[From J. Marvin Hunter's Frontier Times Magazine, May, 1937]

MARCH 20th, last, Mr. and Mrs. Albert Maverick, Sr., of San Antonio, celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of their marriage at the home of their son, James S. Maverick, on the Sunshine Ranch near San Antonio. Mr. Maverick is the son of the Texas patriot, Samuel Maverick, whose place in history is well grounded. On March 20, 1877, Albert Maverick was happily married to Miss Jeannie L. Maury, of Charlotesville, Virginia, and they became the parents of eleven children, one of whom is the Hon. Maury Maverick, now a Member of Congress. About a year after their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Albert Maverick purchased a ranch in Bandera county, and moved here. This was in 1878, when the country was still the wild frontier. In 1928 Mrs. Maverick wrote a sketch of their experiences in Bandera county, which we published in Frontier Times. The ranch property, located on the Medina river and Winan's Creek, comprises several thousand acres of rich grazing land, and was purchased from a man named Mott of Galveston. Since the Mavericks disposed of the property it has been cut up into several small ranches and farms, the old headquarters place now being owned by George Miller.

In writing of this ranch, Mrs. Maverick said:

"It was a most beautiful place when we moved there. It looked like a well kept park. Occasional big postoak and liveoak trees shaded green grass which went to the very edges of the river and creek. Mr. Mott, who had, been `batching' there with John Gairagan, went back to Galveston, but John stayed, fortunately for us. He was considered a cranky old Irishman, and when he had headaches he would tie a red bandana on his head, get a quirt and whip every dog in sight. In reality he was one of the kindest men, and was a Godsend to two greenhorns like we were. Coming from Virginia, where darkies were plentiful, I was one of the poorest housekeepers to be found. I did not know how to boil water, but Mrs. Annie E. Brown came over and saved our lives. Mrs. Brown was a well educated lady and had been raised by her uncle, who was a banker of New Orleans, but she, like many others at that time, had been stranded in Texas during the gold rush to California. She always carried her own feather bed wherever she went. We were devoted friends and when I came back to San Antonio she came with me, and went to Europe with Mr. Maverick's sister, whose husband was minister to Belgium. "

I was the first woman to set foot on the Mott ranch, and when the chickens, dogs and stock of all kinds, caught sight of me the shock was too great, and they all took to the brush. The house was just what one might expect it to be—kept by two middle aged bachelors. Mr. Mott was small, fat, and red, and was very nervous, so much so that when a hen would do her duty by laying an egg her cackling would annoy him to such an extent that he would rush out and throw stones until she quieted down. Consequently, every fall a wagon load of stones would have to be cleaned out of the corn house before the new crop could be stored. John was an entirely different type—tall, thin, and gotten up in a most attractive style. He rode a good horse, and always wore a pistol and cartridge belt, high boots, high hat, and red handkerchief around his neck. I think he must have belonged to the better class in Ireland. He was well educated, and spoke of taking fencing lessons which is only taught to people of means. He had beautiful hunting dogs, and was very fond of animals, and on one occasion when he lit the fire to make coffee he was, deeply grieved because he shut the oven door and burnt up his cat."

For the few years we lived in Bandera county there was a great influx of people from everywhere, and there was a good deal of money spent. The people did not know how they were going to do lt, but they all expected to get rich some way. Above us on the river, a little below Medina City, a young blood from Boston, Job Parker, bought a ranch, put up a nice house, and bought most anything in sight that anyone brought around. Somebody sold him a drove of geese and told him they always roosted in trees and that he must put planks up to the trees and drive them up until they were accustomed to the place. The cowboys made it convenient to be on time for the drive, and had great fun watching the procedure. Mr. Parker brought with him from Boston a young friend, a sailor named Ladd, to run the ranch. You can imagine how successful they were. This young scapegrace, we understood, was a wayward son of a fine old Boston family, and he had the earmarks not entirely rubbed off. He had been to Harvard, and once he had eight Harvard friends to come and visit him. Some of them were most attractive men. My cousin, Miss Price, was spending the winter with us, and Miss Jeannie Carpenter, about the same age, whose parents had recently moved above us on the river, made a very gay company at my house at the ranch. We had lots of ponies to ride, and there was always some excuse for the girls to go on some jaunt. I had a grand outfit for horseback that would be very amusing now, but was considered the latest thing at that time—a very expensive English side-saddle, a dark blue habit, fitting as tight as the skin, and a beaver hat. In this grand costume I accompanied the girls and young men. John Gahagan led the trail to a camp meeting given under a brush arbor. One night on the way we encountered a pole-cat. My pony was the first to strike it, consequently my habit had to be buried for some time. The young people were hilarious over the experience, and I had some trouble quieting them down before we arrived at the meeting, when someone remarked in an undertone, `Hicks' dog has killed another pole-cat. ' Mr. Ventris Pue was often with us, and it was at my house about that time that he met Miss Jeannie Carpenter, whom he afterwards married. She was a dear, sweet girl, and we were very fond of her.

"Mr. Parker did not prove a credit to his family by any means and didn 't tarry long in the country. On his last visit he borrowed a very beautiful Indian shield from a gentleman in Bandera county, who, of course, prized it highly. Mr. Parker told him that `Mrs. Maverick wished to exhibit it in San Antonio.' He left it at our house for awhile and then took it off north with him, explaining to me that he had bought it. We were much distressed that our name had been used in the affair.

One of the next celebrated people we had to visit us was King Fisher, at the height of his career. He arrived late one evening with a lot of cowboys and a good sized bunch of cattle. Someone explained that he wished to sleep in the house for fear of being killed in the night by some one of his various enemies. That night he was careful when he sat at the supper table not to be a target for a gun, but as Rose Kalka, a little Polish girl, happened to touch h'im while handing around the batter cakes, he jumped like his time had come. He slept in a small room on the gallery. The cattle bellowed all night long. Someone had told me of his many wild experiences, how he said that he had killed twenty-seven men, one for each year of his life. After all was quiet, I spent a very restless time—and one time when he got up to get a drink of water from the bucket, I held my baby very tight, thinking we would die together. I didn't realize that he was a man-killer, and not a baby-killer. To my inexperienced eye, he was a very innocent-looking cowboy, tall and thin and dark. He and I had a very pleasant conversation about his wife and babies before I knew who he was. Not very long after this visit he was shot in San Antonio at the Jack Harris Theater, with Ben Thompson.

"My second daughter was born in Bandera and named Agatha. Mr. Maverick's mother was to have been with me, but we missed count, so she didn't arrive. I was very ignorant on such subjects, so Miss Agatha arrived almost unattended. The old Polish midwife arrived, riding straddle — unheard of for women in those days. She relieved the extreme anxiety of Mrs. Brown and a neighbor. I was entirely exhausted and went to sleep. When I awoke my eyes opened on quite a medieval scene. darkened, a big wood fire was roaring in the rough stone fire-place. The clock ticked on the mantel shelf, and the only person I could see was the old Polish midwife, kneeling at the side of the bed praying audibly. She had a little gray shawl around her shoulders, a big white apron on, and her hair was very smooth. She held a rosary in her hand, and with her eyes raised to heaven, she looked like an old painting. Seeing I was awake, she brought the baby triumphantly to me, and a worse looking specimen I never saw. A poor wretched looking little thing—long black hair, and a sight to behold. The old Polish lady believed in the ways of the old country and did not believe in the modern invention of pins, so she had torn up a piece of cloth into wide strings and bound the baby in swaddling clothes, which I had heard of, but had never seen before. All the babies in the country that year had a hard time. There had been a dreadful drouth through the country, and no one had anything fresh to eat, which Dr. Hudspeth, a good old doctor from Houston, explained was the reason babies had something which was not recognized then, but is now, a form of scurvy. It gave the babies a sore mouth and a nasty little eruption, and my baby was not cured until I went to Virginia to my old home where we had different food. We had many jokes in the country about the food that year. Somebody, said that they had biscuits, molasses and coffee for supper; condensed milk, but no butter. When I mentioned keeping a cow for milk I was laughed at, although there were hundreds of cows. Our fruits consisted of prunes and dried apples. A man volunteered to bring me some fresh goat meat. When it arrived, the man laid it down in the kitchen window, and as the sun shone on it it was a shiny blue. I took one look at it and decided it meant starvation. There; were no eggs, and John Gahagan remarked that a hen would have to have an iron beak and feet to scratch anything out of the hard, dry ground.

"We decided in a year or two that we were not a grand success at ranching, and moved back to San Antonio with a very affectionate remembrance of the friends we had made while living there."

Mr. and Mrs. Maverick are kindly remembered by many of those friends who are yet among the living. Sixty years is a long span, and many changes have occurred since the young couple honeymooned on their ranch nestled among the blue hills of Bandera. In those days it usually required four days to journey to San Antonio and back in a horse-drawn carriage, over a rough and dangerous roadway. Today the trip can be made there and back in four hours and still have plenty of time to attend to brief business matters in the city. After removing to San Antonio Mr. and Mrs. Maverick reared their family of eleven children, and took their place among the leading families of the Alamo City. We hope they will be spared to celebrate many more happy anniversaries.

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