Hutchinson County Biographies

Source: The Handbook of Texas Online

HUTCHINSON, ANDERSON
BUGBEE, THOMAS SHERMAN
ABERT, JAMES WILLIAM
COBURN, JAMES M.
PLEMONS, WILLIAM BUFORD
MCILROY, SHERMAN D.
HALEY, JAMES EVETTS, SR.



HUTCHINSON, ANDERSON

(1798-1853)

Anderson Hutchinson, judge and Perote prisoner, was born in Greenbrier County, Virginia, on April 7, 1798. He studied law while helping his father who was clerk of the county court. After he was admitted to the bar, he practiced at Knoxville, Tennessee, Huntsville, Alabama, and in 1835 at Raymond, Hinds County, Mississippi. In 1840 he and Volney E. Howard published A Digest of the Laws of Mississippi.

On June 23, 1840, Hutchinson and his wife Mariana (Graves?), arrived in Austin. He opened a law office with immediate success. In 1841 he was appointed judge of the Fourth, or Western, District. He presided at the proceedings against Richard Bullock, the Austin innkeeper who thrashed the servant of the French minister Dubois de Saligny for killing the innkeeper's trespassing pig. This incident provoked an international situation, and Hutchinson wrote an official report concerning the prosecution.

Authorities are in accord that Hutchinson was one of the most scholarly lawyers and legal writers who ever sat on a Texas bench. Although a Code of Texas prepared by Hutchinson was never published under his name, it may have been used by Oliver C. Hartley in his compilation. Judge Hutchinson was holding court in San Antonio when the town was captured by Adrián Woll's force on September 10, 1842. When the Mexican Army withdrew, it took along the judge, jurors, court attachés, attending witnesses, and attorneys. Most of them, including Judge Hutchinson, were forwarded to Perote Prison. Hutchinson was released on March 29, 1843, through efforts of Waddy Thompson, United States minister.

Upon his release Hutchinson was taken aboard the U.S.S. Vincennes at Vera Cruz and landed at Pensacola. He then returned to his former home at Raymond. On June 10, 1843, from Jackson, Mississippi, he wrote to President Sam Houston tendering his resignation as district judge. Later Hutchinson came to Texas and closed his business affairs. In Raymond he formed a partnership with Henry S. Foote, author of Texas and Texans. In 1848 Hutchinson published the Mississippi Code. He died in 1853. In 1854 his widow received the 640-acre bounty due him as a Perote prisoner. Another relief act was passed in her behalf in 1856. Hutchinson County, Texas, was named in his honor.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Hobart Huson, District Judges of Refugio County (Refugio, Texas: Refugio Timely Remarks, 1941). James D. Lynch, The Bench and Bar of Texas (St. Louis, 1885).

Hobart Huson



BUGBEE, THOMAS SHERMAN

(1842-1925)

Thomas Sherman Bugbee, cattleman, the third of the five children of John Brewer and Hannah (Sherman) Bugbee, was born on January 18, 1842, in Washington County, Maine. After limited schooling he left home at the age of fourteen to work on a farm and later at a sawmill. In 1860 he secured an eighty-acre homestead in western Maine, but service in the Tenth Maine Infantry during the Civil War kept him away from home from 1861 through 1864.

Since their home state was heavily affected by the postwar recession, Thomas Bugbee and his brother George made their way west, working as teamsters. Hearing of the money to be made in the cattle market, Bugbee visited Fort Worth and formed a partnership with George Miller and M. M. Shea. In 1869 they purchased 1,200 cattle from John A. Knight for $11 a head and sold them in Idaho for $45 a head. The following year Bugbee and Shea bought 1,500 head and drove them to Colorado. In 1871 Bugbee drove 750 steers to Rice County, Kansas, west of Abilene, where he wintered them in order to get a better price. There he met Mary Catherine (Molly) Dunn, whom he married on August 13, 1872. The newlyweds then loaded their wagon and drove the steers farther west. Near Lakin, Kansas, they built their first dugout home and spent four years building up the herd.

In the fall of 1876 the family departed for Texas. After losing half of their herd and possessions to the raging Cimarron River, the Bugbees arrived with their trail hands and 1,800 cattle at the Canadian River breaks in Hutchinson County. There they established the Quarter Circle T Ranch, the second oldest in the Panhandle, with headquarters on Bugbee Creek. In 1882 Bugbee sold his land and cattle and moved his family, which eventually included eight children, to Kansas City, where they could live more comfortably. During the next fifteen years, operating out of Kansas City, he established cattle ranches in Texas, Kansas, and Indian Territory.

In 1883, in partnership with Orville Howell Nelson, he established the Shoe Bar Ranch in Briscoe, Hall, and Donley counties, Texas. At the same time, he formed the Word-Bugbee Cattle Company with Charles W. Word of Wichita Falls. They grazed 26,000 steers on 250,000 acres of fenced range in the Cheyenne country of Indian Territory. Word and Bugbee were forced to sell out at a loss after President Grover Cleveland evicted all white cattlemen from the reservation grasslands in 1885.

In addition, Bugbee owned an 800-acre farm near Bonner Springs, Kansas, and, with William States, operated a 6,000-acre ranch near Dodge City. In 1886 he bought out Nelson's interest in the Shoe Bar and with another partner, L. C. Coleman, formed the Bugbee-Coleman Cattle Company. They remained partners until Coleman's death in 1894, at which time Bugbee sold out his own interest to A. J. Snyder. Afterwards he started the 69 Ranch in Knox County with 3,500 cattle for breeding purposes.

In 1897 Bugbee moved his family from Kansas City to Clarendon, Texas, where he continued with his ranching interests and served as president of the Panhandle and Southwestern Stockmen's Association from 1900 to 1908. He introduced maize, kafir, and many other grains and grasses to the Panhandle and also brought in some of the first harvesters and tractors. As a civic leader, Bugbee led in the founding and supporting of schools and other civilizing institutions. He died at his home in Clarendon on October 18, 1925.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: James Cox, Historical and Biographical Record of the Cattle Industry (2 vols., St. Louis: Woodward and Tiernan Printing, 1894, 1895; rpt., with an introduction by J. Frank Dobie, New York: Antiquarian, 1959). John Thomas Duncan, "The Settlement of Hall County," West Texas Historical Association Yearbook 18 (1942). Helen Bugbee Officer, "A Sketch of the Life of Thomas Sherman Bugbee, 1841-1925," Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 5 (1932). Pauline D. and R. L. Robertson, Cowman's Country: Fifty Frontier Ranches in the Texas Panhandle, 1876-1887 (Amarillo: Paramount, 1981). Lester Fields Sheffy, "Thomas Sherman Bugbee," Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 2 (1929).

H. Allen Anderson



ABERT, JAMES WILLIAM

(1820-1897)

James William Abert, army officer and explorer, was born on November 18, 1820, in Mount Holly, New Jersey, the son of Maj. John James Abert, an officer in the Corps of Topographical Engineers. In his teens he attended Princeton University, where he graduated, probably from its academy, in 1838; he entered the United States Military Academy at West Point in September of that year. In 1842 he was assigned to the Fifth United States Infantry. After an uneventful year of garrison duty in Detroit, Abert was transferred to the Corps of Topographical Engineers in May 1843. His first assignment in the corps was that of assistant topographical engineer in an extensive survey of the northern lakes, 1843-44. During that time he married Jane Stone, and they had a son.

In the summer of 1845 Abert was attached to the third expedition of John Charles Frémont, whose assignment was "to make reconnaissance southward and eastward along the Canadian River through the country of Kiowa and Comanche." Frémont, however, chose to take his main party on to California, and gave command of the Canadian River mission to Abert, with an assistant, Lt. William G. Peck. The legendary mountain man Thomas Fitzpatrick was employed as a guide, and Bent employees John L. Hatcher and Caleb Greenwood were hired temporarily as hunters. Except for the two young officers, the entire party of thirty-three was composed of civilians.

The expedition struck the headwaters of the Canadian and followed it through the breaks in eastern New Mexico and into the Texas Panhandle. Continuing along the north bank of the Canadian, Abert noted many Panhandle landmarks, including Atascosa Creek and the Alibates Flint Quarries (see ALIBATES FLINT QUARRIES NATIONAL MONUMENT), which he labeled Agate Bluffs. The expedition arrived at Bent's trading house in what is now Hutchinson County on September 14, rested there for a day, and exchanged gifts with a party of Kiowas and Comancheros. Three Kiowas had briefly joined the expedition to help keep the peace.

On September 16, after Hatcher and Greenwood had left to return to Bent's Fort, the remainder of Abert's party crossed the Canadian and turned toward the southeast. Near the site of present Laketon, in Gray County, the party struck the North Fork of the Red River, which they mistook for the Washita and followed for a while, then turned back northeast toward the Canadian. They crossed the present Oklahoma boundary before reaching the Canadian, which they followed to its confluence with the Arkansas. At Fort Gibson, in eastern Indian Territory, the expedition was disbanded, and Abert and Peck went on to St. Louis.

In his report Abert described in detail the geology, flora, and fauna of the Canadian valley. His maps of the region were the most accurate of the time, and later explorers found them quite useful, especially for finding campsites and watering places. The abundance of wild game in the valley had kept the expedition well supplied with food. Abert's description of the habits and customs of the Kiowa and Comanche Indians proved valuable to the federal government later. Along with his maps and written accounts, Abert made several sketches and watercolors of activities at Bent's Fort, native animals, and outstanding Indian personalities, including the Kiowa chief Dohäsan, whose village the expedition had visited on September 17.

In the summer of 1846 Abert and Peck accompanied Gen. Stephen W. Kearny's Army of the West to New Mexico. Abert came down with a fever in July and had to remain behind at Bent's Fort to recuperate. While he was sick he continued his studies in natural science and ethnology and compiled a tribal dictionary. Afterward he joined Peck in Santa Fe, and the two lieutenants conducted a thorough survey of New Mexico as far south as Socorro. They visited each of the Rio Grande pueblos and, as before, took note of the geology and wildlife of the new American territory, as well as of the habits and customs of its native residents. Abert then went to Washington to submit his report to Congress.

From 1848 to 1850 he served on the faculty at West Point, where he taught drawing. He was promoted to first lieutenant in 1853 and to captain in 1856. After the death of his first wife he married Lucy Taylor, with whom he had several children. In 1860, after serving two years in Florida, he traveled in Europe to study military affairs and visit various forts and arsenals. When the Civil War broke out Abert served in the Shenandoah valley from June 1861 to September 1862. On March 3, 1863, he was promoted to major and assigned to the United States Army Corps of Engineers. He was later severely injured by a fall from his horse, and in 1864 he resigned from the army.

He had been brevetted lieutenant colonel for his "faithful and meritorious service." During the next five years, Abert and his family engaged in the mercantile business in Cincinnati, Ohio. From 1869 to 1871 he served as examiner of patents in Washington. He taught English literature at the University of Missouri from 1877 to 1879 and afterward was president of the Examining Board of Teachers of Public Schools in Kentucky. Abert was reappointed a major in the United States Army on January 14, 1895, and retired almost immediately. He died at his home in Newport, Kentucky, on August 10, 1897.

Despite the value of Abert's western frontier journals, they lay almost forgotten in government files until 1941, when H. Bailey Carroll first published the 1845 report in the Panhandle-Plains Historical Review. William A. Keleher published Abert's New Mexico report in 1962. In 1967 and 1970 special publications of the Abert journals were edited under the title Through the Country of the Comanche Indians in the Fall of the Year 1845 by John Galvin, a California historian. They featured illustrations of Abert's watercolors, many of which were obtained from his descendants. A species of finch that Abert discovered was named Pipilo aberti in his honor.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: W. H. Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the American West, 1803-1863 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959; 2d ed., Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979; rpt., Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1991). Frederick W. Rathjen, The Texas Panhandle Frontier (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973).

H. Allen Anderson



COBURN, JAMES M.

(?-?)

James M. Coburn was the founder of the Hansford Land and Cattle Company, the Scottish syndicate that purchased the Turkey Track Ranch from C. S. Word and Jack Snider in 1882 and added to it the holdings of W. E. Anderson and T. S. Bugbee in Hutchinson County. After emigrating from his native Scotland, he had established himself as a banker in Kansas City. He returned briefly to Scotland and organized the Hansford company to profit from the "Beef Bonanza." On acquiring the Turkey Track lands, company officials elected Coburn secretary and appointed A. H. Johnson general manager. In 1883, after Johnson was killed by lightning, Coburn appointed Thomas Logan Coffee range foreman and assumed the general managerial duties himself.

Friction between the two men developed after Coffee apparently accumulated several head of cattle of his own, which he had allowed to run on the Turkey Track range. When Coburn tried to discharge Coffee, several cowhands stood by the foreman and sought to intimidate the Scotsman. Such lack of respect on the part of ranch employees led Coburn to hire Caleb B. (Cape) Willingham as supervisor and maintain Kansas City as his home base. One Panhandle settler later recalled that Coburn was "a nervous, fractious man...scared of his own shadow." Apparently Willingham also served as Coburn's bodyguard and hired gun.

Coburn continued to make occasional visits to the Panhandle. He encouraged William (Billy) Dixon to take up a claim on three sections of Turkey Track land on Bent's Creek near the Adobe Walls site and operate the ranch store and post office. During the summers Coburn brought his wife and children, including several from a previous marriage, to the ranch. One summer one of the Coburn children was taken ill and died almost immediately. Since the Canadian River was up and the local minister could not get across, Coburn himself conducted the Episcopal burial service at the Turkey Track headquarters, with only the ranchhands and the Dixon family in attendance. When the river subsided, the body was shipped to Kansas City for interment in the family burial plot.

After Willingham moved to the Hansford company's ranch in New Mexico in 1893, Coburn began experiencing more troubles with the Panhandle spread. Company officials were concerned about increasing cattle thefts, and Coburn lacked the loyalty he needed from his employees to control them. His problems increased in 1897 after the Texas legislature passed the Four-Section Act, which he opposed. Coburn's quarrels with incoming nesters led to several lawsuits in Hutchinson County. He soon sold his Panhandle interests. After Willingham's resignation from the Hansford company in 1903, Coburn ran the New Mexico ranch himself for a few years, with J. M. Sanford and Cal Merchant assisting him. By 1915 the company had closed out its holdings altogether, and Coburn subsequently disappeared from the Texas ranching scene.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Laura V. Hamner, Short Grass and Longhorns (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1943). John L. McCarty, Adobe Walls Bride (San Antonio: Naylor, 1955).

H. Allen Anderson



PLEMONS, WILLIAM BUFORD

(1844-1901)

William Buford Plemons, judge, was born on June 2, 1844, in Macon County, North Carolina, and spent his early years on his father's farm. When the Civil War broke out he enlisted in the Sixteenth North Carolina Regiment and served as color-bearer. He was later promoted to sergeant and assigned to line duty; he saw action in almost all of the major campaigns of the Army of Northern Virginia. He was wounded three times and was present at Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox in April 1865.

After the war Plemons returned home and in 1867 married Mary Elle Kelly of Mesic County, North Carolina. She died the following year after giving birth to a son. Soon afterward Plemons decided to move to Texas, where he planned to establish a colony of settlers from his home state. On the way he met a group of people from Alabama also journeying to Texas. Among them was Mary Elizabeth "Mittie" Martin, whom Plemons married soon after their arrival in Wood County, Texas. Their first home was at Winnsboro. The couple had four children.

Plemons exchanged his colonization scheme for the study of law and began a lifelong friendship with James Stephen Hogg, later governor of Texas. After his admission to the bar in 1872 he moved to Henrietta, in Clay County, where he established his practice. He was elected judge of Clay County in 1876 and served two terms before moving to the Panhandle in 1886 and settling on the section which became the Plemons Addition in Amarillo.

His oldest son, Barney, filed on land in Hutchinson County that became the site of the town of Plemons, the first county seat, and also bought a section in Potter County. W. B. Plemons was elected the first Potter county judge in 1887, and two years later he purchased from John Merchant a section of former Frying Pan Ranch pasture on Amarillo Creek northwest of the townsite. The marriage of his daughter Belle Helen to James R. Gober, first sheriff of Potter County, is said to have been the first wedding in Amarillo.

As a pugnacious criminal attorney who worked zealously on behalf of his clients, Plemons became judge of the Forty-seventh District in 1890. He was elected to the Texas legislature in 1894 and served on the judiciary committee, where he was an advocate of land legislation to benefit the Panhandle area. He was instrumental in the passage of the Four-Section Act, which was designed to allow settlers sufficient land for stock raising in a semiarid environment. Plemons declined reelection to the legislature and formed a law partnership with John W. Veale in Amarillo, an association continued until Plemons's death. He died of apoplexy on the morning of December 14, 1901, and was buried in Amarillo.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: John Crudgington, "Old Time Amarillo," Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 30 (1957), 79-113. J. Evetts Haley, Charles Goodnight (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1949). Della Tyler Key, In the Cattle Country: History of Potter County, 1887-1966 (Amarillo: Tyler-Berkley, 1961; 2d ed., Wichita Falls: Nortex, 1972). Millie Jones Porter, Memory Cups of Panhandle Pioneers (Clarendon, Texas: Clarendon Press, 1945). H. C. Randolph, Panhandle Lawyers (Amarillo: Russell Stationery, 1931). F. Stanley [Stanley F. L. Crocchiola], The Plemons Story (Nazareth, Texas, 1973). Thomas F. Turner, "Prairie Dog Lawyers," Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 2 (1929).

H. Allen Anderson



MCILROY, SHERMAN D.

(1871-1945)

Sherman D. (Tex) McIlroy, pioneer oilman, was born in Randolph County, Arkansas, in 1871, the third of the eleven children of William and Mary C. McIlroy. In 1886, when he was fifteen, the family moved to Hood County, Texas, and settled on a farm near Tolar, ten miles west of Granbury. There he remained until 1889, when he left for Fresno, California. By 1897 McIlroy had followed the lure of the gold rush to the Klondike and gone to Dawson City, Yukon Territory, where he spent several exciting years.

In 1900 he married Katharyn Byrd, a native of San Antonio, at Hot Springs, Arkansas, and took her back to Dawson City. They had two daughters, the elder said to be the first white child born in the Yukon. Later the McIlroys moved to Fairbanks, Alaska, where they remained in the gold fields until 1914. McIlroy, who acquired his nickname in Alaska, then brought his family back to Texas. They settled in Amarillo, where McIlroy joined his brother, White W. McIlroy, in the meat and grocery business.

In December 1918 excitement over the Masterson oil discovery well swept the Panhandle, and early in 1919 the McIlroy brothers formed the Dixon Creek Oil Company as a joint-stock firm and set out to take advantage of the prospects, despite their total lack of experience in the oil business. After securing some prospective leases on the Smith Ranch in southern Hutchinson County, they drilled their first well, Smith-Capers No. 1, which came in during June 1922 at only thirty barrels a day.

Nevertheless, the McIlroys incorporated the company in 1924 to raise funds and continued to drill. Henry A. and Millard C. Nobles were among the principal stockholders. In March 1925 the Dixon Creek, or Smith No. 1, was brought in and produced 400 barrels a day. In December of that year the No. 2 well on the same lease came in at 3,000 barrels a day. Tex McIlroy then decided to try to increase production by deepening Smith No. 1. On January 11, 1926, after being drilled only an additional two feet, the well blew in at 10,000 barrels a day, an unprecedented success that touched off a boom and led to the founding of Borger.

After completing Smith No. 1, the Dixon Creek Oil Company brought in a number of successful producers, most of them on the Smith Ranch leases. This made McIlroy one of the dominant independent operators during the boom's early days. To use the large volume of casinghead gas produced from company wells, he also erected one of the Panhandle's first natural gas plants. Later, McIlroy expanded his operations to the West Pampa Field in western Gray County, where he drilled the second producer. There the company eventually brought in eighty-seven producing wells on leases totalling 1,800 acres; at one time the wells were producing more than 20,000 barrels of oil a day.

In all, the McIlroy brothers organized three successful independent regional oil companies between 1919 and 1932. During that time, Tex McIlroy handled most of the oil properties. In an era of shady stock deals and questionable business practices, he became known for his honesty, his determination to keep his word, and his charities. The Amarillo Community Chest, the Maverick Club, and several small churches were among the organizations the McIlroys supported. In 1930 the McIlroys merged their Dixon Creek and Cockrell-McIlroy companies as the Dixon Creek Oil and Refining Company. They purchased a small refinery at Kingsmill and operated it mostly on company production.

In 1932 the McIlroy brothers sold the company to the King Royalty (later King Oil) Company of Wichita Falls. At that sale, the corporation returned over 700 percent to investors. The McIlroy Oil Company, managed several years longer by White McIlroy, paid dividends of well over 600 percent. Although he was one of the largest stockholders in the King Oil firm, Tex retired from active oil development after the 1932 sale. He bought a large cattle ranch in the vicinity of his old Hood County home and developed it into a game preserve, to which he devoted the remainder of his life. He suffered a severe heart attack on July 16, 1945. He died in a San Antonio hospital on August 27 and was buried in the family plot at the Tolar Cemetery. His game ranch was subsequently sold by his heirs to the Black ranching interests.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Amarillo Globe, August 27, 1945. Amarillo Sunday News-Globe, August 14, 1938. Canyon News, Special Supplement, February 20, 1986. C. L. Hightower, ed., Hood County in Picture and Story (Fort Worth: Historical Publishers, 1970; rpt. 1978).

H. Allen Anderson



HALEY, JAMES EVETTS, SR.

(1901-1995)

J. Evetts Haley, historian, rancher, and political activist, was born in Belton, Texas, on July 5, 1901, to John Alva and Julia (Evetts) Haley. The family moved in 1906 to Midland, where John Haley established a hardware business and later a hotel. He also purchased a small ranch near town and a larger one east of the Pecos in Loving and Winkler counties. As a boy, Evetts worked on area ranches and competed at local rodeos. In the fall of 1920 he entered Midland College, where he excelled in both academics and athletics, winning a letter in football. When that college closed the following year, Haley transferred to West Texas Normal College at Canyon.

There he became senior class president and served as business manager and columnist for the school newspaper, the Prairie, and as editor-in-chief of the annual, Le Mirage. Upon graduating in 1925, he was appointed field secretary of the Panhandle Plains Historical Society and began interviewing pioneers and gathering artifacts and archival material, including the voluminous and important XIT Ranch papers. In the fall of 1925, Haley entered graduate school at the University of Texas, where he studied under Eugene C. Barker. After completing a thesis on Texas cattle trails, he received a master's degree in history in 1926 and resumed his duties with the Panhandle Plains Historical Society.

In 1927 officials of the former Capitol Freehold Land and Investment Company commissioned the twenty-six-year-old scholar to write a history of the XIT Ranch. Haley's critically acclaimed The XIT Ranch of Texas and the Early Days of the Llano Estacado, which appeared two years later, established the author as a premier interpreter of the western range cattle industry. The book, however, was also the subject of libel suits totaling $2.2 million. The first of these actions was tried in state district court in Lubbock in 1931.

Although acquitted of the charges, Haley and his co-defendants subsequently agreed to withdraw the book from the market and paid the plaintiffs $17,500 to settle all pending claims. By this time Haley was hard at work on the biography of legendary Texas rancher Charles Goodnight, whom he had first met in 1925. In the fall of 1929 the University of Texas hired Haley to establish an archival field program. During the Great Depression, he headed the Texas Historical Records Survey.
He published major articles in such diverse journals and magazines as the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Southwest Review, Ranch Romances, Nature, and the Panhandle-Plains Historical Review. He wrote thirteen articles for the Cattleman alone between 1925 and 1949 and, from 1947 to 1964, a series of more than three dozen historical sketches for the Shamrock, a publication of the Shamrock Oil and Gas Corporation. In 1936 Houghton Mifflin published Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman, a masterwork that further enhanced Haley's reputation as an writer and scholar. That same year, he also coordinated the UT history department exhibits commemorating the Texas Centennial.

During the early 1930s Haley became an increasingly vocal opponent of the New Deal policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. After being elected chairman of the Jeffersonian Democrats of Texas, a conservative anti-Roosevelt faction of the Democratic party, Haley directed that organization's political activities during the 1936 presidential campaign. In September the University of Texas, citing budgetary constraints and a shortage of grant funds, did not renew his contract. Haley contended that he was fired for political reasons.

Bitter and exhausted, he returned to the Panhandle to recuperate. Early the following year he accepted a commission to write the biography of Texas banker-cattleman George W. Littlefield under a grant from the Littlefield Fund for Southern History at the University of Texas, and to undertake the biography of frontier lawman Jefferson Davis Milton for Houghton Mifflin. In 1937 he also became manager of the Zeebar Cattle Company in Arizona, owned by Texan L. L. Dent, and purchased a small ranch of his own, the JH, in Hutchinson County. He later managed the Atarque and Clochintoh Ranches in New Mexico for Dent and W. A. Wrather.

In 1939 J. M. West hired Haley to manage an extensive ranching enterprise that stretched from Clear Lake, near Houston, to the Chupadero on the lower Rio Grande, to the Figure 2 in West Texas. He served in this capacity until West's death in 1942, at which time Haley again returned to the Panhandle. In 1943 the University of Oklahoma Press released Haley's George W. Littlefield, Texan. The next year the Texas State Historical Association published Charles Schreiner, General Merchandise, a short biography of a Kerrville businessman. This book marked the first of many distinguished collaborations between the author and El Paso book designer and printer J. Carl Hertzog, Sr.

In the early 1940s Haley became embroiled in a controversy between University of Texas president Homer P. Rainey and the UT Board of Regents over the issues of academic freedom and university governance. Haley sided with the regents and produced a series of essays, published in the San Antonio Express and subsequently issued in a pamphlet entitled The University of Texas and the Issue. In 1948, Haley completed his fourth major biography, Jeff Milton, A Good Man with a Gun. An important regional study, Fort Concho and the Texas Frontier, won Haley a literary award from the Sons of the Republic of Texas four years later.

During the early 1950s, Haley served as president of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Society and became the first director of the Institute of Americanism at Texas Technological College. He resigned the latter position in 1955 but accepted Governor R. Allan Shivers's appointment to the Texas Tech Board of Regents. During his tenure Haley was instrumental in establishing a history archive known as the Southwest Collection. He also continued to expand his ranching operations by purchasing range near Sallisaw, Oklahoma, in 1952.

Haley ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1956 on a platform that endorsed segregation and states' rights and opposed labor unions and federal price controls on natural gas. The following year he and other conservative Texans formed the political action group Texans for America. Haley was elected state chairman. During this same period the federal government charged him and his son with violating the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1936 by exceeding their wheat acreage allotment on their Oklahoma ranch. The Supreme Court eventually heard the case and overturned a lower court ruling favoring the Haleys. Never far from the political arena, Haley was both lionized and vilified for his best-selling polemic, A Texan Looks at Lyndon, issued during the 1964 presidential election campaign. He continued to support conservative candidates and causes.

In 1976 he completed his last major book, a family chronicle entitled Rough Times-Tough Fiber: A Fragmentary Family Chronicle. Haley's library and personal papers became the cornerstone of the Nita Stewart Haley Memorial Library, opened that year in Midland. Haley received many honors, including investiture in the Knights of the Order of San Jacinto by the Sons of the Republic of Texas in 1978, an Award of Merit from the American Association of State and Local History in 1981, induction into the Hall of Great Westerners at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center (Oklahoma City) in 1990, and similar recognition by the Heritage Hall of Fame at the State Fair of Texas in 1994.

He married Mary Vernita Stewart, a college drama teacher, on August 27, 1928, in Alpine. The couple had one son, born in 1931. After his wife died in 1958, Haley remained unmarried until 1970, when he married Rosalind Kress Frame in Savannah, Georgia. He died in Midland on October 9, 1995, and was buried in Moffat Cemetery, Bell County, Texas.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Hervey E. Chesley, Adventuring with the Old Timers, ed. B. Byron Price (Midland: Nita Stewart Haley Memorial Library, 1979). Dallas Morning News, October 11, 1995. James Evetts Haley Papers, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. B. Byron Price, Crafting a Southwestern Masterpiece: J. Evetts Haley and "Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman" (Midland: Nita Stewart Haley Memorial Library, 1986). B. Byron Price, "When a Good Man with a Gun Met a Good Man with a Pen," Journal of Arizona History 33 (Spring 1992). Chandler A. Robinson, J. Evetts Haley, Cowman-Historian (El Paso: Carl Hertzog, 1967). Chandler A. Robinson, ed., J. Evetts Haley and the Passing of the Old West (Austin: Jenkins , 1978).

B. Byron Price

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