Mrs. ANNA BRAZEL

Interview

by Edith L. Crawford 

Carrizozo, N. Mex. 

Words 881. PIONEER STORY. 

By-Mrs. Anna Brazel. 

I was twelve years old when we left Murfreeboro, Tennessee, and seventeen when 
we arrived in New Mexico. 

We spent five years in the state of Texas, on our way to New Mexico, on 
account of my mothers health and the awful stories we heard about the Indians 
and the terrible deeds they were committing out in this part of the country. 

I have lived in the state of New Mexico, forty seven years and most of the 
time in Lincoln County. 

I was married to William W. Brazel, July 19, 1894, five children were born to 
this union, three girls and two boys four of them are living in Lincoln County 
and the oldest boy in Tularosa, Otero County, New Mexico. 

Little Creek, New Mexico was never a town just a settlement of farmers and 
stock men, our post office was Bonito City, New Mexico, eight miles west of 
Little Creek, we rode horse back to the post office about once a week for our 
mail. 

In later years there was a big saw mill located on the head of Little Creek, 
New Mexico. 

Little Creek, New Mexico is located twenty four miles southeast of Carrizozo, 
New Mexico, and eleven miles east of Ruidoso, New Mexico 

My fathers farm on Little Creek, New Mexico, joined Pat Garrett's ranche home 
on the North, this is the old home place of 

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Pat Garrett, where Miss Lizzie Garrett was born. 

The X I T Ranche was in Texas between Plainview, Texas and the extreme west 
line of New Mexico, on the staked plains. The Long S Ranche was in Texas 
southwest of Canon City, Texas. 

The night my father reached the Long S Ranche, in Texas come of the cowboys 
had found a white man wandering around in a circle they first thought he was 
crazy, but on riding up to him found he was about dead for water his tongue 
was swollen out of his mouth, the cowboys were giving him a couple of table 
spoons full of water at a time until he got so he could talk, he told the 
cowboys that "he was trying to make it to the Long S Ranche and had become 
lost on the plains, had run out of water for himself and horse the horse had 
died from thirst, and he started to walk he knew not where looking for water". 

Father said "he would of have died in a few hours from thirst if they hadn't 
found him when they did". 

This happened when father was on his horseback trip to Boswell, New Mexico. 

One night while we were crossing the plains somewhere between Plainview, 
Texas, and Roswell, New Mexico,  (I do not remember just where it was), we 
heard an awful commotion. At first it scared us for we were afraid it was 
Indians, but Father soon detected it was a herd of cattle stampeding. We could 
not go back to sleep and just as it was breaking day Father got up and built a 
fire. In a short time two cowboys rode up and wanted to know if they could get 
a cup of coffee, said they were worn out from 

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riding after the stampeding cattle the night before. Father made some coffee 
and cooked some meat and bread for them. They ate their breakfast and were 
soon on their way looking for their stampeding herd. The trail we traveled 
from Plainview, Texas to Roswell, New Mexico was the "Butterfield Trail". It 
crossed the Mal Pais at [Oscure?], New Mexico, now called the Mocking Bird Gap 
crossing, and went on over to Fort Selden, New Mexico. 

Father and Mother sold their farm on Little Creek, New Mexico in 1894. They 
went back to Bowie, Texas and bought them a small farm. Mother only lived two 
years after they went to Bowie, dying in December, 1896. Father continued to 
live there for fifteen years. He sold his farm at Bowie and moved to Corpus 
Christie, Texas and went in for raising onions on a big scale. He did well 
with his onion farm. He died in Corpus Christie in October 1925 and was buried 
at Alpine, Texas. 

NARRATOR: Mrs. Anna Brazel, Carrizozo, New Mexico., Aged 64 years. 

Anne Brazel

Edith L. Crawford Carrizozo, N. Mex. Words-[1338?] PIONEER STORY By-Mrs. [??]. 

My father J.C. Wiggins, mother and four children, two girls and two boys, and 
Ned Taylor, wife and two children, left Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in September 
1886, for Grapevine, Texas, twelve miles north of Dallas. They chartered a 
railroad emigrant train consisting of a coach and several box cars. The two 
families lived in the coach which had a cook stove and places for us to sleep. 
They furnished the wood for the cook stove. Our farming implements, two span 
of mules, game chickens and some blood hound pups were in the box cars, Ned 
Taylor was a school teacher in Tennessee and was going to Grapevine to locate 
as his brother Sam Taylor lived there and owned a big stock farm. When we 
arrived in Dallas it was [?]. We had to cross the Trinity swamp and it was 
four miles across it. We were in wagons drawn by four large mules and it was 
all they could do to pull us through the swamp. We went to Sam Taylor's farm 
where we saw our first cotton and self binding reaper cutting wheat and our 
first jack rabbits, called mule eared rabbits, in those days. We lived in 
Grapevine for two years where father ran a stationary engine for a cotton gin. 
We children attended a subscription school while in Grapevine. We left there 
in covered wagons for Weatherford, Texas, where Father farmed for two years. 
He sold this farm and we went to Duck Creek, sixty miles north of Greenville, 
Texas. While here Father worked as a carpenter, building bridges for the 
Railroad Construction Company. [???]

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Jay Gould was building a new railroad from Greenville to Dallas. It crossed 
the Santa Fe railroad at Duck Creek. The Santa Fe ran north and south and the 
Jay Gould road ran east and west. We lived here six months and while father 
was working in the construction camp they had an epidemic of Grippe and two of 
the workmen died. Father was one of the men elected to sit up with the bodies 
of these men who were laid out in tent. 

The camp was composed of tents for the laborers and they were very close 
together. While sitting up with those bodies Father heard some one in the next 
tent speak of Charlie Jefcoats, who was my mother's brother, whom she had not 
heard from in twenty years. Father went in to the tent and asked who in there 
knew Charlie Jefcoats. A man by the name of Red Keith said that he knew him 
and that he was living in [Dening?], New Mexico. Father came home the next day 
and told mother what he had heard, she wrote him a letter but did not hear 
from him. 

In the meantime we moved to Bowie, Texas, where Father farmed and we children 
went to a subscription school. We left Duck Creek in a covered wagon drawn by 
two of the mules that we had left Tennessee with. We had sold everything 
except the mules and wagon.  We camped out in the open at night. Father and 
the two boys did the cooking over the camp fire as Mother was sick and Father 
was afraid we girls would catch our dresses on fire as we were rather young. 
We used wood for fuel as we were traveling through a densely wooded country. 
Mother had us lay a table cloth on the ground and lay stones on the corners to 
keep it from blowing away. We lived in Bowie two years. While

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[?] in Bowie someone told my Father that Mother's brother, Charlie Jefcoats 
was living on a farm sixty miles north of Bowie. We got in touch with him and 
he was getting ready to go back to New Mexico as he liked that country very 
much. He sold out and went to Little Creek, New Mexico, taking a few head of 
cattle and some horses with him. He wrote back and told Mother about the 
beautiful and healthy country and wanted us to come on out as he had a place 
picked out for us. Father began at once to try to sell his farm but it took 
sometime to dispose of it. In the meantime we had heard stories of the Indians 
still being on the warpath in New Mexico, and Mother was afraid to make the 
trip. 

We started for New Mexico April 10, 1891, leaving Bowie, Texas, in a covered 
wagon drawn by two horses. Father had hired a man to take us to New Mexico but 
when we got to Plainview, Texas, he decided that he did not want to go on so 
he turned back and left us there. Father was determined to go on so he 
borrowed a saddle horse from the Long [S?] outfit, which was a big cattle 
company owned by the Slaughter Brothers. He rode his horse to the next side 
camp and there got another horse and rode on to the next camp. He did this 
until he reached Roswell, New Mexico. These side camps were about thirty or 
forty miles apart, each having a sod shack, windmill and watering tanks, with 
one cowboy in charge to look after the windmills and the immense herds of 
cattle that would water there. 

Father hired an old freighter in Roswell to come to Plainview after us. We 
were living in a sod house that Father had 

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built for us before he left Plainview. To build this house he had dug down in 
the ground about six feet, walling this up with boards to the level of the 
ground, then building up with sod blocks (about the size of a large adobe) out 
from the ground where there was grass growing. We had two windows in the shack 
and it had a sod roof. We lived in this house about two weeks and then Father 
came from Roswell with the freighter for us. We traveled in a covered wagon 
and camped out. We had to use cow chips for fuel on this last lap of our 
journey. The old freighter showed how to eat in camp like they did in the 
west, which was to help your plates from the dutch oven and pots. Our first 
stop after leaving Plainview was the Long [?] cattle ranch, where we saw our 
first white faced Hereford cattle. The cowboys were burning cow chips for fuel 
and my brother and I were so embarrassed when we saw them put them in the 
stove. The next stop was at a X I T side camp and the cowboy there entertained 
us by singing cowboy songs which we children thought were the grandest songs 
that we had ever heard. On our third day out we were approaching Fort Sumner, 
and saw our first view of the Capitan Mountains by field glasses. We camped 
out in the open in the X I T pasture. The antelopes were so numerous in this 
pasture that the young ones came up to our camp. The men folks killed one and 
cooked some in a dutch oven for our supper that night. The rest of the fresh 
meat that we had on this trip was given us by the cowboys at the side camps. 
We crossed the Pecos River just above Roswell,

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which was not a very big town at that time. We turned north and traveled up 
the Hondo River and camped that night just below Picacho. The only excitement 
that night was the howling of the coyotes and wolves. We came on up the Hondo 
Valley through Lincoln and on to Little Creek, where we found a new two roomed 
log cabin in a beautiful pine grove awaiting us. Our hearts were filled with 
delight at our new home. This was in May 1891. Two days after our arrival a 
beautiful snow fell on the pine trees. 

We had left Tennessee on account of my mother's health and that is the reason 
we lingered along as we did. Mother was very much afraid of the Indians in New 
Mexico. Geronimo was still on the war path. 

Narrator: Mrs. Anna Brazel, Carrizono, N.M. Aged 64 years. 

Credit: Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, WPA Federal Writers' Project  
Collection.

Lincoln

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