Wilson Ranch History

The Wilson Ranch was founded in Archer County, Texas, in the mid-1880's.  It was an offshoot of the  130,000 acre 099 Ranch, owned by Mr. J. H. Stone.  Mr. Stone divided the ranch into three parts and Luke F. Wilson, an investment banker in Kansas City, bought one of those parts.

My grandfather, Milton Walker "Cap" Alexander, began working for Luke Wilson in Archer County as a cowboy.  In about 1900, Mr. Wilson purchased several thousand acres in Creek County, Oklahoma, and Cap brought a herd of 5000 steers to Mannford from Archer City.  He stayed in Mannford and in 1906 married Mary May Stephens who was running a laundry in Mannford.  He continued to work for Wilson until about 1920, when he started his own small ranch, located near where Coyote Trail crosses State Hwy. 51 today.

Little is known about Luke Wilson at this time.  He was born in 1842 in Palestine, Illinois to Isaac Newton Wilson and Hannah Decker.  The elder Mr. Wilson was a prominent farmer in the area and had migrated there from Virginia, as did many people of the time.  Luke married Sarah McCrory in Illinois in 1869 and shortly after that, they moved to Kansas City.  Sarah's parents were also well-to-do farmers in Illinois.  Luke and Sarah lived in Kansas City for the rest of their lives.

Luke Wilson's nephew, Glenn Wilson, was the head of the cattle operation and Cap Alexander reported to him.  Glenn lived in Archer City while his uncle Luke resided in Kansas City.  Cap's son, Tommy (my father), remembered both Luke and Glenn from his childhood and talked of them often.

Allen Parmer was the original foreman of the ranch in Archer County.  He had been a member of Quantrill's Raiders during the Civil War and was considered a mean "hombre" by most of the people who worked for him.  He did get backed down, however, by a woman with a shotgun.  He went to drive Mrs. Matthews, the nester, out of her dugout home and she wouldn't be driven out.  She apparently was regarded as a heroine for her actions at the time.

John McCluskey was another of the Wilson Ranch people.  My father referred to him as Uncle John and he spent quite a bit of time traveling back and forth between Archer City and Mannford.  Little is known of him today except that he apparently never married or had any children.

Tom Porter also got his start on the Wilson Ranch in Mannford.  He had come from southeastern Oklahoma as a thirteen year old and found himself being raised by a Zickefoose family in the Keystone area.  He was enrolled at Keystone School in the fourth grade.  By about 1910, he had gone to work for Cap Alexander as a cowboy.  DNA results lately have shown that he, not Cap Alexander, was the true father of Tommy Alexander.

Tom Porter was apparently asked to move to the main Wilson Ranch location in Archer County, since he was located there in 1917 when he registered for the draft.  In 1929, Tom married Margaret Cox and they had two children.  His daughter, Minna Lo, is 96 years old and lives in Tulsa today.  Tom worked on ranches and in the oil patch for many years before opening a saddlery in Seymour, Texas.  He was running the saddlery in 1974 when he died.

Another ranch hand on the Wilson Ranch at Mannford was Herman Weer.  He was the son of John Weer and Elizabeth Yakel (from Indiana and Illinois, respectively), who had migrated from that area to Labette County, Kansas, to the Tulsa area.  Herman was, in fact, born in Labette County in 1887.  Herman's father, John, tried in 1896 to be added to the Dawes Rolls as a Creek Indian but was denied.  It is doubtful that he had a legitimate claim to be added.  Interestingly however, his son Frank married Edna McIntosh, a full blood Creek Indian.  The McIntoshes were one of the most prominent Creeks in Indian Territory.

Herman Weer died in 1978 and is buried in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.  No evidence exists that he ever married or had children.

The cooks on the Wilson at Mannford were David Casper "Buster" Henkell and his wife, Sarah Ihrig Henkell.  I can remember Buster coming by our house to visit my father when I was a child.  Sarah was my father's first cousin and a sister to Ernest "Twenty" Ihrig, a long time resident of the Mannford area.  Buster died in 1957 at the age of 69 and Sarah died in 1986 at the age of 85.

Ernest Ihrig was another of the early cowboys on the Wilson Ranch at Mannford.  He was born in Indian Territory, the son of Marion Francis Ihrig and Mahala Stephens Ihrig.  "Aunt Mahala", as we called her, was a sister to my grandmother, Mary May Stephens Alexander.  Ernest, or "Twenty", was Cap Alexander's assistant foreman on the ranch and the two were usually seen together.

The last cowboy of interest on the Wilson Ranch was at the Archer County location.  He was Lee McMurtry and is presumed to be a relative to Larry McMurtry, the author and screenwriter.  Larry was born and raised in Archer City and still owns two bookstores there.

I am continuing to study the Wilson Ranch history and I'll let you know further as I progress.

The Real Truth

In August, 2015, I wrote about DNA testing which had raised some doubts about our family name.  As Paul Harvey used to say on the radio, here is "The Rest of the Story".

My adoptive father, Tommy Alexander, was born on February 7, 1911, ostensibly to Milton Walker Alexander and Mary May Stephens Alexander.

Milton Walker, or “Cap” as he was called, was the foreman of a ranch in Mannford, Oklahoma. He had come there in 1901 or 1902 with a herd of cattle which had been brought from Archer City, Texas. The owner of the ranch was Luke F. Wilson from Kansas City, Missouri. Cap was in charge of the ranch in Mannford and had several cowboys working for him. Tommy was named after two of the cowboys, Herman Weir and Thomas Perry “Tom” Porter, as well as for his father.

(L to R): M.W. "Cap" Alexander, Bob Powell, Tom Porter, Katie Porter

Mary May Stephens was born in Arkansas in 1881 and had spent most of her young life in Missouri before coming to Mannford around 1900. Cap, her husband, had been born in Tennessee in 1857 so he was 24 years older than his wife. Their first child, Beulah, was born in Mannford in 1907. Sometime after her birth but before 1911, the ranch house burned. Cap and May moved to another house on the ranch, near Kellyville, Oklahoma, while a new ranch house was being built in Mannford. Tommy was born in the house near Kellyville.

Cap Alexander died in 1935 in Mannford and is buried there. May, his wife, died in 1967 and she is also buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Mannford.

Cap and May's marriage was tumultuous to say the least. Eventually they divorced and she remarried, living in several places before her death. In all, May was married four times.

Tommy Alexander, after a first marriage that lasted 13 years, met Annie Sue Nash and married her. Sue had two young boys from a previous marriage, Roy Edward (this writer) and Gary Wade. Tommy adopted these two boys and he and Sue had two children of their own, Mary Sue and Thomas Milton. Tommy died in 2004 at the age of 92 and Sue died in 2012 at 86 years of age.

In 2014, Roy Edward, “Edd”, who had been involved with genealogy for several years, became interested in DNA. He had his own DNA tested, along with those of his wife, Mary Louise “Louise” and Thomas Milton “Milt”. He noticed that, although Milt had a lot of cousins turn up on his paternal grandmother's side, there were no Alexanders who showed up.

Finally, in mid-2015, a match showed up on Ancestry DNA which showed a second cousin relationship between Milt and a person who lived in California. After exchanging several emails, it was discovered that one of this man's great uncles was Thomas Perry Porter, the cowboy who had worked for Cap Alexander on the ranch in Mannford. Since then, several Porter relatives have been discovered through DNA testing.

Apparently May Alexander, who was 24 years younger than her husband, had had a relationship or “dalliance” with Thomas Perry Porter! At the time Tommy was born, Thomas Porter was 23 years old and single. He later married and had two additional children. Interestingly, Tommy Alexander was named after his biological father.

May Alexander probably knew who Tommy Alexander's biological father was, since she named him. What will always remain a mystery is whether Tommy knew who his father was. Although he was much more fond of Cap Alexander than of his mother, May, he did have several pictures of Tom Porter which he kept throughout his life.

Without a doubt, May went to her grave thinking that no one would ever know about her dalliance with Tom Porter. However, 50 years later, through DNA testing, the truth came out!