Almost 250 years after the start of the American Revolution, we Americans still like to remind the world how we told the mother country to shove off, then struck out on our own. But every so often, we still tend to buddy up with the Brits if there’s something in it for us.
The dawn of the Panhandle’s ranching empire was one of those moments in time when the on-again, off-again Anglo-American bromance was quite effective, and it played a strong role in shaping the permanent settlement of our home region.
It all began in 1877 when Col. Charles Goodnight formed a partnership with John Adair, a British aristocrat living in Denver with his American wife, Cornelia. Goodnight had established his home ranch in Palo Duro Canyon in 1876, but he needed capital to make it work. The British, represented by men such as Adair, were willing to provide it. This partnership was the genesis of the famed JA Ranch, the Panhandle’s longest-lived business venture.
What followed was a small but steady influx of British businessmen dipping their toes in the Panhandle ranching business, either as faraway investors or as an outright cowhand, such as Alfred Rowe, who established the RO Ranch in Donley County in 1878.
Rowe assembled a vast estate that eventually spilled out over portions of four Panhandle counties. And though his proper accent was likely as surprising as a harpsichord solo in the fiddle tune that was the southeastern Texas Panhandle of the time, Rowe was accepted and admired by his neighbors because he lived and worked alongside his cowboys.
Adair and Rowe were among the first Brits to develop an interest in Panhandle grass, and according to historian Michael Grauer, McCasland Chair of Cowboy Culture and Curator of Cowboy Collections & Western Art at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, those who followed were greatly influenced by the rosy picture of western grazing painted by James S. Brisbin in his best-selling book The Beef Bonanza; Or, How to Get Rich on the Plains, published in 1881. It was likely handed around many smoke-filled rooms in London and Edinburgh because from that point onward, British capital began to flow liberally.
It’s not known if Englishman J. John Drew had read the book or not, but he had the same idea when, in 1883, he and his partner Early W. Spencer purchased the Rocking Chair Ranch in Collingsworth County. After acquiring the ranch, Drew flipped his property to British investors Dudley Coutts Marjoribanks (pronounced like “Marchbanks”), the first baron of Tweedmouth, and John Campbell Hamilton-Gordon, the 1st Marquess of Aberdeen. Unlike Rowe, the noblemen had no intention of getting their hands dirty, but they did send over Marjoribanks’ youngest son, Archibald John, to oversee the ranching operation.
The Rocking Chair, from its home base of Aberdeen, grew to more than 150,000 acres in northeastern Collingsworth County and southern portions of Wheeler County. The operation had trouble turning a profit as the younger Marjoribanks, known by the locals as Archie, didn’t make much of a hand. It was said he took leave fairly often with his “blooded hounds” to gamble and drink in Mobeetie. Archie began to pay more attention when farming interests south of the Rocking Chair range agitated to form a county government that would be funded in large part by taxes assessed against ranch property. In hopes of winning Archie’s approval, the organizers named their prospective county seat after the Duke of Wellington.
Bleeding money and feeling hemmed in by the onrush of settlers, the Rocking Chair owners sold the ranch in 1896. Aside from leaving some curious place names behind, the noblemen introduced a breed of dog that is now one of America’s most beloved. One of Archie’s “blooded hounds” turned out to be a Golden Retriever named Sol, a representative of a breed developed in Scotland by—you guessed it—the Baron of Tweedmouth. According to the American Kennel Club, Sol was the first Golden to call North America home.
Other British investors played a valuable role in constructing the landmark Texas Capitol in Austin in 1888. The Capitol Freehold Land and Investment Company was organized in London in 1884 to inject $15 million of British capital into the famed XIT Ranch, developed by a group of Chicago investors as payment for building the Capitol building. Though famous in ranch lore, the XIT was short-lived, as were other large ranching ventures situated in fertile areas that could generate more money in the form of land sales to newly settled farmers.
While its lands were not as expansive as the XIT, the British-owned Francklyn Land & Cattle Company came to control a whopping 700,000 acres of rangeland in Carson, Gray, Roberts and Hutchinson counties. The blizzard of 1886 devastated this operation, however, and the Francklyn acreage was taken over by another venture known as White Deer Lands Company that was more of a liquidator than a ranching operation. It was at this time that one of the Panhandle’s most admired British immigrants, Montague Kingsmill (M.K.) Brown, arrived in Pampa to promote the sale of White Deer lands to farmers moving into the area. In 1924, Brown joined forces with another British expatriate, Cecil Victor Payne Buckler, to co-manage the remaining White Deer Lands properties.
According to Anita Gullett, executive director at Pampa’s White Deer Lands Museum and a scholar on the British influence on Panhandle ranching, Brown and Buckler shouldn’t be overlooked when it comes to the importance of the British in the development of the Panhandle. What’s more, Brown and Buckler made the Panhandle their permanent homes and contributed greatly to community life. Most of the others moved on to other ventures.
Alfred Rowe eventually moved back to England to raise his family, but paid regular visits to his Texas ranch. On what would be his final return trip, he booked passage on the RMS Titanic and died in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic when the ship went down in 1912. But Sol, the Scottish-born Golden Retriever—who trailed along on Rowe’s booze and gambling forays into Mobeetie—died in his adopted country. According to legend, this sire of the Golden Retriever breed was laid to rest here in the Panhandle, buried under Collingsworth County sod.
