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Sod Hut Bride to Financier
Tall, willowy Dora Nunn packed her bags, married a red-haired cowboy and left Brownwood to build a home and community on four sections of state school land further west. Andrew Griffin arrived in Brownwood for supplies for his new cattle ranch. He swept the Brownwood beauty off her feet. She latched onto his dream of owning his own spread and left family and friends for an isolated patch of rocky ground. They honeymooned on the trip to his land—a day’s ride south of the “big spring,” where a tent city had sprung up--in a wagon loaded with a year’s supplies. Dora wouldn’t see the tent city for months; six months before she saw another woman, a neighbor; a far different life from Brownwood in 1881 where trains and people, churches and schools, stores and doctors existed. However, by year’s end, the Denver Railroad whistled into Big Spring, linking residents to supplies. In the meantime, Dora and Andrew carved a sod hut out of a rise of land on the 2,560 acre ranch he had purchased for 50-cents an acre, the price of a night’s lodging. At round up, Dora chased cattle from the brush and gullies, branded, fed and tended calves. She straddled a horse and was said to be, “as skilled with a loop as any hand.” Springtime, she prodded a small garden from the drought-prone soil, gathered eggs and churned milk into butter. Later, she would market these in the growing community of Big Spring while her husband gathered buffalo bones to sell for fertilizer. They scrabbled, but held onto land and cattle, proved up their claim and built a one-room house. At subsequent public land sales, they enlarged their holdings. In the drought of 1887-1888 Andrew trailed part of the herd north for grass. Dora and their two daughters stayed behind. She burned cactus to feed remaining livestock, and when a steer went down, skinned it, trading two hides for a sack of flour. Ten years later, and another drought, Andrew was injured when his horse fell backward. At 34, Dora became a widow and manager of land baked by sun, and starved for water. She hired neighboring rancher John Roberts. But it was her land, her cattle, and there was work to do. Plopping her daughters into a two-wheel buggy, she took off over pastures checking cattle and fences, and toting a .22 rifle, the cracks hot peppered jackrabbits to fill the cooking pot. The year ended with a two-week blizzard. But Dora had hung onto the ranch and paid off the debts for her 300 Herefords. In 1900, Dora and John Roberts bought the land between their ranches and married, easing the struggle. They built a house in Big Spring in 1904 so her daughters could attend high school, and lined the porch with rocking chairs for visiting. But if visitors called while Dora was hitched to a horse plowing the side lot garden, they had to wait until she finished. By the time her girls graduated, another horse accident claimed Roberts in 1909, so Dora had the ranch to run again. A strand of ivy, painted green, decorates the eves of her dream ranch house. “I always want to see something green,” the survivor of droughts, blizzards, tornadoes and plunging beef prices said. The house was built from rocks found on her 32,000-acre Roberts Ranch where her grandchildren and great grandchildren still gather. In the late twenties, the area buzzed about oil, but Dora held out. She knew Herefords, and she loved the land. Water wells interested her more. But, in 1927 she agreed, after negotiating the highest royalty in the region. The Dora Roberts No. 1 still pumps, among over 900 other oil wells on the Roberts Ranch (renamed the Garrett Ranch after a grandson) and spews wealth for family and community. Dora bought other ranches in the Permian Basin area. She also became a lending agent to help others finance their dreams. She gave to the poor. She funded hospitals, libraries and churches, and always set a place at her table for visiting ministers. In a time when women were “seen and not heard,” she presided over First National Bank in Big Spring. She expected people to listen. Yet, she still donned her sunbonnet and sold eggs, butter and cream to the groceries on Saturday. Before her death in 1953, at 90, she established and funded a large foundation. Today Big Springs and Howard County remember her by placing Dora Roberts name on projects as varied as recreation areas and gyms, charitable services, the library and the college, and converted her town home to a museum. If a woman in your family or community has pioneered in Texas, please drop a note to Texas Dames™, P. O. Box 70841, Fort Worth, TX 76147; OR, |
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