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  • Texas | Columns | "Texas Tales"

    Lizzie Crosson Had True Grit

    by Mike Cox
    Mike Cox
    Lizzie Crosson had true grit.

    Born and raised in New Orleans, she married George Crosson at Brenham in 1866. The couple moved to San Antonio, but Crosson spent much of his time as a freighter hauling goods to Santa Fe, and across the Big Bend to Mexico along the Chihuahua Trail. Crosson made a good living, but he had to keep his wife and children in San Antonio.

    Crosson had traveled a lot of miles across the Southwest and considered the Davis Mountains the best country he’d seen. In 1878, realizing it wouldn’t be too many years before the railroad came through West Texas and put him out of business, he decided to settle in Presidio County and raise sheep.

    He bought sixty bucks in Central Texas and hauled the sheep west from San Antonio in three wagons. Turning them out on his Musquiz Canyon land, he added 1,800 ewes purchased from pioneer Big Bend rancher Milton Faver. Perhaps based on the number of children he had, he registered his brand as “5.” Now he sent for his wife and family.

    The journey by wagon train from San Antonio to Fort Davis would be dangerous. While the Comanches had been defeated, the same could not be said for the Apaches. The Mescaleros stubbornly clung to their land and their culture, killing any whites they could.

    The trek westward would take about a month at twelve to fifteen miles a day. Lizzie, her children, and another young woman were the only passengers among the freighters. When the train made camp each evening, before turning the teams out to graze, the wagonmaster had the wagons arranged in a semi-circle in case of Indian attack.

    As her friend Bessie Jacobs later wrote, Lizzie brought with her to West Texas “the tradition of the East and the Old South, and…in a new country she met every difficulty with her unfailing energy and adaptability, conquering hardships hard to conceive of in this day.” Two more tangible items she took along were the family piano and a shotgun. She knew how to use both.

    Lizzie proved her mettle early on when she heard that one of the teamsters had become too sick to travel. Rather than delay their trip, the wagonmaster intended to leave the man by the roadside with food and water. On the surface, that seemed humane, but Lizzie understood the reality: If left behind, the man would die. Whether by charm or threat, Lizzie prevailed on the wagonmaster to stop long enough for her to nurse the man back to health.

    When the wagon train finally reached Fort Davis, the community threw a dance to welcome the new arrivals. That would have made Lizzie feel right at home, but unfortunately, she didn’t have one. Crosson had not yet had time to build a house for his family. Fortunately, the curate of the local Catholic church let the Crossons stay there until they could get a house built.

    Crosson had experienced some close calls with Indians along the trail and they still caused him problems. As Carlyle Raht wrote in 1919 in his “Romance of the Davis Mountains,”: “The Indians seemed to prefer sheep to cattle, as they could be driven more easily…over mountain passes; and, when pressed closely by irate citizens or soldiers, they Indian herders could secrete the sheep in small bunches, where their tracks would pass unnoticed by the trailers.”

    When one of their sons didn’t show up at home when expected, the couple feared the child had been captured by Apaches. Notified of the disappearance, General Edward Ord, the ranking military officer in Texas, wired Fort Davis’ commander to deploy every soldier at the post to look for the missing youngster. Turned out the boy had merely wandered off and was found unharmed.

    The Crossons stayed in the Fort Davis area until 1884, when they moved to a ranch they had acquired on Calamity Creek south of Alpine. Only two years later, in 1886, Crosson died. Now with six children, Lizzie had a family to raise and a ranch to run. When the sheep business went belly up because of the so-called “Cleveland Tariff,” a measure which severely affected the wool market, Lizzie and other ranchers in the area switched to cattle.

    In 1888, Lizzie filed the requisite paperwork with the federal government to seek restitution for property losses incurred by Indian depredations from 1875 to 1880. The full amount of the claim came to $19,625 – a fortune in those days. But the U.S. Court of Claims ruled that the evidence did not support that large a financial loss. In late 1901, the government finally awarded the widow $2,590, less attorney’s fees.

    “Mrs. Crosson met difficult situations in a matter of fact way,” her friend later wrote. “Nothing seemed too large or too small for her to do. To drive thirty miles and sleep in a box car on a siding, waiting to flag a train to send her child to college was just part of a day’s work.”

    Lizzie Crosson died Nov. 17, 1924, survived by three sons, two daughters and a reputation for having been one strong lady.

    ©
    Mike Cox - "Texas Tales"
    June 30, 2011 column
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