The Armstrong Ranch: Establishing and Preserving a Legacy

Abstract

The Armstrong Ranch: Establishing and Preserving a Legacy Sarita A. Hixon (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution The Armstrong family, circa 2003. Courtesy of Sarita A. Hixon. [End Page 140] I had the good fortune to be raised on the Armstrong Ranch, which my family has owned for more than one hundred and sixty years. Located about eighty miles south of Corpus Christi, the ranch is an oasis in the heart of the Wild Horse Desert. We are in the seventh generation of family ownership, and I am thankful for the vision, labor, tenacity, and sacrifice of those who established and preserved this family ranch. I am proud to share the story of my family’s legacy. The story of the Armstrong Ranch began on a spring day in May 1852 when my great-great grandfather, James H. Durst, rode through the Wild Horse Desert from the Rio Grande Valley to Corpus Christi, Texas, for a state fair. At the time, the Wild Horse Desert was raw, unsettled land. The arid, sandy soil and scarcity of water made it unsuitable for farming. Yet the presence of great numbers of healthy wild horses, cattle, and deer clearly proved the land could be grazed. James Durst had recently moved from Nacogdoches to the Rio Grande Valley following the U.S.–Mexico War. He had established a successful mercantile operation and had money to invest.1 He saw potential for large scale cattle ranching in this land, so in December 1852, he bought 21 leagues, more than 92,000 acres, of the La Barreta land grant from descendants of the original grantee, José Francisco Ballí.2 His friends Captain Richard King and Captain Mifflin Kenedy followed suit the next year and purchased lands in the Wild [End Page 141] Horse Desert.3 With these purchases, Durst, King, and Kenedy became the founding fathers of the Armstrong, King, and Kenedy Ranches, respectively. Sadly, Durst never realized his vision for his raw rangeland. He died on April 24, 1858, and left a twenty-four-year-old widow, Mary Josephine Durst (my great-great grandmother), and two young children, Mollie and Jim Durst. Unable to support her children alone in South Texas, Josephine Durst moved to Austin to be near her family. According to James H. Durst’s will, the properties were to be left equally to his widow and children.4 The family retained the Nueces County law firm of Lovinskiold and McCampbell to settle the estate.5 Suspiciously, a few years later, title to the extensive La Baretta property ended up in the hands of the attorneys, and the widow and children never received a dime for the sale of the estate properties.6 The story of the Armstrong Ranch would have ended with this fraud had not my great grandfather, John Barkley Armstrong, gone to Texas (later sources list his middle name as “Barclay”). John B. Armstrong came from a long line of prominent physicians in Tennessee. He left for Texas in 1868 at the age of eighteen.7 We do not know why he left his family in Tennessee.8 By January 1873, however, he was in Austin, where he joined the Travis Rifles, and in 1875 signed on to serve in Captain Leander McNelly’s company of Texas Rangers.9 He rose quickly through the ranks and acquired the nickname “McNelly’s Bulldog.”10 The highlight of my great grandfather’s Texas Ranger career was his arrest of the notorious outlaw John Wesley Hardin in 1877.11 Family lore has it that once Armstrong returned Hardin to Texas for trial and collected his share of the $4,000 reward, he finally believed he was worthy of marrying the young lady in Austin he had admired for several years, Mollie Durst, James Durst’s daughter and heir.12 Mollie and John B. Armstrong were married in Austin in 1878 and their mutual friend, Robert J. Kleberg, served as Armstrong’s best man.13 [End Page 142] It is not clear when Armstrong learned of the Durst properties lost to unscrupulous lawyers. Once aware of the fraud, John B. Armstrong resolved to regain title to those lost lands for...