CARROLL, JOHN ELLISON
(1862-1942)

John Ellison Carroll, champion steer roper and rodeo pioneer, son of J. E. and Mary Carroll, was born in San Patricio County, Texas, on September 14, 1862. As a young man he began working as a cowboy and trail driver in the Panhandle. He later ranched in Oklahoma and in Tarrant and Crockett counties, Texas, before he and Jim Todd established the 07 Ranch in Reagan County.

In 1912 Carroll sold his shares in the ranch and moved to Big Lake, where he lived for the remainder of his life. He won his first major professional contest as a steer roper at Canadian, Texas, in 1888 and was soon classed among the best single-steer ropers in the state. He would challenge anybody, any time, primarily in matched contests where earnings from side bets far exceeded contest prizes.

His chief opponent in matched roping from 1900 through 1913 was fellow Texan Henry Clay McGonagil, whom he defeated for the unofficial world's championship in a legendary three-day, ten-steer match in San Antonio. Carroll set a record that still stands by roping and tying a steer in seventeen seconds; he won $2,000. Thereafter, until he retired from competition around 1913, he proclaimed himself the "world's champion steer roper."

He issued postcards bearing this title and his picture alongside a "busted" steer. Thanks to his reputation as a roper Carroll also became a Wild West-show star and performed with such notables as Lucille Mulhall, Tom Mix, and Will Rogers between 1900 and 1910.

Carroll married Marie Wiegand Van Wert on October 16, 1916. She died when their son, J. E. Carroll Jr., was born in 1919, and in 1926 Carroll married Frances Wiegand McClour. He was a Methodist and a Democrat. He served as sheriff of Reagan County from 1931 to 1933 and was county commissioner from 1937 until his death.

Carroll remained interested in rodeo throughout his life. During the 1930s he judged the Stamford Cowboy Reunion Rodeo and competed in its Oldtimers' Rodeo. He was also president of the Texas Cowboy Reunion Oldtimers Association in 1941. He died on April 20, 1942, and is buried in Big Lake Cemetery.

He was elected to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame Rodeo Division in Oklahoma City in 1976.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Foghorn Clancy, My Fifty Years in Rodeo (San Antonio: Naylor, 1952). Beth Day, America's First Cowgirl: Lucille Mulhall (New York: Messner, 1955). Willard H. Porter, Who's Who in Rodeo (Oklahoma City: Powder River, 1982). Hooper Shelton, 50 Years of a Living Legend: Texas Cowboy Reunion and Old-Timers Association (Stamford, Texas: Shelton, 1979). Carl L. Studer, "First Rodeo in Texas," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 48 (January 1945). J. L. Werst, Jr., ed., The Reagan County Story (Big Lake, Texas: Reagan County Historical Survey Committee, 1974).

Mary Lou LeCompte

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EATON, NICK T.
(ca. 1839-ca. 1895)

Nick T. Eaton, Panhandle rancher, was born about 1839 in Missouri and appeared in the Panhandle in 1878, when he brought a herd up from the vicinity of Fort Griffin. Among his hired trail drivers were George Finch, W. K. (Doc) Franz, and James P. (Lengthy) Sutton, all of whom stayed to work on Eaton's new ranch, which he established twenty-five miles west of the site of present Wheeler.

This ranch covered a third of Wheeler County and a third of Gray County. The headquarters, built out of cedar posts, was located on Hackberry Creek, a tributary of McClellan Creek, six miles northwest of the locale of present McLean near the North Fork of the Red River. On his range Eaton ran 3,000 head of cattle that carried his U Bar U brand.

Finch served as the first wagon boss but became an invalid after a year and died in 1888. He was succeeded as wagon boss by Doc Franz, who as state surveyor for the Clay District had helped survey the Panhandle in 1869-73. Franz also served as range foreman. Thomas T. McGee, later Hemphill county sheriff, was among those hired to drive U Bar U cattle to Dodge City.

Eaton was a charter member of the Panhandle Stock Association, formed in Mobeetie in 1880, and served consistently on the association's executive board. He was also on grand juries, county commissions, and school boards. Eaton and Henry Cresswell became partners about 1880 in a cattle enterprise in which they used a Forked Lightning brand. Their cattle grazed on Eaton's U Bar U range until 1889, when the partners discontinued the brand, shipped out the cattle of that marking, and sold them.

Marvin V. Sanders, later Wheeler county sheriff, who worked for Eaton, told of one episode in which Doc Franz and Lengthy Sutton discovered a band of reservation Indians slaughtering some Forked Lightning steers near the U Bar U headquarters. Sutton allegedly rode eighteen miles to Fort Elliott in forty minutes to alert the military. Troops came to escort the Indians back to their reservation, and the government later reimbursed Eaton and Cresswell for the cattle.

In 1885 Eaton filed an injunction against Abner P. Blocker to try to prevent him from driving the first XIT Ranch herd across the U Bar U rangeland to Dallam County. However, the case was "dismissed at cost of plaintiff."

After 1889 Eaton, who was approaching fifty, ended his bachelorhood by marrying in Kansas City. There he maintained a palatial mansion for his bride and commuted to his Panhandle ranch during cattle-shipping times.

He was known among the "cowpuncher element" as an expert "brand man," straightforward in all his dealing. Eaton reportedly turned the U Bar U's registry over to J. P. Sutton after 1892. Some accounts related that Eaton later committed suicide after going broke.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Millie Jones Porter, Memory Cups of Panhandle Pioneers (Clarendon, Texas: Clarendon Press, 1945). Pauline D. and R. L. Robertson, Cowman's Country: Fifty Frontier Ranches in the Texas Panhandle, 1876-1887 (Amarillo: Paramount, 1981).

H. Allen Anderson

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FRYE, HENRY
(1851-1941)

Henry Frye, rancher and Wheeler County pioneer, was born on October 6, 1851, in Rochelle, Virginia, the son of a Presbyterian minister. At age twenty-one he moved to Austin, Texas, where he worked as a wheat harvester. He used his earnings to buy cowboy equipment and went to work on the Chisholm Trail.

In 1874 Frye joined William J. (Bull) Miller in herding cattle up the trail to Kansas, where he met Miller's thirteen-year-old daughter Lula. He married her in 1877 and left by wagon for the Texas Panhandle.

In July 1877 the couple settled in Hemphill County, where they ran 200 heifers for Lula's father. They lived in a half dugout on the Washita River but later built a two-room picket house, which Lula carpeted with towsacks. From the original herd of 200 head, Frye received one-half of the increase. He registered his Campstool brand in 1880.

In 1879 he was among those who petitioned to organize Wheeler County; he also served as a juror. In 1882 he sold his Hemphill County home to Robert Moody and moved his family to a half dugout in Wheeler County. In 1884 he purchased about 1,000 cattle and built a two-room rock house on Sweetwater Creek. The seven Frye children received much of their early education at the Rock community school.

After the town of Canadian was founded in 1887, Frye operated a mercantile store for a short time with his brother, W. E. Frye. Although his primary interest was ranching, Frye played a leading role in Canadian's civic and educational development. In 1897 a post office was established at the Frye ranchhouse, with Lula Frye as postmistress. It remained in operation until 1909.

Frye invested in more land and eventually divided the original ranch into smaller farms. He passed the Campstool brand on to his sons Will, Tobe, and Harry, and his daughter Nellie Puryear. Frye's daughter Elizabeth and her husband, Frank Young, bought back the land on the Washita River where Frye's first homestead was located.

In their later years Henry and Lula Frye moved to Sulphur, Oklahoma, where their sons Will and Harry operated a sanatorium and bathhouse. Henry died there on August 14, 1941, and Lula died about a year later. They were both buried in Sulphur.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sallie B. Harris, Cowmen and Ladies: A History of Hemphill County (Canyon, Texas: Staked Plains, 1977). Sallie B. Harris, comp., Hide Town in the Texas Panhandle: 100 Years in Wheeler County and Panhandle of Texas (Hereford, Texas: Pioneer, 1968). Millie Jones Porter, Memory Cups of Panhandle Pioneers (Clarendon, Texas: Clarendon Press, 1945). Pauline D. and R. L. Robertson, Cowman's Country: Fifty Frontier Ranches in the Texas Panhandle, 1876-1887 (Amarillo: Paramount, 1981).

H. Allen Anderson

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GERLACH, GEORGE
(1863-1937)

George Gerlach, early Panhandle merchant, son of Franz Joseph and Mary (Gilmartin) Gerlach, was born on February 8, 1863, at Virden, Illinois. Although he learned the stonemason's trade from his father, he felt no attraction to it and earned his first wages by hoeing corn for fifty cents a day.

In February 1885 he joined his brother, John J. Gerlach, at his dugout on Horse Creek, seven miles north of the site of Canadian, Texas. They established Gerlach Brothers Road Ranch and Store, so named because of its location on the Jones and Plummer Trail and near the military route from Fort Elliott, and stocked it with equipment George had brought in from Larned, Kansas. They built corrals for freighters who drove their teams along the road, cooked meals for them, sold them merchandise, and often put them up for the night.

In the spring of 1887 the Gerlachs moved their store, the first in Hemphill County, to the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway construction camp of Clear Creek, or Hogtown. As the rails moved on, the town of Canadian was platted, and by the fall of 1887 the store had been moved there.

A year later George turned the store over to John and opened a lumberyard, at which he specialized in coffins. It was said that the Gerlach brothers could "marry a man, build his home, furnish it, supply him with groceries, dry goods, implements, and other necessities of life, and when he no longer had need for them, bury him."

Gerlach married Dora E. Knollenberg of Jackson, Illinois, in 1890. They had four children and lived in Canadian, where George and his partners took over the mercantile business after John moved to Oklahoma to open a branch store. The original store burned in 1916, and the Gerlachs established the Canadian Hardware Company and Everybody's Dry Goods and Clothing Store, which operated until 1925.

Their home, located on the present site of the First Baptist Church in Canadian, was the town's first two-story house. Gerlach died on December 29, 1937, and was buried in the Canadian.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Margaret Moody Gerlach Papers, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. Sallie B. Harris, Cowmen and Ladies: A History of Hemphill County (Canyon, Texas: Staked Plains, 1977). F. Stanley [Stanley F. L. Crocchiola], Rodeo Town (Canadian, Texas) (Denver: World, 1953).

H. Allen Anderson

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GERLACH, JOHN J.
(1865-1931)

John J. Gerlach, plains pioneer, the younger son of Franz Joseph and Mary (Gilmartin) Gerlach, was born at Virden, McCoupin County, Illinois, in 1865. He moved to the Texas Panhandle in the fall of 1883 and worked for various ranches.

In November 1884 he erected a dugout in Hemphill County on Horse Creek, about four miles northwest of its juncture with the Canadian River. After his brother George Gerlach joined him there in 1885, they opened their Road Ranch and Store, which they moved to Clear Creek and then to Canadian after the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway built through in 1887.

Gerlach was elected first Hemphill county treasurer and managed the mercantile store at Canadian, which evolved through several partnerships, until 1893, when he made the run into the Cherokee Strip of Oklahoma. He helped establish the town of Woodward, Oklahoma, and opened the Gerlach-Hopkins Mercantile there with his partner, J. H. (Hoos) Hopkins. Gerlach's sister Capitola later joined him there. The firm operated until 1928, when the Gerlachs sold out.

On January 14, 1894, Gerlach married Margaret Moody, daughter of PO Ranch owner Robert Moody. They became the parents of three children. Gerlach served as treasurer of Woodward County and was a member of the state banking board.

During World War I he served on the county council of defense, the coal commission for settling difficulties of the Oklahoma miners, and the food commission under Herbert Hoover. He died on December 16, 1931.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Margaret Moody Gerlach Papers, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. Sallie B. Harris, Cowmen and Ladies: A History of Hemphill County (Canyon, Texas: Staked Plains, 1977). F. Stanley [Stanley F. L. Crocchiola], Rodeo Town (Canadian, Texas) (Denver: World, 1953).

H. Allen Anderson