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Phip's, Ioody
Rangell
-.'arrant 3o., -1st. r/7
Joe C. Woody, 57, was born on his father's
stock farm at Paradise, Wise oo., Texas*
His father built the first barb wire fence
in rise Co., on a Muth he owned near Boone-
ville, vise eo., His neighbors tore the fence
down, and he traded the entire reach to his
father, Joe's grandfather, for a ranch near
Springtown, Tarrene,co., Tex. When Joe was
five, his father's death caused the burden
of rearing eight ohilotten to fall on his
mother. His mother sold the stock farm in
/Ise co., and moved the family to the ranch
in Tarrant Co. The shortage of labor on the
ranch forced the ohildren to experience work
at an early age. Joe liked to work with
cattle, so he naturally did all of his work
with cattle, learning to ride a horse at the
age of six, and taking a regular oowboy's
place at eight. /hen he left the ranch, he
went to Tort /orth, where he dealt in cattle.
Trom a smell beginning, he now operrtes a
large cattle commission co in the Livestock
7xchg. Big. -t. His story:
--,age 11
14'7,
Why, yes, T knowa good deal about the old range. In
fact, I s born on June 27th, 1880, at Paradise, in lee county,
when thjre wasn't a fence anywhere to be seen. !Ty. own father was
one of first to see the value there was to a fence, and he
built te first barb wire fence in /ise county on r ranch he
owned e4 Booneville.
The fence didn't stay up 1 -ng, though, beca*se the
neighbo s all tore it down. l'ter dad went to all the trouble to
put the fence up, and make sure it lee a gold job, he went out one
morning and it was all out down. There wasn't a fence post stand-
ing an are. "Then they'd out the wire betweon two posts, they'd
also is soed the posts and drug 'em down. Some son would have been
mad, an wanted to shoot somebody. Not dad. e just went to my
grandda and trrded ranches. 4e got my granddrd's ranch at
Springt wn, in Tarrant county
Phipps, foody
Rangelore.
Tarrant Co., Dist. 1/7
Page
94C
"When I was still a baby, my dad moved the family down to
the Springtown ranch. I don't remember how many head there was
on the place when we first moved there, but it seemed like there
was a regular sea of beef and horns. One thing really stayed with
me, and that was the iron. '11 the beef was in the WOODY iron.
The reeson it stayed with me was because after dad died, I hld to
burn our brand on our cattle.
One of the things I remember about my childhold was the
sheriff coming by to get dad. There were several gengs,Operating
in %:lea county from time to time, and the Campbell gang was one of
them. Every time the 7ise county offloers figured they could
capture one of the gangs, they always got word to the sheriff at
743atherford, and he'd go up to help. On the way, he'd pick dad
up, and they'd go together. You know, in those days when there
wasn't so many people, a sheriff had to be careful who he chose
to help him when he went after a desperado. Likely Ps not, he
might pick a relative of the desparedo, or r good friend, and he'd
lose out when it oame to a tight spot.
This time I remember the folks talking about, the sheriff
bed come by and got dad. They left word that the Wise county
officers had the Campbell boys in e trap, and just needed more men
to close in with. Dad especially wanted to see the Campbell boys
stopped because he knew two of them had rustled some bosses of his.
Chelk and Rob. They were the two.
"W en the sheriff end dad got to the rendezvous with the
ise opunty officers, they saw a tiro story farm house with the
top floor all lit up, and sounds or music with &racing oould be heard
Everybody was really feeling good, because there was no possible m
Phipps, ',!oody
Rangelore
Tarrant Co., :Asa.
Page 43
F0
chance of escape from the house.- The officers Pnd their men had
it completely surrounded. After a good deal of talk about whether
to charge in and capture, or just let the folks leave one by one,
and capture them then, it was decided to wait and take them one at
a time. 'loll, the music played on and on, 'til finally, at about_
two in the morning, it stopped with the dancing. The officers ,all
waited and waited, then docide1 thPt everybody had gone to bed in
the house. Just before daylight, it was decided to rush the
house and make the capture. 7.his was a danger )us prooeOure because
the stairs leading up to the 'second floor had a solid well on both
sides, all the way up, with no plase to dodge bullets should the
outlaws discover their predicamen). ill, sir,.my dad was the
first to mount those stairs. _1l the way up, he said he expected
bullets, but none cane. Awn he got to the top, the doors were
unlocked. He eased the door open, and to his surprise, the entire
building was vacant. There wasn't a man to be found anywhere.
Some way or other, all the men and women escaped through the line
the officers and their men had drawn around the house.
when I was quite a bit over five years old, dad died,
and left the berden of raising eight healthy children to my mother.
She filled the bill better than many melicould. lie first thing
she did was to let the cow punchers go. Dad had four or five, and
the place really needed them,- but mother let them go. "he next thing
she done, was to sell oft all the somub stock, and only keep 200
head of the very best stuff.
Since I'd always liked to mes aro,nd stook, and knew
how to ride a horse, it fell my lot to ride herd on out cattle.
That was the best job I could have been given because -Isranted to
Phipps, -..00dy
Rangelore
Tarrant Co., TAst.,17
Dago 44
be the cow puncher my uncle, Joe 7oody, was. Uncle Joe was a
cowman from the tip of his boots to the crown of his stetson.
-hat he didn't know about cattle wasn't worth knowing. T saw
a good dell of him after dad died, because he advised mother
about her cattle. !Te was the foremen or the F.tivner 7,7ench, which
was owned by old -nolo :im ?ermer's father. Old Uncle Jim runs
the Farmer Cow.ission company with selarel-Aesks14.the,lobby of
our oface.
:he reason I wante- to pattern after Uncle Joe was
because even though he limped, he was still a swaggering cow poki
that was good and he knew it. Pe could rope, ride, and shoot as
well as an/ circus performer of today* mid better, T expect,
because the mild hoses he rode had never seen a men before, and.
even a hoss with a spVle made them skittish.
One of the thiag s folks tell on Uncle Joe was rbout an
Indian ambush on the Farmer Ranch. One day, he and about 19
cow nokes were out on a roundup* They were given a certain section
around Flag Springs and Farmer's Creek to roundup the cattle.
They'd never separated, and were still in a bunch when they rode
into a canyon. :11 of a sudden, a regular hail of bullets fell
into them* he shots were all coming from one side of the canyon's
rim. Uncle Joe ordered everybody to dismount and force the hose
to lay down. This would give each man something to hide behind.
"'Every man in the 20 were good shots, and pll of the -1
wouldn't be afraid to tackle the old devil himself. !ll of them
except the negro* cook. This nigc.,er, he didn't do any shooting.
Instead, he went to praying in 9 loud voice. Uncle Joe told him
to shut up and go to shooting, but the nigger didnt pay any
TThipps,
RPngelore
Tarrant o., Piet. '/.7
rage 5
attention. Since Uncle Joe and the other cow pokes were reloading
t -lid shooting as fast as they could, it made him med for the nigrer
to not join in on the shrviting. Uncle Joe said later, that it
seemed like everytime when he was out of a-Qmunition in the gun,
he'd get good shots. list gave him an idea, so he had the nigger,
whose name was Dick Davis, to reload his pistols and another man's.
That was the main trouble. The cow pokes didn't have
anything but pistols to shoot with, while the Indians were above
them, and had the advantage of the canyon's rim to hide:them.
They never did find out how many Indians there were, but since
he'd been in Indirtn fights; before, and everytime the fight lasted
anytime, always before, the Indians high tailed it home. All
during the fight, he'd hear a certain thumpt which indicated
thst a shot had struck another unfartunate cow poke. The fight
lasted all evening, beginning along about noon. It looked like
the Indisns were going to kill all the cow pokes, so a talk was
had.
Finally, it was decideu to let some man volunteer to
go for help. 3ince this was almost certain dwth to leave the
party, it had to be a volunteer. Uncle Joe volunteered, and
left. ihen he left, he had six or seven bullets already in him,
and one of them almost made him lose his leg. 3ne of the hosses
had gotten away from his rider, but hadn't run off. Instead, he
was about 200 yards from the ambush, behind some big boulders.
"Znole Joe had watched the,hoss all afternoon, with the idea that
they might have to use it. Ilan he left the -Narty, he crawled
down the canyon, keeping in to the walls as ollse as he could.
Ale finally made it, got on the hoes, and zig zagged a way hook
Phipps, loody
7enlelore
Tarrant Co., Dist. 47
to the ranch headquerters.
P.nge
When he reached the headquarters, he got every man
out that could possibly go, and started book with wagons and plenty
of ammunition. Then the wagons reached the men, the Indians had
left. There were only four or five of the white men living, and
they were baudly wounded. The wagons were used to carry the
dead and wounded back to the ranch, but the nigger, Dick Davis,
didn't even get a scratch out of the fight, so he rode a hose beck.
Of course, it couldn't possibly have been fanny then, about the
ni-,,er not fighting but praying, but later on, the men razzed him
so much that he almost left the ranch. The remaining wounded
finally died, leaving Uncle ;oe and the nir,ger the only ones to
come out of the frreas alive.
I didn't want to get into any shooting serapes like
that, but I did want to be able to take oars of myself in serapes
that might come up, end I did want to know cow critters like he
did. They say that in a matter of a beef contract for so many
pounds, he'd guess each critter's weight as it passed him, mentally
tally it all up 'til he had the beef weight to fill the contract.
Fe could come el )ser to picking the scrubs out of a herd than any
body else. That was also my ambition. To be able to look at a
critter and tell if it had stamina, or if it was the kind of beef
that looks good outside but isn't so good inside. This may sound
sort of jumbled to you, but it's part of a cowman's busines to
be able to know what he's buying. Also, if he intends to build
his herd up, he has to know how to cut the se-ubs out.
"1 had this in mind, and studied cattle all the time.
Another thing that helped me to know scrubs was when a twitter
Phipps, 7oody
Bengelore
Tarrant 7.0., Dist. 17
Page P*
ref
got sores on it, I doctored it. I always toted a bottle of
cru-silic ointment with me to daub on the sores. These sores
were from the barbs on the fences, and other things. Doctoring
them gave me a close opportunity for study.
!,nother thing that gave me F chance for study, was once
when a brother of mine got a chance to buy up 40 heed of cattle,
and he did it. ':;e drove these cattle to our rnach, and right
iway, they began dieing. It wasn't nothing to look out and see
H critter drop over dead. After we got down to where wp only had
about 10 of them left, Uncle Joe came' out and said that the
critters had come from a tick -free country. He said that unless,
a critters to born in tick country, it couldn't live with ticks.
"hat ticks gave cattle fever, and the other cattle always died
with it.
People had funny ideas about ticks in those days, and
among the other ideas they had aboit cattle was that e cow would
dry lin if dt's calf 'was taken away fro n it before the calf had
bc,en weaned. Along when I was about nine and 10 years old, -I
started to buying these calves. I could always sell them when
they got to be three-year olds, si I just started me a business
of buying and selling. By the time T was 13, I had a large
nu7nber of people who would sell me all their calves, and keep
then 'til their cows weaned them. Sometimes, they'd keep the
calf two yeers. Can you imeginedn They'd k-ep it, and feed it
for two years, then I'd get it and keel) it a ye -r, and sell it.
From that start, I've built a big oomAmsion business
here in the Livestock xchange building' Lets year, we done
over 412,000000.00 business. It's these business oars. that