An early photograph of Virgil Seay teaching his first grandchild to ride a horse. I wasn’t very good at riding but to this day I love horses, they are so graceful and beautiful. This was in his cattle pens a short distance from the house. The turkeys and hogs had free range to scavenge for food. (Author’s collection)
I was especially blessed as a child. All four of my grandparents lived near my family. In addition I had two great-grandparents whom we visited often. Three of my four grandparents were great storytellers; my maternal grandmother who seldom told family stories lost her mother before her fourth birthday.
My maternal grandfather, Virgil Seay, could tell wonderful stories from his childhood and early youth. His father and uncle were ranchers in Montague County, Texas and leased land in the Chickasaw Nation known as the Big Pasture. Virgil was born east of the Chisholm Trail in the Big Pasture. This was after the famed cattle drives to railheads in Kansas but before automobiles, radios, and other modern conveniences.
We would sit in the back yard after supper while he told me stories. My favorites were about droughts, although there is nothing good about lack of rain. His family watched the western horizon, looking for summer’s giant thunderheads. Frequently they saw the huge clouds and hear the roar of thunder, only to realize it was Texas ranchers sending their herds into the Big Pasture where water was adequate and grass fairly abundant. Yet, they never gave up and finally the rains came.
A few years later his parents, Jeff and Laura Seay, moved across the Red River to the Texas ranch. Here they raised four boys and two girls. One time, I decided to practice my oral history techniques with Virgil’s younger sister Ruby. We were talking about holidays, a very generic topic. Ruby informed me that the only holiday they celebrated was Christmas. The rest of the time there was too much work to do on the ranch for such foolishness. That abruptly ended the portion about holidays.
In 1913 Virgil, his brother Hardy, and two ranch hands moved a herd of fifty heifers from the Montague County ranch to a new place Jeff purchased in Archer County, south of Wichita Falls. The four men walked the cows for a week to their new home. When they arrived, the three herders stayed until the cows were “bedded” down before putting their horses on the train and returning home. Bedded down meant the cows became comfortable with their new home. If you wonder why the cattle didn’t travel by train rest assured I asked. It was too expensive. Virgil remained on the ranch for the next fifty years.
Recently I was on the Portals of Texas website looking for something when I found an article from the Archer County News of November 13, 1931. Newspapers of that day filled blank spaces with local gossip and trivia. This article was titled “Some Seay-Saw Business” for some reason.
It read: “We saw Virgil Seay in town Monday from his ranch 5 miles west of Archer City. In fact you will see Mr. Seay in this town every few days. We were out to see Mr. Seay a few days ago. We found milch (milk) cows in the pen, chickens and children in the yard, and we heard the gobble of turkeys and squeal of pigs. In his pasture we found fat cattle, and in his tank (pond) we found fish – and heard a bullfrog off down the creek. Life on such a farm isn’t bad – where a fellow can convince his wife he has business in town before dishwashing time immediately following each meal.” Virgil did go to town often to supposedly get the mail but really to chat with his friends over coffee. He did that when I was a child and took me with him to get an ice cream cone.
I was delighted to find this article. I found out much more than I ever knew about the ranch. They had turkeys and hogs! I would never guess. One of the children was my mother Evelyn with her sister Elaine and brother Jeff. Such a treasure for me to share with my six cousins!