The Days were known around the Texas capital of Austin as the "Week Boys." There were seven of them: William, John, Monroe (Dock), Perry, Joe, Addison, and Tony—all pioneer cowmen, each a soldier in the Confederacy. Their range was anywhere a Texas longhorn ate grass from Texas into Canada. There were also three daughters: Jane, Emma, and Sarah Day.
The original Day in America was John, who was born of Scotch parents at Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1742. During the Revolution he served as an Indian Scout in Virginia. John's pioneering blood was evidently passed on to his grandson, Jesse, because that younger Day kept pace with the fringes of western civilization as it moved across the country. From his native Tennessee, he moved to North Georgia. There his son William was born May 8, 1833. Two years later Jesse Day moved his family on west to settle for twelve years in the southwest corner of Missouri in Barry County. For more than a decade he freighted quantities of goods and supplies into Texas and returned with longhorn cattle to sell in Missouri.
Bill Day went on several freighting trips to Texas with his father before Jess moved his family there in 1847. After living at Bastrop and San Antonio for four years, Jesse bought a farm and settled near Mountain City in Hays County between San Antonio and Austin. He put his boys to work on the farm and kept several wagons and teams busy hauling from the Gulf ports to Austin. Freighting in Texas in the Fifties was an active business, because all trade with the outside world moved overland in wagons.
When Bill Day was old enough to branch out for himself, he acquired some wagons and teams and took up freighting. In eighteen months he managed to save fifteen hundred dollars, which he wisely decided to spend on an education. With what supplementary funds his father was able to send him, he went through Cumberland University at Lebanon, Tennessee. In 1858 he graduated as a Civil Engineer.
During Bill Day's last two years in school he received numerous letters from his father in Hays County, which give a flavor of the times in that section of Texas during 1857 and 1858:
February 23, 1857—...We are driving (to the port) on as usual. The spring is opening beautiful and people is planting corn and some done. I have planted about thirty acres and have the most of my field ready for planting. Monroe and Perry is on the third trip to the port. Hauling is worth two dollars both ways. The grass is getting fine and stock doing well. We have had but little rain since last May and it has been fine for teaming and work of every kind. Stock is in better order this spring than they have in several past....
May 23, 1857—Prospects looks quite gloomy with regards to crops. We have had no rain yet. Our wheat will make nothing on account of the frost and the dry weather. The corn is dying fast. Prospects bids fare to make nothing. Corn is not to be had at enny price. There is a great menny sent to Orleans and bought at ninety cents. Flower is worth from twelve to fourteen per barrel and money as scare again as it was when you left here. I have nothing of importance to write you but that we have had a considerable revival of religion here within the last few weeks. There has several of the girls profesed religion, one of Mr. Stevenson's, two of Mr. Bredelov's, Susan Rowden and Mrs. Walden.
I am going to the port in the morning. There is very little doing. People has pretty well done working their crops, what little they have got. They will have nothing to do for they don't think of improving much while it is so dry. John (Day) is on the road with his teams. He has a very dead prospect for crops. Nearly all the people in Stringtown is hauling water from San Marcos and our water is getting very low in the well. We will have to start hauling water if it continues dry much longer. The Blanco is dry from Nance's down. Stock is doing badly. If we don't have rain soon we will have to depend on some other country for bread another season for I don't think it will be made here....
August 3, 1857—...We have had no rain yet. Our crops is so far gone that all the rain that could fall would not help them. We are cutting up to save the fodder. It is thought that there will not be enough made west of the Brazos to feed the people. A great many won't make their seed. Prospects is duller here than I ever have seen in Texas. Hauling is worth eighty cents from the port and none to do at that. And if there was, it could not be done on account of the scarcity of water. We are hauling water from the Blanco as is all this settlement. All from Owens to San Marcos are hauling from San Marcos. Not withstanding the dirth in our land, the Lord has blessed us with good health. There hasn't been a case of sickness in our settlement this year. We have had no need of medison, but great need of bread and meat.
I wrote you about the middle of June to Lebanon and sent you a draft on the Union Bank at New Orleans for fifty dollars. I now send a draft enclosed for one hundred dollars on the same bank. I want you to write me at what time you will need money so that I may make my arrangements to meet your wants. I don't want you to think of leaving school until you complete your studies on account of hard times, at least not until I fale to rase money to pay your way.
November 29, 1857—...I received the barrel of wheat that you sent me a few days ago. I have sowed about sixteen acres and there came about two million grashoppers and has eat it all up. I have not sowed the barrel I got from Tennessee, waiting for the grashoppers to leave. We have had plenty of rain to start the watercorces again and think if continues seasonable and the grashoppers don't take our crops in the spring we will stand some chance to make something another year. If we don't, we may leave Texas. There has a great many left already, but I think of trying it another season and if we make no crops we will be obliged to try something else besides farming. Times seems to be giting harder. People is suing one another and selling property at one third of the value. Our legislature is in session and speaks of doing something to relieve the pople, but has done nothing yet.
Monroe is still going to school yet. Gipson is teaching here with twelve or fourteen scollars and I think the chance bad to git a good teacher here soon. I think of farming and teaming some teams to pay expenses and work along till times gits better. Land can't be rented at no price. I shall let what I can't tend lay out for all money is scarce. Everything is higher than it has been since I came to Texas. I sent to Orleans for a barrel of pickled pork and it cost me thirty six dollars. Bacon is worth twenty cents per pound, corn two dollars per bushel, flower worth from ten to twelve per barrel. If better times don't come I don't now what we shall do. The last two years has put Texas five year behind what she was two year ago and I don't think she will be up again for the next ten to come. The only thing that keeps us alive is what little money we get for hauling a load now and then from the port.
Perry has gone down to the port. We have had not enough frost to kill the grass and I think he will be able to get back on the grass [without feeding] for we have very fine warm weather.
John Day and Driskill's families [J. L. Driskill married Nancy Day] are well and they have about two hundred steers gathered to take to Missouri in the spring. They expect to heard them this winter in the mountains.
January 24, 1858—...We have been overflooded with rain. We have had rain every change, quarter and full of the moon for about two months. Stock is doing very well. Plenty of good fat beeves, but very little pork. What there is is worth ten dollars a hundred, corn worth two dollars per bushel, flower fifteen dollars per barrel and money scarcer than it is enny place. There is a great many that will not be able to buy seed corn. Driskill and Monroe is gone to the port and John is herding the steers. They expect to start to Missouri with them as soon as grass rises. Matters is moving on with the tide and sometimes very swift for people is sueing one another and selling property for nothing. There has been no emigration this fall and in consequence of it much land will lay out. Try to make out the best you can as times is hard here.
May 17, 1858—...I have no good news to write you. Hard times still is looking us in the fase. The grashoppers has eat up all the crops that was plented first and all that has come up the second time. I had a hundred and forty acres near waist high and they et it all and twenty five acres of wheat. They even et the rutes out. We have give out making enny crops this year. We have had a great deal of rain, enough to of made two crops. I have quit my farm. Have got three teams on the road, but hauling only worth one dollar to Austin when there is enny to do. We have not heard from the boys since they crossed the Red River with them cattle. We have fine grass and plenty of water; fat beef and little bread. Everything has a downward tendency and gloomy prospects...
When Bill Day returned home with his diploma in Civil Engineering, he found the times even harder than reported in his father's letters. Crops were a failure and hundreds of draft horses and mules were lying idle throughout the country. Such was not the case on the Louisiana cotton and sugar plantations that Bill Day passed through on his way back to Texas. Work stock there was selling at a premium. Consequently it did not take him long to get into business. He gathered a herd of horses and mules and set out with them for Louisiana. It is reported that, while this business involved considerable risk and offered numerous harrowing experiences, it was profitable and Bill Day continued driving mules to Louisiana until 1860.
The late winter of that year he, Dock, and his father gathered a herd of cattle to drive to Kansas City. April 22, 1860, they reached the Brazos River at Waco and found the stream almost out of banks. Knowing that the swollen stream might hold them up for several days, they proceeded to swim the herd. But when Jesse plunged his horse into the roiling water, something went wrong. Both he and his horse went under. Bill Day tried desperately to save his father, but Jess never reached the shore alive. The two brothers tried to return their father's body to Austin, but they were forced to bury him at Belton. The remains were later removed to Austin.
They returned to the herd and started on toward Kansas City. En route they were met by citizens who were opposed to their driving the herd over their lands. They were forced at the point of guns back to neutral territory. There they made a good sale of the stock, but the purchaser failed to fulfill his contract. In some way they managed to get the herd through to St. Louis where they found a ready market. They turned their money into horses and headed for the sugar plantations of Louisiana. After their arrival home in January 1861, Bill Day left immediately on a horse buying trip to Matamoros, Mexico. While in Mexico the news of secession and impending war reached him. Bill Day returned home immediately.
Texas seceded from the Union on February 1, 1861, and on February 26 Captain E. Kirby Smith, commanding Company B, 2nd U.S. Calvary stationed at Camp Colorado, Coleman County, Texas, ordered the Federal troops to abandon the fort. Captain Smith surrendered to Colonel H. E. McCulloch, resigned his commission in the U.S. Army and tendered his services to the C.S.A. At this time there was hopes that secession would not lead to war and those of Smith's command who so desired were permitted to return to the North in peace. Company B marched to Green Lake and then to Indianola, where it embarked on the S. S. Coalzacoalcos on March 31 for Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, by way of Key West and New York.
Thus Camp Colorado fell into the hands of the Confederate Army. Bill Day's Hays County friend, William A. Pitts, was commissioned to organize a company at Camp Colorado and he was successful in getting William to join his company. Bill Day's five brothers enlisted in Hays County units. War Department records show that William Day enlisted in Captain William A. Pitts' Company, 1st Regiment Texas Mounted Riflemen, later 1st Regiment (McCulloch's) Texas Cavalry, C.S.A. at Camp Colorado on July 1, 1861. The Company muster roll of October, 1861, shows Day "Absent on detached service at Ft. Mason from October 26, 1861." A subsequent record, dated April 29, 1862, shows Day paid as a teamster for the above organization.
No later army record of Day has been found, but in John Henry Brown's Encyclopedia of the New West, published after Day's death, it is learned that he had enlisted in the army for the period of one year, and after serving out his term of enlistment, he was mustered out of service at Fredericksburg, Texas, on July 1, 1862. From this source it is further revealed that after his separation from the army, he immediately purchased a herd of beeves in that rich cattle country and drove them to Alexandria, Louisiana, where he sold them to the Confederate Army. From that time until the end of the war he drove under contract to furnish supplies of cattle to the Confederate Army, and in this period was the boss of two thousand men getting up and driving cattle to army depots.
The end of hostilities found him in Mason, Texas, with all of his assets in worthless Confederate money. This emergency caused him to take a job with a New Orleans livestock commission house, but it was not long before he was back in Texas. On his return through East Texas, he found that lumber was in great demand in Texas. In a Mr. Dunlap's general store at Brenham, Texas, on February 4, 1866, he learned of some big timber over at nearby Montgomery that could be had reasonably. After purchasing some timber there he returned to New Orleans and purchased the machinery for a small steam sawmill, which when in operation Day felt would clear $50 a day. He had his first mill running by May 15, and it was not long until he had several such mills which he operated until he sold out his lumber interests in the Fall of 1868. [W. H. Day Letters.]
That winter W. H. Day and his brother-in-law, J. M. Driskill, formed a partnership and made plans to drive a herd of cattle to Abilene, Kansas, late that spring. In the year 1869 the system of banking and credit on the frontier had not yet developed to a very refined point. In the absence of banks, the general merchandise store that was to be found in operation on the fringe of civilization, acted as the middleman in various forms of commercial transactions. A letter of credit given by Spencer Ford at Bryan, Texas, February 25, 1869 to Day and Driskill explains how such matters were often handled.
You are hereby authorized to draw on me for such amounts, payable in Dry Goods, as may be necessary to meet your demands in the purchase of Beeves this Spring, and by this letter of credit can make whatever arrangements to that end with merchants living in the Stock Sections, such arrangements being subject to such conditions you yourselves may impose.
With this letter of credit in hand, Day and Driskill arrived in the stock country where they went about gathering their trail herd. That summer they arrived at the market of Abilene, Kansas, with a herd of 1,400 cattle.
The drive of the previous year, Day's first experience on the newly-opened Kansas market, evidently proved to be a productive venture, because in 1870 he drove a trail herd of three thousand head to Leavenworth, Kansas. He arrived there to find the cattle market badly overstocked and prices low. Consequently, he killed and packed his beef and shipped it to New York, where it is reported he liquidated for $70,000, thereby realizing a large profit.
After estimating that the drive of 1871 would exceed 750,000 head and that the Kansas market would be glutted with Texas cattle, he decided to quit the trade until the cattle business became more profitable. Being a civil engineer, he engaged himself for the next two years in locating and selling lands.
Although Day had a natural fondness for the cattle business, it was probably the depression of 1873 that brought him back into the livestock trade. That spring he went to work for the livestock commission firm of Hunter and Evans, of St. Louis, and remained with them for about a year. By the spring of 1874, however, he was back in business for himself buying cattle. At Denison, Texas, he set up a small packing plant where he butchered his cattle and shipped the beef in refrigerator cars to Eastern markets. As an operator, Day was known as a quick trader. He knew his business thoroughly, which permitted speedy judgment and fast transactions. He could glance at a steer and quickly figure his margin of profit at the market. His excellent character, manner, and bearing, as well as his recognized knowledge of the trade, instilled confidence in all with whom he dealt.
Hunter and Evans evidently appreciated Day's abilities in the livestock trade, for in 1875, they persuaded him to take charge of their entire Texas business, which was very extensive at the time. This connection took him all over the livestock domain of the state. He made frequent trips to the coast country, San Antonio, and Mason County, but returned often to Denison, where he had made a fond attachment for Miss Mabel Doss, a music teacher, whom he later married.
By 1876 Day had become such an extensive operator throughout Texas that he gained the title of Colonel Day, by which he was respectfully known the rest of his life. It was also in that year his keen foresight told him that cattlemen of the Southwest would eventually have to change their method of operations; the day of the open range would pass and the cattle grower would have to own his land. During Day's Civil War period he no doubt became impressed with the ranch country in Coleman County, because when Brazoria and Ft. Bend counties decided to put their school lands, lying in Coleman County, on the market, Colonel Day went directly to those counties and bought 22,000 acres of school lands which lie in the southwest corner of Coleman County, from their respective commissioners courts, paying them fifty cents per acre, twenty-five cents per acre cash and the balance on time. This transaction made Colonel Day the first large landowner in Coleman County. In 1876 he purchased several herds of cattle in South Texas, drove them to his ranch, and began his first grazing operations.
When Colonel Day arrived at the ranch he found Rich Coffey and his family living at the mouth of the Concho on the Coleman county side of the Colorado River, in what is known as the Coffey Flat. The Coffeys had come from Brown County in 1861 and had at first camped on Grape Creek just below the mouth of Little Grape, but by the time Colonel Day arrived, they had moved to the Coffey Flat on the Colorado at the mouth of the Concho where they were living in a dugout. Bill McCauley, a son-in-law of Rich Coffey and an excellent stone mason, had built a two-room rock house on the bank of Grape Creek and it was here that Colonel Day established the Day Ranch headquarters. Incidentally, this rock house was the first one built in the southwestern part of Coleman County and is still in use as a ranch headquarters on the ranch. At the Trap Crossing on the Colorado River, just west of the present town of Leaday, lived a man named Hogue who had put in a fifteen-acre farm there in 1874. A. S. Creswell moved into the country in the fall of 1876. He first camped at Bull Hollow on Elm Creek, but soon bought a claim of 320 acres from a Mr. Cleghorn and on Christmas Day of that year moved into what is known as the Creswell Bend of the Colorado River. From what can be gathered, Colonel Day spent the rest of the year getting his ranch established and did not make his accustomed trip up the trail to market. Early in the spring of 1877 Colonel Day decided to drive 7,000 head to Kansas that year. He had his ranch well established and could not resist his first calling and the rich possibilities to be found with a herd at the other end of the trail. He set May 1 as the date he wished to have his herd on the trail and immediately busied himself in scouting for cheap beef. This search took him to Corpus Christi, where he purchased the basic part of his trail herd. With these cattle on the road to his Coleman County ranch he wrote on April 30 from Austin:
I start for Kansas tomorrow. I go from here to ranch and from there to Dodge City by way of Panhandle of Texas. It will be some time before I reach the settlements. I have 7000 head on the road to Kansas. Write me June 1st at Dodge City.
After selling his herd at Dodge City, there was another matter of business that was most important to Colonel Day's plans for the future. He was forty-four years old and still a bachelor. With his new spread in Coleman County, he most of all needed a wife. The person figuring in these plans was Miss Mabel Doss, with whom he had been pressing his case on his frequent trips to Denison and Sherman. Miss Mabel was spending the summer at Brownsville, Missouri, and it was for that place he started as soon as he could pay off his boys and accomplish a matter of banking in Kansas City. As it was not until more than a year later that he was to gain this cherished prize, Colonel Day returned to Texas that fall and spent the winter buying and gathering another trail herd. On the monetary side of the ledger, things were beginning to come the Colonel's way, and that spring, through his agents, McCord and Lindsey of Coleman, he secured another 7,200 acres to add to his ranch.
The summer of 1878 again found Day with a trail herd in Kansas. He retraced his steps of the previous year, but this time with greater success for that fall he succeeded in winning the hand of Miss Doss. At Sherman, Texas, on January 26, 1879, they were married in the First Presbyterian Church of that city. After the wedding they left for Austin where they visited in the home of Colonel Day's mother. Mabel remained in the Day home while her husband, in the company of his new brother-in-law, Will Doss, went to Coleman County to gather the trail herd for that year. This was an unwelcome separation so soon after being married, but they were looking forward to a later honeymoon in Kansas after the herd had been gotten off.
The men arrived at the ranch March 7 and soon started out to buy cattle. Ranchmen had been delayed in rounding up because of the backwardness of spring and the cattle buyers got off to a slow start. By March 28, however, Colonel Day started receiving cattle in the San Saba country. Although Doss was also out on a purchasing mission, buying and gathering 4,500 head of cattle was a slow and tedious task. There were very few large outfits operating in the country and the average purchases were from one to two hundred head. Cattle had first to be found and contracted for, then cowboys had to be brought from the ranch to receive, brand, and then drive them long distances to the concentration point on the Day Ranch. On May 23, Colonel Day wrote that he had 4,000 head gathered on the ranch and he was in San Saba, where he had just contracted 500 more to deliver at Coleman City in time to meet the main herd as it passed that place on May 28.
Before the cattle left the ranch, they were divided into two groups: a steer and a cow herd. J. T. Hoch, the Colonel's favorite trail boss of three years' standing, took the steer herd. "Tobe" (William Walter) Driskill, a nephew, took the cow herd that followed. Will Doss was left in charge of the ranch, and after seeing the herds across the Pecan Bayou headed to Ft. Griffin, Colonel Day went directly to Austin. He and his wife took the cars for Kansas City where they planned to have some time together before the trail outfits arrived.
On June 5, Day was registered at the Dodge House and wrote the following letter to his wife at Kansas City:
I arrived back in Dodge this evening, after being absent five and a half days. I did not remain in Dodge long when I came up, I found Brother Dock and Tony waiting my arrival. We soon got a conveyance and started down the trail to meet my cattle. We met the first herd about sixty miles down. Found the boys all well and getting along very well. Had lost but few cattle. I camped with them one night and went on next morning to meet the other herd, which we did that day, which was about one hundred miles from here. I found all right with them. That was the cow herd, the one that had the cattle that my brothers wanted. I cut out for Dock and Tony four hundred cows and calves which shaped up the herd very well. I sold them all my cows and calves and started the balance for here. My first herd of 2500 will be here tomorrow and I will begin to turn over to J. M. Driskill the next day. Will take me about two days to get through with them. By that time the other herd will be here. I have some cattle in the last herd not sold, but don't think it will take me long to sell them, as the market is pretty good. I will send up with Driskill all my young cattle to the Yellowstone and if no bad luck will be back in about two weeks....
On their way home, the Days stopped by Hot Springs, Arkansas, and by September 4 were back in Austin and on their way to the Day Ranch. This was Mrs. Day's first trip to the ranch about which she had heard so much. They left Austin in a new, large, three-seated hack, which the Colonel had bought in St. Louis. In this hack there must have been everything desired in a frontier conveyance, because years later Buffalo Bill Cody bought it and used it in his famous Wild West Show.
Early in spring of 1879 a four-strand barbed wire fence had been started around the Day Ranch. Cedar posts and wire had been freighted in wagons from Austin and, all year long, a crew of about twenty men had been busy building a fence aound the 7,500-acre Red Wire Pasture, so called because the wire was painted red. This was the first fence of any distinction built in Coleman County and possibly in that entire section of the country, because it must be remembered that this was a land of open and free range for many, many miles in all directions. Following the Red Wire Pasture, Day next fenced his Grape Creek pasture.
After a trip of several days across country in the big ranch hack, the Days arrived at the Rock House Headquarters of the Day Ranch. As previously mentioned, this was a two-room structure, but from lumber hauled from Austin two wooden rooms had been added on the south. This was used strictly as a headquarters house, because most of the cowboys on the ranch lived in a cow camp that moved wherever their work took them.
No more vivid picture of life on the Day Ranch is at hand than the one described by Mrs. Day in a letter written in September, 1879:
Col. Day is building a fence around his pasture, which when done will contain forty thousand acres of land. It is a beautiful country, rolling prairie, covered with good grass, interspersed with timber, through which are beautiful little streams of running water and cool springs. Just across the Colorado River, which runs along one side of it, are high bluffs, hills and mountains which appear perfectly grand. We have a good stone house with four rooms and a front porch, a smoke house full of hams, breakfast bacon, flour meal, dried apples, beans, golden and maple syrup by the barrel, splendid pickles, canned corn, tomatoes, grapes, blackberries, strawberries, sugar, coffee and catsup. I believe that is all we have to eat except cheese and maple sugar, which I keep in my room for my own use. Col. shipped his provisions from Austin, one of the nearest railroad points. We get a nice mutton or goat every once in a while or a hind quarter of beef. Then the boys bring in a deer occasionally and every evening some quail or a turkey—have plenty of wild game.
Col. hired a man and his wife to keep house for us so I could go with him whenever I want to. He got me a gentle pony, nice saddle, etc. I made me a navy blue riding habit and the way I fly over these praries—it would do you good to see me. When I get tired of riding horse back he takes the buggy or rather the little spring wagon. You see he starts early in the morning and does not get back until nearly dark. I have to go with him or be very lonely at home with Mrs. Thompson, the housekeeper. He has twenty men at work on the fence and it keeps him busy bossing them. The fence will be done the second week in November. Col. will then buy up his cattle to fill it and then he will go to Austin. He will return in the spring to get off his herd to Kansas. I will come with him again if he will let me.
I have but one neighbor, Mrs. Gatlin, who lives seven miles from me. She spent the day with me day before yesterday. She is a splendid woman; has lived here but two years. I wish you could see her house. It is made of poles stuck straight up and down covered with boards. That is a paradise compared to the other houses in this country, most of which are dug outs. All these people who live here are good hearted, but wholly uneducated. Col. got me a guitar to bring with me instead of a piano and they call it a music box and think it very large. What would they think, could they see a piano?
There are few panthers, plenty of snakes, centipedes, tarantulas, wolves, prairie dogs, and polecats out here, so, you see, if I get up a music class out here they will have to be my pupils.
Col. and I are going to Coleman City tomorrow, which is twenty-five miles north of the ranch, so I stayed home today to write my letters. Here comes a wagon. Who can it be? Well, what do you think! Old. Mr. Cresswell, the only man for forty miles who has a garden and he has a good one, he has brought over twenty-five watermelons, a sack of string beans, and some nice fresh tomatoes with his compliments to the 'Old Boss' and his boys. Ha, Ha, he forgot me, but that is all O.K. I'll just quit my letter a moment and try one of these melons all the same.
I'll have to send these melons to the boys. They camp where they are at work, as it is so far to come home. It is eleven miles from the house to the far side of the pasture.
Do you wonder I weigh one hundred forty-five pounds? I wish you were here with me. I'll venture you'll never complain again. What do you say, Myrt? Come out and ranch it a while. I'd dance on my head to see you coming. Come to Ft. Worth on the cars, then stage to Brownwood, and I'll meet you there with our "traveling she-bang". Col. got it in St. Louis. It is nice, cost $373.00, has three seats in it. They can be let down and a bed fixed in it like a sleeping car. We can cook and eat in it, if the weather is raining. Can't you come? Tell Annie I'll be settled next summer, if I don't go to Colorado, and will then have my piano and shall expect her then if she is not married.
Let me hear from you, if you will allow me to still be your friend, and I'll promise to do better in the future. Address me at Trap Post Office [officially recorded as RICH COFFEY, TEXAS, in Postmaster Generals office, Washington, D. C.], Coleman County, Texas.
That winter the Days returned to Austin, where they remained for the winter months, but on the morning of February 16, 1880, they were again opening the gate to the big pasture. As they drove through the gate they were met by Hill Young, a cowboy on the ranch, who appeared quite ill with a bad cold. Colonel Day urged him to leave the camp and come to the house until he felt better. Early the next morning he came in and asked whether he could lie down a while. The Colonel gave him a strong toddy and put him to bed. He sent for the only physician in the neighborhood, Dr. D. B. Currie, of Paint Rock, Texas. When the doctor arrived he pronounced the case as pneumonia.
Colonel Day was compelled to go to Ft. Concho on business, but left the sick man in the hands of Mrs. Day, the doctor, and several of the cowboys. Upon returning a few days later, he found that Hill Young had died and had been buried. The boys had made a coffin which Mrs. Day had covered with some dark material. Young was an Odd Fellow and the lodge at Coleman had helped lay his body at rest in the Coleman Cemetery. Colonel Day was later buried beside this young man.
The details of how the Days busied themselves the spring of 1880 are not known. Day and his brother-in-law, J. L. Driskill, signed a note, dated March 1 for $10,000 on the Armour Brothers Banking Company of Kansas City, and it is presumed that they drew on this company for the cattle they purchased that spring, which were to be added to those already on the ranch, in making up the trail herd for that year's drive. All mail directed to the ranch was received at Rich Coffey Post Office, located in the Trap Store. This store was on the ranch at the Trap Crossing on the Colorado River. On the Concho County side of the crossing was a store called the Trigger. When these two stores came into existence is not known, but the Trap Crossing is an old landmark known to many an early day trail outfit. Only a few hundred yards from where the Trap Store stood is an old "Boot Hill Cemetery," located on a hill overlooking the Colorado River, where cowboys of the early Seventies were laid to rest. The crumbling old grave markers reveal that the average age of those resting beneath them was nineteen. No doubt the whiskey to be had at the Trap Store plus the normal hazards of the trail accounted for the need of a cemetery there. No one rests there who died of old age. The river at flood stages certainly has claimed its toll of cowboys since the first cattle crossed there.
The next report of Colonel Day is on July 7, 1880. This comes through a letter written by Mrs. Day, who was stopping at the St. James Hotel in Kansas City. He was in the Black Hills of South Dakota looking over J. S. Driskill's ranch and considering the possibilities of buying a ranch near Deadwood. An interesting passage from Mrs. Day's letter is as follows: "They celebrated the Fourth on the third in Kansas City. Grant and party were there. I saw them all and a more ordinary set of people I never saw. Fireworks best I've seen."
The Colonel did not like the Dakota country and returned to meet his trail herd, and on July 30, he was registered at the Dodge House. When the herd arrived, his brother Tony, who ranched 150 miles north of Dodge City, helped him work the cattle into classes suitable to meet the various demands of the market. A Colonel Grimes bought the cow herd, the steers were disposed of to other buyers, and W. L. Nichols bought the lame and cripples, paying five dollars a round for twenty-one head. The Armour note was stamped paid on August 18, and Colonel and Mrs. Day were off to Manitou, Colorado, for a much needed vacation.
Vacations were not of long duration for an operator like Day. He had already contracted to deliver another herd of Texas cattle in November to a point somewhere between Camp Supply, Indian Territory, and Dodge City. Consequently, on September 2, he was back at the Day Ranch making plans to assemble a second trail herd. He wrote to Mrs. Day as follows:
When I arrived at the ranch I found all the boys well, cats, dogs, etc. in good condition. Grass in pasture fine and cattle doing well. Have bought no cattle yet, but think I will be able to get the herd up in about twenty-five days. Hock and the trail outfit have not gotten in yet, but look for them soon.
On October 5 he had the five and eight dollar yearlings and two year olds, bought in Coleman and Concho counties, headed north towards Camp Supply. After seeing the herd off, he swung by Austin to see Mrs. Day who was then expecting a blessed event the latter part of December. After riding the train to Dodge, he took the stage south to Camp Supply. At that place, on November 23, he wrote Mrs. Day from the store of Lee and Reynolds as follows:
I have had a great deal of trouble delivering the cattle, but got through today, although have to drive part of the herd twenty-five miles farther towards Dodge. Can do that in two days. It is fifteen degrees below zero and snow about ten inches on the ground, so you may know how it is to camp out. Have lost a few cattle during the snow, though not many. They all say there has not been such a snow storm in ten years. I will have to settle with the boys and then will start home.
Mrs. Day had evidently given him a list of things the baby would need, because he made a stop in Kansas City where he bought a long list of baby clothes and blankets. From Kansas City he made a hurried swing by the Day Ranch and on to Austin where he arrived in time to be present at the birth of a daughter, Willie Mabel, on December 19, 1880.
The original Day in America was John, who was born of Scotch parents at Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1742. During the Revolution he served as an Indian Scout in Virginia. John's pioneering blood was evidently passed on to his grandson, Jesse, because that younger Day kept pace with the fringes of western civilization as it moved across the country. From his native Tennessee, he moved to North Georgia. There his son William was born May 8, 1833. Two years later Jesse Day moved his family on west to settle for twelve years in the southwest corner of Missouri in Barry County. For more than a decade he freighted quantities of goods and supplies into Texas and returned with longhorn cattle to sell in Missouri.
Bill Day went on several freighting trips to Texas with his father before Jess moved his family there in 1847. After living at Bastrop and San Antonio for four years, Jesse bought a farm and settled near Mountain City in Hays County between San Antonio and Austin. He put his boys to work on the farm and kept several wagons and teams busy hauling from the Gulf ports to Austin. Freighting in Texas in the Fifties was an active business, because all trade with the outside world moved overland in wagons.
When Bill Day was old enough to branch out for himself, he acquired some wagons and teams and took up freighting. In eighteen months he managed to save fifteen hundred dollars, which he wisely decided to spend on an education. With what supplementary funds his father was able to send him, he went through Cumberland University at Lebanon, Tennessee. In 1858 he graduated as a Civil Engineer.
During Bill Day's last two years in school he received numerous letters from his father in Hays County, which give a flavor of the times in that section of Texas during 1857 and 1858:
February 23, 1857—...We are driving (to the port) on as usual. The spring is opening beautiful and people is planting corn and some done. I have planted about thirty acres and have the most of my field ready for planting. Monroe and Perry is on the third trip to the port. Hauling is worth two dollars both ways. The grass is getting fine and stock doing well. We have had but little rain since last May and it has been fine for teaming and work of every kind. Stock is in better order this spring than they have in several past....
May 23, 1857—Prospects looks quite gloomy with regards to crops. We have had no rain yet. Our wheat will make nothing on account of the frost and the dry weather. The corn is dying fast. Prospects bids fare to make nothing. Corn is not to be had at enny price. There is a great menny sent to Orleans and bought at ninety cents. Flower is worth from twelve to fourteen per barrel and money as scare again as it was when you left here. I have nothing of importance to write you but that we have had a considerable revival of religion here within the last few weeks. There has several of the girls profesed religion, one of Mr. Stevenson's, two of Mr. Bredelov's, Susan Rowden and Mrs. Walden.
I am going to the port in the morning. There is very little doing. People has pretty well done working their crops, what little they have got. They will have nothing to do for they don't think of improving much while it is so dry. John (Day) is on the road with his teams. He has a very dead prospect for crops. Nearly all the people in Stringtown is hauling water from San Marcos and our water is getting very low in the well. We will have to start hauling water if it continues dry much longer. The Blanco is dry from Nance's down. Stock is doing badly. If we don't have rain soon we will have to depend on some other country for bread another season for I don't think it will be made here....
August 3, 1857—...We have had no rain yet. Our crops is so far gone that all the rain that could fall would not help them. We are cutting up to save the fodder. It is thought that there will not be enough made west of the Brazos to feed the people. A great many won't make their seed. Prospects is duller here than I ever have seen in Texas. Hauling is worth eighty cents from the port and none to do at that. And if there was, it could not be done on account of the scarcity of water. We are hauling water from the Blanco as is all this settlement. All from Owens to San Marcos are hauling from San Marcos. Not withstanding the dirth in our land, the Lord has blessed us with good health. There hasn't been a case of sickness in our settlement this year. We have had no need of medison, but great need of bread and meat.
I wrote you about the middle of June to Lebanon and sent you a draft on the Union Bank at New Orleans for fifty dollars. I now send a draft enclosed for one hundred dollars on the same bank. I want you to write me at what time you will need money so that I may make my arrangements to meet your wants. I don't want you to think of leaving school until you complete your studies on account of hard times, at least not until I fale to rase money to pay your way.
November 29, 1857—...I received the barrel of wheat that you sent me a few days ago. I have sowed about sixteen acres and there came about two million grashoppers and has eat it all up. I have not sowed the barrel I got from Tennessee, waiting for the grashoppers to leave. We have had plenty of rain to start the watercorces again and think if continues seasonable and the grashoppers don't take our crops in the spring we will stand some chance to make something another year. If we don't, we may leave Texas. There has a great many left already, but I think of trying it another season and if we make no crops we will be obliged to try something else besides farming. Times seems to be giting harder. People is suing one another and selling property at one third of the value. Our legislature is in session and speaks of doing something to relieve the pople, but has done nothing yet.
Monroe is still going to school yet. Gipson is teaching here with twelve or fourteen scollars and I think the chance bad to git a good teacher here soon. I think of farming and teaming some teams to pay expenses and work along till times gits better. Land can't be rented at no price. I shall let what I can't tend lay out for all money is scarce. Everything is higher than it has been since I came to Texas. I sent to Orleans for a barrel of pickled pork and it cost me thirty six dollars. Bacon is worth twenty cents per pound, corn two dollars per bushel, flower worth from ten to twelve per barrel. If better times don't come I don't now what we shall do. The last two years has put Texas five year behind what she was two year ago and I don't think she will be up again for the next ten to come. The only thing that keeps us alive is what little money we get for hauling a load now and then from the port.
Perry has gone down to the port. We have had not enough frost to kill the grass and I think he will be able to get back on the grass [without feeding] for we have very fine warm weather.
John Day and Driskill's families [J. L. Driskill married Nancy Day] are well and they have about two hundred steers gathered to take to Missouri in the spring. They expect to heard them this winter in the mountains.
January 24, 1858—...We have been overflooded with rain. We have had rain every change, quarter and full of the moon for about two months. Stock is doing very well. Plenty of good fat beeves, but very little pork. What there is is worth ten dollars a hundred, corn worth two dollars per bushel, flower fifteen dollars per barrel and money scarcer than it is enny place. There is a great many that will not be able to buy seed corn. Driskill and Monroe is gone to the port and John is herding the steers. They expect to start to Missouri with them as soon as grass rises. Matters is moving on with the tide and sometimes very swift for people is sueing one another and selling property for nothing. There has been no emigration this fall and in consequence of it much land will lay out. Try to make out the best you can as times is hard here.
May 17, 1858—...I have no good news to write you. Hard times still is looking us in the fase. The grashoppers has eat up all the crops that was plented first and all that has come up the second time. I had a hundred and forty acres near waist high and they et it all and twenty five acres of wheat. They even et the rutes out. We have give out making enny crops this year. We have had a great deal of rain, enough to of made two crops. I have quit my farm. Have got three teams on the road, but hauling only worth one dollar to Austin when there is enny to do. We have not heard from the boys since they crossed the Red River with them cattle. We have fine grass and plenty of water; fat beef and little bread. Everything has a downward tendency and gloomy prospects...
When Bill Day returned home with his diploma in Civil Engineering, he found the times even harder than reported in his father's letters. Crops were a failure and hundreds of draft horses and mules were lying idle throughout the country. Such was not the case on the Louisiana cotton and sugar plantations that Bill Day passed through on his way back to Texas. Work stock there was selling at a premium. Consequently it did not take him long to get into business. He gathered a herd of horses and mules and set out with them for Louisiana. It is reported that, while this business involved considerable risk and offered numerous harrowing experiences, it was profitable and Bill Day continued driving mules to Louisiana until 1860.
The late winter of that year he, Dock, and his father gathered a herd of cattle to drive to Kansas City. April 22, 1860, they reached the Brazos River at Waco and found the stream almost out of banks. Knowing that the swollen stream might hold them up for several days, they proceeded to swim the herd. But when Jesse plunged his horse into the roiling water, something went wrong. Both he and his horse went under. Bill Day tried desperately to save his father, but Jess never reached the shore alive. The two brothers tried to return their father's body to Austin, but they were forced to bury him at Belton. The remains were later removed to Austin.
They returned to the herd and started on toward Kansas City. En route they were met by citizens who were opposed to their driving the herd over their lands. They were forced at the point of guns back to neutral territory. There they made a good sale of the stock, but the purchaser failed to fulfill his contract. In some way they managed to get the herd through to St. Louis where they found a ready market. They turned their money into horses and headed for the sugar plantations of Louisiana. After their arrival home in January 1861, Bill Day left immediately on a horse buying trip to Matamoros, Mexico. While in Mexico the news of secession and impending war reached him. Bill Day returned home immediately.
Texas seceded from the Union on February 1, 1861, and on February 26 Captain E. Kirby Smith, commanding Company B, 2nd U.S. Calvary stationed at Camp Colorado, Coleman County, Texas, ordered the Federal troops to abandon the fort. Captain Smith surrendered to Colonel H. E. McCulloch, resigned his commission in the U.S. Army and tendered his services to the C.S.A. At this time there was hopes that secession would not lead to war and those of Smith's command who so desired were permitted to return to the North in peace. Company B marched to Green Lake and then to Indianola, where it embarked on the S. S. Coalzacoalcos on March 31 for Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, by way of Key West and New York.
Thus Camp Colorado fell into the hands of the Confederate Army. Bill Day's Hays County friend, William A. Pitts, was commissioned to organize a company at Camp Colorado and he was successful in getting William to join his company. Bill Day's five brothers enlisted in Hays County units. War Department records show that William Day enlisted in Captain William A. Pitts' Company, 1st Regiment Texas Mounted Riflemen, later 1st Regiment (McCulloch's) Texas Cavalry, C.S.A. at Camp Colorado on July 1, 1861. The Company muster roll of October, 1861, shows Day "Absent on detached service at Ft. Mason from October 26, 1861." A subsequent record, dated April 29, 1862, shows Day paid as a teamster for the above organization.
No later army record of Day has been found, but in John Henry Brown's Encyclopedia of the New West, published after Day's death, it is learned that he had enlisted in the army for the period of one year, and after serving out his term of enlistment, he was mustered out of service at Fredericksburg, Texas, on July 1, 1862. From this source it is further revealed that after his separation from the army, he immediately purchased a herd of beeves in that rich cattle country and drove them to Alexandria, Louisiana, where he sold them to the Confederate Army. From that time until the end of the war he drove under contract to furnish supplies of cattle to the Confederate Army, and in this period was the boss of two thousand men getting up and driving cattle to army depots.
The end of hostilities found him in Mason, Texas, with all of his assets in worthless Confederate money. This emergency caused him to take a job with a New Orleans livestock commission house, but it was not long before he was back in Texas. On his return through East Texas, he found that lumber was in great demand in Texas. In a Mr. Dunlap's general store at Brenham, Texas, on February 4, 1866, he learned of some big timber over at nearby Montgomery that could be had reasonably. After purchasing some timber there he returned to New Orleans and purchased the machinery for a small steam sawmill, which when in operation Day felt would clear $50 a day. He had his first mill running by May 15, and it was not long until he had several such mills which he operated until he sold out his lumber interests in the Fall of 1868. [W. H. Day Letters.]
That winter W. H. Day and his brother-in-law, J. M. Driskill, formed a partnership and made plans to drive a herd of cattle to Abilene, Kansas, late that spring. In the year 1869 the system of banking and credit on the frontier had not yet developed to a very refined point. In the absence of banks, the general merchandise store that was to be found in operation on the fringe of civilization, acted as the middleman in various forms of commercial transactions. A letter of credit given by Spencer Ford at Bryan, Texas, February 25, 1869 to Day and Driskill explains how such matters were often handled.
You are hereby authorized to draw on me for such amounts, payable in Dry Goods, as may be necessary to meet your demands in the purchase of Beeves this Spring, and by this letter of credit can make whatever arrangements to that end with merchants living in the Stock Sections, such arrangements being subject to such conditions you yourselves may impose.
With this letter of credit in hand, Day and Driskill arrived in the stock country where they went about gathering their trail herd. That summer they arrived at the market of Abilene, Kansas, with a herd of 1,400 cattle.
The drive of the previous year, Day's first experience on the newly-opened Kansas market, evidently proved to be a productive venture, because in 1870 he drove a trail herd of three thousand head to Leavenworth, Kansas. He arrived there to find the cattle market badly overstocked and prices low. Consequently, he killed and packed his beef and shipped it to New York, where it is reported he liquidated for $70,000, thereby realizing a large profit.
After estimating that the drive of 1871 would exceed 750,000 head and that the Kansas market would be glutted with Texas cattle, he decided to quit the trade until the cattle business became more profitable. Being a civil engineer, he engaged himself for the next two years in locating and selling lands.
Although Day had a natural fondness for the cattle business, it was probably the depression of 1873 that brought him back into the livestock trade. That spring he went to work for the livestock commission firm of Hunter and Evans, of St. Louis, and remained with them for about a year. By the spring of 1874, however, he was back in business for himself buying cattle. At Denison, Texas, he set up a small packing plant where he butchered his cattle and shipped the beef in refrigerator cars to Eastern markets. As an operator, Day was known as a quick trader. He knew his business thoroughly, which permitted speedy judgment and fast transactions. He could glance at a steer and quickly figure his margin of profit at the market. His excellent character, manner, and bearing, as well as his recognized knowledge of the trade, instilled confidence in all with whom he dealt.
Hunter and Evans evidently appreciated Day's abilities in the livestock trade, for in 1875, they persuaded him to take charge of their entire Texas business, which was very extensive at the time. This connection took him all over the livestock domain of the state. He made frequent trips to the coast country, San Antonio, and Mason County, but returned often to Denison, where he had made a fond attachment for Miss Mabel Doss, a music teacher, whom he later married.
By 1876 Day had become such an extensive operator throughout Texas that he gained the title of Colonel Day, by which he was respectfully known the rest of his life. It was also in that year his keen foresight told him that cattlemen of the Southwest would eventually have to change their method of operations; the day of the open range would pass and the cattle grower would have to own his land. During Day's Civil War period he no doubt became impressed with the ranch country in Coleman County, because when Brazoria and Ft. Bend counties decided to put their school lands, lying in Coleman County, on the market, Colonel Day went directly to those counties and bought 22,000 acres of school lands which lie in the southwest corner of Coleman County, from their respective commissioners courts, paying them fifty cents per acre, twenty-five cents per acre cash and the balance on time. This transaction made Colonel Day the first large landowner in Coleman County. In 1876 he purchased several herds of cattle in South Texas, drove them to his ranch, and began his first grazing operations.
When Colonel Day arrived at the ranch he found Rich Coffey and his family living at the mouth of the Concho on the Coleman county side of the Colorado River, in what is known as the Coffey Flat. The Coffeys had come from Brown County in 1861 and had at first camped on Grape Creek just below the mouth of Little Grape, but by the time Colonel Day arrived, they had moved to the Coffey Flat on the Colorado at the mouth of the Concho where they were living in a dugout. Bill McCauley, a son-in-law of Rich Coffey and an excellent stone mason, had built a two-room rock house on the bank of Grape Creek and it was here that Colonel Day established the Day Ranch headquarters. Incidentally, this rock house was the first one built in the southwestern part of Coleman County and is still in use as a ranch headquarters on the ranch. At the Trap Crossing on the Colorado River, just west of the present town of Leaday, lived a man named Hogue who had put in a fifteen-acre farm there in 1874. A. S. Creswell moved into the country in the fall of 1876. He first camped at Bull Hollow on Elm Creek, but soon bought a claim of 320 acres from a Mr. Cleghorn and on Christmas Day of that year moved into what is known as the Creswell Bend of the Colorado River. From what can be gathered, Colonel Day spent the rest of the year getting his ranch established and did not make his accustomed trip up the trail to market. Early in the spring of 1877 Colonel Day decided to drive 7,000 head to Kansas that year. He had his ranch well established and could not resist his first calling and the rich possibilities to be found with a herd at the other end of the trail. He set May 1 as the date he wished to have his herd on the trail and immediately busied himself in scouting for cheap beef. This search took him to Corpus Christi, where he purchased the basic part of his trail herd. With these cattle on the road to his Coleman County ranch he wrote on April 30 from Austin:
I start for Kansas tomorrow. I go from here to ranch and from there to Dodge City by way of Panhandle of Texas. It will be some time before I reach the settlements. I have 7000 head on the road to Kansas. Write me June 1st at Dodge City.
After selling his herd at Dodge City, there was another matter of business that was most important to Colonel Day's plans for the future. He was forty-four years old and still a bachelor. With his new spread in Coleman County, he most of all needed a wife. The person figuring in these plans was Miss Mabel Doss, with whom he had been pressing his case on his frequent trips to Denison and Sherman. Miss Mabel was spending the summer at Brownsville, Missouri, and it was for that place he started as soon as he could pay off his boys and accomplish a matter of banking in Kansas City. As it was not until more than a year later that he was to gain this cherished prize, Colonel Day returned to Texas that fall and spent the winter buying and gathering another trail herd. On the monetary side of the ledger, things were beginning to come the Colonel's way, and that spring, through his agents, McCord and Lindsey of Coleman, he secured another 7,200 acres to add to his ranch.
The summer of 1878 again found Day with a trail herd in Kansas. He retraced his steps of the previous year, but this time with greater success for that fall he succeeded in winning the hand of Miss Doss. At Sherman, Texas, on January 26, 1879, they were married in the First Presbyterian Church of that city. After the wedding they left for Austin where they visited in the home of Colonel Day's mother. Mabel remained in the Day home while her husband, in the company of his new brother-in-law, Will Doss, went to Coleman County to gather the trail herd for that year. This was an unwelcome separation so soon after being married, but they were looking forward to a later honeymoon in Kansas after the herd had been gotten off.
The men arrived at the ranch March 7 and soon started out to buy cattle. Ranchmen had been delayed in rounding up because of the backwardness of spring and the cattle buyers got off to a slow start. By March 28, however, Colonel Day started receiving cattle in the San Saba country. Although Doss was also out on a purchasing mission, buying and gathering 4,500 head of cattle was a slow and tedious task. There were very few large outfits operating in the country and the average purchases were from one to two hundred head. Cattle had first to be found and contracted for, then cowboys had to be brought from the ranch to receive, brand, and then drive them long distances to the concentration point on the Day Ranch. On May 23, Colonel Day wrote that he had 4,000 head gathered on the ranch and he was in San Saba, where he had just contracted 500 more to deliver at Coleman City in time to meet the main herd as it passed that place on May 28.
Before the cattle left the ranch, they were divided into two groups: a steer and a cow herd. J. T. Hoch, the Colonel's favorite trail boss of three years' standing, took the steer herd. "Tobe" (William Walter) Driskill, a nephew, took the cow herd that followed. Will Doss was left in charge of the ranch, and after seeing the herds across the Pecan Bayou headed to Ft. Griffin, Colonel Day went directly to Austin. He and his wife took the cars for Kansas City where they planned to have some time together before the trail outfits arrived.
On June 5, Day was registered at the Dodge House and wrote the following letter to his wife at Kansas City:
I arrived back in Dodge this evening, after being absent five and a half days. I did not remain in Dodge long when I came up, I found Brother Dock and Tony waiting my arrival. We soon got a conveyance and started down the trail to meet my cattle. We met the first herd about sixty miles down. Found the boys all well and getting along very well. Had lost but few cattle. I camped with them one night and went on next morning to meet the other herd, which we did that day, which was about one hundred miles from here. I found all right with them. That was the cow herd, the one that had the cattle that my brothers wanted. I cut out for Dock and Tony four hundred cows and calves which shaped up the herd very well. I sold them all my cows and calves and started the balance for here. My first herd of 2500 will be here tomorrow and I will begin to turn over to J. M. Driskill the next day. Will take me about two days to get through with them. By that time the other herd will be here. I have some cattle in the last herd not sold, but don't think it will take me long to sell them, as the market is pretty good. I will send up with Driskill all my young cattle to the Yellowstone and if no bad luck will be back in about two weeks....
On their way home, the Days stopped by Hot Springs, Arkansas, and by September 4 were back in Austin and on their way to the Day Ranch. This was Mrs. Day's first trip to the ranch about which she had heard so much. They left Austin in a new, large, three-seated hack, which the Colonel had bought in St. Louis. In this hack there must have been everything desired in a frontier conveyance, because years later Buffalo Bill Cody bought it and used it in his famous Wild West Show.
Early in spring of 1879 a four-strand barbed wire fence had been started around the Day Ranch. Cedar posts and wire had been freighted in wagons from Austin and, all year long, a crew of about twenty men had been busy building a fence aound the 7,500-acre Red Wire Pasture, so called because the wire was painted red. This was the first fence of any distinction built in Coleman County and possibly in that entire section of the country, because it must be remembered that this was a land of open and free range for many, many miles in all directions. Following the Red Wire Pasture, Day next fenced his Grape Creek pasture.
After a trip of several days across country in the big ranch hack, the Days arrived at the Rock House Headquarters of the Day Ranch. As previously mentioned, this was a two-room structure, but from lumber hauled from Austin two wooden rooms had been added on the south. This was used strictly as a headquarters house, because most of the cowboys on the ranch lived in a cow camp that moved wherever their work took them.
No more vivid picture of life on the Day Ranch is at hand than the one described by Mrs. Day in a letter written in September, 1879:
Col. Day is building a fence around his pasture, which when done will contain forty thousand acres of land. It is a beautiful country, rolling prairie, covered with good grass, interspersed with timber, through which are beautiful little streams of running water and cool springs. Just across the Colorado River, which runs along one side of it, are high bluffs, hills and mountains which appear perfectly grand. We have a good stone house with four rooms and a front porch, a smoke house full of hams, breakfast bacon, flour meal, dried apples, beans, golden and maple syrup by the barrel, splendid pickles, canned corn, tomatoes, grapes, blackberries, strawberries, sugar, coffee and catsup. I believe that is all we have to eat except cheese and maple sugar, which I keep in my room for my own use. Col. shipped his provisions from Austin, one of the nearest railroad points. We get a nice mutton or goat every once in a while or a hind quarter of beef. Then the boys bring in a deer occasionally and every evening some quail or a turkey—have plenty of wild game.
Col. hired a man and his wife to keep house for us so I could go with him whenever I want to. He got me a gentle pony, nice saddle, etc. I made me a navy blue riding habit and the way I fly over these praries—it would do you good to see me. When I get tired of riding horse back he takes the buggy or rather the little spring wagon. You see he starts early in the morning and does not get back until nearly dark. I have to go with him or be very lonely at home with Mrs. Thompson, the housekeeper. He has twenty men at work on the fence and it keeps him busy bossing them. The fence will be done the second week in November. Col. will then buy up his cattle to fill it and then he will go to Austin. He will return in the spring to get off his herd to Kansas. I will come with him again if he will let me.
I have but one neighbor, Mrs. Gatlin, who lives seven miles from me. She spent the day with me day before yesterday. She is a splendid woman; has lived here but two years. I wish you could see her house. It is made of poles stuck straight up and down covered with boards. That is a paradise compared to the other houses in this country, most of which are dug outs. All these people who live here are good hearted, but wholly uneducated. Col. got me a guitar to bring with me instead of a piano and they call it a music box and think it very large. What would they think, could they see a piano?
There are few panthers, plenty of snakes, centipedes, tarantulas, wolves, prairie dogs, and polecats out here, so, you see, if I get up a music class out here they will have to be my pupils.
Col. and I are going to Coleman City tomorrow, which is twenty-five miles north of the ranch, so I stayed home today to write my letters. Here comes a wagon. Who can it be? Well, what do you think! Old. Mr. Cresswell, the only man for forty miles who has a garden and he has a good one, he has brought over twenty-five watermelons, a sack of string beans, and some nice fresh tomatoes with his compliments to the 'Old Boss' and his boys. Ha, Ha, he forgot me, but that is all O.K. I'll just quit my letter a moment and try one of these melons all the same.
I'll have to send these melons to the boys. They camp where they are at work, as it is so far to come home. It is eleven miles from the house to the far side of the pasture.
Do you wonder I weigh one hundred forty-five pounds? I wish you were here with me. I'll venture you'll never complain again. What do you say, Myrt? Come out and ranch it a while. I'd dance on my head to see you coming. Come to Ft. Worth on the cars, then stage to Brownwood, and I'll meet you there with our "traveling she-bang". Col. got it in St. Louis. It is nice, cost $373.00, has three seats in it. They can be let down and a bed fixed in it like a sleeping car. We can cook and eat in it, if the weather is raining. Can't you come? Tell Annie I'll be settled next summer, if I don't go to Colorado, and will then have my piano and shall expect her then if she is not married.
Let me hear from you, if you will allow me to still be your friend, and I'll promise to do better in the future. Address me at Trap Post Office [officially recorded as RICH COFFEY, TEXAS, in Postmaster Generals office, Washington, D. C.], Coleman County, Texas.
That winter the Days returned to Austin, where they remained for the winter months, but on the morning of February 16, 1880, they were again opening the gate to the big pasture. As they drove through the gate they were met by Hill Young, a cowboy on the ranch, who appeared quite ill with a bad cold. Colonel Day urged him to leave the camp and come to the house until he felt better. Early the next morning he came in and asked whether he could lie down a while. The Colonel gave him a strong toddy and put him to bed. He sent for the only physician in the neighborhood, Dr. D. B. Currie, of Paint Rock, Texas. When the doctor arrived he pronounced the case as pneumonia.
Colonel Day was compelled to go to Ft. Concho on business, but left the sick man in the hands of Mrs. Day, the doctor, and several of the cowboys. Upon returning a few days later, he found that Hill Young had died and had been buried. The boys had made a coffin which Mrs. Day had covered with some dark material. Young was an Odd Fellow and the lodge at Coleman had helped lay his body at rest in the Coleman Cemetery. Colonel Day was later buried beside this young man.
The details of how the Days busied themselves the spring of 1880 are not known. Day and his brother-in-law, J. L. Driskill, signed a note, dated March 1 for $10,000 on the Armour Brothers Banking Company of Kansas City, and it is presumed that they drew on this company for the cattle they purchased that spring, which were to be added to those already on the ranch, in making up the trail herd for that year's drive. All mail directed to the ranch was received at Rich Coffey Post Office, located in the Trap Store. This store was on the ranch at the Trap Crossing on the Colorado River. On the Concho County side of the crossing was a store called the Trigger. When these two stores came into existence is not known, but the Trap Crossing is an old landmark known to many an early day trail outfit. Only a few hundred yards from where the Trap Store stood is an old "Boot Hill Cemetery," located on a hill overlooking the Colorado River, where cowboys of the early Seventies were laid to rest. The crumbling old grave markers reveal that the average age of those resting beneath them was nineteen. No doubt the whiskey to be had at the Trap Store plus the normal hazards of the trail accounted for the need of a cemetery there. No one rests there who died of old age. The river at flood stages certainly has claimed its toll of cowboys since the first cattle crossed there.
The next report of Colonel Day is on July 7, 1880. This comes through a letter written by Mrs. Day, who was stopping at the St. James Hotel in Kansas City. He was in the Black Hills of South Dakota looking over J. S. Driskill's ranch and considering the possibilities of buying a ranch near Deadwood. An interesting passage from Mrs. Day's letter is as follows: "They celebrated the Fourth on the third in Kansas City. Grant and party were there. I saw them all and a more ordinary set of people I never saw. Fireworks best I've seen."
The Colonel did not like the Dakota country and returned to meet his trail herd, and on July 30, he was registered at the Dodge House. When the herd arrived, his brother Tony, who ranched 150 miles north of Dodge City, helped him work the cattle into classes suitable to meet the various demands of the market. A Colonel Grimes bought the cow herd, the steers were disposed of to other buyers, and W. L. Nichols bought the lame and cripples, paying five dollars a round for twenty-one head. The Armour note was stamped paid on August 18, and Colonel and Mrs. Day were off to Manitou, Colorado, for a much needed vacation.
Vacations were not of long duration for an operator like Day. He had already contracted to deliver another herd of Texas cattle in November to a point somewhere between Camp Supply, Indian Territory, and Dodge City. Consequently, on September 2, he was back at the Day Ranch making plans to assemble a second trail herd. He wrote to Mrs. Day as follows:
When I arrived at the ranch I found all the boys well, cats, dogs, etc. in good condition. Grass in pasture fine and cattle doing well. Have bought no cattle yet, but think I will be able to get the herd up in about twenty-five days. Hock and the trail outfit have not gotten in yet, but look for them soon.
On October 5 he had the five and eight dollar yearlings and two year olds, bought in Coleman and Concho counties, headed north towards Camp Supply. After seeing the herd off, he swung by Austin to see Mrs. Day who was then expecting a blessed event the latter part of December. After riding the train to Dodge, he took the stage south to Camp Supply. At that place, on November 23, he wrote Mrs. Day from the store of Lee and Reynolds as follows:
I have had a great deal of trouble delivering the cattle, but got through today, although have to drive part of the herd twenty-five miles farther towards Dodge. Can do that in two days. It is fifteen degrees below zero and snow about ten inches on the ground, so you may know how it is to camp out. Have lost a few cattle during the snow, though not many. They all say there has not been such a snow storm in ten years. I will have to settle with the boys and then will start home.
Mrs. Day had evidently given him a list of things the baby would need, because he made a stop in Kansas City where he bought a long list of baby clothes and blankets. From Kansas City he made a hurried swing by the Day Ranch and on to Austin where he arrived in time to be present at the birth of a daughter, Willie Mabel, on December 19, 1880.
While Colonel Day was sweating it out, just before Willie was born, he was relieved to hear from John Doss, at the Day Ranch, as follows:
After regards to all, would say I arrived home all O.K. found things all right. Jim got home from Brownwood, got 46 bu. of corn, paid seventy-five cents per bu. I will have Henry Eubank to send him back as soon as he can. There will be some thirteen or fourteen hundred of the I C cattle in this evening.
Captain Doakes took his mares and Jack out of pasture this A.M., said for you to make out his account. He was one short. I think he took out nineteen head. His address is Paint Rock. Mr. Andrews says tell you he took your advice as how to approach the Captain in a trade, so he went for him Red Hot and talked fast and sold his jack to the Captain.
Jim House, at the Trigger, got robbed. Two men came to the store about dark. House was at supper. They went up to his house and called for him, said they wanted to buy corn. Jim went down and traded them some $2.50 worth. He suspicioned them and slipped $55.00 down his pants. One of them pulled down a six shooter on Jim and told him to hold up his hands; Jim's pistol caught in his pocket. They took his pistol and he gave up his money, some $12.00. Jim told them to leave some change in the drawer; they left $1.50. Told Jim to take a seat by the stove while they looked over the store. Each took one pair boots, fine hat, shirt and underclothing, and ten boxes of sardines, dressed in the store and left their old ones. Said they could not live at home and that was the way they made their living. They talked some time and was going to tie Jim, but Jim promised not to leave the store. They locked him in and told Jim they would leave his key and pistol up on the hill. They asked Jim for his gun. Jim told him to take it. They took a box of cartridges, remarking they might have occasion to do some shooting tomorrow.
Ridge Goodman has just arrived, says the I. C. cattle will be here at Davidson's pens tonight. Hetler (the fence builder) has not returned from Brownwood.
Incidentally, Jim House [Howze], connected with the Trigger story, later became the sheriff of Concho County.
About three weeks later John Doss sent Colonel Day another report from the Day Ranch:
After my regards would say the trail outfit got in this evening, except Tolbert, Will Doss and Wilkerson, who stopped off at Ft. Griffin and Coleman.
The horses all look bad. They say they lost fourteen head on the way back. Harry is going to Austin and can give you full particulars. Johnnie Glenn is going back up the trail 75 miles from here to look for six horses they lost. We are having cold weather with four inches of snow on the ground. Stock looks bad with some few dieing. We will have to feed the horses that came back, as they would not get through the winter. The OOZ stock looks bad and we occasionally find a dead calf.
The fence is all in good fix. J. T. Hoch is looking after the north string and I the south string, when it is so I can get out.
Today is the first day that any work has been done by Hetler's fence building crew since Monday week on account of weather. Last Saturday they cut posts up on Grape Creek. He is putting posts around the Hogue Farm and making a fence.
I wish you would come up. I think it would be to your interest.
In the same mail came a letter postmarked at Paint Rock from Ridge Goodman, a cow buyer who frequently purchased cattle for Day on a commission basis. Goodman informed him that he was looking around to see what one's and two's could be put up for that spring, but that grade was very scarce and hard to get and it was quite likely that it would take several months of buying a few here and a few there to get a herd together. He further remarked that the I. C. outfit had gone to the head of the San Saba to winter and that most of the cattle in the country had drifted south and were with the I. C. outfit.
When little Willie Mabel Day was one month old the Days were making plans to leave Austin as soon as the mother and baby were able to travel. One of their grandmothers, Mrs. F. P. Doss, on January 17, revealed their plans in the following letter:
Mabel married Col W. H. Day, a citizen of Austin for the past 20 years. He is a stockman and has a pasture of 47,000 acres fenced with wire and has 10,000 head of cattle in it. We are going to move out there next week as he thinks it best to be out there. He drives every summer. The ranch is in Coleman County twenty-five miles from Coleman City.
Will Doss brought the "traveling she-bang" down to Austin and moved Mrs. Day, little Willie, and Mrs. Doss to the Ranch. Colonel Day sent word to Goodman to contract the I. C. yearlings and two year olds and to buy any others he could find. On February 4, Day was on his way to Kansas City to borrow money with which to finance the proposed drive and to feel out the market. He had very little cash on hand as he had been using every available dollar to make down payments on lands that were being added to his ranch. His lawyer, W. T. Simms, and McCord and Lindsey, of Coleman, as well as W. Von Rosenberg and Lawrence and Edwards, his Austin land agents, were all buying whatever land that came on the market in the Day Ranch area. W. T. Simms had Colonel Day's power of attorney for the purpose of acting for him in land purchases and that spring he acquired many thousands of acres for his client at from fifty cents to a dollar an acre.
On April 1 Colonel Day and his boys had rounded up the Grape Creek Pasture and for several days had been branding and working cattle on the relatively level, open country immediately in front of the Rock House. After a long, hard day on horseback, he found no difficulty in going to sleep that night. In the middle of the night he suddenly awoke and immediately realized there was something wrong with the herd that had been bedded for the night not far from the house. He hurriedly pulled on his clothes and ran to the yard gate where he jumped on a night horse left saddled there for such emergencies. It was now apparent that something had stampeded the herd and he pushed his horse to full speed to rush to the aid of the few cowboys standing their tour of the night watch. Somewhere in the darkness the Colonel's horse stepped into a prairie dog hole and wildly spilled himself and rider. The horn of the saddle hit Day squarely in the stomach severely injuring him internally.
After a few days he felt some better and was up and around. For the next several weeks he suffered from his stomach, but not thinking it of much consequence, he deferred seeking medical aid until the symptoms of his case assumed a grave aspect. When Dr. D. B. Currie, a local physician, told him his case was dangerous, he requested that Dr. James Johnson, who had been his physician when he lived in Denison, be called in council. When Dr. Johnson arrived, he found that the stomach injury had resulted in gangrene and human skill could not save the patient.
On the afternoon of his death the Colonel expressed no desire to live for himself, but he said he would like to live a few years longer to place his business in a secure position for his wife and infant child. Before his death he told his wife the details of his business and instructed her to take over.
At eight o'clock in the evening on June 14, 1881, a Cattle King of Texas died as the results of injuries received in line of duty.
Following the death of her husband, Mrs. Mabel Day took personal charge of the Day Ranch and assumed the responsibility of paying off the $117,000 claims and debts against the estate. At a time when women were unwelcome in the business world, she developed into the most outstanding business woman of her period in Texas. She refinanced her business by organizing a $200,000 Kentucky corporation known as the Day Cattle Ranch Company, in which she retained the controlling stock and management. In 1885 she was running 9,000 cattle on the Day Ranch. She lost over a hundred miles of fence in the fence cutting war of 1883. Although heavily in debt, she survived when Cattle Kings went broke all around her. In 1889, when she married Captain Joseph C. Lea, "The Father of Roswell," she was mentioned by the press of Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico as "The Cattle Queen of Texas." In New Mexico, she started what is now New Mexico Military Institute in her Roswell home. [Captain J. C. Lea Letters, March 9, 1891, and others undated.] She wound up her life by colonizing over five hundred families on the Day Ranch in Coleman County, Texas.
James T. Padgitt, The Southwest Historical Quartery, April, 1950