PPHM ACQUIRES RO RANCH COLLECTION FROM SCOTLAND
OWNER ALFRED ROWE DIED ON THE TITANIC
From the high plains of Texas to the depths of the North Atlantic, Alfred Rowe’s story reads like a novel. Told through the RO ranch records and artifacts Rowe left behind, his story is back home in the Texas Panhandle.
The Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum will display several Rowe items including a buffalo fur coat, Alfred’s passport to Switzerland, an American Indian headdress, and the Rowe’s honeymoon portrait in Niagara Falls for the media Wednesday, April 16 from 1:30 to 2:30 pm.
PPHM procured the RO Ranch collection with an acquisition purchase fund created by Tom and Norma Cambridge. The collection formerly belonged to Henry Rowe, grandson of Alfred Rowe, and his wife Sarah, who live in Scotland. The collection includes the diaries of Alfred and his wife, photographs of the ranch, maps, financial records, stock reports, and letters.
Rowe items including a buffalo fur coat, Alfred’s passport to Switzerland, an American Indian headdress, and the Rowe’s honeymoon portrait in Niagara Falls will be on display for the media Wednesday, April 16 from 2:00 to 3:00 pm at PPHM.
“We are grateful to the Rowes and the Cambridges for their acknowledging of PPHM as the proper depository for the collection because of our dedication to the rich history of the region,” PPHM Director Guy C. Vanderpool said.
Rowe’s story came to a heart-wrenching end. After graduating at the Royal Agricultural College in Gloucestershire, England, he moved to Donley County in 1878. After some months learning the cattle business and with the help of Charles Goodnight, Rowe started his own herd and formed the RO ranch, which expanded over the next few years.
At the age of 47 in 1901, Rowe married Constance Ethel Kingsley, a cousin of the British author Charles Kingsley, and brought her to the ranch from England. Mrs. Rowe lived at ranch headquarters near Clarendon until 1910, when Rowe moved his family back to England. He returned twice a year to the Panhandle to check the ranch.
On a return trip to Texas, Rowe bought a ticket on the Titanic. The Handbook of Texas states that Rowe refused to enter a lifeboat until others were saved; thus, he died from exposure to ice-cold water. Five months later his wife gave birth to their fifth child.
In the year before Rowe’s death, the RO had increased to cover 100,000 acres (200 square miles) and contained 15,000 cattle.
“The RO Ranch was among the most successful early Panhandle ranches largely because of Alfred Rowe’s personal adaptation to the Panhandle’s ranching culture,” said Frederick W. Rathjen, professor emeritus of history, West Texas A&M University. “Acquisition of the Rowe Ranch papers by the Panhandle-Plains Historical Society adds a trove of archival riches to the ranching history of the Texas.”
EXHIBIT AND SYMPOSIUM BRING TOGETHER NOTABLE AUTHORITIES
Dr. Candace Green, Ethnologist from the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution; Dr. Phillip Earenfight, Director of The Trout Museum, Dickinson College; and Dr. Joyce Szabo, Professor of Art History at the University of New Mexico, will speak at a symposium on A Kiowa’s Odyssey: A Sketchbook from Ft. Marion on Saturday, April 26, 2008, from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum,.
The symposium also will include a walking tour of the exhibition with Kiowa Storyteller Florene Whitehorse Taylor and lunch.
Please RSVP by April 23 to 806-651-2258 or ecunningham@pphm.wtamu.edu. Cost is $12 for PPHM members and $18 for nonmembers.
Sketches reunited from Yale University and Dickinson College collectively form A Kiowa’s Odyssey: A Sketchbook from Ft. Marion exhibit currently on display in the Southwestern Gallery.
The experience of 72 Plains Indians that were moved from Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, to Ft. Marion, Florida, is chronicled by Kiowa warrior Etahdleuh Doanmoe in 32-pages of sketchbook of drawings.
The drawings depict the Indians being taken as prisoners and exiled to Ft. Marion where they were made to adopt Western values, appearance, behavior, language, and beliefs. The exhibit runs through May 26, 2008.
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