Kings of Texas by Don Graham

The author of this book clearly loves his subject and gives the reader a lot to think about. Indeed, the subtitle of the book is The 150-Year Saga of an American Ranching Empire and the author covers it all. The King Ranch story is a fascinating one made more so by being here in Texas and having a sense of just how much country there is from San Antonio down to the border.  There’s a lot.  More than enough for one man to easily aggregate to himself over a half million acres.  Today, the King Ranch in the United States covers almost a million acres, roughly the same area as the state of Rhode Island.

Richard King (1824-1885) began life in New York, the child of Irish immigrants.  He was orphaned by the age of 5, stowed away on a ship by his early teens and at 16 was a steamboat pilot on the Alabama River.  His life only grew more exciting after that! From Alabama, King made his way to Texas via Florida and the Seminole War. By 1847, when he began steamboating along the Texas/Mexico border, the Texas Revolution was history, Texas had joined the Union and the Mexican American War was just about fought. 

In the years before the Civil War, King began to coalesce his empire through steamboats and ranches.  As he explored Texas beyond the area of Brownsville, territory variously referred to by the author as the Wild Horse Desert or the “sea of grass,” King ultimately bought a tract of land along the Santa Gertrudis Creek.  Today, when you take a tour of King Ranch, one reports to this area, Kingsville to be exact.    

Mention should be made of the innovation in ranching that Richard King made.  The author writes, “King adopted the Mexican model, which meant year-round, lifetime support for one’s vaqueros and families.” (pg. 66) King established a hacienda not a mere ranch and he was the hacendado.  His workers came to be called Kinenos (tilda over the second n) and bestowed upon King the sobriquet El Capitan or el patron.  The Kinenos lived and worked together as a community alongside the King family. In some cases, lifelong loyalties were formed.

During the Civil War, King had a lucrative business shipping cotton for the South from the only port available to the Confederacy, the Brazos Santiago Pass (Port Isabel). To the extent that he was political, King was a Confederate who quickly pledged loyalty to the Union when the War was over.  No sooner was the nation’s war settled than the hostilities between Mexicans and Anglos went into full swing.  Cattle and horse thievery on the part of Mexicans was a constant threat during the 1870’s.  That’s not to say that the Anglos didn’t do their share of killing and provoking.  On this topic the author does an excellent job of examining Mexican/Anglo relations in terms of Manifest Destiny and the history of the times.  Highly recommended reading in those early chapters of the book. 

As engaging as it is to read about Captain King’s exploits, it is equally engaging to read about the German immigrant Robert Justus Kleberg whose son by the same name married Alice King, the Captain’s daughter, and carried on the King Ranch successes.  Robert Kleberg and Alice King Kleberg had five children, at least two of whom went on to make history themselves.  Son Richard Kleberg (1887-1955) is the career congressman from Texas who gave Lyndon Baines Johnson his entrée to Washington D.C. politics.  LBJ was Kleberg’s secretary!  It’s nice how history connects the dots for us.  Robert Kleberg---that’s a third Robert---is the son whom the author so accurately identifies as “the most significant figure in King Ranch history since Captain King.” pg. 207.  

From Richard King to Robert Kleberg (1896-1974), the King/Kleberg Ranch has had its hand in salt, wool, sheep, the cotton trade, cattle, oil, thoroughbred horses and citrus groves to name a few.  The King Ranch came to have operations not only in several countries, but even in my little hometown corner of the world, the Coatesville/Brandywine River Valley area.  History is again at hand to make connections!

The details of the 20^th century lawsuit, Chapman vs. King Ranch, are described in a fair amount of detail in the final chapters of the book. A descendant of the Chapman family decided to revive an 1883 lawsuit brought against King Ranch over a parcel of land claimed to belong to the Chapman heirs. While the lawsuit is certainly part of the lore of King Ranch, it just got to be more detail than I cared to go into.  Of greater value in my opinion is the colorful, historical account of South Texas that the author supplies as part of the warp and woof of Richard King’s life.  Texas is certainly unique among states given its beginnings as part of Mexico.  Its sons and daughters are equally unique in the contribution they’ve made to the history of our country.  That is all captured in this book.