Fountain Goodlet and Mary Beal Oxsheer
Fountain Goodlet Oxsheer (son of William Wilson Oxsheer and Martha Elizabeth Kirk) was born November 9, 1849 on the Oxsheer ranch in Milam County, Texas, southwest of Hearne. Fount made and lost fortunes in cattle, and was one of the Texas Cattle Kings. At one time, he owned over 3 million acres in Texas and northern Mexico.
Fount started out working on the cattle drives from Texas to Kansas, saving enough money to buy his own herds to trail to Kansas in the spring. By 1873, he owned more than a thousand head.
Fount married Mary V. Beal on May 28, 1873, in Milam County, Texas, daughter of John and Mary Beal. He quit the trail after he married, becoming a rancher and cattle trader.
In 1882, Fount and Mary moved to Calvert in nearby Robertson County. He opened a meat market that grew into the largest in town. He also operated a feedlot there. In the 1880's he became Sherriff, and managed to bring order to the wild town of Calvert, where it was said that the Coroner had a dead man for breakfast almost every morning.
"Years later, when all of Central Texas was settled and frontier times in Calvert were but a memory, many would attribute the rise of law and order to the coming of the railroads, to Prohibition, or to the building of churches and schools. But old-timers would always recall a lean young man named Oxsheer who tamed a wide-open town with a shotgun, a long-barrelled Colt .45, and iron nerve."
- Benton White, The Forgotten Cattle King
The Oxsheers left Calvert, settled for a short time in Lampasas, then continued west to Colorado City in 1884, where he and his brothers-in-law, John and Nick Beal, started the Jumbo Cattle Company along with partners John Drennan and J. T. Davis. The Jumbo encompassed about a half million acres about 40 miles northwest of Colorado City.
In 1885, a series of five blizzards in west Texas drove almost all the cattle in there far to the south between the Pecos and Devils' Rivers, in present-day Val Verde County. All the ranchers worked together to gather the cattle and head back north in the largest cattle drive in Texas history. Fount was selected to be in the first group to head north, driving 8000 head of cattle back home. There would be no source of water for the cattle until they reached the Concho River, 140 miles away; between thirst, stampedes, and exhaustion, thousands of cattle died in the move, and the landscpe was decimated.
A terrible drought followed, wiping out almost all the herds.
Fount moved his remaining herd to the Llano Estacado, the plains west of the Caprock in the Texas panhandle. he bought up as much land and as many cattle as he could, drilling water wells and building windmills to keep them alive until the drought broke. His gamble paid off. He established the Mallet, Tahoka Lake and Lazy Diamond ranches, and bought up others. He also leased government lands to build an enormous range.
He partnered with C. C. Slaughter in 1895 to buy Charles Goodnight's herd of purebred Herefords, and built the largest and finest herd of Hereford cattle in the United States on his Ancient Briton Ranch.
Much of the land he had been leasing was being sold or granted to farmers, dividing the rangeland. In 1900, Fount left the Llano Estacado, selling part of his land to cereal magnate C. W. Post, and much of the rest to his partner C. C. Slaughter. Fount moved further south and established the Diamond Ranch on 200,000 acred in Howard, Glasscock, and Martin Counties.
In 1895, Fount had moved his family from Colorado City to Fort Worth the place to be for buying and selling cattle. In 1900 built a new mansion there on Pennsylavnia Avenue, the street known as Silk Stocking Row. The home had imported Italian wallpaper, crystal chandeliers, velvet drapes, walnut panelling, and a tubing system that worked as an intercom to every room.
In 1901, Fount bought the Hacienda de Sainapuchic in Chihauhua, Mexico, from E. W. Gould, Jr., nephew of railroad magnate Jay Gould. His son, F. G. Jr., was superintendant there. It is thought that he made a deal with Pancho Villa, because Sainapuchic was the only hacienda never raided by Villa's bandits. In 1908, Villa warned the Oxsheers that they should leave Mexico; they shipped the cattle to Texas and sold the hacienda in 1909, just before the Mexican Revolution.
During World War 2, beef prices rose as the government bought beef to feed the troops, but the worst drought in 30 years was going on in Texas, and ranchers were having a hard time feeding the cattle. In the summer of 1918, Fount gambled everything, and bought as many feeder cattle as he could. He borrowed money from banks and friends, and by the fall of 1918 he owned over 185,000 head of cattle scattered in feed lots around the country.
In November of 1918, the war suddenly ended, and beef prices dropped. Fount tried to sell his cattle, but the market was flooded, dropping the price even lower. Banks called in their loans. Fount was forced to sell his cattle for a fraction of what they had cost.
Most of his possesions were auctioned off to pay his debts. He was left with only the house in Forth Worth and the remaining 10,000 acres of the Diamond Ranch.
He started over. During the 1920's, Fount continued to raise and trade cattle, and slowly began to build another ranching empire. Just when things were starting to go well, the stock market crashed, cattle prices dropped, and drought hit again. The cattle soon finished off the last of the stored grain; Fount, now 80 years old, took an army surplus flamethrower and burned the thorns off the cactus so the cattle could eat it.
He never got the chance to rebuild once more. Fountain Goodlet Oxsheer died in Fort Worth, Texas on September 28, 1931. He was buried in Oakwood Cemetery.
Mary Beal Oxsheer died January 16, 1937, and was buried next to her husband.
The image below shows the Oxsheer Pennsylvania Avenue in Fort Worth, Texas. Unfortunately, few of the old grand homes remain.
For more on Fountain Goodlet Oxsheer and his family, read his biography:
The Forgotten Cattle King
Benton White, Texas A&M University Press, 1986
Order the book for $17.95
For more information:
The Handbook of Texas Online: Fountain Goodlet Oxsheer