession of stories built on it and then later you get her relatives re-enacting her role. And you know, and a good bit of all that process is part of how we come to view ranch women.
J: Uh-huh.
M: And this particular exhibit, I would like to get that process in front if I can. But I do want to start with... with either artifacts or things relating to particular women. One of the things that your wife was telling me yesterday and that I read in your interview with Esther is that your grandmother had a traveling shebang of special remade Confederate guns that she used to go out on the range and look at the herds with, and that was sold to Buffalo Bill’s show. Well, see, that’s a very interesting thing to me because Buffalo Bill was one of the earlier people who disseminated views of the West all over the world by going around and giving, you know, shows.
J: Well, I saw his show in Pueblo, Colorado, one time.
M: Really?
J: Uh-huh.
M: What did you think of it?
J: Well, I thought it was a pretty good show. It was one of those types of shows that was not in a circus tent, it was all in the open, but they had canvas, wagon sheets, whatever you might call them, strung all the way around the ...
M: There was awnings over the grandstands?
J: No. It was all in the sun and...
M: Oh.
J: The only way you couldn’t see without paying was that...
M: Oh, I see.
J: ...because they had these – all these wagon sheets are big sheets.
L: Kind of a fence.
J: Fencing all the way around.
M: Uh. Do you have any record of that - that wagon that your grandmother had or where it went beyond that?
J: No.
M: Do you have any photographs of it?
J: No. The only thing that I happen to have - letters she wrote...
M: Uh-huh.
J: ...describing the wagon. As a matter of fact don’t you have the...
L: It’s right there on the table if you want me to get it.
J: Well, get it then. Lil...
L: Yeah?
J: Do you have that picture of her up here on the front porch – I mean on the side porch?
M: One other thing that was mentioned in the...I believe in one of your articles but also in your interview, was the letter that Mabel Day wrote - the open letter, sort of - to the fence cutters that appeared in the paper.
J: Yeah, that was the Fence Cutting War of 1883.
M: Do you have the clipping?
J: Well, I have the...that was published in the West Texas Historical Association Yearbook and I have it upstairs, but I don’t have it...
L: Do you think it’s in this article?
J: No. Now they have – wait a minute, now, it – what do you mean by it?
L: The letter you’re talking about. I mean the article.
J: Oh, we’re talking about two different...
L: This has the one about traveling to... Here’s the letter that has that.
J: But now that...Colonel Day was killed in a stampede in 1881 and this article in the...that he was talking about is ...let’s take this yearbook...
L: Here’s the paragraph about it, “Do you wonder,” - this was written to a friend...
J: I just wanted to know whether you had it.
M: Well, we have that, and I’ve seen the articles in the West Texas Historical Association Yearbook.
J: ...[inaudible].
M: The reason I was asking about the clipping is if you have the clipping as it appeared in the paper?
J: Yes. I have the clipping as it appeared in the paper.
M: Could we possibly use that in an exhibit? I mean, that would be something that people could look at in the exhibit and I could put a little card under that says, “This is Mabel Day’s letter to the guys who were cutting her fence.” And, possibly, the kinds of things we can do at the Institute is to take a clipping like that, take a photograph of it and then blow it up big and use it as a big poster.
L: That would be interesting.
M: That would be something that...
L: Maybe if you even made the clipping newspaper size that might relate in someway.
M: Uh-huh.
J: No, it wouldn’t be quite...
M: See, the thing is – my problem is – I actually have a good bit of information from articles like yours and other people about a number of women who were involved as ranchers themselves and so on. It’s very hard to find actual things that those women used or owned that you can display in a case. And you know, I can find a lot of side-saddles for instance, there’s dozens of side-saddles, but it’s not nearly as effective for kids coming to the Institute or other people to see “just a side-saddle.”
J: By the way, now, where are you planning on... I know the... What I was wanting to know, where is the...
L: This is Mabel Day here, here’s Coleman, Texas, in early ...in those days. There’s one of Mabel and her little girl.
J: Now...[inaudible] picture in there with the oil painting right there about 18...she was married.
L: Mabel Day?
J: Yes.
L: With a necklace on?
J: Yes, with the necklace on.
L: Okay, that may be here. Let’s see.
J: ...[inaudible] thing you’d be interested in is...her husband who was killed...
M: W.H.?
J: W.H. Day in 1881, I guess.
M: Now this is Mabel?
J: That’s her when my mother was 15, 16 years old.
M: This is your mother next to her?
J: Yes.
M: Oh, all right.
J: And this is my mother when she was about 16 years old. And here is the town of Coleman. Now the reason why I have all those things on that piece of paper is that...oh, fifteen years ago we had...I still am one of the members of the Texas Historical group in Coleman County.
M: Uh-huh.
J: And so I had the entire county – Coleman County was represented in Coleman - coming down to our ranch, and also over where Chisholm used to have a ranch east of there.
M: John Chisholm?
J: Yes. Those were the two places, you know, that Coleman County was important in those days.
M: Uh-huh.
J: So, I had...well, I invited everybody in the county, to the southwest part of the county to visit the old White-Top Fort there on – it’s on the Day Ranch. And then there’s a rock house there that’s still...it was the first, the oldest house in Coleman County.
M: Uh-huh.
J: And still being occupied, except the woman who still lived in it died here two or three months ago.
M: Um.
J: But at least two...[inaudible] January 1st, at that time...[inaudible]. I’m going to go back in there and kind of renovate it a little bit.
M: Uh-huh.
J: It’s right across the street where my daughter lives. Well, anyways, I’ve got all these pictures together, just the people...[inaudible] our house and we fed the whole bunch - I think it was five hundred people on the trip.
M: Uh-huh. Is this a photograph that was also...?
J: Yes, this has been there some time. Now this is Capt. Joseph P. Lea, who my grandmother married in 1889.
M: Uh-huh.
J: And he is the Father of Roswell, New Mexico.
M: Uh-huh.
L: ...[inaudible].
J: And this is my grandmother.
M: Your grandmother.
L: She must not have been very tall.
J: That was her in 18...oh, about 18...
M: That’s beautiful.
J: 1879.
M: The oil painting.
L: ...[inaudible] after her marriage?
J: No, before her marriage. Oh, I don’t know what...
L: Well, this has W.H. Day, oh [inaudible].
J: I’m kind of...[inaudible] necklace there that she was wearing at that time.
M: Uh-huh.
J: It’s one of those necklaces that you had before...about the time that you were going around with different young men, you know, and each one would give you a coin.
M: Like a charm bracelet.
L: Yeah.
J: Like a charm bracelet, yeah.
L: And they did have bracelets later. See these are coins and do have initials. But one of them – this one has H-o-p-e, Hope here, I think, engraved on it, and this has W.H. Day, the man she married - it’s a silver dollar.
M: Uh-huh.
J: I have that necklace.
M: Is this...oh, all right.
L: She went to Kidd-Key College in Sherman.
J: No, she did not.
L: Oh, shoot. She went...
J: She did not.
L: ...[inaudible] Kentucky School.
J: She went...graduated from school in Lexington, Kentucky...[inaudible] and at the time it was the Transylvania University.
M: Yeah.
L: ...[inaudible] College, it was in the...
M: Picture.
L: Which was unusual in those days. You know, not too many girls got a college, some college education.
M: Uh-huh.
L: And the letters there show it was hard to get money pulled together for her to stay in, but encouraging her to do so and...
M: Do you have any kind of saddle that your grandmother used?
J: No, I did have a saddle but the barn burned down.
M: Oh. Do you have any pictures of what you refer to as...
J: But she never did, in my knowledge, ever ride a horse - except when she first married she made a riding habit.
M: Uh-huh.
J: But after he died, I never did ever know of her riding a horse again.
M: Do you...
J: She went out and inspected the herds of cattle and so forth in a buckboard, and drove.
M: Uh-huh. Did...she wrote about making that riding habit, is that still around?
J: No, the habit...I...
L: No, we never saw that. I married into the family about fifty years ago, and I never did see it. I think it was gone by that time.
J: It was... See, my grandmother, until the time I was born, she died about four or five more months before I was born.
M: Uh-huh.
J: She died in 1906. And her whole life, although she married Capt. Lea and started the New Mexico Military Institute in her own home... It was the...Military Institute at that time; she continued to operate this ranch, all the time. And he had nothing to do with that, although he operated a big ranch in Roswell for H.K. Ferber, who was the head of the Arbuckle Coffee Company.
M: Uh-huh. How far is it, distance-wise, from Coleman County to Roswell?
L: It’s a long way.
M: Is it?
J: Five, six, five hundred miles, I guess.
M: Yeah.
L: And they said that somebody who either knew her or... said that when she would...they’d go to Pecos and change conveyances at Pecos or someplace. But when she got to Roswell, she was just cratered. She would just be gasping for air - there was cedar through there, you know, and she’d just...she really...she had some times there. But said that she would be very much affected by the allergies...
J: The way that she met this man here, is he was in Coleman County trying to buy some cattle,...[inaudible] ranch out in New Mexico was the financing of H.K. Ferber...
M: Uh-huh.
J: And Mr....[inaudible] he spent the night with him and bought, supposed, I don’t know whether he bought any cattle that day or not. Mr. [inaudible] sent him over to see Mrs. Day at the Day Ranch, thinking maybe she had some cattle to sell.
M: Uh-huh.
J: But she met him but didn’t marry him until 1889 which is about, oh, eight or nine years later.
L: And she was a widow nine years before she remarried.
J: ...[inaudible] What were you trying to find out now?
M: I started to ask a minute ago, the place that’s on your ranch called “The Rock House”. Is that still there?
J: Yes.
M: Do you have any photographs of that in the earlier times? When she was there.
L: Real good ones. Do you want to come see it? It’s right here by the phone.
M: Oh, all right.
J: Show him...
L: ...[inaudible].
J: That was taken in 1900.
M: ...[inaudible].
L: ...[inaudible].
J: I didn’t hear what she said, what?
L: The Days Cattle Ranch...
J: Yeah, uh-huh.
L: ...[inaudible].
J: Also there’s a couple of pictures there of – that was taken recently – Lil...
L: Yeah.
J: Do you have it there on the table - the picture of the Rock House?
L: Oh, yeah, uh-huh, Jim making that speech one time... [inaudible] laughed and shouted, in Austin at the time of the Texas Historical banquet. It was the night, the main one, maybe along about this same year. He said, well, he did believe that his grandmother got more out of her college education than anybody she knew, because she got these rich distillers from her town, her school town, to put up money...
M: All right.
L: ...to found that Day Cattle Ranch Company. She furnished the land...
J: And the cattle.
M: All right. Now this is after...this says Mabel D. Lea - this is after she remarried.
J: Yes. That’s Capt. Lea.
M: 18, 1891, it says here.
L: Well, she might have been married then two years or... [inaudible].
M: Has anyone from the Institute or another Institution photographed these things for...
J: Not that.
M: A record at all? Would you agree to have something like that done? And to maybe use something like this in an exhibit?
J: Yes, I would not furnish it, but I would be glad to use it...let you make a copy of it.
M: Yeah. I mean it would be nice to have this in an exhibit. But if nothing else, it would be very good things for us to get our photographers to just snap this and the painting and all of these things and we can keep them, because we keep a file down there of personalities. Oh, yeah, I checked and we don’t have any of Mabel Day.
L: You should have a picture of her in her widow’s weeds, there should be one...
M: Is there one?
L: ...because you all made one last year with that Ima Hogg and Lyndon Johnson and Women of Texas and...[inaudible]
M: Well, there may be one, and you know that exhibit is now traveling.
L: Yeah.
M: And it left before I started working at the Institute so I...
L: Oh, and is it still gone?
M: Yeah, it was in Austin for a long time and then it went, I think, Dallas or Abilene, someplace that direction.
L: I think in the fall it’s going to come...[inaudible].
J: Well, I have the original of the picture.
M: Uh-huh.
J: Now what I’m trying to find out so I can visualize what you’re doing; I can help you better.
M: Okay.
J: Are you planning on having a permanent exhibit or just a temporary exhibit?
M: It’ll be a temporary exhibit and it might...in fact, it might turn in to more. You know, the Institute can have exhibits but then we can also make slide shows. We can do slide lectures from the materials we gather, we can make films.
J: How big of an exhibit do you...[inaudible].
M: This is not a big exhibit. They didn’t give me much room.
J: Uh-huh.
M: But what I’m trying to construct is the...[inaudible].
J: Will it be upstairs or downstairs?
M: It will be on the main exhibit floor there.
J: I see.
M: And it will be in the Anglo area. There’s a chuck wagon there...[inaudible].
J: Yeah, I know where it is.
M: And then there’s an old frontier kitchen and it’ll be sort of between those and it’ll have one good-size case - glass case you know - and then one wall to display things on.
J: Uh-huh.
M: And what I want to do is have some of the materials I was telling you about from Amanda Burke’s and have a painting and then an example of a picture of her in this story of North of 36, and then I’ve got a very good photograph of her great-niece playing...[inaudible] Lockhart in The Texan.
J: Uh-huh.
M: And I want to show how this, you know, lay all this out and I want to do the same thing for... I’m going to do a little – a couple of things – use dime novel covers blown-up and colored...
L: That sounds interesting.
M: That show, you know, the girl trailer and the cattle queen and some things like that.
J: Uh-huh.
M: I want...but in the case itself, the glass case, I would like to display things that were used by ranch women, things that document the actual history with which the other stuff begins.
J: Yeah.
M: So I’ll have a case and have people look at the case and then walk along the wall and look at the artifacts from the movies and so on and so forth.
J: Uh-huh. Well, for instance, to give you an example, I have an 18 letters from 1885, I think it was, the Cattlemen’s Convention, at Denver, Colorado.
M: That’s the one where your grandmother told the reporter that she didn’t wear split riding skirts and six-shooters.
J: ...[inaudible].
M: Now that...a letter like that I could also use and take a photograph maybe and blow it up...
J: Uh-huh.
M: Or dis...in front of that maybe, you know, display the letter itself. This stuff is not a permanent exhibit. None of the things in the Institute are considered permanent, because the Institute does not treat itself as a museum. Almost everything on that floor there is on loan from people like yourself, and you know we fill out a form and say we’ll give it back in X-time or we... People, some people, do want to give it to the Institute, but after we take the exhibit down, we don’t keep it; we give it to another museum.
J: Uh-huh.
M: Anything that you loaned us we would account for and return at the closing of the exhibit.
J: Well, in other words, that down there, then, you mean what you have there is not permanent...anything...
M: A little of it is permanent. We consider almost every thing there on-loan. Now that doesn’t mean that we always give everything back, but it depends on what the donors want us to do, some donors say, “We’ll give you this for the exhibit and we agree that after you take down your exhibit you will give it the Witte Museum or somebody like that.” But it’s not...the Institute is not set-up to be a holding museum, to have a lot of artifacts.
J: Uh...[inaudible].
M: You know, most museums...
L: That’s interesting to know.
M: ...Have something on the floor, but they don’t have... but then they also have vaults where they keep a lot of stuff. Well, we don’t have any place to do that; we have very little artifact storage. What we have is on the floor. And we change exhibits all the time. I guess you have to ...
END OF TAPE 1,
SIDE 1. SIDE 2.
J: ...than give away because I’ve had about twelve different opportunities to give it away to twelve different ...
M: Um.
J: ...[inaudible].
M: Yeah. Well, what I would like very much to do is look at the letters and the photographs and the things you have, document them with photographs just for our records.
J: Yeah.
M: And to insure that if something did happen to them anywhere that somebody would have a clear copy of the thing. But also borrow items like this, or even maybe the painting, for a time to put in the exhibit and that would, you know, come back and...
J: Yeah. Well, in other words, I would be willing to loan for a period of time...
M: Yeah. And you know, you set it up, and we say, “Well, we want to run this exhibit six months or something and then we give it back.”
L: Do you want to start a little list of letters that you’d like to...
J: Well, I’d like you to...
L: ...Read and...[inaudible].
J: Take him upstairs and show him what we have. I have two file cabinets pretty full of letters that go back to Civil War days...
M: Yeah.
J: ...to 1905/6 – along in there.
L: But, see, Jim McNutt probably won’t want very many at this time for the exhibit...
J: No.
L: Except the one. Well, borrow that, for instance, then I don’t know, might want one from the college or maybe not - one from Denver, one or two of the Denver ones - and then you spoke of the newspaper clipping about the Fence Cutting War.
M: Uh-huh. That, I think, would be great fun.
L: And this morning we were talking about it and, of course, we might be able to get examples of two or three wires that were used out there. There is a little piece I have up here - Buffalo wire.
M: Uh-huh.
L: See, that was the first ranch fenced on the open plains.
M: Yeah. This particular map would be something I would like to copy, too; this is a recent copy, isn’t it?
J: That is a recent copy of the original letter – map – because...see Hearn, Smith, over at the left?
M: Yes.
J: Hearn is a wool buyer at Ballinger, Texas, and he wanted a copy of the map because his parents – he lives on that ranch there - Hearn, Smith out of Ballinger.
M: Uh-huh.
J: So I had a copy...we sent him a copy.
L: Did he ever do...[inaudible].
J: Never heard a word from him.
L: Uh.
M: So anyway, there are basically two things that would be useful for me to do: one is just to document the significant things, the things that would be significant to historians, other people like – including, like, the letters you’ve already published. But...and, you know, the photographs. But then also possibly to use some of those in a temporary exhibit. And I don’t mean to...you know I didn’t come out today to cart off anything.
J: Yeah.
M: The exhibit is not ready to go up, by any means. I’ve got a lady coming tomorrow...
J: What’s...when do you plan on completing all this work?
M: I hope – well, I’d better not promise anything. I would like to get it ready late fall, November probably, and that might be the earliest. It’s not up to me altogether; I don’t do the setting-up on the floor and everything myself. Once I’ve completed all the research, gathered all the materials, or at least located them, then I hand it to a designer and a production person and the exhibits people and they all go to work and sometimes they’ve nine other projects in front of me, and it takes a while. So it’s fairly indefinite really, but it’s - and it’s certainly not immediate. The things that I could do now, possibly, are take the things that we could photograph and, you know, I could take those for a little bit and return them pretty quickly since you are in San Antonio. And then what we did want to use in an exhibit that you felt like you could loan or I could come and get just immediately prior to exhibit.
L: Well, that sounds fair enough. Do you...don’t you think it’s interesting subject?
M: Oh, I think it’s fascinating.
L: I think it’s just most remarkable.
M: And I like to get these people, you see...
L: Isn’t that dear?
M: When you look at...we have photograph files, thousands and thousands of photographs, and you see pictures like this all the time but so seldom, I mean, and I’ve worked in Austin Library at the University of Texas and they have stacks and stacks of these old photographs just like this one or these that are made in a studio somewhere, and nobody knows who those people are. Somebody’s got a stack of them and they give them and until you find something else, you don’t know. And I go up there...
J: Uh-huh. I can tell you who this one is here - that’s me.
M: Well, this is the two of you here in the...?
L: No, unhuh-unhuh.
J: That’s my mother, this lady here, and that’s my father.
M: Oh, well, you look a lot like your father.
L: And then here’s Jim and the babe, and then here he is out at the old ranch house...[inaudible].
M: This you in your uniform?
J: No. He just had a pair of boots on.
M: Oh, right.
L: That’s Jim’s father.
J: That was taken...
M: That’s your father holding you.
L: 1906, I guess - in August or September - because you’re not very old.
M: I hope you didn’t have to get out of those boots in a hurry. Who is...oh, you know, I’m...who is...is this Mabel Day with a guitar?
J: No, that’s my mother.
M: Really? Where is she playing? This is a chuck wagon behind her.
J: That’s in New Mexico, I think. I don’t know for sure.
M: That’s something I would like to copy, too, just for the interest of having her playing the guitar. You know, there was a photographer named...
J: ...about the same time of these two pictures, don’t you imagine?
M: Uh-huh. There was a photographer named Ray Richter who did a lot of cowboy photographs, ranch photographs, in the ‘20s and ‘30s and he took...they had an exhibit of his in Austin. And there was just a wonderful picture he had taken out on the...I think on the SMS Ranch, one of the Swenson Ranches.
J: ...North Texas.
M: Uh-huh. And it was a...it had a chuck wagon in the background and a cowboy playing a fiddle and another cowboy playing a guitar, and they had spread a big canvas thing on the ground - big tarp kind of a thing - and this is down on the Plains. And there were some women visiting and they were having a square dance, just out there in the middle of nowhere in the broad daylight...
J: Uh-huh.
M: Four women in a square with the men. But the women – it was taken in the ‘20s - the women, the cowboys, you couldn’t tell the difference in the way they look from – it could have been 1870 or something – they were just in their work clothes, you know. But the women were dressed up in those just-below-the-knee-length skirts and those tight hats that the women wore in the ‘20s, kind of – not really flapper get-up – and the big – what are they called? – kind of shoes – I call them Minnie Mouse shoes, but...
J: You mean button top shoes?
M: They’re not...no, they’re not button top shoes, they’re – what do you call them? No, they’re just a plain shoe with about a heel about that high on them – there’s no buttons to it. And there’s a great photograph of these, you know, this square dance going on out in the middle of nowhere, in broad daylight, and the women obviously are dressing according to the times and the cowboys are dressing according to the work.
L: Oh.
M: But this kind of thing is very interesting. Did your mother play the guitar? Much?
J: I don’t remember her playing it in her late years, but probably may have just...I don’t know if she played the guitar or not.
M: Your grandmother did play. Thank you very much.
J: My grandmother played the piano...[inaudible].
L: She was very musical and taught music course, and is that a phase that would be I think interesting since...
M: Do you have any of her instruments?
J: No.
L: There’s a little violin, but I think it belonged to...
J: ...My mother.
L: Did it belong to? Willie Day.
J: Oh, and my granddaughter, five year old – I mean six years old - granddaughter has the violin that belonged to my mother. My grandmother, Mrs. Day Lea, was very musical and she made everybody around her play something. She was kind of, almost like a traveling band whenever she went anywhere because she always made everybody get together and they played. Why I suggested this...[inaudible] take you upstairs and show you cases I have of letters up there.
M: I’d love it.
J: And Lil, where is the picture of Mrs. Mabel Day taken in 1881 when she became...?
L: Oh, her wedding picture.
J: I didn’t say anything about her wedding picture. I said 1881; she was already married in 1881.
L: Right.
J: So, what I want is the picture that was over here but we had it and took it down to Esther McMillan, and they have a copy on – traveling now. But I still have the copy here but I don’t know where it is.
L: I think it would be around your desk, in that area.
J: ...[inaudible].
L: That would be my idea.
J: See, the trouble with me is last August, a year ago, I haven’t been able to see since then; I’ve been having my eyes operated on. Just last week and a half or ten days ago I had the right eye operated on and I don’t see too good right now, but I will as time goes on. One of the troubles with me is, see, I had this eye...cataract taken out and all, but I haven’t had time to recover from it to have my eyes retested - glasses so I can see again.
M: Yeah.
J: Which I’d very much like to do.
M: Well, that’s wonderful that they can do something and help you out. That would just drive me up the wall - to not be able to see.
L: Bad.
M: I imagine it does you, if you’re used to reading and writing much.
L: The picture of 1881, she would be a widow by then, see, her child was born in 1880 and was six months old when her father was killed in a stampede.
J: Well, let’s go upstairs. Now, Coleman the...was established in 1876, wasn’t it?
L: I think so.
J: And my grandfather, see, he built over near Austin and his...there were seven Day boys, I call them “The Week Boys.” And everyone of them was in the cattle business and ranched from Texas clear to Canada. And everyone of them was a member of the Confederate Army. But my grandfather went to Coleman County in 186 – what was it? 1? 1861 was Lillian’s Uncle Sam Maverick...
M: Oh, really?
J: And they were in the same company out there - the Confederate, the Texas Calvary. And then after, he went up the trail 19 different years. But he located in 1874/5 and bought land back in Coleman County again and set up a...he realized that ranching was not going to be no...[inaudible] any longer. And so he bought this ranch I was showing there, but he did not own all of that land there because some of it was not even put on the market then, but it was all under his fence. Then he...when he died my grandmother had a terrible time because of that – every time a piece of land came on the market, she had to buy it to protect herself. And it kept her broke all the time – buying land. And that started out in 18...
M: Was that...you’re talking about land inside their fences?
J: Yeah.
M: But...so they fenced what was essentially the open range and then bought it up as it came on the market?
J: Well, I have a letter discussing that, but I right now can’t remember exactly, but she bought – originally from Brazoria County and Fort Bend County, down there near Houston. And they bought both of those sections there. But then there were a lot of individual sections that were not on the market.
M: Uh-huh.
J: But as they came on the market they bought it. But in 1879 they started fencing all that country, and they fenced everything and controlled everything within that area.
L: That was school land. Some of those Brazoria...
M: Yeah, I noticed on these maps.
L: ... called school lands and weren’t, and those schools apparently needed to sell some land and so they put it on the market. But being the land of minors, the government took...the state took a careful guardianship look at it. They sent out there, the Governor Ireland, sent a man out, he stayed two weeks...
M: Uh-huh.
L: ...And verified. He said, “Sell lit!” There was somebody or maybe they were checking to see that it was not being sold for less than it was worth. He said, “Sell it!” Fifty cents an acre is a high price; it’s more than it’s worth now or ever will be. And so the inspector felt that...you know, at that time it was. And then, see, Jim, you’ve used the term. You said J.E. McCord was authorized. The land man in Coleman County who dealt in land, he wasn’t a lawyer but he was a land man, but he was authorized by William Day to buy adjoining lands and anything that would block up this thing.
J: Uh-huh.
L: And so it got to be 80 or a 100 thousand acres. But, you see, then Mabel would have to borrow money frequently to pay the down payment even; then she’d have to pay 18 percent interest and keep paying on it. So she...for twenty-six years she had a pretty rough time of it. She was a widow.
M: She had to make her money by dealing in cattle.
J: Yeah.
L: Yes, and they’d have a drought, price would go down. Ike Pryor would offer a dollar less than they were worth, each year...
M: She knew Ike Pryor?
L: Yeah, she said...
J: I have letters from Ike Pryor upstairs to my grandmother.
M: Oh, really?
J: And he’d offer her a certain...[inaudible]; he tried to buy cattle from her every year and he’d come by...
L: Six or seven dollars a head.
J: Now he wasn’t...
M: He wasn’t known for being free with his money, was he?
J: No. He wasn’t very free with...
L: I don’t know, but he never was with her. He’d say, “Well, Mrs...”.
J: Yeah, she never traded with him either.
L: I don’t think she ever sold him any. But each year he might offer five, or said he did. You know, somebody else in the early Texas, I think that Mabel Day must have...
J: I’ll take you upstairs and show you.
L: ...Must have dealt with Rosenberg of Galveston... [inaudible].
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 2. END OF INTERVIEW
J: So, I had...well, I invited everybody in the county, to the southwest part of the county to visit the old White-Top Fort there on – it’s on the Day Ranch. And then there’s a rock house there that’s still...it was the first, the oldest house in Coleman County.
M: Uh-huh.
J: And still being occupied, except the woman who still lived in it died here two or three months ago.
M: Um.
J: But at least two...[inaudible] January 1st, at that time...[inaudible]. I’m going to go back in there and kind of renovate it a little bit.
M: Uh-huh.
J: It’s right across the street where my daughter lives. Well, anyways, I’ve got all these pictures together, just the people...[inaudible] our house and we fed the whole bunch - I think it was five hundred people on the trip.
M: Uh-huh. Is this a photograph that was also...?
J: Yes, this has been there some time. Now this is Capt. Joseph P. Lea, who my grandmother married in 1889.
M: Uh-huh.
J: And he is the Father of Roswell, New Mexico.
M: Uh-huh.
L: ...[inaudible].
J: And this is my grandmother.
M: Your grandmother.
L: She must not have been very tall.
J: That was her in 18...oh, about 18...
M: That’s beautiful.
J: 1879.
M: The oil painting.
L: ...[inaudible] after her marriage?
J: No, before her marriage. Oh, I don’t know what...
L: Well, this has W.H. Day, oh [inaudible].
J: I’m kind of...[inaudible] necklace there that she was wearing at that time.
M: Uh-huh.
J: It’s one of those necklaces that you had before...about the time that you were going around with different young men, you know, and each one would give you a coin.
M: Like a charm bracelet.
L: Yeah.
J: Like a charm bracelet, yeah.
L: And they did have bracelets later. See these are coins and do have initials. But one of them – this one has H-o-p-e, Hope here, I think, engraved on it, and this has W.H. Day, the man she married - it’s a silver dollar.
M: Uh-huh.
J: I have that necklace.
M: Is this...oh, all right.
L: She went to Kidd-Key College in Sherman.
J: No, she did not.
L: Oh, shoot. She went...
J: She did not.
L: ...[inaudible] Kentucky School.
J: She went...graduated from school in Lexington, Kentucky...[inaudible] and at the time it was the Transylvania University.
M: Yeah.
L: ...[inaudible] College, it was in the...
M: Picture.
L: Which was unusual in those days. You know, not too many girls got a college, some college education.
M: Uh-huh.
L: And the letters there show it was hard to get money pulled together for her to stay in, but encouraging her to do so and...
M: Do you have any kind of saddle that your grandmother used?
J: No, I did have a saddle but the barn burned down.
M: Oh. Do you have any pictures of what you refer to as...
J: But she never did, in my knowledge, ever ride a horse - except when she first married she made a riding habit.
M: Uh-huh.
J: But after he died, I never did ever know of her riding a horse again.
M: Do you...
J: She went out and inspected the herds of cattle and so forth in a buckboard, and drove.
M: Uh-huh. Did...she wrote about making that riding habit, is that still around?
J: No, the habit...I...
L: No, we never saw that. I married into the family about fifty years ago, and I never did see it. I think it was gone by that time.
J: It was... See, my grandmother, until the time I was born, she died about four or five more months before I was born.
M: Uh-huh.
J: She died in 1906. And her whole life, although she married Capt. Lea and started the New Mexico Military Institute in her own home... It was the...Military Institute at that time; she continued to operate this ranch, all the time. And he had nothing to do with that, although he operated a big ranch in Roswell for H.K. Ferber, who was the head of the Arbuckle Coffee Company.
M: Uh-huh. How far is it, distance-wise, from Coleman County to Roswell?
L: It’s a long way.
M: Is it?
J: Five, six, five hundred miles, I guess.
M: Yeah.
L: And they said that somebody who either knew her or... said that when she would...they’d go to Pecos and change conveyances at Pecos or someplace. But when she got to Roswell, she was just cratered. She would just be gasping for air - there was cedar through there, you know, and she’d just...she really...she had some times there. But said that she would be very much affected by the allergies...
J: The way that she met this man here, is he was in Coleman County trying to buy some cattle,...[inaudible] ranch out in New Mexico was the financing of H.K. Ferber...
M: Uh-huh.
J: And Mr....[inaudible] he spent the night with him and bought, supposed, I don’t know whether he bought any cattle that day or not. Mr. [inaudible] sent him over to see Mrs. Day at the Day Ranch, thinking maybe she had some cattle to sell.
M: Uh-huh.
J: But she met him but didn’t marry him until 1889 which is about, oh, eight or nine years later.
L: And she was a widow nine years before she remarried.
J: ...[inaudible] What were you trying to find out now?
M: I started to ask a minute ago, the place that’s on your ranch called “The Rock House”. Is that still there?
J: Yes.
M: Do you have any photographs of that in the earlier times? When she was there.
L: Real good ones. Do you want to come see it? It’s right here by the phone.
M: Oh, all right.
J: Show him...
L: ...[inaudible].
J: That was taken in 1900.
M: ...[inaudible].
L: ...[inaudible].
J: I didn’t hear what she said, what?
L: The Days Cattle Ranch...
J: Yeah, uh-huh.
L: ...[inaudible].
J: Also there’s a couple of pictures there of – that was taken recently – Lil...
L: Yeah.
J: Do you have it there on the table - the picture of the Rock House?
L: Oh, yeah, uh-huh, Jim making that speech one time... [inaudible] laughed and shouted, in Austin at the time of the Texas Historical banquet. It was the night, the main one, maybe along about this same year. He said, well, he did believe that his grandmother got more out of her college education than anybody she knew, because she got these rich distillers from her town, her school town, to put up money...
M: All right.
L: ...to found that Day Cattle Ranch Company. She furnished the land...
J: And the cattle.
M: All right. Now this is after...this says Mabel D. Lea - this is after she remarried.
J: Yes. That’s Capt. Lea.
M: 18, 1891, it says here.
L: Well, she might have been married then two years or... [inaudible].
M: Has anyone from the Institute or another Institution photographed these things for...
J: Not that.
M: A record at all? Would you agree to have something like that done? And to maybe use something like this in an exhibit?
J: Yes, I would not furnish it, but I would be glad to use it...let you make a copy of it.
M: Yeah. I mean it would be nice to have this in an exhibit. But if nothing else, it would be very good things for us to get our photographers to just snap this and the painting and all of these things and we can keep them, because we keep a file down there of personalities. Oh, yeah, I checked and we don’t have any of Mabel Day.
L: You should have a picture of her in her widow’s weeds, there should be one...
M: Is there one?
L: ...because you all made one last year with that Ima Hogg and Lyndon Johnson and Women of Texas and...[inaudible]
M: Well, there may be one, and you know that exhibit is now traveling.
L: Yeah.
M: And it left before I started working at the Institute so I...
L: Oh, and is it still gone?
M: Yeah, it was in Austin for a long time and then it went, I think, Dallas or Abilene, someplace that direction.
L: I think in the fall it’s going to come...[inaudible].
J: Well, I have the original of the picture.
M: Uh-huh.
J: Now what I’m trying to find out so I can visualize what you’re doing; I can help you better.
M: Okay.
J: Are you planning on having a permanent exhibit or just a temporary exhibit?
M: It’ll be a temporary exhibit and it might...in fact, it might turn in to more. You know, the Institute can have exhibits but then we can also make slide shows. We can do slide lectures from the materials we gather, we can make films.
J: How big of an exhibit do you...[inaudible].
M: This is not a big exhibit. They didn’t give me much room.
J: Uh-huh.
M: But what I’m trying to construct is the...[inaudible].
J: Will it be upstairs or downstairs?
M: It will be on the main exhibit floor there.
J: I see.
M: And it will be in the Anglo area. There’s a chuck wagon there...[inaudible].
J: Yeah, I know where it is.
M: And then there’s an old frontier kitchen and it’ll be sort of between those and it’ll have one good-size case - glass case you know - and then one wall to display things on.
J: Uh-huh.
M: And what I want to do is have some of the materials I was telling you about from Amanda Burke’s and have a painting and then an example of a picture of her in this story of North of 36, and then I’ve got a very good photograph of her great-niece playing...[inaudible] Lockhart in The Texan.
J: Uh-huh.
M: And I want to show how this, you know, lay all this out and I want to do the same thing for... I’m going to do a little – a couple of things – use dime novel covers blown-up and colored...
L: That sounds interesting.
M: That show, you know, the girl trailer and the cattle queen and some things like that.
J: Uh-huh.
M: I want...but in the case itself, the glass case, I would like to display things that were used by ranch women, things that document the actual history with which the other stuff begins.
J: Yeah.
M: So I’ll have a case and have people look at the case and then walk along the wall and look at the artifacts from the movies and so on and so forth.
J: Uh-huh. Well, for instance, to give you an example, I have an 18 letters from 1885, I think it was, the Cattlemen’s Convention, at Denver, Colorado.
M: That’s the one where your grandmother told the reporter that she didn’t wear split riding skirts and six-shooters.
J: ...[inaudible].
M: Now that...a letter like that I could also use and take a photograph maybe and blow it up...
J: Uh-huh.
M: Or dis...in front of that maybe, you know, display the letter itself. This stuff is not a permanent exhibit. None of the things in the Institute are considered permanent, because the Institute does not treat itself as a museum. Almost everything on that floor there is on loan from people like yourself, and you know we fill out a form and say we’ll give it back in X-time or we... People, some people, do want to give it to the Institute, but after we take the exhibit down, we don’t keep it; we give it to another museum.
J: Uh-huh.
M: Anything that you loaned us we would account for and return at the closing of the exhibit.
J: Well, in other words, that down there, then, you mean what you have there is not permanent...anything...
M: A little of it is permanent. We consider almost every thing there on-loan. Now that doesn’t mean that we always give everything back, but it depends on what the donors want us to do, some donors say, “We’ll give you this for the exhibit and we agree that after you take down your exhibit you will give it the Witte Museum or somebody like that.” But it’s not...the Institute is not set-up to be a holding museum, to have a lot of artifacts.
J: Uh...[inaudible].
M: You know, most museums...
L: That’s interesting to know.
M: ...Have something on the floor, but they don’t have... but then they also have vaults where they keep a lot of stuff. Well, we don’t have any place to do that; we have very little artifact storage. What we have is on the floor. And we change exhibits all the time. I guess you have to ...
END OF TAPE 1,
SIDE 1. SIDE 2.
J: ...than give away because I’ve had about twelve different opportunities to give it away to twelve different ...
M: Um.
J: ...[inaudible].
M: Yeah. Well, what I would like very much to do is look at the letters and the photographs and the things you have, document them with photographs just for our records.
J: Yeah.
M: And to insure that if something did happen to them anywhere that somebody would have a clear copy of the thing. But also borrow items like this, or even maybe the painting, for a time to put in the exhibit and that would, you know, come back and...
J: Yeah. Well, in other words, I would be willing to loan for a period of time...
M: Yeah. And you know, you set it up, and we say, “Well, we want to run this exhibit six months or something and then we give it back.”
L: Do you want to start a little list of letters that you’d like to...
J: Well, I’d like you to...
L: ...Read and...[inaudible].
J: Take him upstairs and show him what we have. I have two file cabinets pretty full of letters that go back to Civil War days...
M: Yeah.
J: ...to 1905/6 – along in there.
L: But, see, Jim McNutt probably won’t want very many at this time for the exhibit...
J: No.
L: Except the one. Well, borrow that, for instance, then I don’t know, might want one from the college or maybe not - one from Denver, one or two of the Denver ones - and then you spoke of the newspaper clipping about the Fence Cutting War.
M: Uh-huh. That, I think, would be great fun.
L: And this morning we were talking about it and, of course, we might be able to get examples of two or three wires that were used out there. There is a little piece I have up here - Buffalo wire.
M: Uh-huh.
L: See, that was the first ranch fenced on the open plains.
M: Yeah. This particular map would be something I would like to copy, too; this is a recent copy, isn’t it?
J: That is a recent copy of the original letter – map – because...see Hearn, Smith, over at the left?
M: Yes.
J: Hearn is a wool buyer at Ballinger, Texas, and he wanted a copy of the map because his parents – he lives on that ranch there - Hearn, Smith out of Ballinger.
M: Uh-huh.
J: So I had a copy...we sent him a copy.
L: Did he ever do...[inaudible].
J: Never heard a word from him.
L: Uh.
M: So anyway, there are basically two things that would be useful for me to do: one is just to document the significant things, the things that would be significant to historians, other people like – including, like, the letters you’ve already published. But...and, you know, the photographs. But then also possibly to use some of those in a temporary exhibit. And I don’t mean to...you know I didn’t come out today to cart off anything.
J: Yeah.
M: The exhibit is not ready to go up, by any means. I’ve got a lady coming tomorrow...
J: What’s...when do you plan on completing all this work?
M: I hope – well, I’d better not promise anything. I would like to get it ready late fall, November probably, and that might be the earliest. It’s not up to me altogether; I don’t do the setting-up on the floor and everything myself. Once I’ve completed all the research, gathered all the materials, or at least located them, then I hand it to a designer and a production person and the exhibits people and they all go to work and sometimes they’ve nine other projects in front of me, and it takes a while. So it’s fairly indefinite really, but it’s - and it’s certainly not immediate. The things that I could do now, possibly, are take the things that we could photograph and, you know, I could take those for a little bit and return them pretty quickly since you are in San Antonio. And then what we did want to use in an exhibit that you felt like you could loan or I could come and get just immediately prior to exhibit.
L: Well, that sounds fair enough. Do you...don’t you think it’s interesting subject?
M: Oh, I think it’s fascinating.
L: I think it’s just most remarkable.
M: And I like to get these people, you see...
L: Isn’t that dear?
M: When you look at...we have photograph files, thousands and thousands of photographs, and you see pictures like this all the time but so seldom, I mean, and I’ve worked in Austin Library at the University of Texas and they have stacks and stacks of these old photographs just like this one or these that are made in a studio somewhere, and nobody knows who those people are. Somebody’s got a stack of them and they give them and until you find something else, you don’t know. And I go up there...
J: Uh-huh. I can tell you who this one is here - that’s me.
M: Well, this is the two of you here in the...?
L: No, unhuh-unhuh.
J: That’s my mother, this lady here, and that’s my father.
M: Oh, well, you look a lot like your father.
L: And then here’s Jim and the babe, and then here he is out at the old ranch house...[inaudible].
M: This you in your uniform?
J: No. He just had a pair of boots on.
M: Oh, right.
L: That’s Jim’s father.
J: That was taken...
M: That’s your father holding you.
L: 1906, I guess - in August or September - because you’re not very old.
M: I hope you didn’t have to get out of those boots in a hurry. Who is...oh, you know, I’m...who is...is this Mabel Day with a guitar?
J: No, that’s my mother.
M: Really? Where is she playing? This is a chuck wagon behind her.
J: That’s in New Mexico, I think. I don’t know for sure.
M: That’s something I would like to copy, too, just for the interest of having her playing the guitar. You know, there was a photographer named...
J: ...about the same time of these two pictures, don’t you imagine?
M: Uh-huh. There was a photographer named Ray Richter who did a lot of cowboy photographs, ranch photographs, in the ‘20s and ‘30s and he took...they had an exhibit of his in Austin. And there was just a wonderful picture he had taken out on the...I think on the SMS Ranch, one of the Swenson Ranches.
J: ...North Texas.
M: Uh-huh. And it was a...it had a chuck wagon in the background and a cowboy playing a fiddle and another cowboy playing a guitar, and they had spread a big canvas thing on the ground - big tarp kind of a thing - and this is down on the Plains. And there were some women visiting and they were having a square dance, just out there in the middle of nowhere in the broad daylight...
J: Uh-huh.
M: Four women in a square with the men. But the women – it was taken in the ‘20s - the women, the cowboys, you couldn’t tell the difference in the way they look from – it could have been 1870 or something – they were just in their work clothes, you know. But the women were dressed up in those just-below-the-knee-length skirts and those tight hats that the women wore in the ‘20s, kind of – not really flapper get-up – and the big – what are they called? – kind of shoes – I call them Minnie Mouse shoes, but...
J: You mean button top shoes?
M: They’re not...no, they’re not button top shoes, they’re – what do you call them? No, they’re just a plain shoe with about a heel about that high on them – there’s no buttons to it. And there’s a great photograph of these, you know, this square dance going on out in the middle of nowhere, in broad daylight, and the women obviously are dressing according to the times and the cowboys are dressing according to the work.
L: Oh.
M: But this kind of thing is very interesting. Did your mother play the guitar? Much?
J: I don’t remember her playing it in her late years, but probably may have just...I don’t know if she played the guitar or not.
M: Your grandmother did play. Thank you very much.
J: My grandmother played the piano...[inaudible].
L: She was very musical and taught music course, and is that a phase that would be I think interesting since...
M: Do you have any of her instruments?
J: No.
L: There’s a little violin, but I think it belonged to...
J: ...My mother.
L: Did it belong to? Willie Day.
J: Oh, and my granddaughter, five year old – I mean six years old - granddaughter has the violin that belonged to my mother. My grandmother, Mrs. Day Lea, was very musical and she made everybody around her play something. She was kind of, almost like a traveling band whenever she went anywhere because she always made everybody get together and they played. Why I suggested this...[inaudible] take you upstairs and show you cases I have of letters up there.
M: I’d love it.
J: And Lil, where is the picture of Mrs. Mabel Day taken in 1881 when she became...?
L: Oh, her wedding picture.
J: I didn’t say anything about her wedding picture. I said 1881; she was already married in 1881.
L: Right.
J: So, what I want is the picture that was over here but we had it and took it down to Esther McMillan, and they have a copy on – traveling now. But I still have the copy here but I don’t know where it is.
L: I think it would be around your desk, in that area.
J: ...[inaudible].
L: That would be my idea.
J: See, the trouble with me is last August, a year ago, I haven’t been able to see since then; I’ve been having my eyes operated on. Just last week and a half or ten days ago I had the right eye operated on and I don’t see too good right now, but I will as time goes on. One of the troubles with me is, see, I had this eye...cataract taken out and all, but I haven’t had time to recover from it to have my eyes retested - glasses so I can see again.
M: Yeah.
J: Which I’d very much like to do.
M: Well, that’s wonderful that they can do something and help you out. That would just drive me up the wall - to not be able to see.
L: Bad.
M: I imagine it does you, if you’re used to reading and writing much.
L: The picture of 1881, she would be a widow by then, see, her child was born in 1880 and was six months old when her father was killed in a stampede.
J: Well, let’s go upstairs. Now, Coleman the...was established in 1876, wasn’t it?
L: I think so.
J: And my grandfather, see, he built over near Austin and his...there were seven Day boys, I call them “The Week Boys.” And everyone of them was in the cattle business and ranched from Texas clear to Canada. And everyone of them was a member of the Confederate Army. But my grandfather went to Coleman County in 186 – what was it? 1? 1861 was Lillian’s Uncle Sam Maverick...
M: Oh, really?
J: And they were in the same company out there - the Confederate, the Texas Calvary. And then after, he went up the trail 19 different years. But he located in 1874/5 and bought land back in Coleman County again and set up a...he realized that ranching was not going to be no...[inaudible] any longer. And so he bought this ranch I was showing there, but he did not own all of that land there because some of it was not even put on the market then, but it was all under his fence. Then he...when he died my grandmother had a terrible time because of that – every time a piece of land came on the market, she had to buy it to protect herself. And it kept her broke all the time – buying land. And that started out in 18...
M: Was that...you’re talking about land inside their fences?
J: Yeah.
M: But...so they fenced what was essentially the open range and then bought it up as it came on the market?
J: Well, I have a letter discussing that, but I right now can’t remember exactly, but she bought – originally from Brazoria County and Fort Bend County, down there near Houston. And they bought both of those sections there. But then there were a lot of individual sections that were not on the market.
M: Uh-huh.
J: But as they came on the market they bought it. But in 1879 they started fencing all that country, and they fenced everything and controlled everything within that area.
L: That was school land. Some of those Brazoria...
M: Yeah, I noticed on these maps.
L: ... called school lands and weren’t, and those schools apparently needed to sell some land and so they put it on the market. But being the land of minors, the government took...the state took a careful guardianship look at it. They sent out there, the Governor Ireland, sent a man out, he stayed two weeks...
M: Uh-huh.
L: ...And verified. He said, “Sell lit!” There was somebody or maybe they were checking to see that it was not being sold for less than it was worth. He said, “Sell it!” Fifty cents an acre is a high price; it’s more than it’s worth now or ever will be. And so the inspector felt that...you know, at that time it was. And then, see, Jim, you’ve used the term. You said J.E. McCord was authorized. The land man in Coleman County who dealt in land, he wasn’t a lawyer but he was a land man, but he was authorized by William Day to buy adjoining lands and anything that would block up this thing.
J: Uh-huh.
L: And so it got to be 80 or a 100 thousand acres. But, you see, then Mabel would have to borrow money frequently to pay the down payment even; then she’d have to pay 18 percent interest and keep paying on it. So she...for twenty-six years she had a pretty rough time of it. She was a widow.
M: She had to make her money by dealing in cattle.
J: Yeah.
L: Yes, and they’d have a drought, price would go down. Ike Pryor would offer a dollar less than they were worth, each year...
M: She knew Ike Pryor?
L: Yeah, she said...
J: I have letters from Ike Pryor upstairs to my grandmother.
M: Oh, really?
J: And he’d offer her a certain...[inaudible]; he tried to buy cattle from her every year and he’d come by...
L: Six or seven dollars a head.
J: Now he wasn’t...
M: He wasn’t known for being free with his money, was he?
J: No. He wasn’t very free with...
L: I don’t know, but he never was with her. He’d say, “Well, Mrs...”.
J: Yeah, she never traded with him either.
L: I don’t think she ever sold him any. But each year he might offer five, or said he did. You know, somebody else in the early Texas, I think that Mabel Day must have...
J: I’ll take you upstairs and show you.
L: ...Must have dealt with Rosenberg of Galveston... [inaudible].
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 2. END OF INTERVIEW
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