Briscoe County Biographies

BAGGARLY, HERBERT MILTON, JR. (1915-1985)
BARTON, ALFRED HIGHTOWER (1848-1921)
CONNER, LINCOLN GUY (1860-1920)
COOK, JIM (1861-1940)
DYER, LEIGH RICHMOND (1849-1902)
MOW­WAY (?-1886)
TAFOYA, JOSÉ PIEDAD (ca. 1830-?)

BAGGARLY, HERBERT MILTON, JR.
(1915-1985)

Herbert M. Baggarly, Jr., journalist, son of Herbert Milton and Flora Henry (Parker) Baggarly, was born at Plainview, Texas, on January 1, 1915. He grew up in Happy, where he completed elementary and secondary school. After earning a B.A. at West Texas State University and an M.A. at the University of Missouri, he taught at Tulia High School, from 1938 to 1943. During World War IIqv he served as a junior aide to Adm. Chester W. Nimitzqv in the Pacific. After the war he returned to Tulia, where he taught school and worked at the newspaper.

From 1950 to 1979 Baggarly was editor and publisher of the Tulia Herald, which published his column, "The Country Editor." The Herald had a weekly circulation of 4,500, with subscribers in every state as well as several foreign countries. This popularity was due in large part to Baggarly's column, which provided sharp, down-to-earth commentary on political issues. His editorial and column writing won numerous state, regional, and national awards. The first of two awards from the National Editorial Association came in 1957, a first-place ranking granted to the Herald for column writing. The second, a 1961 award for editorial writing, named the Herald as one of the top three newspapers of all sizes and frequencies of publication in the nation. Additional honors for editorial and column writing came from the Texas Press Association, the West Texas Press Association,qv the Panhandle Press Association, and the journalism departments at Texas Tech University and West Texas State University. In 1966 Baggarly received the first Editor of the Year Award granted by the Texas Farmers' Union; the next year he was named Tulia's outstanding citizen of the year. In 1968 he declined a personal invitation from Lyndon B. Johnsonqv to join the president's Washington staff as advisor and speechwriter.

Selected columns from "The Country Editor" were published as The Texas Country Editor in 1966 and The Texas Country Democrat in 1970. After selling the Herald in 1979 Baggarly continued until to write a weekly column his death. He never married. He died at Tulia on September 7, 1985, and was buried in Rose Hill Cemetery.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Eugene W. Jones, ed., The Texas Country Democrat: H. M. Baggarly Surveys Two Decades of Texas Politics (San Angelo: Anchor, 1970). Eugene W. Jones, ed., The Texas Country Editor: H. M. Baggarly Takes a Grassroots Look at National Politics (Cleveland: World, 1966). Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin.

Eugene W. Jones

BARTON, ALFRED HIGHTOWER
(1848-1921)

Alfred Hightower (Al) Barton, Motley County pioneer, cattleman, and founder of Barton Community, was born on December 21, 1848, near Greenville, South Carolina, to Decater (or Decator) and Catherine (Hightower) Barton. Accounts of his life differ. In 1854 the family joined the Barton wagon train headed for Texas. They settled on the frontier near Round Rock, then in Burnet County, where Indian raids were still common. When he was twenty-two, Al hired out to drive 2,500 cattle to California to sell to gold miners there. With the help of twenty cowboys he arrived with the herd, 100 horses, and two wagons intact, having lost none to Indians or stampedes. He delivered the proceeds to his employer, Dudley H. Snyder, in Denver, and the Snyder brothers hired him to trail a herd to the Texas plains.

In 1878 Barton returned to Burnet County and married Mollie Moreland. Taking a herd of cattle to Cimarron, Kansas, they moved north. A blizzard in the late 1880s wiped out most of the cattle. Mollie died soon afterward, leaving motherless her three small sons. Barton returned to Texas, temporarily leaving the two older boys with his parents and permanently leaving the youngest son with his sister Milda.

He found work on the F Ranch, owned then by Charles Goodnight and Lysander Moore, on Quitaque Creek in Floyd and Briscoe counties. He sent for his oldest son, Wilburn, who quickly became a ranchhand. Barton continued as manager when Goodnight sold his part to Moore in 1890 and when Moore sold out to the Cresswell Cattle Company in 1898. In 1889 Al married Mollie (or Millie) Sams of Della Plain; they had six children. When Mollie and her eight-month-old daughter died of pneumonia, they were buried together near the ranch headquarters in the Grey Mule Cemetery, overlooking Quitaque Creek. By this time Barton's eldest son had filed on land, built a dugout, and married, while the next, Sam, had moved to Canada.

While working for the F Ranch, Barton had accumulated sizable acreage on the Middle Pease River. When the F Ranch was dissolved, he bought some of its cattle and moved them a few miles southeast onto his ranch in Motley County. At the age of fifty-five he married Addie Bishop Seay, a widow with a son and daughter. Alfred and Addie Barton had four children. The new Mrs. Barton was very strict about cursing and drinking, but loved to dance and threw parties that often lasted all night. One time a local fiddler from Turkey, Texas, unable to make it to the dance at the Barton place, sent his fifteen-year-old son, a guitar player named James Robert (Bob) Wills, who was to play many times at the Barton dances in the years to come.

Barton Community grew as Al's many children began their own farms and ranches nearby. School was held in the east bedroom of the ranchhouse; by 1919 the students filled a one-room school built on a knoll northeast of the home. In 1930 this building was replaced with a two-room red brick building, and a teacherage was provided. At one time as many as seventy-two students were enrolled in Barton School. After 1935 students were transported to Matador so that they might graduate from state-accredited schools. Al Barton died in 1921, probably in May or June.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Harry E. Chrisman, Lost Trails of the Cimarron (Denver: Sage, 1961). Darrell Debo, Burnet County History (2 vols., Burnet, Texas: Eakin, 1979). Eleanor Traweek, Of Such as These: A History of Motley County and Its Families (Quanah, Texas: Nortex, 1973).

Marisue Potts

CONNER, LINCOLN GUY
(1860-1920)

Lincoln Guy Conner, rancher and founder of Canyon, was born on March 4, 1860, near Boonville, Missouri. Earlier, his father had established a flour mill, and the community that grew up around it was known as Conner's Mill. After suffering severe economic losses during the Civil War the family moved to Grayson County, Texas. There Conner met Queenie Victoria Younger, whom he married on January 19, 1884. They made their home on a 600-acre tract in Clay County near Bellevue, east of Henrietta, where Conner had previously built a small herd of cattle.

In the summer of 1887 the Conners moved their 350 cattle into the Panhandle, stopping first at Quitaque, near the future site of Plainview. On Christmas Day 1887 Conner surveyed and located section 34, block B5 in Randall County, near the T Anchor Ranch headquarters. He bought this land from the state for three dollars an acre on April 2, 1888, and constructed a half-dugout from logs hauled from nearby Palo Duro Canyon. Here he established a general store and post office, and in the spring of 1889 he laid out the townsite of Canyon City. When Randall County was organized on July 27, the Conner dugout served as a voting place. Conner's daughter Mamie, the oldest of three children, was the first white child born in the county.

To attract settlers to Canyon City, the Conners began donating town lots to anyone willing to built a home or business building. Conner opened the town's first real estate office and gave thirty acres to the Santa Fe Railroad for a depot and cattle pens. He also donated lots for a county courthouse, schools, and churches. In 1891 he built the two-story Victoria Hotel, which he named for his wife. Conner expanded his ranching and real estate ventures steadily over the next two decades and became one of Canyon City's most prosperous citizens.

As a charter member of Canyon's First Baptist Church and Masonic lodge, Conner contributed generously to the improvement of his community's civic and educational institutions and sought to have Palo Duro Canyon made a national park. His crowning achievement was the donation of forty acres near his residence and $2,000 for the establishment of West Texas State Normal College (now West Texas A&M University) in 1910. He died on December 30, 1920, and was buried in Dreamland Cemetery, Canyon. Victoria Conner continued her husband's philanthropic works and was the undisputed leader of the local Pioneer Club until her death on March 27, 1946. Conner Park, Canyon's first city park, is named for the Conners. In 1967 a historical marker was placed on the site of the original Conner dugout in Canyon.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Harley True Burton, "A History of the JA Ranch," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 31 (January 1928). Canyon News November 15, 1928, July 20, 1939, April 4, 1946. Swisher County Historical Commission, Windmilling: 101 Years of Swisher County History (Dallas: Taylor, 1978). Mrs. Clyde W. Warwick, comp., The Randall County Story (Hereford, Texas: Pioneer, 1969).

H. Allen Anderson

COOK, JIM
(1861-1940)

Jim Cook, cattleman and raconteur, son of Mart Cook, was born on February 25, 1861, in Washington County, Arkansas. When the Civil War broke out, Mart enlisted in the Confederate Army and served as a captain under Gen. Sterling Price. Afterward he moved to Texas, rounded up cattle, and sought out a market in Kansas. Jim and his brother Al grew up in the saddle. In 1866 the Cooks were perhaps among the first to drive cattle north to Honeywell, Kansas. The boys' mother died later that year, and their father was reportedly killed by Indians in 1867. Jim and Al went to live with an uncle and cousin who were also ranchers. Until 1876 Jim remained at his uncle's ranch; he was then put in charge of a herd of 1,000 steers to be trailed north to Kansas and fattened on the grasslands there. While on the trail, according to his earliest account, some of Cook's fellow cowboys started calling him Jim Lane and Kid Boss. The nicknames stuck with him for several years. In the fall of 1876 Cook and a partner started their own ranch on the South Fork of the Llano River in Kimball County. Cook remained there until 1880, when he sold his interest.

Both Jim and Al, who sometimes went by the alias of Taylor Williams, worked for O. J. Wiren, foreman of the Quitaque Ranch. In 1881, when the Quitaque was sold to Charles Goodnight and Wiren purchased the Two Circle Bar on the upper Brazos from Jesse Hitson, the Cooks stayed with Wiren. Indeed, Jim "Lane," who was made wagon boss, was said to have owned an interest in the Two Circle Bar, although the records show no such evidence. He reportedly ran his own herd at the ranch and won notoriety among the cowboys as a "hard man to work for and inconsiderate of his men." However, he remained with Wiren five years before leaving "for reasons of my own," as he later stated. At that time Cook reportedly "put a notice in the Fisher County Call refusing to answer to Lane any more to anyone."

In 1888 he was hired by the Capitol Freehold Company as foreman for the XIT Ranch's Escarbada Division. Aggressive and overbearing and often carrying a pair of six-shooters, Cook was nearly always at odds with cow thieves from "across the line" and occasionally with his own men. When he met a visiting young lady from Kansas City at La Plata, he fell in love with her, and according to several old cowboys, was instrumental in getting the Escarbada headquarters declared a post office so that letters from his lady would be delivered directly to him. Eventually they were married.

When Deaf Smith County was organized on October 3, 1890, Cook was elected its first sheriff, but he was ousted a year later because of his needless killing of a cowboy. In later years he boasted that since La Plata had no cemetery he had to "kill a man to start one." Whether or not this was true, he was finally acquitted after judicial wrangling and a change of venue to Amarillo. Possibly to escape the effects of the scandal, Cook and his wife turned up in South Dakota for a short time and then homesteaded near Monument, New Mexico. They became the parents of a daughter, whom Cook managed to raise after his wife died. His brother, Al, eventually made his home in Las Cruces.

Beginning in the early 1900s, Jim Cook traveled throughout the western United States and Canada, prospecting and working as a wilderness-park guide in his attempt to find or re-create the way of life he had known during the early years of the Cattle Kingdom. In 1912 he published a booklet entitled The Canadian Northwest as It Is Today, in which he described his experiences on a pack trip into the Canadian wilds in 1910-11. Cook's eccentricities increased in the 1920s when he proposed to open a central detective agency in Austin to recover stolen cattle, an information bureau to locate choice homesteads, and a home for aged cowboys. As he recounted his early adventures to enthralled listeners, facts became submerged in plausible fantasy. He made his later travels in a battered Model T with his daughter and two granddaughters.

While Cook was living in Albuquerque during the 1930s, T. M. Pearce of the University of New Mexico conducted a series of interviews with him for the New Mexico Folklore Society. These formed the basis for the book Lane of the Llano (1936). In this work Cook related his alleged birth in Llano County in 1858, his capture by Comanches as a boy, his wanderings with the tribe and marriage to the chief's daughter White Swan, his role as a scout in Ranald S. Mackenzie's Palo Duro campaign, his alleged involvement with John S. Chisum and Billy the Kid, and the death of White Swan from a rattlesnake bite, all mixed with convincing descriptions of the arid land, with its flora and fauna and harsh realities. One contemporary called the book "a bunch of the worst lies that would make Bill Burns, Zane Grey, and John Cook green with envy," and J. Evetts Haley admitted that an accurate biography of Cook could never be written as long as the man failed to distinguish between truth and fiction. However, for the remainder of his life, Jim Cook was lionized by college students, faculty, and others who saw him as a living symbol of the vanished frontier. He died in January 1940 and was buried in the Oddfellows Cemetery in Goldthwaite.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Evetts Haley, The XIT Ranch of Texas and the Early Days of the Llano Estacado (Chicago: Lakeside, 1929; rpts., Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953, 1967). Deaf Smith County: The Land and Its People (Hereford, Texas: Deaf Smith County Historical Society, 1982).

H. Allen Anderson

DYER, LEIGH RICHMOND
(1849-1902)

Leigh Richmond Dyer, Panhandle pioneer and rancher, one of eight children of Henry Joel and Suzan (Miller) Dyer, was born in Dyersburg, Tennessee, in 1849. His father, former attorney general for the West District of Tennessee, moved his family in 1854 to Fort Belknap, Texas, and later to Fort Worth, where the elder Dyer resumed his law practice. After the death of both his parents in the mid-1860s, Leigh Dyer and his remaining two brothers were left in the care of their only sister, Molly (see GOODNIGHT, MARY ANN), who taught school at Weatherford. Dyer began working as a drover for Charles Goodnight in 1867 and made several drives over the Goodnight-Loving Trail to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, and beyond. In the fall of 1875, when Goodnight began moving his herd from Colorado to Palo Duro Canyon, Dyer and his brothers Sam and Walter were among the drovers. When winter came, Goodnight left Dyer in charge of the herd. The following year the Dyers helped Goodnight and John George Adair establish the JA Ranch. In 1877 Leigh and Walter Dyer, in partnership with Samuel Coleman, filed on a 320-acre tract in Randall County near the site of present Canyon. Here the Dyers developed a quality herd of shorthorn cows, which they crossbred with registered bulls from the JA. Their brand was DY. In 1878 the Dyer ranch was sold to Jot Gunter, William B. Munson, and John S. Summerfield,q as part of a vast spread they had bought. Dyer was hired as range boss by the GMS (later the T Anchor Ranch). Later, Dyer and L. C. Coleman established what became the Shoe Bar Ranch on the Red River in Hall County. When Dodge City opened as a cattle market, Dyer trailed the first JA herd there. When Donley County was organized in 1882, he was designated a commissioner. He was also active in the Panhandle Stock Association. After Goodnight bought the Quitaque (Lazy F) Ranch, Dyer was appointed its manager. In 1883 he married Willimena Cantelou of Weatherford. A few years later he turned the management of the Quitaque over to Walter and established his own ranch on Mulberry Creek in Armstrong County. Dyer was known as a superb and humane breeder of horses. In the 1890s he and his wife sold the Mulberry Creek Ranch and, with Molly Goodnight, purchased several tracts west of the Goodnight community. The Dyers had two children. Dyer died on May 4, 1902, at his home near Goodnight and was buried at Goodnight. A log ranchhouse that he and his brother Walter built in 1877, later the T Anchor headquarters, is now on the grounds of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon. It is the oldest extant in the Panhandle.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Evetts Haley, Charles Goodnight (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1949). C. Boone McClure, "A Review of the T Anchor Ranch," Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 3 (1930). Pauline D. and R. L. Robertson, Cowman's Country: Fifty Frontier Ranches in the Texas Panhandle, 1876-1887 (Amarillo: Paramount, 1981).

H. Allen Anderson

MOW­WAY
(?-1886)

Mow­way, a Comanche headman, was the leader of the Kotsoteka ("Buffalo­eater") band during their last years of dominance in West Texas. His name was thought to have meant Shaking Hand or Hand Shaker, but his son, Ti­so­yo, later claimed that it more accurately meant Push Aside. Apparently a warrior of some renown, Mow­way once killed a grizzly bear with his knife after the animal had attacked a hunting companion in eastern New Mexico. As a memento he wore one of the bear's claws in his scalplock. Though Mow­way signed the Medicine Lodge Treaty in October 1867, during the late 1860s he raided frontier settlements in Texas and in the vicinity of Santa Fe. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan's winter campaign of 1868, particularly Maj. Andrew W. Evans's Canadian River expedition in December, prompted him to surrender to the military authorities at Fort Bascom, New Mexico. Mow­way and several other Comanches were subsequently sent to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for a brief confinement for past raids before being returned under guard to Fort Sill, Indian Territory, in June 1869. When Mow­way's guards got drunk along the way, the chief continued on to Fort Sill and turned himself in to Col. Benjamin Grierson. The astonished commander promptly turned him over to the new Quaker agent, Lawrie Tatum. Mow­way left Fort Sill and rejoined his band on the Llano Estacado. Though some sources say that he generally favored peace with whites, he did not want to be under government control and thought that living conditions on the reservations were worse than outside of them.

After the Salt Valley Massacre in May 1871 Mow­way and his Kotsotekas became more closely associated with the hostile Quahadi band, led by Parra­o­coom (Bull Bear) and Quanah Parker. He was among the Indian leaders pursued without success by Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie in the fall of 1871. Mow-way attended the council in 1872 with Capt. Henry Alvord at Fort Cobb. While he was away at these meetings Mackenzie's troops attacked his village near the North Fork of the Red River on September 29, 1872, and took 124 prisoners, mostly women and children. Mow­way moved his beleaguered camp near the agency and remained until the release of these captives the following spring. There followed a short period of peace, but at the outbreak of the Red River War in the summer of 1874, Mow­way and his band hid out at Palo Duro Canyon, where they again battled Mackenzie's Fourth United States Cavalry in late September. After retreating south into the Quitaque country, Mow­way and 200 followers received the delegation led by Sgt. John B. Charlton and Dr. Jacob Sturm and surrendered to Mackenzie at Fort Sill on April 28, 1875. On the reservation Mow­way was among the leading candidates for principal chief of the Comanches before the federal authorities selected Quanah for that position. In 1878 he abdicated his chieftainship and settled with his family on a farm south of Fort Sill. There he succumbed to pneumonia in 1886 and was buried in an unmarked grave at the foot of South Arbuckle Hill, three miles east of his homestead.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Robert G. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie, or Winning West Texas from the Comanches (Washington: Eynon Printing, 1935). James L. Haley, The Buffalo War: The History of the Red River Indian Uprising of 1874 (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1976). Bill Neeley, Quanah Parker and His People (Slaton, Texas: Brazos, 1986). Wilbur Sturtevant Nye, Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1937; 3d ed. 1969). Wilbur Sturtevant Nye, Plains Indian Raiders (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968).

H. Allen Anderson

TAFOYA, JOSÉ PIEDAD
(ca. 1830-?)

José Piedad Tafoya, a Comanchero who often traded in stolen livestock and other contraband items with the Comanches and their allies on the Llano Estacado before 1875, was born in northern New Mexico around 1830. Tafoya owned a sizable spread in San Miguel County, New Mexico, on which he raised mostly sheep. Records show that on September 17, 1860, he enlisted for service against the Navajos. Throughout most of the next decade, however, he engaged in a lucrative, often extralegal, trade with the nomadic Indians of the Texas Panhandle. Often backed by army officers and frontier merchants, Tafoya quickly rose to prominence among the Comancheros. From 1865 to 1867 Tafoya maintained a crude stone and adobe dwelling on Las Lenguas (Los Lingos) Creek near the breaks of the Quitaque valley in what is now Briscoe County, Texas. There he acted as a middleman by trading thousands of stolen livestock, many of them bearing the brands of Texas ranchers like Oliver Loving, Charles Goodnight, and John W. Sheek. At one time his retainers hauled trade goods in caravans and trailed cattle on the Fort Smith-Santa Fe road via Fort Bascom. From this ill-gained supply of stock, which was distributed among the ranges near the settlements of northern and eastern New Mexico, Tafoya and his allies realized a handsome profit. After 1867 Tafoya ceased his operations in the Quitaque valley because of attempts by federal officials in New Mexico to crack down on the illicit trade. Nevertheless, he apparently continued making occasional trips to the Llano Estacado as circumstances permitted. Though he did not mention it in his official report, Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie is reputed to have captured Tafoya in 1874 and forced him, at the end of a rope, to reveal the Quahadi Indian stronghold in Palo Duro Canyon. This story is not supported by contemporary records, but it coincides with the end of Tafoya's career as a Comanchero.

Tafoya resumed sheep ranching in San Miguel County. According to his own testimony, however, he served intermittently until 1882 as a government scout under Mackenzie, Col. Nelson Henry Davis, and Gen. Edward Hatch. He participated in Capt. Nicholas Nolan's fabled Lost Expedition across the parched South Plains area in the summer of 1877. In 1878 Tafoya settled his wife, Julia, and four children on the Puenta de Agua, near its junction with Rita Blanca Creek, in Oldham County, Texas. Apparently, however, their stay in Texas was brief; they retreated to their old San Miguel County homesteads after William M. D. Lee and other Texas cattlemen bought, or perhaps bribed, the pastores to leave in the early 1880s. José Tafoya probably spent his remaining years on his sheep ranch in San Miguel County. In June 1893 he and three other onetime Comancheros were called to testify before the United States Court of Claims as a result of Goodnight's attempts to secure damages for livestock he and John W. Sheek had lost to Indians during the 1860s. In his sworn deposition on June 23, Tafoya described his activities on the Quitaque and admitted that many of the horses and cattle he had traded carried the brands of the plaintiffs, who were eventually awarded $14,176. That trial apparently was his last public appearance, since no further records have been unearthed in regard to Tafoya's later activities and death.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Ernest R. Archambeau, "The First Federal Census in the Panhandle, 1880," Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 23 (1950). H. Bailey Carroll, "Nolan's `Lost Nigger' Expedition of 1877," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 44 (July 1940). Lowell H. Harrison, ed., "Three Comancheros and a Trader," Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 38 (1965). Charles Leroy Kenner, A History of New Mexican-Plains Indian Relations (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969). Frederick W. Rathjen, The Texas Panhandle Frontier (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973).

H. Allen Anderson

(information from The Handbook of Texas Online --
a multidisciplinary encyclopedia of Texas history, geography, and culture.)

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This page was last updated August 16, 2000.