One of the most notorious feuds in Amarillo history is reexamined in a new book—one that wouldn’t have happened had descendants from both sides of the feud not worked together to tell the story.
Because This Is Texas, which published in June, dives headfirst into one of the most infamous conflicts in Amarillo’s earliest days—for a second time this year. Clara Sneed, a Texas native now living in California, first released the historic fiction novel Before We Turn to Dust in March, though she’d been researching the story for more than two decades. Because This Is Texas, in fact, is an expanded and updated version of an article that appeared in a 1999 issue of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Review. (This interview has been edited and condensed.)
Chip Chandler: Who were the Boyces and the Sneeds?
Clara Sneed: Albert G. Boyce Sr., who was known colloquially as the Colonel, ended up being the manager of the XIT Ranch for decades, until he retired in 1905, at which time they were breaking up the ranch and starting to sell it off. The Sneed family also has deep roots in Amarillo. My great-uncle, John Beal Sneed; his sister, Georgia Sneed Thompson; and his older brother, Joseph T. Sneed, all lived in Amarillo. J.T. Sneed ended up with a lot of property in Moore County, where they first drilled for oil and hit it big. Joe Pool, J.T. Sneed’s descendent, was very, very helpful to me in my research.
I don’t want to give away the ending of the book, but give us an idea what it’s about.
This is a love triangle, and the families involved are all prominent, well-to-do families in Texas. Col. Boyce had retired from the XIT and bought a house on Polk Street. My great-uncle Beal Sneed and his wife, Lena Snyder Sneed, moved into town around the same time. So, the Boyces and the Sneeds were living about three-and-a-half blocks away from each other. In the fall of 1910, the Colonel’s son, Albert Boyce Jr., came back to Amarillo from Montana. These people had all known each other as children … and Lena and Al resumed their acquaintance and fell passionately in love. In 1911, right around the eve of their 10th wedding anniversary, Lena told Beal that she wanted a divorce in order to marry Al. Divorce was not completely uncommon, but it was still a very controversial subject, certainly for a woman of her background and her education. Because Beal is not willing to give her a divorce, the solution was to have her confined to a sanitarium in Fort Worth, where she was subsequently diagnosed as morally insane.
Wow, what happened next?
She sends a letter to Al Boyce, who’s in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, saying, “For God’s sake, get me out of this place.” And on Nov. 8, with the help of her nurse, Lena went and met Al in downtown Fort Worth, and then they just vanished. Beal hired [nationally known detectives] the Pinkertons, and at the end of December 1911, they were discovered in Winnipeg, Canada.
Beal succeeded in getting Lena deported, had her meet her dad in Minneapolis and left her with her father with the understanding that she would be returned to the sanitarium. She had some diamond jewelry with her, and Beale had Al charged with stealing. That infuriated the Colonel, who had been kind of willing, in a weird way, of letting Beal go after Al. So the Colonel and his wife went to Fort Worth to fight the charges. Meanwhile, Lena has given her power of attorney to the Boyces to try to stay out of the sanitarium. The Colonel was having dinner at the Metropolitan Hotel, and Beal walks through the door. He starts firing and kills him.
And that, I would say, is just the set up.
Yeah, that will make readers want to keep going.
It’s a tragic, terrible story, but it is a wild story.
When did you first hear the story?
I really don’t remember not knowing some version of this story. I have a really vague recollection of somebody saying to me, “Did you know you had a relative that killed a guy?”
What changed between that 1999 piece and the full book?
I went to the XIT Ranch headquarters, and there was a picture of Colonel Boyce. [The XIT manager] said yes, we got that from Pete Boyce in Manteca, California. Well, here I am, living in Berkeley, so I left a card and said, “Please tell him that I would really love to talk to him. I’m very sympathetic to his family, and I’m working on this book.” Two weeks later, I get a call, and it’s Pete Boyce, the great-nephew of Lena Snyder Sneed’s lover. And do you know, within 10 minutes, he said, “Do you know we have some of her letters?” They had kept them all this time. There are things I found out that happened because I read them in her letters, and no one else knew about them.
What an amazing discovery!
Yeah, after everything, after all the history — you know, the wounds that were caused by my family to that family. It’s a remarkable, remarkable thing that both families have participated in this.
