The Oklahoma Connection

“Buckskin Joe’s” Emigrant Guide to the Texas/Oklahoma Homestead Colony, first published in 1887, caught the eye of Texas lawman James Monroe “Jim” Ferris who moved his wife Martha Stanford and eight children to Greer County that same year. Although ownership of Greer County was disputed (it was claimed by both Texas and Oklahoma), the unorganized territory was touted as a land of opportunity.

James Monroe Ferris (1849-1918) - Eldest living son of Warren Angus Ferris

Martha Jane Stanford Ferris (1854 -1899)

According to Jim Ferris’s son Arthur, there was only one dugout cabin between the north and south forks of the Red River. Early settlers had to go fifty miles to Vernon, Tx. for supplies, but Greer County was a paradise for hunters - plenty of antelope - not much law and few doctors. Jim Ferris, a spare, blue-eyed man of medium height with a gentle, soft voice quickly won respect in the settlement of Navajoe. A professional lawman, he was soon appointed deputy sheriff and later U.S. marshal. Often he was gone for months, chasing outlaws in Indian Territory. At home, Ferris dealt with unruly cowboys off the “Chism" Trail or Indians off the nearby Kiowa/Comanche reservation. Jim carried the mail and acted as health officer when smallpox broke out on the Indian reservation. He surveyed (perhaps using his father’s old chain) and built roads, planted black locust trees, and collected money for the Navajoe Cemetery as the little community grew to 200 residents.

Old Navajoe Cemetery, Greer County, Oklahoma

In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Greer County belonged to Oklahoma. When the railroad came through, it bypassed Navajoe so the entire town picked up and moved to the railroad, creating a new town - Headrick, OK. Old Navajoe became a ghost town, left with only the cemetery in the shadow of the Navajo Mountains. Jackson County was cut out of Greer County and Altus, OK became the main town and county seat. When Jim Ferris’s wife died in 1899, he was left with ten children still at home, including an infant son Aaron. Jim died in 1918, probably like his brother Charley of the Spanish flu. Many of his children and grandchildren continued to live and flourish around Altus.

Children of Jim Ferris identified by name (Christmas 1905).

Jim’s grandson Weldon Ferris (1907-1983) was one of the youngest district attorneys and district judges in the history of Oklahoma. First appointed in 1946, later elected, Ferris served on the State Superior Court for 39 years, hearing cases in three counties. Judge Ferris and his wife Ruth Smith Ferris were active in the Democrat Party, well-connected to the Kerr dynasty that controlled Oklahoma politics. They attended several national conventions where they met President Harry Truman. The Ferris family lived very modestly; they raised their daughter while living in one side of a duplex they owned. Weldon Ferris was an introvert, uncomfortable as a public speaker. His election campaigns were led by his wife and friends. Beyond the judgeship he had no further political ambition. According to his grandson Richard Ryan, Ferris was satisfied to be a judge and gentleman farmer with three large farm properties. Everyday after court, he would come home, put on his khakis, and go to inspect one of his farms. At the farm, he could relax, count his Hereford cattle, and not have to look or act like “The Judge”. Ferris was extremely proud of his family heritage and kept up the Oklahoma/Texas connection by attending the Ferris reunion in Dallas in 1962. Nephew Bill Ferris says when Weldon Ferris died in 1983, the courthouse closed down, all of the attorneys and employees lined the street to honor this highly respected Oklahoman.

Judge Weldon Ferris. Photo courtesy of Museum of the Prairie, Altus, OK

The Texas Connection

One of Jim Ferris’s daughters, Allie Ferris (1883-1931), married Texan Robert A. Pounds and moved to Newcastle in Texas. Allie exchanged letters with her family in Oklahoma, keeping up the Texas/Oklahoma connection. Newcastle was a coal town, dubbed the “Birmingham of the Southwest”; its mining developed around 1903 when the railroads were extended through Young County. Nearby were the ruins of Old Fort Belknap, one of eight frontier forts that had protected early settlers. Allie and Robert Pounds had six children: Edgar Lee, Sadie Irene, Robert, Jr., Lucy Mae, Ferris, and Clara Belle.

It is Allie’s daughter Lucy Mae (1918-1974) that carried on an interest in Ferris history. In 1940, she married James “Pete” Smith, a union carpenter, and, after the birth of their first son Leland, they moved to the Dallas area to get jobs in the aviation industry. North American Aviation opened a giant plant in Grand Prairie, Tx. to build B-24 Liberator bombers. A mile-long assembly line in a 900,000 square foot air-conditioned building churned out 3000 B-24s in the next few years. People came from all over Texas - young boys, old men, housewives -increased the population from 2000 to 16,000 in one year. According to Leland Smith, his father Pete, mother Lucy Mae, and two of her sisters worked at North American. By the end of the WWII, the family was in Port Arthur, Tx., working at a naval shipyard. War industries provided jobs and helped Texans recover from the Depression.

When they moved back to Dallas in the 1950’s, Lucy Mae made contact with Robert Ferris’s descendants who lived in Dallas. Together, they attended a Ferris family reunion in Oklahoma and Lucy Mae organized two family reunions in Texas, one at the Dallas Public Library in 1962 and another at Ft. Belknap in 1966. Oklahoma and Texas branches of the family mingled at these gatherings. She became active in politics, supporting John Connally, who she had met at Fort Belknap, and putting up yard signs for Mike McKool, a Dallas attorney running for the Texas Senate who was married to Ferris descendant Betty Uselton.

Lucy Mae Pounds Smith with Gov. John Connally (1968)

Photo 7 - Oklahoma and Texas Ferrises at 1962 Reunion in Dallas. Judge Ferris and wife Ruth on back row left. Lucy Mae Smith with beehive hairdo, 2nd row, third from right.

Lucy Mae was a member of several ancestral organizations, including the Daughters of the American Revolution. She took great interest in Ferris family history, working with historians Walter McCausland from Buffalo, NY, Homer DeGolyer from S.M.U., and William R. Conger at Sunset High School in Dallas. She championed the neglected Ferris Cemetery and tried to get a new elementary school (Sanger) named for her famous ancestor Warren Angus Ferris. In the early 1980’s, although she was by then deceased, Lucy Mae’s grandson Greg Smith made her scrapbook and letters available to Eastfield College history instructor Susanne Starling, leading to the publication in 1998 of Land Is the Cry! the biography of surveyor Warren A. Ferris.

Written by Susanne Starling with the aid of Richard Ryan, Bill Ferris, Talmadge Oden, Greg and Leland Smith.