Courtesy of Donna Davenporty

Davenport Cemetery
 

EVERARD MEADE DAVENPORT, JR.

"POP"

by Everard Lee Davenport, November 14, 1908 - May 31, 1994

My father, E. M. Davenport, Jr., was born on February 22, 1883 in Edna, Texas, where his father was County Clerk. His mother was Ruth Milby, daughter of Robert Milby who had been a member of Sutherland's Company in the war for Texas Independence and a signer of the Lavaca Navidad Declaration demanding independence from Mexico about four months before the more recognized declaration was signed on March 2, 1836. The Milbys bought land in Virginia in 1654—about three years before the Davenports did. I do not remember my grandmother because she died when I was about one year old. Aunt Ruth McDowell was their oldest daughter. She and Ruth Davenport both carried her name. My grandparents oldest son, born about 1881, was named William Blackwell for his grandfather. "Pop" was Everard Meade Davenport, Jr. He grew up in Edna—quite proud of the donkey he rode about town. He was small for his age and rather sickly. I am not sure how much formal schooling he had. He did learn one thing that stood him in good stead later.

Because he was small and probably quite aggressive, he had frequent fights which he usually lost. He got tired of getting four whippings in one day: (1) the other boy; (2) the teacher, for fighting; (3) his big brother on the way home, for losing the fight at school; and (4) his father, because the teacher had to whip him. He soon learned to whip the larger boys and eliminate losing to them and to his older brother. Two whippings a day weren't nearly as bad as four. During his lifetime as a peace officer, he probably whipped more men than anybody else in the state. He did learn, as he said, "God put hands on you to scratch with." He either kicked or hit with something in his hand—a six-inch blackjack about an inch in diameter, a pistol, etc. Because the other Rangers were all larger (he seldom weighed as much as 125 lbs.), Pop was the Ranger the men they were arresting challenged. He never lost a fight.

Because of bad health (probably tuberculosis), he left elementary school and, as a pre­teen, started driving cattle from South Texas to the Indian territory (now Oklahoma). He usually worked for a Mr. Kaiser who had married one of the many Traylor girls. I don't know how many trips they made—but it continued until he was 18 or 19.

Since he was gone so much, the people of Edna hardly knew him, and he fell in with his older brother's crowd of friends. He was accepted as being their age. The Sheriff, without questioning his age, appointed him a Deputy when Pop was 19. He needed the job—and took it. The rest of his life was connected with law enforcement or cattle.

He was one of the best ropers in the local contest and, with the two Bonnot (pronounced Ben-noh') brothers, all riding Pop's horse "King Herod", broke up those contests because they won all the money. One that I remember was held in Wharton about 1922 as a contest between Jackson and Wharton Counties. The first contest they won 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd. The second contest they won 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd. The third contest they goofed up and let Wharton get 3^rd place.

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Pop was elected Constable which paid very little money, so he supplemented it by continuing to work as a deputy sheriff. In those days if you could not pay your fine, you worked it out at a $1 a day. Pop built most of the dirt roads in the county with that kind of labor before 1914. Whenever they ran out of workers they raided a Negro crap game and got more. The Sheriff, Albert Egg, was defeated in 1914, and Pop became foreman of the Ward ranch for about a year. When Mother and Mrs. Ward had a big row because Mrs. Ward "talked down to her," he quit.

The foreman position had become vacant because Uncle Blackwell had been killed while trying to make an arrest. He had left his good gun at home with his wife and was carrying an old one into town to be fixed. During the arrest a gunfight ensued and he was killed because the cartridges in his gun were too old to shoot. Blackwell had been foreman on Mr. Ward's ranch in Cuba right after the Spanish American War. When he got to Cuba, he was told that they had a serious bandit problem, so Uncle Blackwell had a party and invited the local populace out to the place. With them watching he chased jack rabbits on horseback and shot them with a pistol. They got the message and he had no trouble.

After leaving the Ward Ranch, Pop went back to Edna and worked in Grandfather Traylor's grocery store—a job he hated. He returned to the Ward Ranch on November 1, 1917 with Mother's stipulation that we would live away from the big house where the Wards stayed when they came down from San Antonio. We moved into a big house on the bank of the West Carancahua. (Mrs. Bill "Gussie" Correll's son has a week-end house on the same spot that used many of the timbers from the house in which I lived as a boy and still uses the same well.)

Supposedly Pop was there to supervise the clearing of a creek and prevent flooding of a field. Actually, there had been a draught in the summer of 1917, and the winter of 1917-18 was one of the coldest in history. Pop moved all the cattle that he could into the woods along the West Carancahua, brought in about a hundred wetbacks to pull down moss and green leaves from small trees for food. Many of the cattle either froze to death or starved. Pop, a Negro, and a big Mexican called "Brown Mule" worked out a system by which they could skin out a dead cow incredibly quickly. Pop and the Negro skinned out the head and slit the skin down the belly and down the four legs and tossed the head to Brown Mule saying "Estirale" (pull it). Off came the skin. They shipped more than two thousand hides that Spring and there is no telling how many they did not find in time.

The next summer we moved into the town of LaWard, where Pop could manage the whole ranch. Mother had not liked the solitary life on what they called the "Hog Ranch" where we had lived that winter.

A man from San Antonio who weighed some 200 lbs. came down to run the store. Everybody there knew he was stealing from the store and insulting the men and their wives, but no one wanted to tangle with him. Finally Pop whipped him and ran him off. He had to use his hands in that fight. Maybe that's when he learned not to hit with them. In 1920 he ran for Sheriff against "Light" Townsend—won and made Townsend his chief deputy. He served four years, then went into the meat market business with Uncle Otho

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Traylor (Mother's brother). Pop raised or bought the cattle and either had a Negro butcher or he and I did it. He later bought out Uncle Otho.

By 1932 many businesses were taking bankruptcy. Pop joined the Rangers and turned the market over to me. I made $200 the first month and sold the business for $200 more than Pop had asked for it. The $400 covered my expenses at UT for a year of course work after my Master's. Pop was stationed in Del Rio with Light Townsend serving as his Captain!

Townsend still thought of the Rangers as border riders. They had a pick-up truck to haul their supplies and would be out of town for a week riding the river on horseback. A man named White who had been Sergeant-at-Arms in the Texas House of Representatives got a political appointment to the Rangers. He was from East Texas—no experience as an officer and no experience in West Texas. The other Rangers took camp cots to get up where the snakes could not crawl into their bed for warmth. White did not know to do that. They spent White's first day on the job (and his first full day on a horse) telling him how dangerous it was to sleep on the ground. They explained that he must lie perfectly still if a rattlesnake got into bed with him. He was exhausted at the end of the day and went to bed right after supper. They had a 1-inch rope about 50 feet long to be used to pull the truck out of mud, etc. The other Rangers drank coffee and told tales until White was sound asleep. Pop eased the rope across White, then wiggled it. They saw White start to move, then force himself to lie still. After about ten minutes, they had finally pulled all 50 feet of rope across him, a little bit at a time. He threw back the covers and said "He sure was a long son-of-a-bitch!" The other Rangers split their sides laughing and White got so mad that he wouldn't speak to them for the rest of the week. Later he and Pop worked well together.

Pop and another Ranger were sent to El Indio Ranch which had a 40-mile Rio Grande river front south of Eagle Pass. There had been several gunfights with Mexican bandits who lived off the cattle they took back across the river. The two Rangers never had a fight with them, but sat on a hill and "poisoned the crossings" by dropping bullets occasionally for a mile or two in each direction. After that, the bandits were a little slower in trying to cross the river.

Pop decided any fight would be at night and at close range, so he had me get a box of buckshot for the 10-gauge shotgun and take the gun and shells to him. That would have been a mean weapon at night! I still don't know how he kept his shooting ability. I never knew him to practice and almost never to hunt. When we lived on the "hog ranch", he met me on the way home one time and took me with him when he killed two ducks with one shot. Another time, a Negro and I stayed back while he went forward. When he peeped around a tree, the ground was covered with Mallards eating acorns. He backed away far enough to let his shot scatter and fired both barrels of an old hammer 12-gauge. They let me kill the cripples with my .410 shotgun. We picked up 24 ducks. I never knew him to miss a wolf within 200 yards with his rifle. While stationed on the river, the other Rangers (two by this time) laughed at him when he went out to get a rabbit to feed his dog. If the dog was very hungry, Pop took two .22 cartridges, otherwise he only took one. He saw no reason to load the magazine as he didn't expect to miss. I never saw him

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fire a pistol. Sometimes I would shoot his old cartridges and reload them, but.I don't think he ever did.

While he was stationed on the Rio Grande, "Ma" Ferguson was elected Governor. Her "General Order No. 1" canceled all Ranger commissions. She then appointed only those who had helped her get elected. Few had any peace officer experience. One of her Rangers tried to get into a football game at UT and was stopped. He said, "Don't you let Texas Rangers in free?" He was told, "Real Rangers--yes; Ferguson Rangers--no."

After Mrs. Ferguson left office, the Department of Public Safety combined all state officers under a single commission. Many of the former Rangers went back. For some unknown reason, they kept Sid Kelso, who had served under Mrs. Ferguson. They even put him in charge of four men, including Pop, who were to stop professional gambling in Harris and Galveston Counties. He gave them all vacation for the week-end of July 4. They wondered about it until they found that the gamblers had paid Kelso $70,000 so they could stay open that week-end. He was fired but there wasn't enough evidence for a conviction. Kelso decided that gambling must be profitable, so he opened a nightclub out near Onion Creek (?) with gambling equipment on the second floor. That floor was never opened because at least one Ranger spent each evening sitting in the lobby. It took Kelso about two months to go broke. The last time I heard from him, he was in Corpus Christi trying some confidence game—probably phony oil stock.

When Kelso was ousted, Pop was given the title of Sergeant and put in charge of the gambling detail. He did not need any help after a month or two. When he raided a game he did not take the gamblers to jail—he sent them. One time he started 22 and only 21 arrived. As the 21 were going into a cell, the other one came in yelling, "Don't close that door. I belong in there. I got lost coming over here."

He occasionally had assignments out of town, but when he got back he found out where the games were going on. He phoned those that he could not get to for a while and told them to go on playing and he would get there to arrest them as soon as he could. He could usually tell them how many were in the room and that he expected them to all to stay. Once he gave the number as 13. The gambler counted as said "there are only 12." Pop asked, "Did you count yourself?" The gambler answered, "Hell, no, I forgot. Yes, there are 13."

The gamblers all liked him and were always trying to give him something. He, of course, refused, but occasionally gifts arrived with no return address.

The head of the Mafia in Galveston County, Sam Maceo, kept insisting that Pop bring his family to the Hollywood (the nicest place in that part of the state) for a meal. He did not want to go, but the two girls who were rooming with them insisted, so they went. Mother and Pop were helping these two girls through a business college, as they were both almost penniless. Mom and Pop had taken in the two youngest Thedford girls from Lolita. Their father had died when they were in high school, leaving a large family. One of the

Thedford girls and a friend of hers were living with Mom and Pop in their two-bedroom apartment at this time. Anyway, to save a lot of explanation, they were introduced as Pop's daughters. So far--so good. But, about a week later, two of the boys from the

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school saved up a few dollars and made dates with the girls. To really impress the girls, the boys drove them down to Galveston to the Hollywood. No reservations, of course. The crowd was standing in line at the door waiting for someone to leave and hoping for a table. One of the waiters recognized the girls. Sam Maceo came running out, called them by name, apologized for not knowing they were there, took them in and placed them at a table close to the orchestra. He had them served at once. It was like the restaurant belonged to them! How do you suppose those boys felt? As you can imagine the girls loved it.

These were not, by any means, all the girls who Pop befriended. He had always wanted a daughter. I never knew the details, but when I was about 1½, Mother went to Burns Hospital in Cuero and had an operation that removed what was to have been their second child. Mother was, as you may recall, quite small. She almost died when I was born, and I dimly understand that both she and the baby would have died without the operation. I know that she was very sick every month until I was 12 or more. So Pop tried to make up for the daughter he did not have.

During this time Pop was stationed in Houston. In the nearby town of Columbus, two Negroes raped and killed a white girl. Pop caught the two, took them to Houston to avoid a lynching, and got full confessions. The local sheriff took them back to Columbus where a mob lynched them. Ed Correll's brother-in-law, Gresham Marmion, was a young Episcopal preacher in Columbus at the time. He stood on a car and begged the crowd not to lynch the young men. Pop was sent to Columbus to investigate the lynching. Gresham said that he was so appalled at what the crowd was doing and trying so hard to stop them that he did not really see any individuals in the mob. Nobody would testify as to the make-up of the crowd.

At the time, Pop was investigating the lynching, the Houston radio announced that he had been killed by a mob near Columbus that had been formed to stop his investigation. Mother heard it but she didn't pay any attention to it and went on with what she was doing. Several of her friends called to tell her what they had heard. She just said, "It isn't true because they didn't say how many he had killed first."

While I was in the Highway Patrol in 1938 (?), Pop had a heart attack in Houston. I was sent to get him and relieved of my regular duties until he was better. Later, Governor O'Daniel vetoed the appropriation for 520 positions in the Department of Public Safety, including all safety education positions (like mine) and all Ranger sergeants (like Pop), except one at a desk at headquarters. Pop lost his title, Sergeant, which he had never used; he had been called "Captain" for years. Governor O'Daniel was a flour salesman before running for governor. The theme song of his campaign was "Please Pass the Biscuits, Pappy." From then on, Pop was "Pappy" when at work. To compensate for the small reduction in pay, Pop was promised all living expenses while away from home. This actually amounted to about $120 a month instead of the extra $25 a month he had been drawing for being a sergeant.

Pop was sent by himself to close down all gambling in El Paso. He did this very quietly, in spite of some earlier problems caused by other Rangers. The editor of the El Paso paper had thrown fits about having a Ranger stationed there until Pop visited him. The very next

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day there was a highly complementary editorial telling everybody what a perfect gentleman this particular Ranger was and asking them to cooperate with Pop. As Pop described it, he "closed the gambling down so tight that it squeaked."

Actually it was the altitude at El Paso that ultimately killed Pop a few months later. He had repeatedly requested a transfer, but headquarters thought that he was just bored with too little to do. In reality, Pop had earned several big rewards for solving old crimes. It was this money he sent to Dixie and me when we were struggling financially in 1939 at the time of Dixie Lee's birth. Finally, he did go to Austin. The colonel took one look at him and said, "My God, what happened to you?" Pop explained that the altitude in El Paso had aged him at least ten years in one. He was asked if I still lived in Corpus Christi, and was immediately transferred there.

One week before his death, he got his .45 revolver from me to wear on his right hip and use as a club. His left arm was so crippled by what must have been arthritis that he could not reach the blackjack in his left hip pocket. He and a local police captain raided a Mexican crap game of seven players. The captain did the usual thing (police officers have a strange sense of humor) of running everyone over the other man. By using both feet and one hand swinging a .380 automatic Pop drove all seven men back into the room.

Pop's commitment to his job might be summed up in one incident. The gambler's of Houston sent a friend of Pop's to persuade him to resign from the Ranger force. They knew better than to try to bribe him to do his job less efficiently, but offered $50,000 if he would resign. He answered, "You are my friend, so I won't kill you this time. But tell everyone that I will kill the next man that makes such an offer." Nobody else ever did.

This was from a man whose salary was less than $200 a month and whose total estate was less than $5,000.

Pop died of a heart attack in Corpus Christi at the age of 57. Almost every Texas newspaper ran a lengthy article.

Photo courtesy of Find A Grave Volunteer Bob Kelch #47122091
 

"Grandpop"
Everard Meade Davenport, Jr.

He and two of his cousins (McDowells, I think, but am not certain) rode the local rodeo circuit with great success. Once when they were over in Victoria, they were staying at a hotel that had a scale that announced the weight. The more you weighed, the deeper the voice. They were fully dressed, wearing guns and boots when they tried it out. The first one got a tenor "One Hundred fifty (or so) pounds," the second got a base "One Hundred Seventy (plus) pounds." Grandpop got a squeaky "One Hundred Twenty-eight pounds." The other two almost died laughing when he turned around, pulled his gun and demanded "Who said that?"

When he was Sheriff, he loved testifying against inexperienced attorneys. He would set traps for them as a way of getting inadmissible evidence before the jury. Once, for example, he was in court answering questions about a repeat offender. Prior offenses were not admissible when considering guilt for the charged crime. He referred to the defendant by his nickname, "Chicken" then mentioned, "All his friends call him that." Stupid young lawyer fell for it, "Why do they call him that, and how did you get to be such a good friend?" "Well, he got the nickname because he is always stealing chickens, and I got to know him so well because he spends so much time in my jail."

His success breaking up gambling houses was the stuff of stories I heard from retiring Rangers when I worked for the Texas state Employees' Retirement System thirty years later. He sat in a hotel in Houston all day, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and running a large crew of informants. In the evenings, he went to Galveston and harassed gamblers. Sam Maceo was the Mafia don in Galveston. For the space of about a week, when Grandpop got to a place he knew was running illegally, nothing was happening but some folks having supper. He figured out that Maceo had posted a watchman on the Galveston causeway. Grandpop came through a few times wearing hats, caps, etc., but the watchman soon saw through his ruses.  Then Grandpop made a spectacular series of raids one Saturday night. When he left the last place, Maceo was there. They knew each other, of course. Grandpop said, "Sam, don't fire your watchman on the bridge. It wasn't his fault. I went around by High Island." "Damn, now I am going to have to hire another watchman."
 

"Uncle Archie"
Archibald White Davenport
December 4, 1885 - July 25, 1936

Uncle Archie, is buried 20 or 30 feet away from Grandmother and Grandpop (Ida Mae Traylor Davenport and Everard Meade Davenport, Jr.) in Edna cemetery. His father and Archibald White lived across the street from each other and were best friends. Their son's were born about the same time -- Archibald White Davenport, and Everard Davenport White.

When he was a kid, he did normal rowdy kid things for the time. For example, the boys had fast horses; the night watchman has slow nags. The boys would go to one end of town, shoot off their guns and whoop it up. As the night watchman was charging that way to arrest them, they would ride the long-way around to the other end of town and repeat the performance.

One could say that Uncle Archie lacked ambition. Uncle Archie took "laid back" to dimensions otherwise unknown to the human race. However you want to describe it, he lived his adult life exactly as he though it should be lived.

One when he was in his late teens, he and a friend got truly intoxicated one evening. They got into a disagreement as they were walking back to the Davenport house. The other guy pulled his gun and emptied it at Archie. Archie, who was never known to hurry in his life, did not return fire, but instead carefully climbed through the barbed wire fence so as not to damage his clothes. The next morning, his dad went to town while Archie was still sleeping it off. Archie's dad heard the story and hurried home. Archie was up by then and cleaning his pistol. His dad asked what he was doing, and Archie explained that (name?) had shot at him and that he was going to kill the SOB. His father asked why he had not shot back the night before, and he said, "Hell, I was as drunk as he was, I couldn't have hit him either." They sent Archie off to run a ranch in Cuba for a year of so until things settled down.

When Archie got to the ranch in Cuba, he was told of the fierce gangs of banditos who kept rustling the herd. Archie put on a fandango and invited everyone for miles around, knowing that the banditos would be in attendance. At the party, he suggested a game, the men rode up jackrabbits, and shot them with their pistols from running horses. Archie had, by far, the best results. Nobody ever bothered his herds.

Archie was a private in Gen. Pershing's division when they were chasing Pancho Villa and other Mexican bandits deep into the interior of Mexico (and we wonder why the Mexicans don't trust us). One night when he was on guard duty he ambled (his only form of movement) around to the officer of the day and drawled, "There is a Mexican around back trying to steal stuff." Everybody (but Archie) ran around back. When he finally got there, the group was standing around a local face-down on the ground. The office asked what happened. Archie turned the guy over with his foot, and displayed a large knife sticking out of his chest. "He tried to stick me with that." End of report.

When Pershing was sent to France, the division was hurried through final training, and rushed to the front. As they were marching along, near enough for occasional artillery shells to be dropping in, Archie fell out and took off his boots. He was sitting there rubbing his feet when the Sgt. ordered him back into line. Archie explained that his feet hurt, but that they should just go on without him. He would, he said, catch up later. The Sgt. pulled his pistol and said the Archie was guilty of desertion in the face of enemy fire and threatened to shoot him. Archie's response? "Go ahead, some damn kraut will probably do it anyway."  Archie caught up later.

When Dad heard about his Uncle Archie's many medals for bravery, he asked if he had ever been offered a battlefield commission. Archie said that it had happened a couple of times, but that he had refused unless they made him a captain. He did not, he said, want to be "any damn shavetail lieutenant."

After Archie got back to the states, he developed what, for him, was a perfect lifestyle. He would take some low-paying job, hold it for 6 or 8 months, then loaf for a year or so on the proceeds. Once he took a jacket back to a store there in Edna and complained about the workmanship. The jacket, he explained, had worn out long before it should have. The clerk replied that he had been working in the store for 6 months and did not remember selling the jacket to Archie. Archie said that he had gotten it nine or ten months before. The manager, who knew the pace of Archie's life, gave him a new jacket.

Archie was working as a night watchman in Edna the night he died. Grandmother and Grandpop were there (during Ma Ferguson's term as Governor, when all the Rangers had been fired and replaced with her friends). Uncle Archie came to the house, woke them up, calmly explained that he was dying from a heart attack and asked them to call the doctor.  They had him lie down on the couch and made him comfortable. A few minutes later, he sighed and said, "You know, that doctor better hurry up if he is going to sign the death certificate." When the doctor got there Archie was not displaying any great distress. The doctor assured him that it couldn't be a serious heart attack, but was probably something he ate. Could he, the doctor asked, make it into the bathroom so that they could pump his stomach?  "Well, I guess I can if you want me to." He did make it into the bathroom, but died there.