NELSON MORRIS and THE CHICAGO RANCH by Dorthy Payne

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1 NELSON MORRIS and THE CHICAGO RANCH by Dorthy Payne Chester Arthur was President and Congress had just passed the Pendleton Act improving the Federal Civil Service. l Lewis Waterman was experimenting with the fountain pen which he perfected the next year. "Buffalo" Bill Cody gave the first performance of his first wild west show. The Brooklyn Bridge opened in New York City, the cornerstone of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty was laid and standard time was established. The first classes at the University of Texas were held in Austin and the first American Historical Association was organized in New York.2 In West Texas Jay Gould had barely got his Texas and Pacific tracks laid to Sierra Blanca, where they met the Southern Pacific. Pecos City had a population of from one hundred to one hundred fifty souls. Monahans Wells had the only water well between the Pecos and Big Spring. Big Spring was the place where everybody and everything stopped for water, including the buffalo, coyote, lobo, antelope and wild mustang. The Comanche and Shawnee fought over the spring and soldiers camped near its sweet water. Midland had a handful of stores and saloons.3 A State Legislative Act passed in 1881 had turned loose some of the vast West Texas lands at fifty cents per acre, with half to go to State Public School Funds and the other half into the General Revenue Fund. A partnership of Job Gunter, W. B. Munson, the brothers - John W. and Fe M. Maddox, and C. E. Anderson bought 228,000 acres embracing what is now parts of Andrews, Midland, Ector and Martin Counties. In 1883 these lands were transferred to Nelson Morris, a meat packer from Chicago. This ranch eventually contained 320 sections.4 Nelson Morris came from the southwest part of Germany when just a boy. He got off the boat and walked most of the way from Buffalo, New York, to Chicago looking for work. He worked here and there in the small stockyards which preceded the building of the Union Stock Yards. John Sherman, founder of the Union Stock Yards, took Morris under his wing and taught him the hog rendering trade, but after a few years Morris left the employ of Sherman and became a cattle trader in a small way. He learned quickly and would bid on anything and buy anything, usually at his own price, staying out of the market until late in the week to catch his competitors napping. Within only a few years he was shipping everywhere, even trans-atlantic shipments. He secured contracts 1

2 with the French and other European Governments and also supplied the Commisariat Department of the Union Troops during the Civil War. By the year 1873 his company was earning more than eleven million dollars per year. The Morris and Company plant covered some thirty acres and was one of the first packing houses to be opened in Chicago at the Union Stock Yards. Morris owned large cattle ranches in the Dakotas and in Texas and Mexico and was one of the first to import Polled-Angus and Galloway cattle, feeding approximately seventy-five thousand head annually from his feedlots. 5 Angus cattle are solid black and have no horns. The breed is a model of beef type. They are short of leg, broad and deep of body and very compactly built. They mature early and fatten well at any age. They have a high dressing percent and the meat is well marbled. 6 When Nelson Morris acquired his West Texas ranch he fenced it, stocked it with black muley cattle, dug wells under the management of H. C. Rogers, his first foreman, and built a headquarters near what is now the town of Andrews in Andrews County. He is credited with bringing in the first "bob" wire and windmills to what is now Andrews County.7 Clint Newlin, a gentleman who now lives in Crane, once worked on the Chicago Ranch. Mr. Newlin saw Nels Morris in Midland and relates this amusing incident: It seems there was a meat market in Midland where some of the cowboys hung out while in town. A drummer from Armour Packing Company was trying to sell the proprietor on the Armour products. One of the spectators in the market became interested in the drummer's sales-pitch and watched the proceedings with a twinkle in his eye. The market owner stated he would not buy anything but Morris Packing Company products because he considered them the best. Upon the departure of the crestfallen drummer, the interested stranger stepped up to the proprietor, stuck out his hand and stated, "I'm Nels Morris and I'd like to shake your hand". The owner refused to believe him, as Morris was not dressed as a well-to-do easterner but wore plain clothes, a white Stetson and coarse boots. The market owner was only convinced when Nels Morris presented him with a new Stetson hat later that day.8.: Clint Newlin went to work for the "C" a few months after Morris died. He was the windmill man and looked after the 79 windmills on the ranch. The equipment was the best and, if anything new came out, Morris, and later his heirs, were willing to give it a try. 2

3 '- The chuck wagon was very well equipped and carried a tent which could sleep sixteen men at a time. The cook- stove was built to order at a cost of $36.00 with an elongated stove pipe that was used in the tent where the men cooked, ate and slept in rainy weather or when a blue norther came up.9 The food was good, even on the range --- not just the usual sowbelly and beans. A typical meal might be beef steaks, sour dough biscuits with gravy, canned corn and vine-gar pie.10 Nelson Morris raised his own Percheron freight horses and sold some on the market. Four or six of these horses pulled his freight wagons on periodical trips to Midland for supplies. He also bred and sold mules. His Angus cattle were ra i.s ed on the "C'" until they were yearlings, then shipped to his ranches in the Dakotas where they were kept until they were three years old and ready for slaughter. They were then shipped to one of his five packing plants. l1 This part of West Texas was still wild and wooly, the willow Springs Massqcre of an ~mbushed wagon train near Monahans having happened in When Morris built his headquarters on the Chicago Ranch he located near a spring and a lake which was called Baird Lake, so named for a Captain Baird who was killed by Indians about the year captain Baird was in command of a small party of soldiers on patrol. He had hired a young man named Lodd Callahan as scout because Callahan was familiar with the country. When the troopers were approaching the lake, Captain Baird saw a lone Indian on horseback and gave chase, while the troopers and scout hung back to watch. When the Indian realized the Captain would catch him, he took off his mocassins and set them in plain sight in the trail and dismounting, dove into a buffalo wallow and kept under cover. When Captain Baird dismounted to examine the mocassins, the Indian ambushed him, killing him with one shot. Captain Baird was buried near the lake and after scouting around, the troopers went back to Big Spring, because it was found that there were three or four hundred Indians camped at the nearby spring, where the present headquarters of the "c" ranch now stands. The odds were just too overpowering. 14 In "A Forgotten Empire of the Pecos", Paul Patterson tells about a big cattle deal that had to do with the Chicago Ranch. The TX Ranch, which was located on the Pecos near Horsehead Crossing, sold 5,000 head of cattle to the "C". Usually the buyers made the delivery in a deal but this time the TX delivered the cattle to the railroad in Midland. 3

4 The cattle were bunched together below the rimrock of what is now called King Mountain. They started trailing about one o'clock in the afternoon. It was such a large herd to move they didn't stop but went on through the night following a lantern hung on the tail end of a chuch wagon. 15 They arrived at Warfield, half-way between Midland and Odessa, where they rested before moving into the shipping pens at Midland the next day. From Midland the cattle were shipped to the Morris Packing Plant in Chicago. Bert Rosenbaum of Indiana, as a young man, bought a ticket on the homeseekers train to Pecos, Texas, in On the train he met two young fellows who were on their way to the Chicago Ranch to visit the general manager. The three boys became friends and persuaded Rosenbaum to stop off in Midland with them and go to the "e" Ranch. When the train stopped in Midland the boys alighted and went up town where they bummed a ride on the Chicago Ranch freight wagon which was preparing to take some supplies to the headquarters. When the two lads returned to the east Bert Rosenbaum stayed on at the ranch. Morris had died in August, a few months before Rosenbaum came to the "C".16 Without the information so graciously given by Clint Newlin and Bert Rosenbaum, Nelson Morris would have remained just a biography in a book, instead of a kind, warm, honest personality. Although Nels Morris was a moneyed man throughout his life he kept his simplicity of character. He didn't like his name publicly connected with his many worthwhile charities, but he gave his name to the Nelson Morris Institute of Pathological Research, which he established. He died in Chicago during August,

5 FOOTNOTES 1. Richard B. Morris, Ed., Encyclopedia of American History, page Garton, Carruth and Associates, -Ed., The Encyclopedia of American Facts and Dates, pages ~. 3. Walter Prescott Webb and Bailey Carroll, Ed., The Handbook of Texas (The Texas State Historical Association, Austin, 1952) Vols. I and II. 4. Andrews County Courthouse Deed Books. 5. American Dictionary of Biography, Vol. XIII, pages The Cattlem~n, March, 1930, page Ibid, January, 1930, page Interview with Clint Newlin, March 15, 1967, Crane, Texas. 9. Ibid. 10. Interview with Bert Rosenbaum, March 15, 1967, Midland, Texas. 11. Interview with Clint Newlin, March 15, 1967, Crane, Texas. 12. walter Prescott Webb and Bailey Carroll, Ed.., The Handbook of Texas (The Texas State Histurical Association, Austin, 1952) Vols. I and II. 13. The Texas Permian Historical Annual, Vol. I, page 39, August, Interview with Clint Newlin, March 15, 1967, Crane, Texas. 15. The Cattleman, May, 1943, page Interview with Bert Rosenbaum, March 15, 1967, Midland, Texas. 17. American Dictionary of Biography, Vol. XIII, pages