The Stribling Texas Legacy: Cattle & Education

Beau Best

 

A long line of Striblings was begun in Texas at the beginning of the Civil War.  Born in Tennessee, James Clayton Stribling was working as a 32 year old school teacher when he was located at La Grange, Texas by the 1860 U. S. Census. He soon married Lurana Fidelia Hudson Cunningham in 1861 in Fayette County, Texas.  A grandson of a Revolutionary War soldier by the same name, James Clayton Stribling passed his name on to his son James Clayton Stribling Jr. when he was born in Winchester, Fayette County, Texas, in the fall of 1864. Bastrop County records reveal that “Major” Stribling and his family were still residing at “Cunningham’s Prairie” in Fayette County in 1875.

Sometime around 1880 J. C. Jr. began studies at Baylor College at Independence, while Major Stribling’s brother John Beckham Stribling came to Texas with his in laws, the Fowlers not far behind. Soon J. C. Sr. and his younger brother John and the Fowlers had quite a spread near Llano, Texas. Stribling was the name, and CATTLE was the game...

A rare photo of Texas cowboys...Thanks to Marda Stribling: "The photograph was taken in "No Man's Land" of the Indian Territory and shows the "Llano Trail Drivers", 1880s. The riders (left to right) were identified by Mr. C.E.Shultz as Bill Pettet, Jim Wilson, Scrap Reed, Marion Clymer, Zan Watts, Dave Reed, Dock Ligon and John Stribling. "  Stribling was boss of the herd and, as a result of his then considered "cranky" notion that a man ought to butcher his own beef, the herd thus pictured was one of the very few if not the only one driven up the trail that provided all the steaks consumed by the accompanying riders...." It's the cover photo of the Stribling and Related Families book by Mary Frances Stribling Moursund.

Just click on the picture to view an enlargement.

While brother John’s dealings led him to relocation and ultimate disaster, Major Stribling and the Fowlers continued to prosper in a cattle enterprise that lasted over half a century.

Tommie and J. C. Stribling Jr., around 1900.

Firmly planted in Llano, J. C. Stribling Jr. grew up in the cattle business with an ambition to start a purebred Hereford herd. He became one of the pioneers of the modern cattle industry when in 1897 he started just that, with just ten purebred heifers. J. C. was married to Kathrine Tommie Long and they had five children, four which lived to maturity; Ruth, Webster Hudson (died age 18), John Benjamin and James Clayton III, born in 1902, known to present day descendants as “Pop.”

Only daughter Ruth attended Mary Hardin- Baylor all-female college in Belton before marrying into the Fowler family next door. There is no doubt J. C. was proud of his daughter Ruth, as he made a gift of $50,000.00 to her alma mater in 1920 to build a new dormitory, named after her. [My own daughter lived there while attending Mary Hardin-Baylor.  I remember thinking…  I wonder… Could it be the same as my friends in Navasota? NAW!]

But the offspring J.C. was most famous for were the calves thrown by his record-priced prize bull, Beau Best.  Many of the great Hereford bulls in the early days were from the “Beau” strain. I was actually hired to restore this painting! It was about this time that the depth of the Stribling family heritage unfolded to me. Beau Best helped build a Stribling Hereford legacy that lasted until the herd was dispersed in 1932.

Stribling Ranch cowboys around 1920... That may be J. C. III on far left.

During hard times the Stribling men fought the beef price wars with particular cunning, modifying their trade to raise free ranging hogs instead. In the spring they would round up their nearly wild swine and put them on rail cars to the meat packers, making huge profits, and a few heart attacks no doubt when these feral Hill Country monsters were sent into the unsuspecting processing plants.

 

J. C. Stribling Jr. with friends at a Texas Cattle Raiser's Convention around 1915... he is #7 on far right.

The Striblings had cattle operations all over, and were even recorded as running cattle on a lease from the Osage Nation in northern Oklahoma around the Turn of the Century. After several severe droughts in Texas the Striblings relocated their operation in the 1950’s to the Madill Ranch, nestled in the Arbuckle Mountains of Oklahoma. J. C. Jr passed away in 1954.
 

J.C. III stayed in the cattle industry all of his life, raising and marketing cattle in Central Texas and Oklahoma. His son Jim (J. C IV) grew up in ranching and told me plenty of stories of his adventures on the range. He once described how he was caught out in the open in a serious Oklahoma hail storm. Just a young man, he knew what to do, and he stripped off his saddle and slapped his horse hard, hoping he would fly home and make it to shelter… and then covered himself with the saddle as the baseball-sized ice balls began to pummel him.  This way he and the horse fared alright… although it was a long walk home afterwards. He ended up as a professor at Texas A & M, teaching Land Management. His son Jimmy Stribling (V) does tractor - dozer work and lives in Fluvanna.


There have been six J. C. Striblings in ths particular line, and I have met three of them. The last in the line, J. C. Stribling (VI!) is the oldest son of my buddy Steve Stribling and attends Navasota High School.

Today vestiges of the Stribling legacy still operate cattle ranches including the Stillwaters Ranch in Llano, Texas run by Stribling descendants, brothers Will and Clayton Leverett.

Quanah Parker, Comanche halfbreed, chief of two worlds: TOP TEN of TEXAS

This is my artist's conception illustrating what a wide-eyed cavalryman described the night he and his bunkies attacked the King of the Southern Plains.

Who knows how many centuries the Comanches had used this gaping hole in the earth in far northwest Texas to hide from their pursuers?

In my younger days I wanted to be a western artist, and I especially loved drawing and painting Native Americans... and my favorite Indians were Comanches.

They were from Texas, and they had as titular head of their nation, a very unusual, very extraordinary man. A man we know as Quanah Parker, born to a captive white woman, who became the greatest Comanche War Chief, at the very end of the "wild Indian," Wild West era. His mother, Cynthia Ann Parker, had been captured by Indians where her famly had established a frontier outpost on the farthest reaches of the Navasota River, in east Texas. Several of her family were killed and little Cynthia was traded around until she was far from home, never to be rescued until she was a grown woman. Quanah was just one of the offspring from the union between Cynthia and Chief Peta Nokona, who ruled and raided the far west Texas plains. Named "fragrance," or stink! as some would translate it, the young halfbreed prince had seen very few white people besides his mother, until he was of fighting age, and he faced them heroically in battle.

As a young war chief, he led hundreds of Comanches and Kiowas and Cheyennes in a seige at Adobe Walls, a trading post in the far northern Texas panhandle, where he showed extraordinary bravery and confidence against the buffalo hunters within the walls. But his people were outgunned and many were killed, and Quanah learned that day that he had to be better, stronger, smarter than this enemy to match him. That may have been when he began to study the white man, and that led to his someday being a ruler in their world as well.

But when the rest of his people gave in and went willingly to the Reservation in Oklahoma, Quanah held out, and spit on the idea of losing his freedom. He was the last wild king of the southern plains. The soldiers hunted him month after month and could not find him... General Ranald S. Mackenzie finally ran him down, finding his secret hiding place... a giant hole in the earth. Today we call it Palo Duro Canyon. I have always found the place to be inspiring, even mystical. There are so many footprints and echoes in the canyon, that speak of the Conquistadores, Quanah, Goodnight and his herds. I always find it hard to leave.

And Quanah did not want to leave either, and fought for his life, and gave amazing resistance. He and a few warriors managed to slip from the Army's grasp. Then finally, after weeks of flight, beaten and hungry, his small group gave in and joined their kinsmen at the reservation. And in most cases, that was the end of the story.

But not Quanah. Quanah contacted his white relatives in Texas. He was no longer treated like a ferocious enemy, but a celebrity. The Governor wrote him a letter giving him passage anywhere he wanted to go. When he found the Parker's, his cousins, he wanted a picture of his mother, then deceased. [Ironically, she was "rescued" and his father killed, by another of my top ten, Texas Ranger Sul Ross] Later the Chief proudly, sentimentally posed with her picture in his home in Oklahoma. Quanah Parker was determined to bridge himself into his new world. He learned some English, and studied the white man's ways. He amassed a fortune on any man's terms. He had many wives, and many children and grandchildren. Amazingly, and only in America, where we nurture our former enemies, authorities saw in him the qualities of leadership useful to any culture.

Quanah Parker was appointed as District Court Judge. He built a massive mansion with many rooms, with giant stars on the roof. He served in this capacity as all powerful judge without fanfare, until somebody noticed... he was a polygamist. When told he had to obey the LAW, and downsize, and send the rest packing.. he pointed to his harem of sad-eyed lovelies and told the authorities... "You tell 'em!"

Never-the-less, he put up tipis in the backyard, for all but Tonarcy, his foremost wife.

When President Teddy Roosevelt and his entourage wanted to go wolf hunting, it was not considered complete without Quanah to ride along. They met at the train station where Roosevelt complimented the Chief on his beautiful daughters who stood proudly behind him. Someone corrected the President... (Ahem) these were not his daughters...

Roosevelt howled, and complimented him again, how did an old man like him keep up with such young wives?

Quanah was not shy about his girls, "Young woman, old woman, ANY woman good for young man... Only young woman good for old man!"

Quanah Parker lived and died, still king of the southern plains, Chief of two worlds, in any man's estimation. And the only man I know of to have ever risen as high as you could go, in two opposing cultures.

That's what makes him one of my "Top Ten in Texas." You can read about Cabeza de Vaca, Frank Hamer, Sam Houston, Michael Murphy, Joe Tex, and Sul Ross in other articles in this blog. I am proud to put Quanah on that list.

There will be more, floating down the Navasota Current.