For about a year and a half, selected Texas newspapers carried short articles written by John McDonald Hendrix of Sweetwater, Texas. Mr. Hendrix was the author of hundreds of articles under the headline “Texas Brands.” Each article would begin with an image of a cattle brand followed by the history that he found. His articles covered ranches of all sizes, small to large. Hendrix was respected as an authority on the old West and Texas.
John was born on September 16, 1887 to Franklin D. Hendrix and Joella May Harris Hendrix and was the oldest of three brothers, all of whom were born in Ohio. Franklin was also born in Ohio where he grew up on a farm. Joella was born in Alabama. They were married in 1885. By 1900, they had settled in Quanah, Hardeman County, Texas. Franklin’s profession was listed as “stockman” and the family consisted of the parents and three sons.
John was married in 1909 to the former Ethyl Kelly. In the 1910 census they were living near downtown in Quanah. His job was shown to be a raiser of stock (cattle) though no details about where he might have been working were provided. While living in Quanah, John is said to have been engaged in the garage and auto sales business. The couple had two daughters. By the time the 1920 census was taken the family had moved to in Dallas. John had entered the auto business in a big way. A 1927 newspaper article the Abilene Reporter News mentioned that John had been part of a transaction to acquire seventeen Dodge auto dealerships. Another article mentions dealerships in Houston, Tyler, Waco, Sweetwater and a number of other locations in West Texas.
The family grew fond of Sweetwater and settled there by 1930. John was still in the automobile business and their two daughters were teenagers. John divested of the car dealerships around that time and began engaging in civic organizations and city government in Sweetwater. There he served as manager of the Board of City Development. He also founded the Sweetwater Chuck Wagon Association, a booster organization. In addition, he was the public relations representative for Lone Star Gas Company and was involved in the activities of the WPA (Works Progress Administration). Hendrix set up activities for the WPA in sixteen West Texas counties. In 1937, he became part of the staff of Fort Worth’s Southwestern Exposition and Fat Stock Show, directing some of its shows and activities.
Over the years, John had become keenly interested in Texas cattle brands and their history. In 1951, he began publishing a newspaper column called “Texas Brands.” One of the newspapers that carried the column was the Abilene Reporter News. In its issue of January 2, 1951, an editor’s note stated that this was the first in what was to be a series of columns on famous Texas cattle brands. The inaugural brand selected was that of the XIT Ranch.
The following notes deal with his columns from his first month of publication. A few days after the XIT column, he told the story of John Chisum and his fence rail brand which was basically a diagonal slash from upper right to lower left. A similar brand was that of C. C. Jones out of Paris, Texas. His Leaning Ladder brand had two diagonal slashes with three crossbars suggesting an image of a short ladder leaning to the upper right. Another of the early columns dealt with the “SMS” brand of the Swenson Ranches in which the S letters were reversed. A brand also using backwards letters was from around his old home of Quanah, the R2 brand where the R was reversed. His columns were carried in several newspapers across the state. It is unknown what his exact publishing arrangement might have been. A particular article might appear on different days in different newspapers.
Early on, he addressed unusual cattle brands in one column. The first one he mentioned was “HOW U,” identifying the rancher as B. Williams. He noted that cattle from various ranches might be grazing together and only separated at round up. John suggested that sometimes a rancher might want to use his own name, but might fear that he could run out of surface area for the brand, citing J. H. Britton’s “JIMB” brand. He noted that some ranchers were blessed by having a small number of letters in their last name like “SISK” or “COPE.” A rancher named John Nunn used the brand “NUN.”
Still early in the life of his column John mentions a group out of Iowa that used a three letter “IOA” brand, leaving the cross bar out of the A. As clever an idea as it may have seemed, this brand proved to be somewhat easy for rustlers and thieves to alter, turning the brand into others like HOW, TOM, VON, JON, HON or other variations. After a while, the company abandoned that brand in favor of another that they thought might be harder to change.
John also did a short profile of the Two Circle Bar brand of Jess Hitson, a familiar name to many people in South Texas, West Texas and the New Mexico territory. Still in the first month of his column, he talked about brands that used a script, citing the Running W of the King Ranch and providing an abbreviated history of the ranch. Another column discussed horizontal lines. One or two straight lines might be called rails, he said, whereas three or more might be called stripes. He gave examples of ranches that horizontal lines in their brands.
Near the end of the month of January, 1951 he profiled the Pitchfork Ranch with its descriptive brand and the Three Circles brand of the Halsell family. He did the 6666 Ranch in February, 1951, the “LFD” of the Littlefield in March and the 3 Ds of the Waggoner Ranch in June. Hendrix kept up his articles all through 1951 and into 1952.
Hendrix is believed to have suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in late March or early April of 1952 and passed away at the age of 64 in a Sweetwater hospital on April 7 of that year. He is interred at Garden of Memories Cemetery there in town.
He was survived by his wife, Ethyl Kelly Hendrix, two daughters, his two brothers and several grandchildren. A granddaughter, Mary Sue, later became the beloved wife of well known rancher and cowboy, Tom Moorhouse. Sue passed away at an early age due to cancer.
The last article that we see was published on May 2, 1952 and profiled the “IB” brand of Isaac Royce of Burnet County. Hendrix’s surviving columns make quite interesting reading and one can only speculate on how far he might have gone with the project had he lived. As far as we are aware, his articles have never been compiled or published other than in the newspapers that carried them.
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Texas History Notebook 