Kimble County, TX - Obituaries: Fisher, Jobe B., 1946 Tuesday, August 1, 2000 Submitted by: burtwyat@ctesc.net (Frederica Wyatt) ************************************************************************* USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net ************************************************************************* Found in the scrapbook belonging to the late Margaret Griffen Harrison, Junction, Texas (Name of paper not given) LAST RITES FOR JOBE B. FISHER HELD ON FRIDAY Kimble county citizens mourned the passing of one of the few remaining trail drivers, when Jobe B. Fisher, pioneer ranchman, died Thursday, February 14, at the home of his son, King Fisher. Funeral services were held Friday afternoon at one o'clock at the Junction Church of Christ, with Elder Walter W. Leamons officiating and interment was made in the Junction Cemetery. He was buried by the side of his wife, Rhoda Clark Fisher, who died June 23, 1933. Active pallbearers were Joe Dell Fisher, Robert Fisher, Raleigh Reese, L. R. Hodges, H. S. Porter, Jim Carpenter, Fred Coleman and Perry Dechert. Deceased was a member of the Junction Church of Christ. He is survived by five sons, Congressman O. C. Fisher and Alva Fisher, both of San Angelo, King Fisher and O. B. Fisher, both of Junction, and Wylie Fisher of San Antonio; five daughters, Mrs. B. B. Reese, San Saba; Mrs. Ben D. Dechert and Mrs. Frank C. Hodges, both of Junction; Mrs. Melvin Williams and Mrs. N. J. Jordan, Jr., both of San Angelo. He is also survived by one brother, Bob Fisher of San Angelo; 28 grandchildren and 13 great grand- children. Mr. Fisher was born Nov. 26, 1858 on the old James Fisher league of land in Collin county, 12 miles northeast of McKinney. His grandfather, James Fisher, Sr., and three brothers had been given a grant of land by the Mexican government. They trailed overland from Illinois in 1823 to settle the blackland tract along Sister Grove Creek. Came to Ben Ficklin The family resided near Florence in Williamson county during the War Between the States. In 1872 the family moved to Llano county, settling 12 miles below Llano town on the Llano River, in the Shad-Owens neighborhood. Mr. Fisher went on up to the buffalo range above san angelo. They camped at Ben Ficklin one night. Mr. Fisher estimating that there were 30 or 40 houses in the community then. Still in his teens, Mr. Fisher gave up his buffalo hide hauling job the next spring to go up the Chisholm Trail to Cheyenne. Mr. Fisher and Rhoda Clark were married in 1881. They built their first house, a log cabin, on the Llano near Llano. Later they lived in Mason county and then in 1901 moved to the ranch they had bought on Red Creek in Kimble county. Mr. and Mrs. Fisher celebrated their Golden Wedding anniversary in 1931. A center for the buffalo hunter, as well as the gathering place of the frontier soldiery of Fort Concho, San Angelo was "the toughest place I'd ever seen" when Fisher first saw the town in the fall of 1875. But it hardly compared with the Trinity River bottom around Fort Worth, through which the teen-aged frontiersman passed the following spring as he made his first trip up the Chisholm Trail. The pioneer Kimble countian once recalled: "The Trinity bottoms were full of dance halls and beer dives. Fort Worth then was as wild as could be. Dodge City and Cheyenne had nothing on Fort Worth." Crossing Took Lives Fisher remembered well another crossing, too. That was the ford at Red River Station, on the edge of the Indian Territory. "The river was on a rise and the outfit had to wait for three days for it to run down. Four days before, an outfit boss had asked for volunteers to lead a herd across. Two men volunteered, and were drowned, along with 300 cattle. "We had some trouble crossing ourselves, and I swam in the Red River nearly all day myself," Fisher recalled. His horse gave out and nearly drowned, but his boss finally lent a rope and they salvaged the horse, "pulling his head down hill and letting the water run out of him." Then Fisher mounted the horse and proceded. The outfit lost only 30 to 40 head of cattle at the crossing, he added. A Big Herd The outfit had made up at Round Rock to receive 100,000 head of cattle from the Galveston Cattle Co. and two or three herds from the J. K Ranch near Columbus, the cattle coming from the Colorado Valley near the coast. In Fisher's outfit were 10 men, including the boss, Dick Arnett, "the greatest boss that was ever on the trail," and John Arnett, John Mouldin, Andy Marcus, Jim Stanley, John Nance, Frank Rawlings, the boss wrangler, George King; Fisher's immediate boss, Tom Gillespie, who later lived at Sonora, and Alex Molin, the cook. The outfit drove up from Round Rock by Snyder's pens, then by Waco, Fort Worth, across the Red River, into the Indian Territory and on up. ============================================================================================