RUFE AND JOE RICE
Rufe and Joe Rice and maybe Pierce Rice took five
to six hundred cattle
to the Door Key, and Tom Patterson, who lived on the Cow
House near Captain Hunt, went out with a like number or more, and I
believe he said that Gentry and Graves sent a herd, G. M. Gentry and
Marion Graves, brother-in-laws. Joe Rice ran the place. Altogether it made
a big outfit. Old Man Sol Barron went out there too. His cattle ranch was
on the Clear Fork of the Brazos, not far away, and his horse ranch was
some miles to the north. Said his son Will Barron was then dead.
(The Edwards I knew at Lubbock in the mid-twenties [ 1920's]
came from there and was probably from the same family. Once he signed up
for a job on the Yellow House Ranch out there. The first think the boss
ordered him to do was to climb and grease the windmill. I remember this
mill very well, indicated in Yellow House Canyon down below the cliff. He
demurred but the boss said that he would like for him to do it. He climbed
as far as the platform on which he lay down and they had to rescue him. A
picture of Mr. Tom Patterson, a very tall man on horseback, is in the
Hamilton Courthouse. In fact there is an interesting collection of
portraits gotten up mostly by the late Judge P. M. Rice still in the
County Judge’s office though it should be displayed in the corridor. Mr.
Joe Rice was more reckless than Mr. Rufe, whom I knew well, the first-born
white child in the county, but sons of old James
Rice, merchant and first Chief Justice. I believe Mr. Joe Rice went on
to Arizona. Mr. Williams, himself, once punched cattle for man J. Wright
Moore. About 1937 I met Evetts Haley and Carl Vandale at Snyder and we
spent about three days during a sandstorm taking down the old buffalo
hunter’s story. Also Mr. Jim (Smokey Joe) McCrary worked at one for Mr.
Moore. Later had the old McCrary Ranch west of Hamilton, whom I knew. His
children came to school in a hack and the mules were always tied to a
certain liveoak tree.\
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CHESLEY'S HAMILTON COUNTY INTERVIEWS
BY
HERVEY EDGAR CHESLEY, JR.
Born: 21 November, 1894
Died: 17 July, 1979
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