John Tarleton and Stephenville
Courtesy of Texas Heritage Committee, Twentieth Century Club, Stephenville, Texas. Copyright 2000.
Born in New Hampshire in 1808, John Tarleton was orphaned at an early age and went to Vermont to live with an aunt, who promised to educate him. On on occasion he heard his aunt tell a neighbor, "John will live around here until die; then he will get my money."
Stung, the lad decided to leave the aunt's house. With belongings tied in a homespun rag and fifty cents in his pocket, he attempted to enlist in the army. Naturally small for his age, the boy was advised to grow up before applying again. Determined to grow rapidly, Tarleton ate raw eggs and beef and raced over the Vermont hills.
When the aunt learned of Tarleton's attempt to enlist, she offered him money from frailing wheat. He collected $15. With the cash, he left Vermont, walked to North Carolina, where he cut wood until harvest time, and then hiked to Tennessee. He applied for a job in the Cowan-Dickerson mercantile firm. At first Perez Dickerson refused to hire the youth, saying he wanted a more mature, experienced clerk, one who would remain with the firm. He eventually hired Tarleton, who promised to remain so long as Dickerson desired his services. He clerked in the store 40 years, living frugally in the back of the building and investing in government certificates.
Veterans of the War of 1812 were offered Bounty Warrant certificates authorizing them to settle on any unsurveyed or unappropriated public land. Millions of acres remained available in Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, and Illinois. Many soldiers owning these certificates were willing to trade for a pair of boots, horse collar, trace chains, or scooter plow. J.C. George recalled that Tarleton "would sell the customer such merchandise as he wanted, take these warrants for pay, and charge himself with the value of the goods."
One afternoon Tarleton chatted with a man who owned Texas land he wished to sell "dirt cheap," or, as he explained, fourteen and a half cents per acre. Tarleton bought. Thirty years passed before he was this land. In 1861 he visited these Palo Pinto-Erath County lands, but finding Indians there, he walked to Waco, where he established a store at 45 Austin Street and boarded at the McClelland Hotel. The 1880-1881 Waco City Directory lists him as a capitalist.
In 1876 he married Mary Louisa Dunnica Johnson, Missouri-born widow of Telephus Johnson, who had owned thousands of acres of Brazos River bottom lands around Waco. In September 1876 Tarleton and Mrs. Johnson agreed to an ante-nuptial contract to keep properties and estates separate. For their honeymoon trip to the International Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Tarleton charged his bride with half the expenses, insisting the practice was in keeping with their contract.
Mrs. Tarleton was "a very proud woman entertaining in her three-story home and Tarleton was wont to coming in with kindling boxes in the front door during his wife's most sedate entertainments," a niece recalled.
One year and a day after the wedding, Tarleton learned that Mary Louisa had filed for divorce. Tarleton appeared in the St. Louis court and produced a copy of the marriage contract. The divorce was granted without a division of property.
In 1880 Tarleton, thinking of leaving Waco, again visited his ranch. He advertised the property for sale, but the notices went unanswered. Tarleton began ranching.
In the early days of his ranching career, Tarleton put ten thousand acres under barbed wire and in compliance with laws of the time placed gates every three miles. Some neighbors regularly cut the wire and burned the gates. Tarleton walked the fence, a distance of 18 miles, several times each week to repair damages. Finally, he called his neighbors together, told them he could finance rebuilding for a long time and still have money.
His TRTN brand on the left side and a T on the left shoulder were burned into the hide of six or seven hundred calves each year, and he often shipped four hundred four-year-old steers at one time.
The Tarletons' divorce did not put an end to their friendship, and for several years, they exchanged letters. Tarleton kept his former wife's letters in a trunk, each envelope marked to show the date he had answered the letter. The question of who would inherit the Tarleton property was first raised by Mary Louisa in a letter to "My Dearest Best Friend" on April 29, 1885:
"Glad to hear that you are getting along pretty well in buying cattle. Hope you will succeed in purchasing all you want before weather gets very hot. I was very much surprised to hear that you own all of your land yet. I have often wondered who would be the fortunate heir to all your property."
On May 6, 1886 she wrote, "Oh, such a man, such a man, what are you going to do with so many cattle, land and money. If I should outlive you, I would like to be your heir."
The last letter Tarleton received was posted in San Francisco August 17, 1887. Mary Louisa said she thought of him often and had once dreamed that he was dying in a "small, uncomfortable room with no good bed to lie on" and with no one to take care of him.
A small, brown-eyed man, five feet five inches in height with small round shoulders, Tarleton weighed approximately 145 pounds. Thrifty and economical--considered miserly and eccentric by many neighbors--he was strictly honest. Every time a hired hand was required to eat away from the ranch, Tarleton made certain that the meal was properly paid for. Once he sent to the depot a number of ranch hands with cattle to be shipped to market. Delayed, the men were forced to remain overnight. One of the hands recommended a place where they could stay for half price provided they paid cash. When Tarleton learned of the bargain, he declared, "You were trying to cheat a widow lady, were you? I do not propose to do such." He sent the man back with enough money to pay the bill in full.
When he clothing became torn, Tarleton mended them himself. The bright patches, sewed with coarse white twine, often made his attire multicolored. He enjoyed many a hearty laugh when he overheard some fastidious person criticizing his attire. When traveling, however, Tarleton went well dressed and stayed in the best hotels.
He walked almost everywhere he went, probably a habit from his youth. He bathed summer and winter in Buck Creek, which ran southeast of his ranch house. He enjoyed two hearty means a day, drank a glass of buttermilk at night, and liked chicken for breakfast. His favorite food was chicken pot pie, and when Mrs. White served it, he left a quarter under his plate.
Many times Tarleton and his foreman looked over the stock. Tarleton frequently commented, a satisfied gleam in his eyes, "By kraut, George, these cattle will help educate some poor boys and girls."
In a drouth year the rancher told his men to graze the animals on public lands. The cattle came too near the homes of some settlers, and these home owners charged Tarleton and his foreman with violating the "anti-herd law."
Tarleton fretted over the affair before deciding to hire a lawyer. He secured the services of J.C. George, who assured him that the case was not serious.
Lawyer George visited the ranch several times before the trial, and during one of these visits Tarleton paid him. The case was heard in justice court in Morgan Mill and Tarleton was convicted, as George had predicted. Appealed to Stephenville, the case was dismissed.
Tarleton immediately presented the lawyer an additional fee. Believing that the old rancher had forgotten he had paid, George declined the money. Tarleton remembered paying at the ranch but thought there might be an extra charge because of the dismissal. From that time on, George handled Tarleton's legal affairs.
One Wednesday afternoon, Tarleton summed George to the ranch to remake his will. After the lawyer and his sister-in-law, Junie Akers, arrived in a buggy, Tarleton handed George a will he had drafted. He had approximately $85,000 he wished to leave for the establishment of a college at Palo Pinto. George explained that the community was a small town off the railroad, in a mountainous terrain, and unlikely to become thickly settled from an agricultural standpoint.
Tarleton then mentioned Weatherford as a possibility, and George reminded him that a college already existed there.
When George proposed Stephenville, Tarleton complained about a difference with an Erath County tax collector who had charged taxes twice on the same piece of property. George persuaded him to abandon these objections.
The draft of the will was finished, Williams and Miss Akers signed as witnesses, and the lawyer and his sister-in-law hitched Billiards and Black to the buggy and returned to Stephenville.
On September 11, 1895, Tarleton died of typhoid fever. His wish to be buried on his own land was disregarded, the body being laid to rest in the Patillo cemetery. Eugene Moore of the Stephenville Empire in November 1896 editorialized that $700 would be sufficient to remove the remains to Stephenville and erect "a handsome monument" on the campus bearing his name. In April 1926 the body was again moved when ground was cleared for a music conservatory.
John Tarleton's Dream
Denied an education, John Tarleton was determined to help educate worthy boys and girls. After he settled on his Palo Pinto-Erath lands, he displayed a willingness to encourage subscription schools: his Texas neighbors remembered that each year he paid tuition for as many as ten youths and encouraged school officials to notify him if any child needed books or clothes.
The recluse rancher reminded his foreman that the herds would help educate boys and girls, and under the terms of his will, he provided for the establishment of a college in Stephenville and a school in Knoxville, Tennessee.
After Tarleton contracted typhoid fever and died, the Stephenville Empire of September 13, 1895, ran an account of his death. "A telegram was received here yesterday by Martin and George announcing the death on the previous night of Uncle Johnnie Tarleton." A week later, the newspaper commented that "the will of the late John Tarleton caused considerable excitement among the people of this section."
Well it might, for throughout the years, Tarleton's legacy would have amounted to $9 million. Today Tarleton State University is located on a 131 acre campus with physical facilities valued at more than $62 million plus a college farm and ranch. A total of 3,754 associate degrees were awarded while the school was a junior college. In Knoxville, John Tarleton Institution continues as a school "for poor, worthy youths of good moral character."
When Tarleton first saw his Texas ranch, he found the area inhabited by Indians. When he returned in 1880 he learned that a squatter named Butler had built on the property. (This one-room structure is probably the same one known in the restoration as the College room.) In this house Tarleton set up his ranch headquarters and received board from the Thomas White family.
Letters from his ex-wife, Mary Louisa Dunnica Johnson, tell something of the spread. She wrote August 21, 1884, "I did not like to hear of your being isolated in such an out of way place having to live so roughly....I am sure a man of your means having no encumbrances ought never deny himself any comfort or luxury this life can give. Very true as you say you may not live to use it all and we can not take it with us."
Later she wrote, "It seems real funny to me that you can enjoy living rough, dressing so common secluded almost entirely from society away out in the country. Would be certain to borrow or hire a horse to ride to the Post Office every time instead of walking. You are getting too old for such a long distance. I think from the place, locality & surroundings where you make your home must be very monotonous & unpleasant at times to one that has been accustomed to living so different the greater portion of his life.
The single-room structure was altered considerably in 1895, when the Whites added two rooms and a dogtrot.
The John and David Laird families donated the house to the Stephenville Museum, and in July 1991 the first section was moved to Stephenville. The second section, now called the College and University rooms, was moved several days later, and by August 27, the two chimneys had been rebuilt. Underpinning, using rocks contractor David Williams had moved from the original site, soon was completed.
To protect artifacts displayed in the building, the board-batten frame had inner walls and insulation added. Restoration under David Williams was completed in March 1992.