Page 56 - Senior Link Magazine Winter 2017- Online Magazine
P. 56
SENIOR LINK FEATURES
Compiled by Marilyn Garrett
get back to Texas Cornelia, and they were soon
but had no money, married. Barbara was born in 1930
so they had to and Evelyn a year and a half later.
stay and teach Bob continued to buy small tracts of
a year just to be land and also leased National Forest
financially able to land to create the large ranch they
get back. ultimately operated, forty sections
of rugged country in the Apache
Sometimes, at National Forest, with hundreds
arbara Hext Davis was school functions, of Herefords grazing on it. It was
born on July 1, 1930 older teachers located in Catron County, the
Bin Lubbock, Texas would point largest one in western New Mexico,
after her mother, Cornelia Hext, of out women who had been former next to the Arizona border. It was
Apache Creek, New Mexico came teachers and had married cowboys. twenty miles from Apache Creek
to Lubbock, so that her first child Cornelia told her friends that she and another twenty miles to the
would be born in her hometown, certainly would not be one to county seat of Reserve.
and the home of her mother and do that. Ironically, she was the
grandmother, Pebble Talley. only one of the four who did just Even though the ranch was large,
that. She met Bob Hext, the son of the Hext family never had full
The backstory sets the stage for ranchers at Canadian, time cowboys on their
the early life of Barbara and her Texas, who had gone payroll, as the family of
younger sister, Evelyn. Their mother out to western New four handled the day-to-
Cornelia graduated from Texas Mexico when he was 19 day ranch work. They
Technological College in 1928. She to start cowboying. As even drove the cattle
and three of her close girlfriends he worked for others, to Magdalena, to the
decided to accept teaching jobs in he bought small tracts railroad shipping pens,
Reserve, New Mexico. They knew of land that had been to be carried to distant
the town would be small, but they homesteads, but whose places. Magadalena was
were terribly disappointed after owners could not make one of the largest cattle
arriving in the night, to find just it financially. He met shipping points in the
how small it was. They wanted to the young teacher, nation at one time. The
56 Lubbock Senior Link
