R
ichard Franklin Tankersley enlisted in an all-volunteer company of “minutemen” on May 24, 1858 and spent the next 60 days combing the West Texas countryside for hostiles.
While he was making the frontier safe for neighbors and perfect strangers, his wife and six children – alone and unprotected – faced the constant threat of attack from the same Indians. Either the head of the household minimized the danger or never gave his loved ones’ predicament a second thought.
There can be little doubt, however, that Annie Allen Tankersley was starting to have her own second thoughts about a life-changing decision made ten years earlier. In 1848 she was the 20-year-old daughter of a wealthy Louisiana planter, when she fell in love with the handsome Mississippian who soon became her husband.
Five years later, R.F., as Richard Franklin preferred to be known, convinced his obliging bride that the opportunity of a lifetime was waiting for them in Texas. They packed everything worth taking in a couple of covered wagons and headed west with their baby girl and two trusted slaves.
The small but determined party crossed the Mississippi River by flatboat and did not stop for more than a night or two until they reached Georgetown. Any hopes Annie may have had of putting down permanent roots in an established community were dashed by R.F.’s announcement they were resuming their westward trek.
R.F. was looking for plenty of elbow room with good grazing, and that was where the Tankersleys made their new home. From their crude cabin south of Brownwood, he “ranched more than two million acres of open range, which included an area that ran from west of Brownwood to Brady, Christoval, Mertzon, the headwaters of (the) Middle Concho River, Bronte, Robert Lee and Winters” according to the San Angelo Standard-Times.
During R.F.’s frequent and lengthy absences, Annie Tankersley had no one but herself to depend upon having long since sent the unhappy slaves back to Louisiana. In a 1978 article, the editor emeritus of the San Angelo newspaper repeated a story often told about her: “When her husband was gone, Mrs. Tankersley could be found sitting at dusk with a gun across her knees, ready for any attack.”
It is thought that R.F. first laid eyes on the site of the Tankersleys’ next homestead while scouting for Indians during the Civil War. Years later, one of the grown children had a vivid memory of the South Concho River in 1864. She could still describe “huge flocks of turkeys, and antelope and deer (that) roamed in herds of thousands. The buffalo came in herds that in the distance looked like great swarms of flies.”
In five years, R.F’s cattle herd more than doubled to 1,700 three- and four-year-old steers. With several hired hands, he drove the livestock to California where he was confident of getting a fair price in gold for live beef on the hoof. Instead of the expected $18 a head, he received $25 which more than made up for the 700 steers lost on the trail.
Fearing $25,000 in gold coins would prove too great a temptation for his employees, R.F. paid them off and booked passage on a ship to Galveston. On the last leg of the epic journey, two fellow travelers relieved him of $500, a pittance in light of the fortune hidden in his bulging saddlebags.
R.F. arrived home with his life and his money only to find his family nowhere in sight. For the past four months, half of the time he had been away, Annie and the children had been living in the officer’s quarters at Fort Concho at the insistence of a major worried about their welfare.
Not to be upstaged by some meddling hero in a uniform, R.F. built a home for Annie and the kids across the river from the fort in the new settlement of Santa Angela – the future San Angelo. Meanwhile, he invested the enormous profit from his California adventure in land and, of course, more cattle.
With the largest herd in the region, the next logical step for R.F. was to supply Fort Concho, Fort McKavett and Fort Stockton with beef. To keep the hungry soldiers well fed, he constructed and operated his own meat processing plant.
After 28 years of marriage, Annie filed for a divorce in 1876. It had been a long time coming, and R.F. evidently did not contest the lawsuit or the equitable division of property.
R.F. remarried within in the year and fathered seven more children in a tiny hamlet not far from San Angelo that he named for himself – Tankersley. That was where he was buried in 1912 following his death at the age of 84.
Free at last to pursue her own dreams, Annie showed herself to be quite the businesswoman. She used the money from the divorce settlement to open the Concho House Hotel and kept it going through two fires and a major flood. The former southern belle was 71 years old when she passed away at her San Angelo home in 1902.
Bartee’s three books and “Best of This Week in Texas History” column collections are available for purchase at barteehaile.com.
