“Tootie” Schnaubert was born January 29, 1917 to Stephen Arthur Schnaubert and Ella M. Adams Schnaubert in Rankin, Texas. Both parents died in December, 1918 when he was not quite two years old, their causes of death unstated. Tootie and his two siblings, Leon and Stephen, went to live with their grandparents, Arthur and Mentie Schnaubert in Upton County, Texas. By 1930, the combined family was living in Carlsbad, New Mexico where Arthur was working as an electrician for Carlsbad Light and Power Company.
Tootie married Peggy Jo Parks in 1939 and the couple would remain married until Peggy’s death in 1987. Tootie registered for the draft in 1940 naming his grandfather Arthur Francis as his next of kin and his employer as Homer Bryan of Carlsbad. He was 23 years old.
Around 1950, Tootie opened up his first retail grocery stores in Hobbs and called them Tootie’s Cashway. A 1952 article in the Lovington Leader announced the remodeling of their Hobbs store giving it the largest floor space of a grocery store in Hobbs. It offered not Green Stamps but Pacific Stamps.
It was not uncommon for the grocery to take out full page ads in local newspapers. The company also ran commercials on local radio stations. The melody was taken from an old Al Jolson song “Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Goodbye” and singer sang these lyrics. “Toot, Toot, Tootie’s Cashway. Ladies hear what we say…”
Clovis News Journal Sun, August 30, 1959
The company expanded to have multiple stores in places like Hobbs, Lovington and Clovis. It was not unusual to see Tootie’s image on the ads. Tootie eventually retired. Over the years, the company employed many people. An internet search of obituaries would mention that different individuals had worked in some capacity for Tootie’s Cashway.
Peggy Jo passed away in 1987 and Tootie followed him in death in 1997. Both are buried in Memory Gardens in Hobbs, New Mexico.
James Benjamin “Jim” Love was the younger brother of Robert Florence Love. Both were sons of John Dillard Love and Mary Jane Austin Love. Jim was born on September 25, 1873 in Palo Pinto, Stephens County, Texas. By the time he was about seventeen, he began working on ranches in West Texas and on into New Mexico. (1) Jim’s father John D. Love died in 1889 at the age of 76. His mother survived John for about seventeen years and died at the age of 69.
Jim had met Mary Myrtleene “Myrtle” Ward who was living in Fort Griffin, north of Albany, Texas. Myrtle had been born in a rock house in old Fort Griffin, the town, according to her daughter Anemone Binkley’s account. There is only one remaining intact structure where Fort Griffin was located. It is called the Jackson-Ward house and is still standing, at last report. This is probably the house that Mrs. Binkley was referring to.
Their first child, a daughter named Emma Leona was born the following year in Turkey, Texas. Another daughter, Ruth Alma, was born two years later in 1906. Soon afterward, the young family moved to southeastern New Mexico, then still a territory and settling first in the general area of Knowles. By about 1908, they were living in what would become the town of Lovington, named after the two brothers.(1)
Jim operated the first mercantile store in Lovington on property he had acquired around what would eventually become the town square. To their family, five more children were born: Velma (1908), Jordan Ward (1910), Mary Kathleen (1910), Myrtle Jim (1914) and Anemone (1918).
Jim Love died in 1945. Myrtle survived him about 26 years until she passed in 1971. The home they lived in, pictured below, was originally located at 109 S. Eddy Street. In the spring of 1975, the children of Jim and Myrtle Love donated the home to the Lea County Museum. At that time, most of the children were still living, with the exception of Jordan, who had passed away in the previous year. The residence was later moved about two blocks to a location behind the Lea County Museum on Love Street, on the courthouse square. The home was renovated and furnished as it would have been in the past.
(1) Lea County Genealogical Society, “Then and Now – Lea County Families, Vol. 1,” Walsworth Publishing Company, 1979.
Samuel R. Cooper was an early resident of Lea County. He was born near Salina, Kansas in 1874. When he was six years old, his family moved to Erring Springs, in the Chickasaw Nation, Oklahoma Territory, now known as Oklahoma.
As a young adult around the age of 21, Mr. Cooper left his family and moved west to Mobeetie, Texas in the Panhandle. He worked on several ranches including the XIT ranch. He also recalled hunting prairie chickens and sending them to markets in Kansas City and St. Louis, Missouri. When he was 27, he married the former Jessie May Gray and the young couple moved to a farm near Mobeetie and supplemented his income by cutting wood and transporting it by ox teams. He also hauled and sold cottonseed cake to ranches int he area.
In 1914, two years after New Mexico became a state, Mr. Cooper sold his Panhandle farm and moved to the area. He homesteaded a half section located roughly ten miles northwest of the area that would give rise to the town of Jal and later added another half section to his homestead holdings. His brothers and father were already residing in New Mexico. Mr. Cooper built a one room house with a dirt floor early on, and lived there for a few years before building a more substantial home. The first three years they were in the area, they had to rely on water which they hauled from Mr. Cooper’s father’s property, but in 1917 they were able to drill their own well and set up a windmill to provide their water supply.
At that time, a one room schoolhouse served the community children and also provided a place for community gatherings and Sunday School meetings each Sunday morning.
After some time, the Coopers set up a post office with Mrs. Cooper serving as post mistress. They later established a small mercantile store near their home, supplying it with goods freighted in from Pecos, Texas. The goods were transported by two large wagons in tandem, pulled by a team of twenty burros.
Oil was discovered in Jal around 1929, and Mr. Cooper recalls that all structures, including barns and chicken houses were converted to housing for oilfield workers. One additional benefit of the oil boom was that Mr. Cooper then was able to get natural gas service to his home where he previously only had wood and kerosene for home use.
Mr. Cooper passed away in 1958 at the age of 84. He had lived in Lea County for forty-four years. His services were held and the Church of God in Jal, of which he was a charter member. He was buried in the Jal-Cooper Cemetery on land that he donated. His wife Jessie survived him another eighteen years. He and Jessie had eight children, four sons and four daughters, all of whom survived him along with 29 grandchildren and 17 great grandchildren.
Robert Florence Love was born April 17, 1870 to John Dillard Love and Nancy Jane M. Austin Love in Palo Pinto County, Texas. John Dillard Love had been born in North Carolina in 1822 while Nancy Jane was a number of years younger having been born in Arkansas in 1837. John Dillard and Nancy Jane had married in 1859 in Arkansas. Their first child, Jefferson A. Love was born in 1862 and he was followed by five more male children, Samuel Oliver (1865), John G. (1867), Robert Florence (1870), James B. (Jim) (1873), and Albert Berry (1877). The first two sons were born in Tennessee and the remaining four were born in Texas.
In the 1880 census, Robert was living with his family in Palo Pinto County, Texas. His father was listed as being a farmer and he and his three older brothers were noted as working on the farm. By the time Robert was twenty, he had begun to move west and was working on the OHO Ranch in Stephens County, in west Texas. Robert continued to work his way further west during the next decade as he neared the Texas-New Mexico border. He is known to have worked on the J96 Ranch, owned by Joe Allen Browning and then on the old Mallet (later known as the Hi-Lonesome) Ranch. For a brief time, he returned to Stephens County, Texas before again turning west near the current town of Plains, Texas. A son, John Leman Love, relates that he worked in Stephens County on the VVN Ranch for a while. He then moved to Stanton, Texas in Martin County, where he met Matilda Anne Glascock whom he married in 1896. By the time the 1900 census was taken, the couple had four of their five children: twins John Leman and Mary Nancy (1897), Grace Elizabeth (1898) and Robert Eugene (1900), all born in Stanton.
In 1900, the young family moved to New Mexico. They came by covered wagon and John Leman recounts that the trip took eight days. After living for a while on Matilda’s parents’ (Leman Pike and Mary Mumford Wilks Glascock) place in Portales, they settled and operated a ranch in what is Lea County. The family persisted despite two memorable winter storms, in 1906 and again in 1917 followed by a drought in 1918. Their youngest son, Florence Warren was born in 1908. For a short time, they built and operated a two story hotel in the Knowles area before selling it and returning to ranching.(1)
The town of Lovington was established in 1908. It was first suggested by the United States Land Commissioner Wesley McAllister that it be named Love, but Robert Florence preferred the name Loving. However, since the town of Loving was already established southeast of Carlsbad, the name request was amended to Lovington. Robert’s brother Jim Love was its first postmaster. (2)
Robert Florence acquired a store from his brother Jim on the west side of the town square and operated it for a few years. In 1911, Robert Florence was elected to the New Mexico State Legislature, serving in the first such session after the territory became a state in 1912. He later served as sheriff from 1921-1924 and returned to the legislature from 1923-1930. His final public office was serving as county assessor from 1931-1934. (1)
Robert Florence died in March, 1944 (his grave stone says 1942) and he was buried in the Lovington Cemetery. Matilda followed him in death some eight years later in 1952, and she is buried in Portales, New Mexico.
(1) Lea County Genealogical Society, “Then and Now, Lea County Families,” Walsworth Publishing Company, 1979.
(2) Julyan, Robert, “The Place Names of New Mexico,” University of New Mexico Press, 1998.
The Causey brothers were formerly buffalo hunters. The big lumbering buffalo were hunted in the southwest to the point where they declined from a peak of over 100 million animals to near extinction in only a few decades during the late 1800s.
Likely the best known Causey brother went by George Causey, though his given name was Thomas Leander Causey. He was born in 1849 in Madison County, Illinois and died in Roosevelt County, New Mexico in 1903. How he came by the nickname of George is unknown. He was a single man most of his life. He married in 1903 but died by his own hand only a few weeks after he married.
George was the first born of ten children to George Washington Causey and Mary Adeline Crowder Causey. The others were Mark, John Van Cleave, Eliza Jane, Mary Adeline, Charles Grant and Nellie Grant (twins), Robert Lincoln, George Washington, Jr. and Rose Evelyn. All but one or maybe two of the children were born in Illinois. George W. (the father) had been born in Tennessee and in the 1870 census, his occupation was listed as farmer and was still shown as being a farmer in the 1900 census before his death in 1907 at around 80 years of age. He died in Guthrie, Logan County, Oklahoma. Mary Adeline had predeceased him, also in Oklahoma, in 1895.
Thomas Leander “George” Causey does not appear have served in the Civil War, although he may indeed have done so. Near the end of the war, however, he is said to have worked as a freighter hauling supplies to Army forts and trading posts in Kansas. This profession became less profitable as the railroad system expanded and goods could be transported reliably via rail.
At some point, George began to hunt and trade in animal hides, following the buffalo herds south and west from Kansas to Oklahoma and later to Texas and New Mexico. George is reputed to be a prolific buffalo hunter, and by esimates of others is said to have killed over 40,000 of these animals, living off money he earned from selling both hides and meat.
By around 1877, George and at least two brothers, Robert and John, had come to Yellow House Canyon, apparently near the current town of Littlefield, Texas. The brothers, George, John and Bob, came to the area in the late 1870s. They are first believed to have settled with a couple of other partners on the western side of Yellow House Draw.
Yellow House Draw was a natural old watercourse, or stream bed, in the Llano Estacado that ran for about 150 miles originating around 20 miles south of Melrose, Roosevelt County, New Mexico all the way to near the current town of Lubbock, Lubbock County, Texas. There it ties into a fork of the Brazos River. There, still hunting for the remnants of the buffalo herds, the Causeys built an adobe house at a water hole there before exploring a bit further south into the Four Lakes area, in the northern part of what is now Lea County. They eventually settled on the southern end of the county near Monument Spring, still hunting the last of the buffalo which had been hunted until around 1880 in this area.
By the early 1880s, the brothers had tried to make the transition to capturing and selling wild mustangs. They began by capturing 100 mustangs along with about 50 stray beef cattle after the brothers moved to what became Lea County. An early task was to look for water, which they found in the northern part of the current county. George bought an Eclipse direct stroke windmill. Their ranch is referred to as being the first ranch in Lea County. After operating there for some time, that ranch was sold and George relocated some five miles south of Lovington. He had to supply water from Monument Spring and built a rock house. Causey ran his horse and cattle operation for a number of years from that location. He also contracted to drill water wells and set windmills for other settlers.
Around 1900, the exact date is unknown, Causey was riding a horse in a mustang roundup. The mount got spooked and fell after possibly stepping into a badger hole and breaking its leg, after which it rolled over Causey. Ranch hands came upon him two days later, sent for a wagon and brought him back to the headquarters at Four Lakes and then taking Causey on to Roswell for further medical treatment. Causey was then transported to Missouri for further treatment but never regained full health, reportedly suffering from a continuing spinal injury causing him extended pain and discomfort. Causey sold his ranch to the owners of the Hat Ranch. He and his brothers continued to operate a mustang operation on the open range in Chaves County. His employees also continued the water well drilling operation.
Albuquerque Journal – May 30, 1903
Causey was married to a nurse of German ancestry named Johanna Fewson on April 8, 1903 and established a ranch between Kenna and Roswell. About six weeks later on May 18, 1903, Causey is believed to have taken his own life. Witnesses heard a gun shot, ran to the room and found Causey fatally wounded. Speculation was that he was despondent over his inability to recover from injuries sustained in the riding accident. When he died, Causey was 54 years old. Funeral services were held in Roswell at the First Christian Church after which Causey was buried in Southside (now called South Park) Cemetery there. His brothers Bob and John moved away and lived until the mid 1930s. Bob is buried in Arizona and John is buried in California.
Sources: Elvis E. Fleming’s articles in the Roswell Daily Record on George Causey. Fleming gives much credit to Gil Hinshaw’s book “Lea: New Mexico’s Last Frontier” and to Vivian H. Whitlock’s book “Cowboy Life on the Llano Estacado.” Sources also include genealogy records of the Causey family and various other newspaper articles.
Addison “Add” Jones was born a slave in Texas. Much of what we understand about his early life was told by his wife Rosa when she furnished information for his death certificate after he died. He is thought to have been born in Gonzalez County in 1845.
Jones worked for many years for George Washington Littlefield (1842-1920), probably only a few years older than Addison, who was former soldier in the Confederate army after which he became a rancher, banker and was known as a philanthropist. Littlefield’s father had died when he was about ten years old and he grew up on the family farm, also in the general vicinity of Gonzalez County. How Jones and Littlefield became acquainted is not documented, but they were closely associated for most of Addison’s life. Addison is believed to have worked on Littlefield ranches including the LFD, Four Lakes in Lea County and Yellow House.
There were racially discriminatory situations that occurred throughout the southwest over these years. It is said that the Black cowboys often got the hardest and most disagreeable jobs, but in ranch life, Black cowboys were quite common, either working in all Black crews or alongside other cowboys. Addison gained a reputation for being a skilled cowboy and a hard worker. He was a leader, was known to be a good horseman and would often be the first to ride wild broncs as they began the process of being broken or tamed. He was also skilled at roping horses and served as trail boss in the Littlefield outfits. Because of his skills and endurance, Add Jones was one of the best known Black cowboys in West Texas and eastern New Mexico.
Jones does not appear to have had much formal education, if any at all, and it has been speculated that he had limited ability to read and write. He left no personally written accounts of his life, as far as is known. He owned his own home later in life and lived in Roswell when he and his wife were older.
According to a 1993 article in the Roswell Daily Record by Elvis Fleming, Addison and Rosa were married on December 7, 1899 in the Chaves County courthouse when he was 54 and she was 36. Rosa was originally from Texas and was working in Roswell.
The couple was living in Roswell when he died in 1926. His obituary was carried in the March 25, 1926 issue of the Roswell Daily Record, and cited his having lived in southeastern New Mexico for forty years. It also mentioned his sunny disposition and many friendships among all people. It also related that he was a member of the Knights of Pythias and that he was a Mason. His wife Rosa followed him in death in 1933. Both are buried in South Park Cemetery in Roswell, New Mexico.
Sources include newspaper articles, and “Black Cowboys of Texas” edited by Sara R. Massey.
When this couple married in Post, Texas in the 1920s, the wedding united two families who were early settlers in the area that became Lea County. John Thomas Easley was one of eight children born to Robert Henry Easley (1864 -1928) and Rosa Belle Jones Easley (1873 – 1962). The other children included Minnie, Levie, Charlie, Blanche, Ruth, Jack and R. H., Jr. Robert Henry and Rosa lived in several locations, mostly within the current boundaries of Lea County, including Monument, Plainview, Hagerman and a few miles north of Lovington before returning to Post, Garza County, Texas where they would remain for a number of years. Robert Henry died in Littlefield in 1928 and Rosa survived him almost thirty five years before she passed away in Post.
John Thomas was born in 1899 in Oklahoma where the family was living at the time. He grew up mostly in Post and also lived in Lovington. He and Lorena married in Post in 1921.
Lorena was the second child born to James Smith Anderson (1873 – 1930) and Minnie Myrtle Stringer Anderson (1881 – 1967). The other children were W. A. (Bill), Preston Pond, Roy Lewis. James and Minnie also came to the area in 1906, settling on a place about four miles east of Lovington. Their property included two dry lakes at the time. The lakes eventually filled up during an extended rainy period. These later became known as Easley’s Lakes to county residents. James died in 1930 and Minnie Myrtle survived him another thirty-seven years. After James died, J. T. and Lorena moved to the county to operate the Anderson ranch and lived there for the rest of their lives.
The couple was active in the community and the county. J. T. served on several boards and area groups including serving as County Commissioner in the 1960s and as President of the county fair board during the time when the McClure Arena was conceived and built.
Sources include various genealogy resources, newspaper archives and Lea County Genealogical Society’s “Then and Now – Lea County Families, Volume 1” published by Waldworth Publishing Company, 1979.
Abel Justus Crawford was a pioneer to the area, having lived in or near Lea County for almost 70 years when he passed away in 1969. Mr. Crawford was born November 10, 1867 in Mount Giliad, Kentucky.
He recalled his first job, that of picking cherries for 15 cents per day. As a youth, he was an industrious and diligent worker who worked in a variety of jobs, from sanding piano legs to piloting a ferryboat on the Ohio River. When he was 17, he left home to come to the southwest. He took a job herding sheep for a rancher named Sam Brookshire who had a ranch near Abilene, Texas. He later purchased 125 sheep from Mr. Brookshire to begin his own sheep ranch operation in Lea County.
At around the age of 30, he returned to Kentucky to marry Minnie Campbell, his childhood sweetheart. When the couple returned to the southwest, they settled in Carlsbad where they made their home for the rest of their lives.
Among his various interests, Crawford owned the Buckeye Sheep Ranch in Lea County. In addition to his ranching activities, he acquired an interest in six banks: El Paso National Bank; Carlsbad National Bank; City Bank and Trust of Kansas City; the Valley National Bank of Phoenix, and the Bank of America in California. He also built or acquired a number of hotels in West Texas and New Mexico including a number that bore the Crawford name in Carlsbad, New Mexico, Midland, Big Spring and Colorado City, Texas.
When Mr. Crawford died in 1969, he was 101 years old and had lived in southeastern New Mexico for almost seven decades. His wife Minnie had predeceased him in 1961.
David Lee Roy Peveler was born in Seymour, Baylor County, Texas on June 18, 1886. He married Henri Bess Coleman on December 23, 1914 in Gaines County, Texas. David’s father, William Jasper Peveler (1855-1947) was born in June 1855 to Greenup Cauley Peveler and the former Martha A. Dennis in Young County, Texas on July 3, 1855.
The Peveler family were early settlers to Texas and many of them lived in an area that came to be known as Peveler Valley in northern Hood County. Greenup Peveler had been a Texas Ranger serving in the Frontier Battalion in 1864 when he died in March of that year in an unrecorded incident. He was serving under his uncle, William Riley Peveler in North Texas. William was a well known Texas Ranger company captain and was later killed in September, 1864 in Jack County in a Comanche ambush, though his grave went largely unnoticed for about 100 years until he was honored and the story of his actions was recounted in local newspapers. The Frontier Battalion was a Confederate Army unit, but generally remained in Texas during the war to protect the settlers living there. It was mostly made up of local citizens and included Christopher Columbus Slaughter who survived the Civil War and went on to become a rancher in north central Texas.
David Lee Roy Peveler is believed to have moved to what is now Lea County around 1902. He and Bess had two sons, James William “Son” Peveler (1916-1957) and Henry Leroy “Wad” Peveler (1918-2002) who lived in the Prairieview area. Their families were involved at various times in the sheep and later the cattle business. Wad also operated a boot shop in Tatum at one time.
One of the early families to come to the area were the Forts. Benjamin Herman Fort was born December 15, 1857 in Scott County, Arkansas to John Gabriel Fort and Dorinda Jane Bell Fort and was the youngest of their eleven children. Benjamin married the former Louisa Swilling “Lou” Bramlett in Paris, Arkansas in 1879. In the years that followed, they had at least about twelve children of their own and lived first in Arkansas before settling down in Brown County, Texas. They were living in Texas when in 1902, they decided to take the younger children and make the long trip by covered wagon to New Mexico. However, Lou did not survive the journey. She passed away about 130 miles from their destination and was buried in the small community of Fluvanna, Scurry County, Texas. Benjamin and the children continued on to the area near Lovington, which was then part of Chaves County.
Fort Family about 1902 – Walter, Dorinda, Mae, Nannie, Lula Second Row: Herman, Johnny Front Row: Lillie, Eddie, Benjamin H. (Father), holding Bessie, Louise (Mother), holding Adriane and Claudie. Photo is believed to be in the public domain.
Benjamin and the children settled not far from the Texas border. Some, if not all, of their property has remained in the family since that time. A number of the children of Benjamin and Lou Fort remained in the area or came to the area to live including Nannie Fort Allen, Benjamin Walter Fort, Dorinda Jane Fort Mann, John Ruben Fort, William Herman Fort, Eddie Thomas Fort and Claudie Adolphus Fort. Benjamin died in Texas in 1929 and is buried with several other family members in Antioch Cemetery in eastern Lea County.
Old Lea County, N.M. 