Traces the life of a Texas pioneer, who established a huge, million-acre ranch and played an important role in the development of the state

C.C. Slaughter, Rancher, Banker, Baptist (M K BROWN RANGE LIFE SERIES)

History

Murrah, David J.

Americas

Univ of Texas Pr

Many of the great Texas ranches established during the cattle boom of the 1880s became immediate business successes, but as time passed, many of them failed. Oil, Taxes, and Cats is the story of one of the survivors and of the family that kept it alive. David Mantz DeVitt, a young New York newspaperman, came to Texas in 1880 and became co-owner of the Mallet Ranch in 1895. Although he lacked practical experience in the livestock business, DeVitt managed to parlay his small investment into a 100,000-acre cattle operation that continues to operate today. DeVitt’s two sons were killed in separate accidents, and when he died in 1934, his daughters Christine (age forty-nine) and Helen (age thirty-four) inherited controlling interest in the ranch along with Florence, DeVitt’s sixty-seven- year-old widow. The women found themselves thrust into the middle of a man’s world during the worst of the Great Depression.Set on assuming her father’s active interest in the ranch, Christine DeVitt struggled to achieve and maintain controlling management, throwing the Mallet partners into a costly and protracted receivership battle. Despite her stubbornness and eccentricity, she ultimately gained the respect she sought, not only preserving the ranch but also gaining great fortune for the partnership.The story of the ranch is a powerful saga of legal battles, oil leases, range disputes, and generous philanthropy that endures to this day.

Oil, Taxes, and Cats: A History of the DeVitt Family and the Mallet Ranch

Texas Tech University Press

Many of the great Texas ranches established during the cattle boom of the 1880s became immediate business successes, but as time passed, many of them failed. Oil, Taxes, and Cats is the story of one of the survivors and of the family that kept it alive. David Mantz DeVitt, a young New York newspaperman, came to Texas in 1880 and became co-owner of the Mallet Ranch in 1895. Although he lacked practical experience in the livestock business, DeVitt managed to parlay his small investment into a 100,000-acre cattle operation that continues to operate today. DeVitt’s two sons were killed in separate accidents, and when he died in 1934, his daughters Christine (age forty-nine) and Helen (age thirty-four) inherited controlling interest in the ranch along with Florence, DeVitt’s sixty-seven- year-old widow. The women found themselves thrust into the middle of a man’s world during the worst of the Great Depression. Set on assuming her father’s active interest in the ranch, Christine DeVitt struggled to achieve and maintain controlling management, throwing the Mallet partners into a costly and protracted receivership battle. Despite her stubbornness and eccentricity, she ultimately gained the respect she sought, not only preserving the ranch but also gaining great fortune for the partnership. The story of the ranch is a powerful saga of legal battles, oil leases, range disputes, and generous philanthropy that endures to this day.

Business & Money

Biography & History

Lubbock and the South Plains: An Illustrated History

Carlson, Paul Howard

Abbe, Donald

Windsor Pubns

The Lazy S Ranch, one of the last major ranches to be established in Texas, came into being at a time when most of the other great ranches were disappearing. Founded in 1898 by Dallas banker and rancher Colonel Christopher Columbus Slaughter, the Lazy S grew to comprise nearly 250,000 acres of the western High Plains in Cochran and Hockley counties, much of which lay in a single contiguous pasture of more than 180,000 acres. Even with careful investment and management, C. C. Slaughter faced many challenges putting together an extensive ranch amid the development of the farmers' frontier on the high plains. Within a decade, he crafted the Lazy S to become a showplace for well-bred cattle, effective range management, and efficient utilization of limited water resources. He created a working ranch that would serve as a long-lasting legacy for his wife and nine children, to remain "undivided and indivisible." But shortly after his death in 1919, the family drained its resources, drove it into debt, then divided the land ten ways. In the 1930s, good fortune returned to some of the Slaughter heirs with the discovery of oil on the family lands. Though the Lazy S Ranch was soon forgotten, the breakup of the ranch spurred a new era for the western Llano Estacado and led to the establishment of a county, growth of four new towns, and a railroad across the heart of the ranch, fostered for the most part by the land development projects of Slaughter's descendants. Here,&nbsp; David J. Murrah covers the entire, fascinating history in The Rise and Fall of the Lazy S Ranch.

The Rise and Fall of the Lazy S Ranch (Nancy and Ted Paup Ranching Heritage Series)

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Texas A&M University Press

The Northwest Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church has a complicated and fascinating history. Its story parallels that of the settlement of the frontier of Northwest Texas. Methodist circuit riders rode in advance of the railroads, and homesteaders in dugouts were often surprised to have a Methodist preacher to be the first to welcome them to the new country. There have been two Northwest Texas conferences: the first was created in 1866 and stretched 600 miles from Georgetown in central Texas northwestward across the vast high plains. By 1910, it had grown to be the largest conference numerically in Texas. As a result, the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, approved a division into two smaller conferences, the Central Texas, and a new Northwest Texas Conference. In 2010, the present Northwest Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church celebrated its 100th anniversary. At its birth, the conference began with nearly two hundred strong churches and another two hundred part-time "school house" churches within its charge. During its first forty years, it grew at a rapid pace; but, in the mid-1960s, began to experience a gradual decline which continues to this day. This study explores the conference’s reasons for growth, the challenge of conflict and decline, and its efforts to find renewal and revival. At the same time, it celebrates the tremendous achievements of the Northwest Texas Conference in bringing salvation, civility, and institutional services to its vast territory.

"And are we yet alive?": A History of the Northwest Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church

State House Press

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