The Spade Ranch (also referred to either as the Spade Renderbrook or the Renderbrook Spade Ranch) takes its name from J. F. “Spade” Evans, who was an early co-owner of the property with Henry Sanborn, who was called the “Father of Amarillo.” Their first property was in Donley County east of Clarendon and amounted to twenty-three sections of land, about 15,000 acres more or less. This property, livestock and Spade brand were all sold to Isaac Leonard Ellwood in 1889.
Ellwood was born in Springfield Hollow, New York on August 12, 1833 to Abraham Ellwood and Sarah DeLong. He was one of eleven children. As a youth, he was industrious and started businesses of his own. Isaac spent some time in California during the gold rush days and returned to DeKalb, Illinois where he worked as a merchant operating his own store. Ellwood bought some Illinois farm property and became interested in coming up with a good product that would help corral livestock. This led him to patent a new type of barbed wire, though he and Joseph Farwell Glidden began making and selling wire of Glidden’s design. The business was successful and by 1881 was known as Superior Barbed Wire Company. Through a series of transactions, it became part of United States Steel. Ellwood had become interested in Texas leading to his purchases of ranch land.
Joseph Farwell Glidden (1813 – 1906) had a somewhat similar interesting story, He was born in Charleston, New Hampshire. His family later moved to New York. Glidden married and subsequently relocated to DeKalb, Illinois where he bought a farm. He had a creative mind and in the 1870s began to work on devising a method of twisting wire for agricultural fencing. Glidden took two strands of wire periodically inserting short and twisted wire barbs as he wrapped the long strands. He applied for and received a patent for his design in 1874. He and Ellwood began to make and market Glidden’s design. Eventually, Glidden sold out, retaining royalties, and Ellwood continued in the manufacture of the wire, as noted above. Glidden became wealthy from his design, also surviving legal challenges arising from the claims of others. He was quite active in Illinois public service, serving several terms as sheriff of DeKalb County, as a member of various boards, a candidate for the state senate, a bank vice president and other posts. Glidden was a financial investor in a major ranch in the Texas Panhandle near Amarillo partly to demonstrate the effectiveness of barbed wire.
The element of how barbed wire was patented and came to be so universally used in farming and ranching across Texas and other agricultural states is an interesting sideline to the history of the Spade Ranches and the lives of Glidden and Ellwood.
Ellwood and Glidden had other transactions in common. In 1889 after his purchase of the Spade Ranch, Ellwood added to his holdings by acquiring the Renderbrook Ranch from brothers Dudley and John Snyder. It included land in Mitchell, Sterling and Coke counties, near Colorado City. To this, he added another group of properties, also acquired from the Snyders, in Lamb, Hockley, Lubbock and Hale counties. At that point, his holdings amounted to some 400,000 acres. One of Ellwood’s last purchases was a portion of the property formerly owned by partners Glidden and Sanborn, also operated under the Spade Renderbrook name. Ellwood acquired the Frying Pan brand in this transaction. He used their barbed wire products on his extensive ranch properties.
Although he maintained his permanent home in Illinois, Ellwood believed in a bright future of agriculture for Texas. This quote is attributed to him in speaking to his son William Leonard Ellwood (1859 – 1933), “I may not live to see it, but you will. Some day this country will be farmed and bringing from forty to fifty dollars per acre.” The September 23, 1928 issue of the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal noted that some of Ellwood’s former ranch land was then going for about those prices. The elder Ellwood had passed away in 1910, but Isaac had told his son W. L. to build the property up in such a way that it could be sold, making room for small farming operations. At that point roughly half of the Lubbock area holdings had been subdivided into farms but W. L. Ellwood, known as a cattleman, still was one of the largest land owners and lessees in West Texas.
The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal picked up the story of the ranch about twenty-four years later in its issue of June 22, 1952. In this article, it gave the size of the ranch in the Lubbock area as 35 sections. 1,000 Hereford steers grazed on the ranges, as opposed to the Longhorns that had populated the ranch decades earlier.
The ranch foreman then was Tom Arnett, who, the article added, might be inclined to ride the range on a horse or fly around in a Piper Cub aircraft. By then 365 sections of the former Spade property had been sold to small farmers and ranchers. The writer noted that the old bell in the back porch of the ranch house that used to be rung to call the cowboys in to eat was now covered with ivy. The old bunkhouse had been converted to house chickens. The Renderbrook was still fairly intact and amounted to over 100 sections. When Renderbrook calves were weaned, they were sent to the Spade properties for the summer and winter and then shipped by rail to market in Kansas.
Though there weren’t as many employees involved, the ranch operation still included checking cattle for screw worms, inspecting the many miles of fencing, making sure their cattle did not find a way to wander into neighboring farms. The ranch was still in the Ellwood family with the overall owners being E. R. Ellwood and W. F. Eisenberg, apparently no relation to the Ellwood family.
Over these many years and though there have been many sales and acquisitions of land, the Spade Ranches in Texas have mostly been owned and operated by Isaac L. Ellwood and his descendants. The ranching interest currently appears to be incorporated. Numerous family members including a number of Isaac Ellwood’s great-great-grandchildren serve on the board of directors. The owners have used the name Spade in their ranch names since the late 1800s. The ranch properties are estimated to be approximately 275,000 acres across multiple locations in Texas, including the original Renderbrook Spade in Mitchell, Sterling, and Coke Counties, North Spade in Motley and Hall Counties, Panhandle Spade in Roberts and Hemphill Counties, and Alpine Spade in Brewster and Presidio Counties. As an aside, Spade, Texas is an unincorporated community in Lamb County. It takes its name from the Spade Ranch, though the area is now privately owned by others.
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