People & Families of Moore County

Benjamin Thomas Ansley moved from the Hill Country to Moore County because he "liked the land and he liked the men who were settling it." He and his brothers and sisters established businesses in Moore County -- a mercantile store, a freighting company and a small bank.
Anderson Blacksmith shop was owned by an immigrant from Norway, A. L. Anderson. He came to America at age 16 and moved to Moore County in 1902. The blacksmith shop was an integral part of early Moore County history.
Little stories can tell a lot about history. In the book, The Windswept Land, a couple of events in the W. F. Bennett family tell about life that was much different than it is today. The stories were told by two of the Bennett children, Verna Bennett Swaggert and Charlie Bennett.
It took a lot of vision for a young man of 20 to leave his family, travel over 300 miles to come to Moore County in 1900. Bob Powell was such a man. He came to this wide-open county and stayed to help shape Moore County.
The love of the land was evident in the Howard and Wendell Bose family. It started back in Germany with their grandmother, Anna Marie, who moved to Russia from Germany to find land. Her search for land and a home eventually led her son, the Bose Brothers, to the Middlewell Community in Moore County.
R. L. Crump earned the name "Boss" by leading a cattle drive to Moore County. He stayed, worked as a cowboy, a freighter and rancher, leaving his mark on the growing county.
One of the buildings downtown has a name on the top -- "J. T. Brown" named after the man who came to Moore County with his family in 1901.
The museum has tried to preserve the history of area windmills. One, an Aeromotor, has become the symbol of the museum and stands on the southside of our building. The windmill was a gift of the Charlie Jameson family and was erected by Dumas Water Well Service in 2002 when the museum moved to its new location.
A couple of names from the late 1880's stand out in the history of the area -- Old Tascosa and Frenchy McCormick.
While driving on Christmas Eve in 1924, J. W. Fowlston saw an deserted oil derrick outlined by a full moon and decided to use that vision of a derrick as his cattle brand. He owned no cattle at the time, but had plans to make his vision a reality.
Hickman scrapbook tells a story of a local coffee group that met every morning at ten o'clock and solved all the problems of the day -- from politics to weather to fishing to "who knows what."
A handwritten note on the side of a document led to find "the rest of the story."  The story tells of John Cook, probably the first white man to come to Moore County.
Marshall Cator and his love for cattle led him to create a cattle empire in the Texas Panhandle. Even when his hearing and eyesight were failing, he still helped with cattle round-ups and branding.
When young Mildred Irene (Mil) Burnett arrived in Dumas with her family, her first thoughts  were, "On a late spring day in 1918 as my family and I approached the city of Dumas all I could see was a courthouse, windmill and water tower silhouetted against the rainy sky. It looked as it was situated on the open prairie. I wasn't far wrong! The houses were few and far between. I wasn't sure then that I wanted to live in Dumas."
Noel McDade came to Moore County as a young man in 1906 and tackled many tasks to make this a better place to live. He operated a store and a bank, worked to incorporate the city, served as county judge, worked to stop soil erosion, lobbied Washington to stop bank foreclosures on land during the dust bowl, helped bring the railroad to Moore County -- just to name a few.
Sam Russell was well known by most people in Dumas beginning in the 1940's until his death in 1972.
Jeremiah and Elizabeth Portman came to Moore County in 1891 to operate a hotel and find a dead cowboy.