Weir Family Sedgwick Co Kansas Genealogy Trails

The Weir Family

In 1906, William Fletcher Weir purchased the Hat Ranch at Monument Spring, New Mexico; as he realized his lifelong dream of purchasing that very ranch. This dream began when William was Texas Ranger with Lt. Col. W. R. Shafter, who commanded a company of rangers searching for stolen horses by Plains Indians, most likely Comanche's. Lt. Col. Shafter retrieve the horses without engaging the Indian raiders. In Shafter's report, dated Jan. 4, 1876, he says that, "I arrived at the spring on the night of November 21, 1895. It was discovered a large number of wells of excellent water. After thoroughly scouting the country in every direction I started on the 27th my return to Five Wells….Monument Spring is a very large spring of excellent water, furnishing water for several thousand head of horses. The country to the north is for fifty miles, hard high prairie, to the south and west, sandy; grass growth, luxuriant, in every direction, of the finest quality found on the plains; wood abundant for fuel and good building stone nearby. Monument Spring is so named from the monument I had built on a hill southwest, one and one fourth miles distant from the spring. This monument is of all nearly white stone about eight feet in diameter at the base and four and one half feet high. It can be seen for several miles in all directions. The monument served to lead anyone who was lost or in search of water, according to Bill Odens", Range", Jim Harvey and Dick Wilkerson, buffalo hunters. Later he hauled rocks from the monument and built a rock house with port holes in it at every corner, also building rock corrals, keeping the horses therein, we also slept with the stock to prevent Indians stealing the horses.

William Weir vowed to one day return and buy the ranch, but before he did he went back to Texas and married his only love, Ellen Gray Johnson, daughter of David J. Johnson and Mary Ann Macon. They married in December 1881, in Brady, McCulloch County Texas. Of this union they had eight children, four boys, four girls. Before the turn of the century, the family had purchased a ranch near Garden City, Texas. Originally the Hats as the outfit was then called extended from the Texas line on the east, the San Simon Ranch on the south, the Pecos River on the west, and the LFD's (The Littlefield Ranch) on the north. The Hat Ranch had been a very large ranch but by 1906 it had been reduced to a fraction of its size. When the Weir children reached their majority they applied for government land through the Homestead Act and added several sections to those purchased by their father. The Weir Boys were fairly grown by the time they moved to New Mexico but the girls went back to Texas to attend school. The two older ones attended Weatherford Female College. Helen, being the musician in the family, boarded with Mrs. W. K. Edwards in Big Spring, where Mrs. Edwards gave her piano lessons. Jane was sent to Trent, Texas where she boarded with a family and attended school. All the girls were taken by horse and buggy to Monahan's, Texas to board the Texas Pacific Railway for their trip eastward.

All of the Weir boys were devotees of the rodeo, but Charlie gave up the sport after he was seriously injured in a rodeo at Hope, New Mexico. He spent several weeks in a coma. Bert and George indulged their fascination for their competitive roping for many years. Their favorite rodeos included Pecos, Texas, Cheyenne, Wyoming and Calgary, Canada. Bert was a world champion steer roper in 1910. George won many roping contests at an age when most ropers would have retired.

Although drought was a problem, Grandpa Weir never regretted his move to New Mexico. He used to say that the only place that he know of those cattle could live on nothing at all. When the wind did not blow in the summertime, gasoline engines were sometimes put into use to pump water from the wells. Windmills, of course, were the primary means of supplying water.

Submitted by: Karen Ayers Weir, 2007