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Edith L. Crawford, Words 1260
Carrizozo, New Mex.
PIONEER STORY --77/A-c/
My father, Captain John Lee, was born November 27, 1835 in Edinburgh
Scotland. His parents came to the United States when he was eighteen months old
and lived in Moodus, Connecticut. The he was fourteen years old, he ran away
to sea. He followed the sea for many years and came to own his own sailing vessel.
He traded extensively in the South Seas and dealt mostly in copra. He went around
the world three times in a sailing vessel, and discovered a small island that
was called Lee's Island. When I was a small girl in school at White Oaks New
Mexico this island was shown on the maps of my geography:
My father married Mary Purcell, who was a daughter of an English missionary
of the Church of England, and a graduate of Oxford. My mother was the grand-
daughter of King Mats. Afa, who was king of the island of Samoa. My father and
mother were married at Apia Samoa. They owned a plantation near Apia and lived
there for several years. They had nine children born on this island.
Father decided that he wanted his children educated in the United States,
so they left Apia, Samoa on a sailing vessel for the States. They were six months
on the sea. They ran into "calms" and were delayed for days and weeks. Their
water and food supplies ran short and they were put on short rations. Just be-
fore the food was entirely gone they made the port of Honolulu and the vessel
was restocked. They landed at San Francisco about the year 1879.
After visiting my father's family in Connecticut and traveling around a
good bit they decided to settle in Richmond, Virginia. Father bought a farm
near Richmond and lived there for about a year and a half. Mother and the
children had chills and fever and were sick so much that they decided to move.
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and my married sister and their families moved back to Texas. We went to the
McBee ranch which was about two miles from White Oaks. We lived on this ranch
a year and Father ran a dairy and sold the milk in White Oaks. At the end of
the year Father got us a house nearer town, just above the Old Abe Mine pump
station. He opened up a meat shop in town. We children went to school and I
remember one teacher especially, named Wharton. The geographys that we studied
showed Lee's Island on the map and the teacher often told the class that it was
our father who had discovered this island.
My brother Bob married and worked in the South Homestake Mine. He drilled
into a "dud" (a precussion cap that had not been explodesi) and it blew up and
killed him. This was about 1892. There was such a big family of us and all the
married ones settled around my father and they called our place Leesville. There
were about five families of us. Father used to drive the stage to Socorro. I
remember once that he did not get home when the stage was due and my mother got
very uneasy. The stage was often held up and we were afraid it had been held
up and my father killed. He was a night and day late and just about the time
my brothers and some friends got their horses saddled to go look for him we saw
the stage coming over the hill into White Oaks. They had run into a terrible
snow storm and the horses could not pull the stage through the storm. It was
very cold and my father and the passengers were almost frozen. He stopped the
stage at our house and the passengers came in and got warmed up and drank some
coffee before father took the stage on into the town. Father wore a beard and
I remember that it was all covered with ice and snow and you could only see
his eyes. I grew up with Edward L. Queen in White Oaks and we were married in
the Methodist Church there on January 1st, 1902, by the Reverend Sam Allison,
who now lives in El Paso, Texas.
Father had had always wanted a cattle ranch, so they moved down to southwest Texas
and bought a cattle ranch about twenty miles from Brackettsville, Texas. The
family came by train from Virginia to Texas and had been there only a short time
when I was born on June 1st, 1882. About two years later my mother had another
baby girl, and she and I were the only children born in the United States.
While we were living there Father met a man named McBee who had a ranch at White
Oaks, New Mexico. He was always telling Father what a great country New Mexico
was, so in 1886 my father sold out his place near Brackettsville and started for
New Mexico.
Our family consisted of Father, Mother and the eleven children. My two
oldest brothers and my oldest sister were married, so they and their families
came with us to New Mexico. We were in five covered wagons drawn by horses.
Father had about 200 head of cattle and about 60 horses. The boys drove the
stock and the ladies did the cooking. I was about four years old at the time
but one or two incidents stand out very clearly in my memory. I•. were very much
afraid of the Indians as we had heard of the terrible things that they had done
to wagon trains. We were not molested by them at all, tho we saw them on several
occasions.
I remember waking up one morning and hearing my mother crying. I looked
out and it seemed to me that I saw piles and piles of dead stock all around us.
The cattle and horses had died from drinking the alkali water. This happened
where Seven Rivers emptied into the Pecos Rivet. Ay father was very much dis—
couraged and took what was left of the cattle and horses and went up on the
Pe6asco in New Mexico. He bought a farm and we lived there for about a year.
We raised lots of potatoes that year and the boys sold them. Father decided to
go on to White Oaks, New Mexico, to where the McBee's lived so he sold out the
farm and what cattle he had left and we moved to White Oaks. My married brothers
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We have three children, two boys and one girl, all married, and one
grandson and one grand -daughter, who all now live in California. Of my fatherts
family there are only three left, myself, one brother, Jim Lee, who lives in
Douglas, Arizona and one sister Mrs. Ray Lemon, who lives in Carrizozo. My
father died in Douglas, Arizona in 1920, at the age of eighty-five years. My
mother died in Carrizozo at eighty-one years, in 1925.
Mr. Queen and I leave White Oaks some times for years at a time but we
always come back. Vie have our home here. Judge Andrew H. Hudspeth, who owned
the property in White Oaks known as Leesville, made me a gift of a deed to this
property in 1936. I am very glad to own our old home.
NARRATOR: May Lee Queen, White Oaks, New Mexico, Aged 56 years.