BY NORMAN ROZEFF
Leffler in his history of the Bentsen-Rio Grande State Park tells us how Headley had come to possess the ranch.
“The chain of title for Porción 50 during the mid-19th century, broken and clouded by missing transactions and inexplicable omissions, mirrors the confused and confusing state of real estate sales in the Valley during this period. Although the Bourland-Miller Commission had confirmed the Porción 50 grant to Servana Quirva in 1852, there is no record that Quirva ever transferred the title to anyone. Yet in March 1858, Manuel Villareal y Zamora, Manuel Ramirez, and Maria Lorenza Villareal (all of them illiterate), all claiming to be grandchildren of José Antonio Zamora, sold their undivided shares of Porción 50 (or 3/12 of the entire tract) for $75.00 to James Walworth, a friend of Richard King, founder of the legendary King Ranch.
“Two weeks later, Maria Louisa Villareal, Francesca Villareal, and Manuel Villareal sold their shares, totaling 1/9 of Porción 50), to Walworth for $33.00. Their claims to the property may have been spurious. Although Walworth recorded the deeds in the Hidalgo County courthouse, he never seems to have sold them or received anything for them from the next owner of record, one Pacifico Ochoa Cornelio Villanueva. Villanueva sold the entire Porción 50 tract at an unspecified date to one Estephanio Mungia, who resold it to Ramona Benavides on a deed signed May 4, 1858, at ‘el Rancho de las Nuebas’ (the ranch village then located within the present boundaries of the Park).
“That very day, Benavides sold it to one Segundio Recio, who that same day sold it to Dr. Alexander M. Headley for 1,400 pesos. 38 Headley did not file the deed until many years later, however, and in 1878, Leo J. Leo, the sheriff of Hidalgo County, sold the property — all 4,725 acres — at public auction to one John B. Burbois for $6.75 — the exact sum due on the property for back taxes supposedly unpaid by Recio back in 1875.”
Because of the obscure property title, events would eventually see Headley lose the ranch. Leffler relates, “Meanwhile, the actual ownership of Porción 50 was apparently still in doubt. In 1890, a person named G. Zamora sold the title to 3,814 acres of the tract to S.V. Rios.43 And about that same time, Headley was embroiled in a lawsuit brought against him by Henrietta King, who claimed she owned all or part of Porción 50. When the suit was finally settled in 1893, she was awarded 1,500 acres of the property, and Headley received 3,814 acres, the rest of the porción.”
Leffler adds, “ It is quite possible that Mrs. King’s claim to the land was based on the derechos purchased by James Walworth in the 1850s. Walworth was a friend of Richard King, and both were active in the real estate market in south Texas during the late 19th century.”
The decades of 1870 into the 1890s and even longer were wild ones for the politics of Hidalgo County, and that is an understatement. In 1873 in Hidalgo County the Democratic Party was popularly called the Reds while the Republican Party affiliates were called the Blues. Leaders of the Blues included John McAllen as well as two English immigrants A.M. Headley and Jesse Dennett.
It was during his ranch ownership period that Headley became entangled in Hidalgo County politics. Headley was county commissioner of Precinct 3 in 1890. This is the year that remarkable and highly unusual events were to transpire. There are numerous historic accounts of what befell Hidalgo County, so I’ll restrict myself to the one written by Ruth Griffin Spence, The Nickel Plated Highway to Hell A Political History of Hidalgo County [Texas] 1852-1934.
Her 1989 history relates, “Violence occurred about 1890 when Thaddeus Rhodes, first County Clerk of Hidalgo County and a veteran of the Mexican War, retired as county judge after having served for many years. There were two strong factions in the county, the ‘Reds’ and the ‘Blues,’ so designated so that the illiterate voters, both citizens and aliens of the county, would know in which column to place their mark. The factions disagreed over Rhodes’ successor.
“As a compromise, both groups agreed on a man named McCabe who was supposed to be a member of neither faction. Soon, however, District Judge John C. Russell removed McCabe, possibly for incompetence. Judge Russell, himself, had been involved with Valley politics since his arrival there before the Civil War.
He had come to the Valley from Illinois where he had studied law with Abraham Lincoln. He replaced McCabe with Max Stein, but the friends and family of McCabe were vindictive and bent on revenge.”
The horrific outcome was that as Mr. and Mrs. Stein and daughter walked in the public plaza in Reynosa in August 1890 Mrs. McCabe emptied her pistol into Max Stein killing him instantly.
“Judge Russell again was remembered in Hidalgo County politics for his action when a group of men, determined to capture the courthouse and the county records, gathered on the outskirts of Hidalgo (formerly Edinburgh).
Judge Russell, with only an interpreter to help him, went out into the crowd of men and persuaded them to go home. This was called ‘The Conspiracy of 1890.’
“Again about 1890, another political revolution occurred soon after Judge Rhodes, a Democrat, stepped down and was finally permanently replaced by Judge W. P. Dougherty, who continued the Democratic domination of the county courthouse. Dr. Alexander M. Headley and his Republican followers decided to take over the courthouse by force.
“The county officials, fearing they might be murdered, put in a hurried call for the Texas Rangers and fled across the river to Reynosa. Dr. Headley ruled the county for several days, calling his government ‘The Independent Republic of Hidalgo.’ He could not gain possession of the records, however, because they were locked in an iron box. He also tried to collect duties at the border, but at that invasion of federal prerogatives, a United States Marshall from Brownsville came up the river with a posse, and Headley fled back to his home in Starr County.”
The story omits several important details. Amberson wrote, “Headley was usually a man behind the scenes when it came to Hidalgo County politics, but, in 1878, he organized Blue party members to oust elected Red county officials. Around 800 men seized the town of Hidalgo (it had officially changed its name from Edinburgh in January 1876) and the county courthouse. They remained in control for six months.”
Governor John Ireland dispatched sixty rangers to arrest Headley, but they encountered Headley’s forces on guard and surrendered the warrant. Eventually Sheriff John Closner interceded and eventually arrested about sixty conspirators while McAbe and Headley fled across the Rio Grande.
This wild account does not end there, however. Mrs. McCabe was arrested and taken to a jail in Matamoros. She was incarcerated for three days until Headley, who with others were accused of being co-conspirators in the murder (but never indicted), took it upon himself to free her and allow her to escape punishment.
One account has her leaping from the police station’s second story balcony where she had supposedly gone to obtain a breath of fresh air. She then leaped to the street breaking her ankle as she hit the cobblestones. Headley awaited her on horseback. She and Headley fled across the river to the safe haven of Texas and where her husband, H.T. McCabe awaited her. And who exactly were Headley’s associate McCabe and his wife? H. T. McCabe was born in Nokomia, Illinois around 1864. He had married O. M. Lester in Bandera, Texas on October 9, 1886. Strangely enough an O. M. Lester is also recorded as marrying a Riley Kelly in Bandera a month later. His gun-toting wife was likely his second wife, Mary Inez Buckalew, whom he had married in Bandera, Texas on October 16, 1887.
She would go on to marry Orlando G. Davenport in Bandera on October 19, 1893. Juanita Dios Ramirez of Brownsville, was his third wife, and he apparently went on to marry a fourth although he had a son and a daughter by Juanita who, for a time, anglicized her name to Jeanette. Juanita was to become a court interpreter according to the 1920 US Census of Houston and still later a legal notary.
In a weird, possibly apocryphal, story recounted by Leffler, “On the way back to his ranch at Las Nuebas, however, one of his ‘friends’ gave him a cup of coffee poisoned with arsenic. Headley saved himself by ingesting a massive dose of castor oil and upheaving the poison, however, the experience apparently convinced him that he had enemies in Hidalgo County. Soon afterward he moved from Las Nuebas to Rio Grande City, where he remained active in Republican politics and practiced medicine until his death in 1912.”
Leffler goes on to add, “Headley sold his 3,814 acres of Porción 50 in 1902 for $4,767 to G. Bedell Moore, a wealthy and influential San Antonio lumberman, businessman and banker who was investing widely in Texas real estate and ranch land. Ironically, Headley gave John Closner, one of his old political enemies, his power of attorney to conclude the sale.”
That Headley was one “cool customer” is validated by a story told of him in the Lott/Fenwick book. One day while standing in the door of his drug store, a Rio Grande City “bad man” approached him, drew his six shot .45 pistol, and fired away in the direction of Headley, who nonchalantly remained composed. Headley then drew his own .45 pistol from his holster and shot his assailant dead. After his appearance in the Starr County district court he was declared “not guilty.”
While residing in Rio Grande City Dr. Headley and Pilar were to have one child, Maria, born in 1886.
Her first schooling was likely at the Incarnate Word Convent in Rio Grande City. In the early 1900s she attended public school and followed teacher Professor Thomas Hart to a San Ygnacio school from which she likely was graduated. She enrolled in the University of Texas in Austin in the summer of 1906 and was one of only two women students from Texas enrolled in the sophomore medical class in Galveston.
It is reported that Maria was the first physician to have been born in the LRGV. She would marry George William Edgerton Jr., and they would parent a daughter and three sons. Edgerton, who was also a doctor, would have a practice in Rio Grande City. The couple resided for a period in the 1894 Rio Grande City house that Dr. Headley had constructed. It was built by the famed German mason Heinrich Portscheller. It still stands today as an historic building in that city. The location is 705 E. Second Street.
Maria and George’s son, George William Edgeton III, became a doctor and surgeon. He had an office in the Baxter Building, Harlingen in the second half of the 1930s decade. His wife Hazel was noted for both her singing and her organ playing.
Alexander M. Headley died in Rio Grande City on February 28, 1912 at age 75. His physician son noted the cause of his death as epthelioma on the left side of his face. This was a type of skin cancer. Headley is buried in the Catholic Cemetery of Rio Grande City.
