MCGEE, THOMAS T.
(1849-1894)
Thomas T. McGee, first sheriff of Hemphill
County,
was born on September
13, 1849, in West
Virginia. In 1877,
after working as
a cowboy for a time in Colorado,
he accompanied Henry W. (Hank) Cresswell's
Bar CC
herd to its new location in Ochiltree
County.
He was listed as a resident of Roberts
County
in the 1880 census. Later he worked for the Moody-Andrews Cattle
Company (PO
Ranch) and helped drive herds to Dodge
City for several
ranches, including
Nick T. Eaton's U Bar
U.
In December 1883 he registered his own Quarter Circle C brand at
Mobeetie. About 1886 he bought
William Young's interest in
the PO
Ranch and
became foreman of it.
During his tenure as foreman McGee was elected the first
sheriff of Hemphill
County
when the county was organized in 1887. With his deputy sheriff,
Vastine Stickley,
as a partner,
McGee operated a wagonyard and
livery stable in the
town of Canadian
until 1893. On June
5, 1889, he married Mary Blandy
Taylor
at the home of her uncle, George T. Lynn, in Kansas
City.
In the fall of 1894 George Isaacs sent five envelopes
reported to
contain a total of $25,000 from Kansas
City to his home
base in Canadian.
After the train pulled into Canadian on the evening of November
24, the money
was transferred to the Wells Fargo
safe in the railroad station. Moments
later gunfire erupted
outside the station.
Sheriff McGee, who had just stepped out onto the
platform, was fatally
wounded and died later that night. When the envelopes were
opened they were
found to contain a total of only $500 in
small bills.
The obvious scheme of Isaacs to swindle Wells Fargo
of thousands of dollars had miscarried. Isaacs was subsequently
charged with
McGee's murder, convicted in 1895 on a change of venue to Quanah
in Hardeman
County, and sentenced to life imprisonment at Huntsville.
He later was reported to have escaped and fled to Mexico,
then to Arizona,
although some sources indicate that he was released. Three men
accused of being
his accomplices-Jim Harbolt, Dan
McKenzie, and Tulsa
Jack, a member of the Doolin
Gang-were later
apprehended by deputy marshals and returned for trial to
Canadian.
After her husband's death, Mary McGee reportedly had
difficulty in
settling his estate, since he did most of his banking in Kansas
City. She served as
a nurse's aid in England
during World War I and remained there until her death. Her ashes
were returned
to Canadian for burial beside her husband.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Ernest R. Archambeau,
"The
First Federal Census in the Panhandle, 1880," Panhandle-Plains
Historical
Review 23 (1950). Jerry Sinise,
George Washington
Arrington (Burnet, Texas: Eakin
Press, 1979). F.
Stanley [Stanley
F. L. Crocchiola], Rodeo
Town
(Canadian, Texas)
(Denver: World, 1953).
H. Allen Anderson
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MOODY, ROBERT
(1838-1915)
Robert Moody, rancher, banker, and businessman, one of
twelve children
of Thomas Cross and Arabella (Neu)
Moody, was born on June 26, 1838,
at Apsley
Farm, near Hampshire,
England.
He was schooled at Manchester
and in 1857 journeyed to Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas,
to join his older brother, Frank.
Soon afterwards the rest of the family, whose fortune
had been
depleted, immigrated to America
and settled near West
Port
Landing (later Kansas
City). Over the next
several years
the Moody brothers operated a freighting business on the Santa
Fe Trail. For a short time in
1859-60 Robert was
in partnership with John Thatcher in a general store in Pueblo,
Colorado.
In 1868 the Moodys sold their
freight wagons and
settled on farms near Lenexa,
Kansas.
On April 2 of that year Robert married Mary Cathryn
Allen, daughter of W. P. Allen of Kansas
City; they became
the parents of
seven children. The Moodys lived at
Kansas City
until 1871, when Moody became
manager of the Dipper Ranch for P. T. Barnum, whom he had first
met in New York
in 1857. Moody later bought an
interest in this enterprise, located on the Huerfano River about
forty miles
from Pueblo, which he sold in 1876.
Moody's interest in the Panhandle began in 1879, when he
joined the
Pollard brothers, whom he had known in Pueblo, at their PO
Ranch in Hemphill
County.
In 1881 he purchased Milton Pollard's half-interest in the
ranch. Moody became
a charter member of the Panhandle Stock Association, which first
met at the Husselby House in Mobeetie.
In 1882 he and J. B. Andrews, a Pueblo
merchant, formed the Moody-Andrews Land and Cattle Company after
the latter
bought Hammond
Pollard's share. The 1886 blizzards almost drove this
partnership out of
business and prompted Andrews to sell out to Moody, who thus
became the PO's
sole owner.
In 1887, after establishing his headquarters on Red Deer
Creek, Moody
brought his family from Olathe,
Kansas,
to the new rail town of Canadian.
With Henry Hamburg he established the Traders Bank, which later
became the
First National Bank of Canadian. In addition, Moody had real
estate interests
and stock in other town businesses.
As an active member of the Baptist congregation, he gave
the land for
the church's Canadian
Academy
and became one of the school trustees. He also helped organize
the public
school and established the Moody Medal and Scholarship for
outstanding
students. Later, in 1906, he erected the sumptuous Moody Hotel,
which was for
years a Panhandle showplace.
In 1900 Moody moved to Kansas
City, where his wife
died in 1908. In
the meantime he had become owner of a chain of banks in Texas
and Oklahoma.
After turning these and his ranching interests over to his
children and
in-laws, Moody moved to Long
Beach, California,
where in 1912-13 he erected the Moody Block on Ocean
Avenue. Even
then he considered
Canadian his home and made frequent trips back to the Panhandle.
On September
27, 1915, while visiting his son
Thomas in
Canadian, Moody died after suffering a paralytic stroke. He was
buried in the
family lot at Lenexa.
Moody descendents still reside in Canadian and other parts of
the Panhandle, as
well as in Oklahoma.
The Moody Hotel in Canadian, sold by the heirs in 1921,
has been
renovated and now houses the Pioneer
Museum.
Moody Street
in Canadian is also named for him.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Margaret Moody Gerlach,
"Robert Moody, 1838-1915," Panhandle-Plains Historical Review
4
(1931). Sallie B. Harris, Cowmen and Ladies: A History of Hemphill
County
(Canyon, Texas: Staked Plains, 1977). Glyndon M. Riley, The
History of Hemphill
County
(M.A. thesis, West Texas State College, 1939). Pauline D. and R.
L. Robertson,
Cowman's Country: Fifty Frontier Ranches in the Texas
Panhandle, 1876-1887 (Amarillo: Paramount, 1981). F. Stanley [Stanley
F. L. Crocchiola], The
Canadian, Texas,
Story (Nazareth, Texas, 1975). F. Stanley [Stanley
F. L. Crocchiola], Rodeo
Town
(Canadian, Texas)
(Denver: World, 1953).
H. Allen Anderson
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SIMPSON, GEORGE ALLEN
(1852-1937)
George Allen Simpson, buffalo hunter and pioneer settler
in the
Panhandle, was born on February 28, 1852,
in Boone County,
Missouri,
the son of John and Marietta
(Foster) Simpson. His father died when George was a small boy.
His mother, who
also had two daughters, later married a man named Gibbs. Gibbs
moved his new
family to Nebraska
and then Colorado
while hunting buffalo for railroad construction crews.
In 1867 the family traveled down the Goodnight-Loving
Trail to South Texas.
They purchased cattle on the way and
planned to start a herd of their own. In 1868 Gibbs's sons
Elijah and Billy
trailed the herd to Baxter
Springs, Kansas.
After living in Ellis County, Texas, for five years, the Gibbses
and their trail hands drove a herd north over the Chisholm
Trail, but danger
from Indians and rustlers forced Gibbs to dispose of his cattle
near Caldwell,
Kansas.
At Fort Dodge
he formed a buffalo-hunting group with Elijah and Billy and his
stepson, George
A Simpson. George's mother and two sisters cooked for the
hunters. They began
their operations in the upper Arkansas
valley in eastern Colorado.
At Bent's Fort, Simpson met Sylvania
Wood and her family, whom he accompanied to the Canadian valley
in the Texas
Panhandle in the spring of 1875.
The hunters established their operations at Hidetown
(later Mobeetie), near the newly
established Fort
Elliott.
With such men as John R. Cook and Sylvania's
brother
Buck, Simpson hunted the entire Panhandle-South Plains region
for the
next two years, until the buffalo were nearly exterminated. The
men gradually
made a great profit from the hides they shipped to Fort
Griffin
and Dodge City
through the Rath and Hamburg
firm.
On October
4, 1877, George A. Simpson and Sylvania
Wood became the first couple on record to be married in the
Panhandle. A
Lieutenant Taylor performed the ceremony at Fort
Elliott,
and Lt. Theodore H. Eckerson, the
post adjutant, drew
up the certificate, on which he erroneously recorded the date as
October 5.
During the next two years the Simpsons
lived near
Junction in Kimble
County,
where they operated a gristmill.
However, thieves stole most of their horses and cattle,
and in 1880
they moved back to Wheeler
County.
They homesteaded land on Russell Creek near Mobeetie
for five years and later bought property on Dry and Clear creeks
in Hemphill
County. The Simpsons produced
vegetables and supplies
for the local market, raised a few cattle, and were said to have
grown the
first domesticated flowers (zinnias) in the Panhandle. They had
two sons and
five daughters.
Simpson helped organize Hemphill
County
in 1887 and was a member of its first commissioners' court. For
sixty years the
Simpsons were prominent citizens in
the town of Canadian.
George died there on November 21, 1937; Sylvania
lived her remaining years with her daughter at Las
Cruces, New
Mexico, where she
died on September
30, 1939. She was buried at Canadian next to her husband. The Simpsons' land on Clear Creek later
became the site of the
Canadian country club.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: John R. Cook, The Border and the Buffalo:
An Untold Story of the Southwest Plains (Topeka, Kansas: Crane,
1907; rpt., New
York: Citadel Press, 1967). Sallie B. Harris, comp., Hide
Town
in the Texas
Panhandle: 100 Years in Wheeler
County
and Panhandle of Texas
(Hereford, Texas: Pioneer, 1968). James M. Oswald, "History of Fort
Elliot,"
Panhandle-Plains
Historical Review 32 (1959). F. Stanley [Stanley
F. L. Crocchiola], Rodeo
Town
(Canadian, Texas)
(Denver: World, 1953).
H. Allen Anderson
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SPRINGER, A. G.
(?-1878)
A. G. (Jim) Springer, rancher, was born in the
northeastern United
States,
possibly in Delaware.
He moved to Kansas
in 1873 and established a ranch on the south bank of the Arkansas
River across from Dodge
City. In 1874 or
early 1875 he moved
to the Panhandle of Texas and built a trading post for buffalo
hunters in what
is now Hemphill County, where Boggy Creek empties into the
Canadian River.
In 1875 Springer purchased 300 head of cattle from
Dillard R. Fant, who was driving
a herd through to Dodge
City. The Dodge
City Times in
September 1877 reported
Springer "fully embarked in the stock business" with some 700 or
800
cattle. He was thus the first permanent rancher in the
Panhandle. He made at
least one drive to Dodge
City.
Although his herd grew and prospered, his business was
primarily as a
trader, storekeeper, and way station operator. Because of his
isolation and
fear of Indian attack, he fortified his post so heavily that
soldiers called it
Fort
Sitting
Bull. John R. Cook, who frequently traded with Springer,
described the station
as being so impregnable that a few determined men could make it
impossible for
the allied tribes to take it without artillery.
When the mail route was extended from Fort
Elliott
to Mobeetie, Springer's ranch
became a major stop,
named Boggy Station, on the stage line. Springer was designated
postmaster on
October 9, 1878. With a road ranch, trading post, and cattle
ranch, he soon
accumulated considerable cash, bonds, and cattle; his cattle
alone were
reportedly worth $12,000.
On November
17, 1878, Springer and his hired
hand, Tom Leadbetter, were gambling
at the way station with some
buffalo soldiers from Fort
Elliott.
A quarrel developed, and both Springer and Leadbetter
were killed. Springer's brother came from Delaware
to settle the estate and sold the buildings to men named Tuttle
and Chapman.
The post office, which had been closed after Springer's
death, was
opened on September
9, 1879, under the name Springer
Ranch, with
Tuttle as postmaster.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: John R. Cook, The Border and the Buffalo:
An Untold Story of the Southwest Plains (Topeka, Kansas: Crane,
1907; rpt., New
York: Citadel Press, 1967). J. Evetts
Haley, Mose Hayes (MS, Barker Texas
History Center, University of
Texas at Austin, 1930).
C. Robert Haywood