MCGEE, THOMAS T.
(1849-1894)

Thomas T. McGee, first sheriff of
Hemphill County, was born on September 13, 1849, in West Virginia. In 1877, after working as a cowboy for a time in Colorado, he accompanied Henry W. (Hank) Cresswell's Bar CC herd to its new location in Ochiltree County.

He was listed as a resident of
Roberts County in the 1880 census. Later he worked for the Moody-Andrews Cattle Company (PO Ranch) and helped drive herds to Dodge City for several ranches, including Nick T. Eaton's U Bar U. In December 1883 he registered his own Quarter Circle C brand at Mobeetie. About 1886 he bought William Young's interest in the PO Ranch and became foreman of it.

During his tenure as foreman McGee was elected the first sheriff of
Hemphill County when the county was organized in 1887. With his deputy sheriff, Vastine Stickley, as a partner, McGee operated a wagonyard and livery stable in the town of Canadian until 1893. On June 5, 1889, he married Mary Blandy Taylor at the home of her uncle, George T. Lynn, in Kansas City.

In the fall of 1894 George Isaacs sent five envelopes reported to contain a total of $25,000 from
Kansas City to his home base in Canadian. After the train pulled into Canadian on the evening of November 24, the money was transferred to the Wells Fargo safe in the railroad station. Moments later gunfire erupted outside the station.

Sheriff McGee, who had just stepped out onto the platform, was fatally wounded and died later that night. When the envelopes were opened they were found to contain a total of only $500 in small bills. The obvious scheme of Isaacs to swindle Wells
Fargo of thousands of dollars had miscarried. Isaacs was subsequently charged with McGee's murder, convicted in 1895 on a change of venue to Quanah in Hardeman County, and sentenced to life imprisonment at Huntsville.

He later was reported to have escaped and fled to
Mexico, then to Arizona, although some sources indicate that he was released. Three men accused of being his accomplices-Jim Harbolt, Dan McKenzie, and Tulsa Jack, a member of the Doolin Gang-were later apprehended by deputy marshals and returned for trial to Canadian.

After her husband's death, Mary McGee reportedly had difficulty in settling his estate, since he did most of his banking in
Kansas City. She served as a nurse's aid in England during World War I and remained there until her death. Her ashes were returned to Canadian for burial beside her husband.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Ernest R. Archambeau, "The First Federal Census in the Panhandle, 1880," Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 23 (1950). Jerry Sinise, George Washington Arrington (Burnet, Texas: Eakin Press, 1979). F. Stanley [
Stanley F. L. Crocchiola], Rodeo Town (Canadian, Texas) (Denver: World, 1953).

H. Allen Anderson

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MOODY, ROBERT
(1838-1915)

Robert Moody, rancher, banker, and businessman, one of twelve children of Thomas Cross and Arabella (Neu) Moody, was born on
June 26, 1838, at Apsley Farm, near Hampshire, England. He was schooled at Manchester and in 1857 journeyed to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to join his older brother, Frank.

Soon afterwards the rest of the family, whose fortune had been depleted, immigrated to
America and settled near West Port Landing (later Kansas City). Over the next several years the Moody brothers operated a freighting business on the Santa Fe Trail. For a short time in 1859-60 Robert was in partnership with John Thatcher in a general store in Pueblo, Colorado. In 1868 the Moodys sold their freight wagons and settled on farms near Lenexa, Kansas.

On April 2 of that year Robert married Mary Cathryn Allen, daughter of W. P. Allen of
Kansas City; they became the parents of seven children. The Moodys lived at Kansas City until 1871, when Moody became manager of the Dipper Ranch for P. T. Barnum, whom he had first met in New York in 1857. Moody later bought an interest in this enterprise, located on the Huerfano River about forty miles from Pueblo, which he sold in 1876.

Moody's interest in the Panhandle began in 1879, when he joined the Pollard brothers, whom he had known in Pueblo, at their
PO Ranch in Hemphill County. In 1881 he purchased Milton Pollard's half-interest in the ranch. Moody became a charter member of the Panhandle Stock Association, which first met at the Husselby House in Mobeetie.

In 1882 he and J. B. Andrews, a
Pueblo merchant, formed the Moody-Andrews Land and Cattle Company after the latter bought Hammond Pollard's share. The 1886 blizzards almost drove this partnership out of business and prompted Andrews to sell out to Moody, who thus became the PO's sole owner.

In 1887, after establishing his headquarters on Red Deer Creek, Moody brought his family from
Olathe, Kansas, to the new rail town of Canadian. With Henry Hamburg he established the Traders Bank, which later became the First National Bank of Canadian. In addition, Moody had real estate interests and stock in other town businesses.

As an active member of the Baptist congregation, he gave the land for the church's
Canadian Academy and became one of the school trustees. He also helped organize the public school and established the Moody Medal and Scholarship for outstanding students. Later, in 1906, he erected the sumptuous Moody Hotel, which was for years a Panhandle showplace.

In 1900 Moody moved to
Kansas City, where his wife died in 1908. In the meantime he had become owner of a chain of banks in Texas and Oklahoma. After turning these and his ranching interests over to his children and in-laws, Moody moved to Long Beach, California, where in 1912-13 he erected the Moody Block on Ocean Avenue. Even then he considered Canadian his home and made frequent trips back to the Panhandle.

On
September 27, 1915, while visiting his son Thomas in Canadian, Moody died after suffering a paralytic stroke. He was buried in the family lot at Lenexa. Moody descendents still reside in Canadian and other parts of the Panhandle, as well as in Oklahoma.

The Moody Hotel in Canadian, sold by the heirs in 1921, has been renovated and now houses the
Pioneer Museum. Moody Street in Canadian is also named for him.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Margaret Moody Gerlach, "Robert Moody, 1838-1915," Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 4 (1931). Sallie B. Harris, Cowmen and Ladies: A History of
Hemphill County (Canyon, Texas: Staked Plains, 1977). Glyndon M. Riley, The History of Hemphill County (M.A. thesis, West Texas State College, 1939). Pauline D. and R. L. Robertson, Cowman's Country: Fifty Frontier Ranches in the Texas Panhandle, 1876-1887 (Amarillo: Paramount, 1981). F. Stanley [Stanley F. L. Crocchiola], The Canadian, Texas, Story (Nazareth, Texas, 1975). F. Stanley [Stanley F. L. Crocchiola], Rodeo Town (Canadian, Texas) (Denver: World, 1953).

H. Allen Anderson

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SIMPSON, GEORGE ALLEN
(1852-1937)

George Allen Simpson, buffalo hunter and pioneer settler in the Panhandle, was born on
February 28, 1852, in Boone County, Missouri, the son of John and Marietta (Foster) Simpson. His father died when George was a small boy. His mother, who also had two daughters, later married a man named Gibbs. Gibbs moved his new family to Nebraska and then Colorado while hunting buffalo for railroad construction crews.

In 1867 the family traveled down the Goodnight-Loving Trail to
South Texas. They purchased cattle on the way and planned to start a herd of their own. In 1868 Gibbs's sons Elijah and Billy trailed the herd to Baxter Springs, Kansas. After living in Ellis County, Texas, for five years, the Gibbses and their trail hands drove a herd north over the Chisholm Trail, but danger from Indians and rustlers forced Gibbs to dispose of his cattle near Caldwell, Kansas.

At
Fort Dodge he formed a buffalo-hunting group with Elijah and Billy and his stepson, George A Simpson. George's mother and two sisters cooked for the hunters. They began their operations in the upper Arkansas valley in eastern Colorado. At Bent's Fort, Simpson met Sylvania Wood and her family, whom he accompanied to the Canadian valley in the Texas Panhandle in the spring of 1875.

The hunters established their operations at Hidetown (later Mobeetie), near the newly established
Fort Elliott. With such men as John R. Cook and Sylvania's brother Buck, Simpson hunted the entire Panhandle-South Plains region for the next two years, until the buffalo were nearly exterminated. The men gradually made a great profit from the hides they shipped to Fort Griffin and Dodge City through the Rath and Hamburg firm.

On
October 4, 1877, George A. Simpson and Sylvania Wood became the first couple on record to be married in the Panhandle. A Lieutenant Taylor performed the ceremony at Fort Elliott, and Lt. Theodore H. Eckerson, the post adjutant, drew up the certificate, on which he erroneously recorded the date as October 5. During the next two years the Simpsons lived near Junction in Kimble County, where they operated a gristmill.

However, thieves stole most of their horses and cattle, and in 1880 they moved back to
Wheeler County. They homesteaded land on Russell Creek near Mobeetie for five years and later bought property on Dry and Clear creeks in Hemphill County. The Simpsons produced vegetables and supplies for the local market, raised a few cattle, and were said to have grown the first domesticated flowers (zinnias) in the Panhandle. They had two sons and five daughters.

Simpson helped organize
Hemphill County in 1887 and was a member of its first commissioners' court. For sixty years the Simpsons were prominent citizens in the town of Canadian.

George died there on November 21, 1937;
Sylvania lived her remaining years with her daughter at Las Cruces, New Mexico, where she died on September 30, 1939. She was buried at Canadian next to her husband. The Simpsons' land on Clear Creek later became the site of the Canadian country club.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: John R. Cook, The Border and the
Buffalo: An Untold Story of the Southwest Plains (Topeka, Kansas: Crane, 1907; rpt., New York: Citadel Press, 1967). Sallie B. Harris, comp., Hide Town in the Texas Panhandle: 100 Years in Wheeler County and Panhandle of Texas (Hereford, Texas: Pioneer, 1968). James M. Oswald, "History of Fort Elliot," Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 32 (1959). F. Stanley [Stanley F. L. Crocchiola], Rodeo Town (Canadian, Texas) (Denver: World, 1953).

H. Allen Anderson

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SPRINGER, A. G.
(?-1878)

A. G. (Jim) Springer, rancher, was born in the northeastern
United States, possibly in Delaware. He moved to Kansas in 1873 and established a ranch on the south bank of the Arkansas River across from Dodge City. In 1874 or early 1875 he moved to the Panhandle of Texas and built a trading post for buffalo hunters in what is now Hemphill County, where Boggy Creek empties into the Canadian River.

In 1875 Springer purchased 300 head of cattle from Dillard R. Fant, who was driving a herd through to
Dodge City. The Dodge City Times in September 1877 reported Springer "fully embarked in the stock business" with some 700 or 800 cattle. He was thus the first permanent rancher in the Panhandle. He made at least one drive to Dodge City.

Although his herd grew and prospered, his business was primarily as a trader, storekeeper, and way station operator. Because of his isolation and fear of Indian attack, he fortified his post so heavily that soldiers called it
Fort Sitting Bull. John R. Cook, who frequently traded with Springer, described the station as being so impregnable that a few determined men could make it impossible for the allied tribes to take it without artillery.

When the mail route was extended from
Fort Elliott to Mobeetie, Springer's ranch became a major stop, named Boggy Station, on the stage line. Springer was designated postmaster on October 9, 1878. With a road ranch, trading post, and cattle ranch, he soon accumulated considerable cash, bonds, and cattle; his cattle alone were reportedly worth $12,000.

On
November 17, 1878, Springer and his hired hand, Tom Leadbetter, were gambling at the way station with some buffalo soldiers from Fort Elliott. A quarrel developed, and both Springer and Leadbetter were killed. Springer's brother came from Delaware to settle the estate and sold the buildings to men named Tuttle and Chapman.

The post office, which had been closed after Springer's death, was opened on
September 9, 1879, under the name Springer Ranch, with Tuttle as postmaster.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: John R. Cook, The Border and the
Buffalo: An Untold Story of the Southwest Plains (Topeka, Kansas: Crane, 1907; rpt., New York: Citadel Press, 1967). J. Evetts Haley, Mose Hayes (MS, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin, 1930).

C. Robert Haywood

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