Jim Perry was the name of an African American cowboy who lived from about 1858 to 1918. He resided mostly in West Texas and the Panhandle. Perry was considered a top hand and was skilled in all aspects of ranching including roping, riding, breaking horses and the like. He was also considered to be a good cook and a good musician on the fiddle. Perry is generally noted along with the most well known African American cowboys including Bones Hooks, Bose Ikard, Bill Pickett and Addison Jones.
Perry is believed to have been born in Texas but his actual birth details are still unknown or not publicly available. The assumption is that his parents were formerly enslaved people, but this does not appear to be confirmed in any of the biographical sketches that we have found. He had at least one brother named Robert Perry who lived in North Texas, but little can be found about the brother’s life or any other possible family members.
Perry worked most of his career with the XIT ranch in the Panhandle, but prior to that he worked for some time in Stonewall County on another ranch. His last job before coming to the XIT was working under Col. A. G. Boyce who is said to have brought Jim with him when Boyce left his previous position to became range manager of the XIT.
Perry and Boyce are believed to have come to the XIT around 1886 or 1887. The XIT is the ranch that was created when the Texas Legislature exchanged 3,050,000 acres of land with a syndicate for the cash to construct the Texas Capitol building in the late 1870s. Albert Gallatin Boyce was an interesting person himself. He was born in Travis County in 1842 and joined the Confederate Army to serve in the Civil War. After the war ended he built a cattle business of his own first by accumulating wild, unbranded animals. After other positions, Boyce came to the XIT ranch where he served as manager for the next eighteen years. With Boyce being a Civil War veteran, one might be tempted to stereotype him with certain views toward other races, but he and Jim Perry appear to have had a good working relationship and worked together for at least about twenty years.
Boyce was married and had five children. It was said of Boyce that he insisted that the XIT cowboys observe Sundays. In addition he enforced a long list of XIT “ranch rules” (they make interesting reading if you can find them) which included a prohibition against gambling and the carrying of handguns. Boyce retired from the ranch in 1905 and went into the banking business. He died in 1912 after being shot by rancher John Bell Sneed in a complicated domestic dispute over an alleged relationship between Boyce’s son and Sneed’s spouse. A series of other shootings and deaths followed in what is referred to as the Boyce-Sneed Feud.
Jim Perry fit in well at the XIT. He was a skilled all around cowboy and was also regarded as a good cook. He ran the chuck wagon from time to time and is said to have cooked at the ranch, as well. He also drove ranch wagons that hauled freight and supplies around the property. One of the few photos of Jim shows him holding a fiddle, but though he was said to be a good musician, no actual accounts of his fiddle playing ability can be found.
Though Jim was African American he appears to have gotten along well in the mostly Anglo community that he was immersed in. By no means would anyone say that the West was free from racial discrimination, and his life certainly was not free from it. Perry is known to have been referred to by a derogatory word that is thankfully no longer in common use. Jim also remarked that he would have been a ranch division boss if his skin had been a different color. However, Perry and many other African American cowboys of his day were accepted for their skills rather than simply being judged for the color of their skin. In many respects, life for a Black cowboy in the West, though far from being ideal, was superior to that of his peers who lived in towns and rural areas in other parts of the country. This sentiment is repeated in other accounts of the lives of African American cowboys.
Despite being only in existence for a few decades from around 1879 to 1918, the XIT Ranch is still well known. Author and historian J. Evetts Haley devotes many pages to the formation and dissolution of the Capitol Freehold Land and Investment Company, Limited, the syndicate that owned the property. The venture was financed by capital contributions and money borrowed from investor/shareholders. An oversimplification of the reasons for the end of the enterprise would include economic conditions in the cattle business, shareholder/investor demands, maturity of financing debt and related litigation. The vast holdings were broken up and sold in parcels over almost twenty years.
Jim Perry did not marry until he was about fifty years old. His bride was the former Emma Beaseley and they were married in 1908. They lived together as husband and wife until Jim’s death nearly ten years later. The couple had no children.
His obituary stated that Jim died during surgery at the Trans-Canadian Clinic in Dalhart. He had come there to be treated for a brain tumor on August 2, 1918. “Canadian” in the name refers to the nearby Canadian River. At the time of Jim’s death, he was sixty years and six months old. The article added that he had survived a similar operation three years prior. Jim was also expected to also do well with this surgery, but that was not to be. The article in the Hartley County News (Channing, Texas) issue of August 9, 1918 added, “Funeral services were held at the [Channing] Methodist Church Sunday afternoon at 5 o’clock by Rev. Strong in the presence of a large gathering of friends. Many of the old timers came from Dalhart and other points. Handsome Green house flowers bore a silent testimony of the love and esteem in which Jim’s friends held him.” One brother, Robert Perry, of Rockwall, Texas attended the funeral.
Jim Perry was buried in the Channing Cemetery, believed to be an all White cemetery at the time. Mrs. Perry survived him, but her final resting place appears to be unknown or not public at this time.
© 2023, all rights reserved.
Sources:
“Jim Perry, XIT Hand” by Ron W. Wilhelm, Chapter 17 of “Black Cowboys of Texas” edited by Sara R. Massey, Texas A & M Press, 2000.
“The XIT Ranch of Texas and the Early Days of the Llano Estacado,” J. Evetts Haley, University of Oklahoma Press, 1953.
Texas History Notebook 