Rocking Chair Ranche: The British-Owned Cattle Outfit of the Texas Panhandle

What was the Rocking Chair Ranche?

The Rocking Chair Ranche was a cattle outfit on North Elm Creek in Collingsworth County, Texas, run as a British-owned company from 1883 to 1896. The spelling Ranche is deliberate. It comes from the legal name, The Rocking Chair Ranche Company, Limited, which marks it as a corporation formed for investors rather than a family spread.

Accounts of its size differ. The Wikipedia article on the company gives 200,000 acres, while a regional history says it grew to more than 150,000 acres across northeastern Collingsworth County and southern Wheeler County. Neither account gives a herd size.

Who owned the Rocking Chair Ranche?

The money came from Britain. Dudley Marjoribanks, 1st Baron Tweedmouth, bought the ranch in 1883, according to Wikipedia, and after his death in 1894 it passed to his son Edward, the 2nd Baron, and to his son-in-law John Hamilton-Gordon, the Earl of Aberdeen. A regional history describes the 1883 sale a little differently: an Englishman named J. John Drew and a partner, Early W. Spencer, bought the property first and then sold it to the British investors.

That kind of detail is why the record is worth reading carefully. Sources differ on the order of events and on the Aberdeens' titles, so the safest summary is that British aristocrats funded the company and that Drew, who is described as the ranch manager, ran daily operations in Texas.

Who was Archibald Marjoribanks?

Archibald, Lord Tweedmouth's youngest son, was sent to Texas and received an annual living allowance of 400 pounds. He worked as assistant ranch manager and bookkeeper and shared a one-bedroom wood-frame house with Drew. One account has it that when Lord and Lady Aberdeen visited in the summer of 1887, the couple took the bedroom while Archibald and Drew slept on the terrace.

The sources are blunt about his fit for the job. Wikipedia says he had no head for stock-raising, and a regional history reports that locals said he took frequent leave to gamble and drink in Mobeetie and that the ranch struggled to turn a profit. These are local-memory claims, so treat them as reported rather than proven.

The era and region: British money on the Panhandle

The Rocking Chair was one of several British-linked ventures in the Panhandle. The JA Ranch began in 1877 when Charles Goodnight partnered with British aristocrat John Adair, who supplied the capital. Alfred Rowe built the RO Ranch in Donley County, and the Francklyn Land and Cattle Company controlled about 700,000 acres in four counties before the blizzard of 1886 devastated it.

British capital was also invested in New Mexico, where English and then Dutch investors owned the Maxwell Land Grant from 1870. Owners who lived an ocean away had to rely on managers they chose, and the Rocking Chair shows how much that choice mattered.

Why did the Rocking Chair Ranche fail?

By 1893 the ranch had failed, per Wikipedia. The regional history says the owners sold in 1896 after losing money and feeling hemmed in by settlers. The deed of sale came in December 1896, when the owners sold the ranch to the Continental Land and Cattle Company. A town history of nearby Aberdeen dates the company's insolvency to around 1900, another example of sources that do not line up.

The pattern in the record is easy to see even if the dates wobble. Distant owners, a young manager with little ranching background, falling returns and a Panhandle filling up with farm families all pressed on the operation. The company never solved the problem of making a large land base pay its way.

Aberdeen, Wellington and the town fights

Aberdeen was named for an Earl of Aberdeen and served in the late 1880s as headquarters of a division of the English-owned ranch. According to the Texas Escapes history of Aberdeen, a post office opened in 1889 and Collingsworth County was organized in 1890. The town hoped to become county seat, but the first election between Pearl and Wellington was declared void, and Wellington won the second.

A regional history adds that Wellington was named for the Duke of Wellington, partly to win Archibald's support for organizing the county. By June 1891 Aberdeen had reverted to Rocking Chair ownership, and potential settlers found it too isolated. By 1963 it was a ghost town.

Learn more about Panhandle ranch history

For the wider story, see Wes Reeves's piece on British influence in the Panhandle, which compares the Rocking Chair with the JA, RO, XIT and Francklyn operations. The farm.FM site also has a ranching section with stories about cattle country, and a farm.FM story on Panhandle ranch history is a good place to keep reading.