Chapter Two
Starting Our New Life

We moved to Grandpa and Uncle Johnnie's homestead about the 15th of January in 1914. Each homestead consisted of 160 acres, so we had 320 acres all together. They were not square lots because one of them that was filed on first, had been laid out in sort of a bench shaped L, and laying it that way the first man that filed was able to place a small lake of about 5 or 6 acres on his land. But with New Mexico being such an arid country the lake only had water in it about three or four months a year. Apparently it was full of water when he placed his claim. So the man that filed next to him just fit his together with the first claim so altogether they had a half section of land a half mile wide and a mile long.

My Grandfather and Uncle were not the original owners of the claims. The first drought caught up with them when one man had been there about a year and a half and the other man had about a year there. So they gave up on being pioneers in New Mexico and decided to go back to Oklahoma or Kansas where they had come from. It just so happened that about the time they decided to leave and go home they came together with Uncle Johnny and he made a deal with them, for he and Grandpa, for the rest of their time on their claims. My folks were very happy with their deal, because they could prove-up and get title to the land in one and a half and two years. The settlers were happy with their deal also, as they could just pack up and go home and had gotten enough money for their claim that they were all set to cover their expenses going home. Since Grandpa and Uncle Johnny had sold all but about 20 or 30 head of their cattle in Jack County before they left there, the half section of land made a headquarters to start up new by running their few cows on several vacant homesteads that the original claimants had gone away and left and since they had not stayed long enough to get title the land had reverted to open range.

This was a good start but they had been stock farmers from 1876 when they came to Jack County, and in 1910, when they came to New Mexico, they had no intentions of settling down on 320 acres. They started in at once building up their herd by buying all the stock that was offered for sale by the homesteaders that were leaving to go back home. By the time they finished the term of living up the time to get the titles on the land, they realized there was not enough land around their place to take care of the herd they had already put together. They had made up their minds before leaving Texas that they were through being stock farmers and come west to set up a cow ranch. They had intended all along to be ranchers so they started looking for a larger ranch. Which they found about 20 miles north, just south of the Canadian River, over near Logan New Mexico. They found this place that had several thousand acres of open range that was being used as range for this ranch. My Grandfather never believed in selling any land that he came in possession of where ever he went. He had two or three different properties in Jack County as well as the land he acquired in San Jon, New Mexico.

In his early years when he had gotten his first land in Jack County, he decided they were to far from a store and there were a goodly number of Cox families whom had migrated in from Missouri and Arkansas, so he just went to work and had a new town laid out and built a store building and started selling lots in his new town. He named the new town New Hope City when he first started in building, but it had grown so fast that he had to lay out more lots so he decided it was time to change the name, so he changed it to Gibtown. It is located about 27 miles south east of Jacksboro which is the county seat of Jack County. I haven't been back there since 1956 but I understand it is practically a ghost town now. The last time I was there I went to look at the old house, on the old homestead, in which Mother and the first three of us kids were born. The old house was in very bad condition because it had not been lived in for many years.

It is very strange how distances get smaller in the days while you are growing up. We went to Gibtown for Christmas when I was about 3 years old and we were living in Jacksboro by that time. Christmas morning Grandfather ask me if I wanted to go squirrel hunting with him? I hastily agreed to go as the invitation made me feel like a big man. The house faced the south, and the garden was inside the yard on the west side of the front walk, going out the yard gate. As soon as we got outside the yard, I remembered for sure the garden was at least two hundred or three hundred feet long out to the gate. Then we turned west to go down to the creek as the bank of it had a lot of large pecan trees and there were a lot of squirrels in the trees. By the time we reached the banks of the creek I was very tired and I was sure in my own mind that it must have been, at the least, a quarter of a mile from the garden gate. So I had to sit down and rest while Grandpa searched out the squirrels. Anyway we were quite successful and he was able to shoot three or four of the little buggers. So much for the squirrel hunt, but when I went back to the old place as I said before, in 1956, I was amazed at how that place had shrunk in all the years when I was away. The garden, from the front porch of the house out to the gate, was not over one hundred feet and then where we turned to go to the creek was not more than a hundred and fifty feet, and the creek was so close to the corner of the garden that the floods had washed out the corner post of the garden fence. So anyone can see at a glance that things had really shrunk in the fifty or so years that I had been gone.