ABRAHAM, NAHIM
(1885-1965)

Nahim Abraham, community builder, was born on February 15, 1885, in Kafracab, Lebanon. He left his homeland in 1901 on the first of three trips he made to America before deciding to immigrate permanently. On his second return to Lebanon he was married to Alia Abdullah Bulos Malouf, the daughter of a doctor.

After returning to America the third time in 1912, Abraham worked as a traveling salesman. He settled briefly in Utah, then in Amarillo, Texas, before moving to Canadian in the summer of 1913. Later that year he brought Alia and his two sons to join him; the couple had two more sons in Canadian. Abraham established a mercantile business called the Fair Store, which he managed until his retirement in 1955; the store was noted throughout the Panhandle for its quality merchandise. Abraham was an elder in the First Presbyterian Church of Canadian.

He and his wife visited Lebanon over the years, the last time in the summer of 1939. In June 1950 Abraham purchased the old Moody Hotel, which dated from 1903. After his son Edward died in 1961, Abraham gave a gift to build the Edward Abraham Memorial Home, a nursing facility. Abraham died of a heart attack on January 10, 1965. His surviving sons became prominent local businessmen; Malouf (Oofie) served as mayor of Canadian and was a state legislator.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Amarillo Daily News, January 11, 1965. Sallie B. Harris, Cowmen and Ladies: A History of Hemphill County (Canyon, Texas: Staked Plains, 1977). F. Stanley [Stanley F. L. Crocchiola], The Canadian, Texas, Story (Nazareth, Texas, 1975).

H. Allen Anderson



ALLISON, ROBERT CLAY
(1840-1887)

Clay Allison, gunfighter, the fourth of nine children of John and Nancy (Lemmond) Allison, was born on a farm near Waynesboro, Tennessee, on September 2, 1840. His father, a Presbyterian minister who was also engaged in the cattle and sheep business, died when Clay was five.

When the Civil War broke out, Allison joined the Confederate Army. In January 1862 he was discharged for emotional instability resulting from a head injury as a child, but in September he reenlisted and finished the war as a scout for Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. He was a prisoner of war from May 4 to 10, 1865, in Alabama.

After the war Allison moved to the Brazos River country in Texas. At a Red River crossing near Denison he severely pummeled ferryman Zachary Colbert in a fist fight. This incident reportedly started a feud between Allison and the Colbert family that led to the killing of the ferryman's desperado nephew, "Chunk" Colbert, by Allison in New Mexico on January 7, 1874.

Allison soon signed on as a cowhand with Oliver Loving and Charles Goodnightq and was probably among the eighteen herders on the 1866 drive that blazed the Goodnight-Loving Trail. In 1867-69 Allison rode for M. L. Dalton and was trail boss for a partnership between his brother-in-law L. G. Coleman and Irvin W. Lacy.

During this time he befriended the John H. Matthews family in Raton and accidentally shot himself in the right foot while he and some companions stampeded a herd of army mules as a prank. In 1870 Coleman and Lacy moved to a spread in Colfax County, New Mexico. Allison drove their herd to the new ranch for a payment of 300 cattle, with which he started his own ranch near Cimarron. Eventually he built it into a lucrative operation.

He is alleged to have had a knife duel with a man named Johnson in a freshly dug grave in 1870. On October 7 of that year he led a mob that broke into the jail in Elizabethtown, near Cimarron, and lynched an accused murderer named Charles Kennedy. Allison was a heavy drinker and became involved in several brawls and shooting sprees.

On October 30, 1875, he led a mob that seized and lynched Cruz Vega, who was suspected of murdering a Methodist circuit rider. Two days later Allison killed gunman Pancho Griego, a friend of Vega, in a confrontation at the St. James Hotel in Cimarron. In January 1876 a drunken Allison wrecked the office of the Cimarron News & Press because of a scathing editorial. He allegedly later returned to the newspaper office and paid $200 for damages.

In December of that year Clay and his brother John were involved in a dance-hall gunfight at Las Animas, Colorado, in which a deputy sheriff was killed. For this Allison was arrested and charged with manslaughter, but the charges were later dismissed on grounds of self-defense. Allison was arrested as an accessory to the murder of three black soldiers the following spring, but evidence was sketchy and he was soon acquitted. In 1878 he sold his New Mexico ranch and established himself in Hays City, Kansas, as a cattle broker.

In September 1878 Allison and his men supposedly terrorized Dodge City and made Bartholomew (Bat) Masterson and other lawmen flee in fear. Later, Wyatt Earp was said to have pressured Allison into leaving. Though Dodge City peace officers may have questioned him about the shooting of a cowboy named George Hoy, there is no evidence of any serious altercation.

By 1880 Clay and John Allison had settled on Gageby Creek, near its junction with the Washita River, in Hemphill County, Texas, next door to their in-laws, the L. G. Colemans. Clay registered an ACE brand for his cattle. On March 28, 1881, he married Dora McCullough. The couple had two daughters.

Though Allison served as a juror in Mobeetie, and though age and marriage had slowed him down some, his reputation as the "Wolf of the Washita" was kept alive by reports of his unusual antics. Once he was said to have ridden nude through the streets of Mobeetie. In the summer of 1886 a dentist from Cheyenne, Wyoming, drilled the wrong one of Allison's teeth, and Allison got even by pulling out one of the dentist's teeth.

In December 1886 he bought a ranch near Pecos and became involved in area politics. On July 3, 1887, while hauling supplies to his ranch from Pecos he was thrown from his heavily loaded wagon and fatally injured when run over by its rear wheel. He was buried in the Pecos Cemetery the next day. On August 28, 1975, in a special ceremony, his remains were reinterred in Pecos Park, just west of the Pecos Museum.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Carl W. Bretham, Great Gunfighters of the West (San Antonio: Naylor, 1962). Norman Cleaveland, Colfax County's Chronic Murder Mystery (Santa Fe: Rydal, 1977). J. Frank Dobie, "Clay Allison of the Washita," Frontier Times, February 1943. Chuck Parsons, Clay Allison: Portrait of a Shootist (Seagraves, Texas: Pioneer, 1983). Richard C. Sandoval, "Clay Allison's Cimarron," New Mexico Magazine, March-April 1974. F. Stanley [Stanley F. L. Crocchiola], Clay Allison (Denver: World, 1953).

C. L. Sonnichsen



ARRINGTON, GEORGE WASHINGTON
(1844-1923)

George Washington (Cap) Arrington, lawman and rancher, was born John C. Orrick, Jr., in Greensboro, Alabama, on December 23, 1844, the son of John and Mariah (Arrington) Orrick. After his father's death in 1848, his mother married William Larkin Williams, who was later killed in the Civil War.

In 1861, at the age of sixteen, he enlisted in the Confederate Army and rode with John S. Mosby's guerrillas, often doing undercover work as a spy. After the war's end, Orrick went to Mexico, but arrived too late to join Emperor Maximilian as a mercenary.

After murdering a black businessman at his hometown in June 1867, he made a brief trip to Central America before moving to Texas in 1870. At that time he adopted the name George Washington Arrington to break with his troubled past. He worked for the Houston and Texas Central Railway in Houston and later took a job at a commission house in Galveston. In 1874 he farmed briefly in Collin County; he was subsequently hired to help trail a cattle herd to Brown County.

Arrington was in Brown County in 1875 when he enlisted in Company E of the newly organized Frontier Battalion of Texas Rangers. During his first two years of service he distinguished himself in the Rio Grande valley by tracking down fugitives and outlaws. Maj. John B. Jones recommended his promotion from sergeant to first lieutenant in 1877 because of his successful accomplishment of difficult missions.

The following year Arrington was made captain of Company C and stationed at Coleman. In July 1878 he was ordered to Fort Griffin to restore peace in the wake of vigilante activities. In the summer of 1879 his company was moved to the Panhandle to investigate depredations at area ranches. His opposition to federal Indian policy soon brought him into sharp conflict with Lt. Col. J. W. Davidson at Fort Elliott.

In September Arrington established Camp Roberts, the first ranger camp in the Panhandle, east of the site of present Crosbyton. From there in January and February 1880 he led his men on a successful forty-day search for the Lost Lakes in eastern New Mexico; the troop also charted the area from Yellow House Canyon to Ranger Lake, in eastern New Mexico, and located watering places and Indian hideouts.

In 1880-81 Arrington and his men covered much of the Panhandle and were stationed briefly at both Mobeetie and Tascosa. Because of his rank he received the nickname "Cap."

Arrington resigned from the rangers in the summer of 1882 to take advantage of Panhandle ranching opportunities. After helping area ranchers break up a major rustling ring, he was elected sheriff of Wheeler County and the fourteen counties attached to it. About that time he met Sarah (Sallie) Burnette, who had come to visit her sister Jane (Mrs. Henry L.) Eubank at the Connell-Eubank ranch. They were married at her hometown, Westboro, Missouri, on October 18, 1882.

They became the parents of three sons and six daughters; the first son died in infancy. During Arrington's years as sheriff, the family resided at the county jail in Mobeetie. His reputation as the "iron-handed man of the Panhandle" increased with his fatal shooting in November 1886 of John Leverton, who was suspected of cattle rustling. Although murder charges were filed against Arrington by Leverton's widow, he was acquitted on grounds of self-defense.

Arrington served as county sheriff until 1890. During his service he filed on choice ranchland on the Washita River in Hemphill County. After first living in a dugout he erected two cabins as his home and headquarters and in 1885 registered his CAP brand.

In 1893 he was appointed manager of the Rocking Chair Ranch by its British owners. In that position Arrington made considerable improvements by shipping cattle, paying off accounts due, and interviewing prospective buyers. He remained manager until December 1896, when the Continental Land and Cattle Company bought the Rocking Chair lands.

Arrington resumed management of his own ranch after 1896. As a Mason and Shriner he became involved in the civic affairs of Canadian, where the family lived for seven years in the former home of Cape Willingham so the older children could attend school. In 1897 Arrington escorted George Isaacs, convicted killer of Hemphill county sheriff Thomas McGee, to the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville.

Later the Arringtons built a new house at the ranch and helped establish a rural school in the vicinity. To the end of his life, Cap was cautious about visitors because of enemies he had made as a peace officer and was seldom seen in public without a gun. In his last years he suffered from arthritis and made frequent train trips to Mineral Wells for the hot baths. On one of these trips in 1923 he was stricken with a heart attack. He was taken to his home in Canadian, where he died on March 31. He was buried in the cemetery at Mobeetie.

Sallie Arrington remained active in the Canadian WCTU and First Baptist Church, of which she was a charter member, until her death on June 1, 1945. In 1986 the Arrington Ranch, on which oil was later discovered, was owned and operated by the heirs of Cap's younger son, French; Arrington's older son, John, established a ranch near Miami, in Roberts County. Arrington's papers are in the Research Center of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum.


BIBLIOGRAPHY: Millie Jones Porter, Memory Cups of Panhandle Pioneers (Clarendon, Texas: Clarendon Press, 1945). Jerry Sinise, George Washington Arrington (Burnet, Texas: Eakin Press, 1979). Estelle D. Tinkler, "Nobility's Ranche: A History of the Rocking Chair Ranche," Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 15 (1942).

H. Allen Anderson



BAKER, BENJAMIN M..
(1850-1918)

Benjamin M. Baker, the seventh of ten children of Benjamin H. and Eliza (Greer) Baker, was born on January 20, 1850, in Russell County, Alabama. His father was a member of the Alabama Secession Convention in 1861 and fought for the Confederacy as a lieutenant colonel of the Sixth Alabama Infantry.

Baker received no formal education. He moved to Carthage, Texas, at the age of nineteen and studied law in the office of A. W. Deberry. He was admitted to the bar in 1871 and began his practice at Carthage, where he married Emily Hull in 1872. They had three daughters and a son, who died at the age of six.

Baker represented Rusk, Panola, and Shelby counties in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth legislatures at Austin. In the Seventeenth Legislature he chaired the committee on finance and, in the Eighteenth, the committee on penitentiaries. In January 1883, after practicing law for a short time in Decatur, he became secretary of the State Board of Education, which appointed him first state superintendent of education.

He was elected to that office in 1884 and served until 1887, when he moved his family to the new rail town of Canadian, in the Panhandle. There he resumed his private law practice and in 1891, with John Pugh, founded the Canadian Enterprise, which under later owners merged with the Canadian Record.

In 1890 Baker was elected judge of the Thirty-fifth Judicial District, and he served in that position until 1917, when he retired to his private practice. He died at Canadian on May 21, 1918, and is buried there. B. M. Baker School in Canadian is named for him.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sallie B. Harris, Cowmen and Ladies: A History of Hemphill County (Canyon, Texas: Staked Plains, 1977). Frank W. Johnson, A History of Texas and Texans (5 vols., ed. E. C. Barker and E. W. Winkler [Chicago and New York: American Historical Society, 1914; rpt. 1916]). F. Stanley [Stanley F. L. Crocchiola], Rodeo Town (Canadian, Texas) (Denver: World, 1953).

H. Allen Anderson



BRAINARD, EDWARD HENRY
(1860-1942)

Edward Henry Brainard, early Panhandle rancher, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Peter H. Brainard, was born on July 4, 1860, in Otis, Massachusetts, and moved with his parents to Sparrowbush, New York, in 1868. There he completed high school at the age of fifteen and did such various odd jobs as clerking in local stores and rafting on the Delaware River.

In the spring of 1880 he went to Colorado to work for the Pollard and Piper cattle firm. He accompanied the Pollards to the Texas Panhandle and worked for a time on Robert Moody's PO Ranch. After a brief return trip to New York in the fall of 1882 Brainard went to work for Joseph Morgan's Triangle Ranch, northeast of the site of present Canadian. He always recalled Morgan's beneficence; when Morgan was fatally stricken with smallpox Brainard rode thirty-five miles to Mobeetie to get a doctor.

After Henry W. Cresswell added the Triangle to his Bar CC range Brainard went to work for him, and in 1887 Cresswell promoted him to range foreman. The following year Brainard acquired a 480-acre tract on John's Creek in Roberts County. His parents and sister Mary, who later became the first schoolteacher in Canadian, moved from Sparrowbush to Canadian to be near him.

Although he had begun purchasing land and cattle of his own, Brainard continued as foreman of the Bar CC until 1895. He afterwards made his home in Canadian, where he became involved in banking. In 1901 he married Kittie Belle Fullerton, daughter of a family of Dutch and Irish extraction from Sparrowbush. They had two children. Over the next several years Brainard took pride in his high-grade Hereford cattle, which bore his Lazy B brand.

He served on the executive committee of the Texas Cattle Raisers Association (now the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association) and for eight years was a member of the Canadian City Commission. By 1940 the Brainard family had acquired 50,000 acres of ranchland.

Brainard died on August 20, 1942, and was buried in the Canadian cemetery. Decades later the family continued to operate the Lazy B. The old Brainard home remained a landmark in Canadian.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sallie B. Harris, Cowmen and Ladies: A History of Hemphill County (Canyon, Texas: Staked Plains, 1977). John M. Hendrix, "Ed Brainard: 60 Years a Cowman," Cattleman, July 1940. Lester Fields Sheffy, "Edward Henry Brainard," Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 19 (1946). F. Stanley [Stanley F. L. Crocchiola], Rodeo Town (Canadian, Texas) (Denver: World, 1953).

H. Allen Anderson