Texas History Notebook

Reynolds Cattle Co.

The parents of the Reynolds family were Barber Watkins Reynolds (1819 – 1882) and Anne Marie Campbell (1816 – 1909). A daughter, Sallie Reynolds Matthews, has written that her father’s heritage was English and Welsh, and that he was born in Oglethorpe County, Georgia. His family had resided in the United States for several generations and at least one of his ancestors had fought for Virginia in the Revolutionary War. The name Barber was his mother’s maiden name.

Colonel Ranald Slidell Mackenzie

Ranald Slidell Mackenzie was born on July 27, 1840 in Westchester, New York to Alexander Slidell Mackenzie (1803 – 1848) and Catherine Alexander Robinson Mackenzie (1814 – 1883). He was the oldest of their five children. His father was the son of John Slidell and Mary Mackenzie but his father had adopted the name of Mackenzie (his mother’s maiden name) in 1837. The explanation for the name change was that it was a condition set out in order for him to claim an inheritance from an uncle, his mother’s late brother. Alexander Mackenzie had served for many years in the United States Navy after entering as a midshipman in 1815. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1825 and commander in 1841.

Lambshead Ranch

Usually the names of three people are mentioned in the early history of the land that later became the Lambshead Ranch. They are Randolph Marcy, Jesse Stem and Thomas Lambshead. Marcy (1812 – 1887) well might be the better known of the three. He was an 1832 West Point graduate who served extensively in the American West during his thirty year Army career. His service included the Mexican-American War, Texas, the Pacific Northwest and the territories that later became the states of Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona. Marcy retired in from the United States Army in 1881. One of his daughters had married General George C. McClellan. Marcy was the author of “The Prairie Traveler” published in 1859, which became widely known and used for its maps, illustrations and itineraries of the West. Marcy had mapped and described the area where the ranch is now located. Fort Marcy in New Mexico was named for him and was active from the time of the Mexican-American War until it was decommissioned in 1890.

President Teddy Roosevelt Visits Texas, 1905

President Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. was the 26th President of the United States. He was born October 27, 1858 in Manhattan, New York and died January 6, 1919 in New York. At the time he became President, he was 42 years old making him the youngest person to take that office. Roosevelt had been Vice President under William McKinley who was only a few months into his second term as President when he died. He had been shot by assassin Leon Czolgosz in Buffalo, New York on September 6, 1901. President McKinley was rushed to the hospital but he died on September 14, 1901. Roosevelt was sworn in and completed the remainder of McKinley’s term. He was elected in 1904 to a second term. He was only a distant (5th) cousin to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They were not closely related and their earliest common ancestor dates back about 100 years.

Henri Castro

Henri Castro (sometimes called Compte Henri De Castro de Boxar) was living in Paris, France at the time he arranged in 1842 to secure a land grant from Republic of Texas president Sam Houston. His first grant proposal was to bring 200 families to Texas the following year. He was not able to fulfill this agreement. A second effort was more successful. Castro’s ambitious agreement was to bring 600 families from Alsace in France to settle in Texas.