Harsh Country, Hard Times: Clayton Wheat Williams and the Transformation of the Trans-Pecos
320
Harsh Country, Hard Times: Clayton Wheat Williams and the Transformation of the Trans-Pecos
320eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Clayton Wheat Williams—West Texas oilman, rancher, civic leader, veteran of the Great War, and avocational historian—was a risk taker, who both reflected and molded the history of his region. His life spanned a dynamic period in Texas history when automobiles replaced horse-drawn wagons, electricity replaced steam power in the oilfields, and barren and virtually worthless ranch land became valuable for the oil and gas under its surface.
The setting for Williams’s story, like that of his father before him, is Fort Stockton in the rugged Trans-Pecos region of Texas. As a youngster accompanying his father on surveying trips through the land, and subsequently as a cadet at Texas A&M, he developed a toughness that served him well in France and Flanders. His letters home provide an unusually nuanced picture of what life was like for an American officer in Europe during the Great War.
After the war, he returned home, where he taught himself petroleum geology—so effectively that he picked the site of what would become in 1928 the deepest producing oil well in the world. With his brother, he mapped the structure of what later became the Fort Stockton oil and gas field, and he went on to hammer out a successful career in the boom and bust cycles of the West Texas oil industry.
On the civic front, Williams served for fourteen years as a Pecos County commissioner, and he held offices in a number of social and civic organizations. Imbued with a deep love for the history of his region, he wrote (with the editorial help of historian Ernest Wallace at Texas Tech University) Texas’ Last Frontier: Fort Stockton and the Trans-Pecos, 1861–1895, published by Texas A&M University Press in 1982. Nonetheless, by some of his neighbors he may be best remembered for his role in drying up the town’s famous Comanche Springs by pumping water feeding the spring’s aquifer to irrigate his and others’ farms west of town.
Williams left behind a treasure trove of letters, personal papers and writings, and interviews with his family, helping document in rich detail the history of an unforgiving land as well as what life was like during a pivotal period of American history. These materials, which form the core of the present manuscript, reveal a life that made a difference in the economy and history of the region and the nation at large.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781603444798 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Texas A&M University Press |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2011 |
| Series: | Clayton Wheat Williams Texas Life Series , #13 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 320 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
JANET WILLIAMS POLLARD collected and organized her father’s archival materials, visited the sites in France where he was stationed in World War I, traveled throughout Texas and New Mexico to retrace her father’s career, and listened to and recorded stories told by relatives and friends. She now lives in Midland.
LOUIS GWIN taught in Virginia Tech’s Department of Communication for fifteen years. The author of Speak No Evil: The Promotional Heritage of Nuclear Risk Communication (Praeger, 1990), he lives in Henderson, Nevada.
Read an Excerpt
Harsh Country, Hard Times
Clayton Wheat Williams and the Transformation of the Trans-Pecos
By Janet Williams Pollard, Louis Gwin
Texas A&M University Press
Copyright © 2011 Janet Williams Pollard and Louis GwinAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60344-479-8
CHAPTER 1
"Paradise for Men and Dogs and Hell for Women and Horses"
Interstates 10 and 20 cut through the Trans-Pecos region of Texas like arrows before joining to become Interstate 10 about 150 miles east of El Paso. Most people traveling these highways probably wouldn't recognize the term Trans-Pecos and simply call the passing landscape West Texas, but the Trans-Pecos is a distinct region, bordered on the east by the Pecos River, on the south and west by the Rio Grande, and on the north by the 32nd parallel that forms the boundary with New Mexico. The Midland-Odessa area of more than 250,000 residents is the largest population center in the region and serves the oil and natural gas industry, but most of the towns are small rural communities and some are merely shells of buildings without people, having boomed and burst with the cycles of oil and gas development since the 1920s.
The cars and trucks speeding toward either El Paso or San Antonio along Interstate 10 pass by three exits to the town of Fort Stockton, a community of 7,600 located about seventy miles east of where I-10 and I-20 meet. Fort Stockton and the area to its south are located in the Chihuahuan Desert, a series of hills, mesas, and peaks covered with short grasses, bushes, and a few trees. Farther to the south and the west near Alpine and Marathon are the Davis Mountains, foothills of the Rockies.
Water is life in this arid land, and the scattered springs that once dotted the area were critical to the early settlers. Fort Stockton grew up around one such spring, and it was a source of clean water for those who passed through on their way west and for those who settled the small farms irrigated by Comanche Springs and the waters of the Pecos River to the north. For the newcomer, the desert around the town was foreboding—"paradise for men and dogs and hell for women and horses." But for the people who lived there, the clean, dry air magnified the sun, and the huge sky became a canvas on which sunrises, sunsets, and the occasional thunderstorm painted brilliant colors of gold, pink, purple, and lavender.
Fort Stockton was a farm and ranch community when Clayton Wheat Williams entered the world on a Monday in April 1895. The fourth of five children born to Oscar Waldo (O. W.) Williams and his wife Sallie Wheat, Clayton arrived at about forty minutes past 4 P.M. in the southernmost house of what was known as "officers' row" in the old military garrison. It had been built by the U.S. Army in 1859 to protect settlers and the mail service from Indian attacks. O. W., who served as Pecos County judge while at the same time trying to make a go of a ranching operation some twenty-eight miles north of town on the south bank of the Pecos River, had leased the house as a base from which to conduct his business in town.
Clayton's older brother, Oscar Waldo II, or Waldo, for short, was born in 1883, and sister Mary Ermine was born two years later, both at their mother's family home in Dallas. Susan Kathryn, who would be known to the family as Kathryn, was born at the ranch in 1892, and Clayton's younger brother, Jesse Caleb (J. C.), with whom he shared a birth date, was born four years after Clayton in the officers' house.
Before O. W. settled in Fort Stockton with his family in 1884, he spent several years surveying the desolate plains of West Texas, returning periodically to the East to seek buyers for the lands at a price of thirty cents per acre. When the Texas legislature passed a law in 1879 to reserve unappropriated lands from private sale, O. W. turned to silver mining in frontier New Mexico, where he faced dangers from both Indians and his fellow miners. During his years in the wild lands of Texas and New Mexico, O. W. recorded his observations, experiences, and adventures, which he later set down in a series of letters to his children. A keen observer of daily life and a dedicated recorder of events, O. W. tried to instill in his children, and especially his sons, a belief that the past would be remembered only if it were accurately recorded. He summarized his philosophy in a 1918 letter to J. C., who was away at college while Clayton was soldiering in France. After praising Clayton's letters home for their description and detail, O. W. emphasized the importance of first observing events and then thoughtfully recording what was seen. "These 2 things," he wrote, "are of the greatest importance in life—to see things & to think over them. I find men—going side by side—one noticing keenly—the other hardly at all—one considering the meaning of the things he sees—the other passing them out of mind with out a thought, there can be no question which one of the two gets the good out of life."
Clayton and J. C. took the advice to heart. Clayton's letters from France provided a nuanced view of what life was like for a young officer, while J. C. sent home many letters describing his experiences in China while working for a subsidiary of Texaco, and these were later published by the Williams family as a series of pamphlets. Clayton's grandson, Adam Pollard, recalls that his grandfather always encouraged him to write letters because letter writing had become a dying art. "When I was a boy, I would write him from camp and could not wait for his return letter. He could describe things and events as if you were sitting right there with him. I still do a lot of my negotiations via handwritten letters. It adds that personal touch my grandfather always spoke of."
Like his father, Clayton believed in writing as a means of recording history, and in later life he completed a series of writing and editing projects that explored his interests in Texas history and pioneer life. Both men also had a keen sense of personal dignity and a measure of reserve. As historian C. L. Sonnichsen notes in the introduction to Pioneer Surveyor, Frontier Lawyer: The Personal Narrative of O. W. Williams, 1877–1902, O. W.'s published writings and letters, though accurate and observant, dealt with facts but very few feelings. Clayton's writing took a similar path. Both were tough and fearless, and neither was afraid to solve a problem in the rough-and-tumble of West Texas life with his fists or the threatened use of a gun. But the two differed in other ways. While O. W. looked harshly on those he believed took part in frivolous and time-wasting activities, Clayton was not averse to dancing, having an alcoholic drink now and then, and telling the occasional joke or story.
While Clayton shared many of his father's traits, particularly O. W.'s passion for observing and recording, he was also very much his own man. A risk taker at heart, Clayton was frequently at odds with his father's motto of "safety first" when it came to financial matters, and the judge viewed with skepticism his son's rush to plunge headlong into what O. W. believed were risky financial ventures, particularly in the fledgling Texas oil and gas industry of the 1920s. Years later, Clayton would give the same cautious advice to his son, nicknamed Claytie, and like his father before him, Claytie ignored it.
"I have witnessed my grandfather scolding Claytie about taking foolish risks with his money in the oil business," said grandson Scott Pollard. "It was fascinating to learn that my great-grandfather scolded my grandfather in the same way. I can only imagine what my great-grandfather's father thought of his son. Each of the sons ignored their fathers and took on risks—risks the fathers knew well and hoped they could avoid for their sons. Each son had to learn for himself. They all had success, but I think at its root it was not money they were after but the adventure."
Later in life, O. W. changed his mind about the oil business and became an active participant with his sons, using his legal expertise and knowledge of the countryside to purchase and execute oil leases for himself, his family, and others. He also helped his sons finance several speculative oil drilling projects in Pecos County. Clayton as well joined Claytie in several oilfield projects and often wished that his father could have seen the accomplishments of his children and grandchildren.
Scott Pollard believes it was O. W.'s emphasis on the value of education that enabled the Williams family to take advantage of the new technological age that the discovery of oil would bring. "Swept up in the enthusiasm for the age of petroleum and converted by the knowledge of the workings of the oil patch, my great-grandfather and his sons became oil people. Because of their talents, the oil patch enticed them out of their West Texas homes and cast them about the state, the nation and the world."
A Family Tradition
In attempting to make a living in the desolate and rugged West Texas countryside, both O. W. and Clayton followed in the footsteps of their ancestors, men and women who had a high sense of adventure and were indifferent to the dangers in a new country. To understand the character of the man who was Clayton Wheat Williams, it is necessary to understand the ancestral tree from which he was descended. Like his father, Clayton was fiercely proud of his forebears, who settled in Virginia from England as early as 1639, and both father and son took pleasure in the fact that the men and women who preceded them participated in some of the great moments of American history.
For example, O. W.'s great-grandfather on his maternal side, John Colyer (later Collier), served in the French and Indian War as a drummer boy for British Gen. Edward Braddock and was present during Braddock's great defeat in 1755 at the Battle of the Monongahela in present-day Pennsylvania. According to the family genealogy compiled by O. W.'s sister, Jesse Williams Hart, Colyer was about thirteen in 1755, and his service in the war "would have been in a minor capacity." Colyer also served in the Revolutionary War, enlisting in either 1776 or 1777 in the Virginia Continental line. According to Hart, the old soldier told his children and grandchildren that he was at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777–78 and told stories about the hardships suffered by soldiers during those harsh months.
Department of the Interior records reproduced by Hart show that Colyer also served as a sergeant in Gen. Arthur St. Clair's army in the 1791 war against the Ohio Indian tribes in the Northwest Territory. During this war, in a battle near the headwaters of the Wabash River in northwestern Ohio, the U.S. Army suffered the greatest defeat against Indian forces in its history. According to Hart, Colyer was wounded in the battle and coughed up blood as he retreated, which allowed the Indians to follow his trail in the snow. When he realized he was leaving a trail, Hart said, Colyer "opened the front of his heavy hunting shirt and spat the blood into it." She said Colyer hid in the hollow of a dead tree and "heard the conversation of Indians" as they pursued the survivors. Successfully evading his pursuers, he eventually made his way to Fort Jefferson, about six miles south of present-day Greenville, Ohio.
Colyer was lucky to have survived the battle. Under the leadership of Little Turtle, war chief of the Miami Indians, some 1,400 warriors from several different tribes routed the U.S. troops in a three-hour battle on November 4, resulting in 634 U.S. dead out of 1,400 present. Indian losses were estimated at between 100 and 120. Hart said that when Colyer died in Kentucky in 1826, a dozen bullets that had been extracted from his body over the years were placed in the coffin with him.
Richard Gott Williams and the Trail West
Ensign Jesse Williams, O. W. Williams's paternal great-grandfather, also served in the Revolutionary War, and his son, Richard Gott Williams, was one of the first merchants to head west on the Santa Fe Trail. The story of Richard Gott Williams's journey was recorded in detail by his son, Jesse Caleb Williams (O. W.'s father), and O. W. and Clayton also retold the story in various writings. Although there are some features of the story that cannot be independently confirmed, this saga of settling the pioneer west embodied elements that have since shaped the Williams family spirit—the taking of great risks, both physical and financial, in search of a better life while combating a harsh natural environment that destroyed lives but also created great fortunes.
In 1826 Richard Gott Williams traveled west on the Santa Fe Trail with several wagons. This was a mere three years after George Sibley began his historic survey of the trail. Williams was born in 1786 on his family's farm in southeastern Culpepper County, Virginia, near the town of Fredericksburg. A saddle and harness maker by trade, he served his apprenticeship in Richmond, Virginia, and developed a reputation as a sound craftsman. In 1808 he moved his business to Richmond, Kentucky, where he prospered. He married Catherine Holder, the orphaned daughter of Capt. John Holder and Frances Callaway Holder of historic Boonesborough, Kentucky, in 1812.
Col. Richard Callaway, Holder's father-in-law and O. W.'s great-great-grandfather, was one of thirty men selected by Daniel Boone in 1775 to clear Boone's Trace, later renamed the Wilderness Trail. Holder, one of the early Boonesborough settlers, married Callaway's daughter Frances in 1776. The marriage occurred a few weeks after Frances, her sister Betsy, and Jemima Boone, Daniel's daughter, were captured and held by Indians for two days. The children were rescued by Boone and a group of men that included Holder. Holder's date of death is uncertain but was probably the winter of 1797–98, and Frances died in 1803. Their daughter, Catherine, was brought up by relatives.
Richard Gott Williams obtained a contract during the war of 1812 to procure lead for the Kentucky military from mines located west of St. Louis. Excited by news of the trade opportunities on the Santa Fe Trail, Williams outfitted wagons and transported them to Westport, Missouri, for the journey west. Jesse Caleb Williams did not provide any details of the trip on the Santa Fe Trail, but O. W. added an intriguing note to the story. It is historical fact that sixteen-year-old Kit Carson made his first trip west on the Santa Fe Trail in 1826, the same year as Richard Gott Williams. In a 1926 letter to J. C., O. W. said that Carson traveled in the Williams's caravan and that Carson and the men from Richmond, Kentucky, shared some common acquaintances. C. L. Sonnichsen, in his introduction to Pioneer Surveyor, Frontier Lawyer, said that in 1826 Richard Gott Williams outfitted "a caravan of twelve prairie schooners" and traveled west across the trail, but made no mention of Carson's presence on the trip.
One of the party, Andrew Broadus, was seriously injured in a rifle accident during the trip. Carson relates the story in his autobiography, and it has been told by others. For O. W., the story of Broadus's accident was the key evidence connecting Carson to his great-grandfather in time and place on the Santa Fe Trail. He cited a conversation he had with ninety-three-year-old Samuel Parke during a trip to Richmond in 1923. Parke claimed his uncle, James Parke, accompanied Richard Gott Williams on the caravan west in 1826 and that Broadus's accident had occurred on the same trip.
One historical record shows that a company of traders, size unknown, left Fort Osage on the Missouri River in August 1826 and reached Santa Fe in November. Included in that company were Carson, Broadus, James Collins, Elisha Stanley, Soloman Houck, Edwin M. Ryland, James Felding, Thomas Talbot, William Wolfskill, and possibly George Yount. In his autobiography, Carson did not name any of the men with whom he traveled except Broadus, making it likely that this was the group of traders that Carson joined. However, neither James Parke nor Richard Gott Williams was named in this record.
Richard Gott Williams's trip to Santa Fe was made without further incident. Jesse Caleb Williams said his father took the caravan to Taos, then to northern Mexico before disposing of his remaining goods. With his wagon train, bills of exchange, money, and a herd of 1,500 horses and mules, 500 of which he owned personally, Williams traveled back over the trail from Santa Fe. According to varying accounts told by Jesse Caleb, O. W., and Clayton, the party was attacked by Indians in either New Mexico or Kansas while returning east, and most of the horses, mules, and other possessions were stolen. O. W. said that his relatives in Kentucky put the loss at more than $100,000, while Clayton, writing in Never Again, said the loss was $112,000 in currency and 800 horses and mules.
According to Jesse Caleb Williams, Richard Gott Williams petitioned Secretary of State Henry Clay for reimbursement, claiming that he was attacked by "Indians of the United States" and that the government was liable for his losses. Clay responded that because the border between Mexico and the United States was in dispute, the location of the attack could have been on Mexican land and that Mexico was liable for Williams's loss. In his introduction to Pioneer Surveyor, Frontier Lawyer, Sonnichsen said that Richard Gott Williams filed a complaint in a Mexican court in 1826 alleging that a thief had stolen some of his goods, but apparently Williams did not recover any of his loss. He was, however, able to sell some of his property in Kentucky and buy an undeveloped plantation in Rockcastle County that he worked from 1829 to 1847. He moved to Mount Vernon, was appointed postmaster, and revived his saddle and harness making business before he died in 1876 at the age of ninety.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Harsh Country, Hard Times by Janet Williams Pollard, Louis Gwin. Copyright © 2011 Janet Williams Pollard and Louis Gwin. Excerpted by permission of Texas A&M University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Cover,Copyright,
Acknowledgments,
Prologue,
Chapter 1: "Paradise for Men and Dogs and Hell for Women and Horses",
Chapter 2: Growing up in Fort Stockton,
Chapter 3: The Suicide Club,
Chapter 4: French Friends and New Adventures,
Chapter 5: Paris Is Bombed,
Chapter 6: Searching for Oil West of the Pecos,
Chapter 7: "Dangerous Business and Dangerous Surroundings",
Chapter 8: Drilling the University No. 1-B Well,
Chapter 9: Risk, Failure, and Reward,
Chapter 10: A Public Figure,
Chapter 11: A Love of History,
Epilogue,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,
Interviews
Midland, TX