By Sue Hancock Jones
The NRHC moved 90 tons of hand-cut limestone and sandstone several hundred miles to reassemble the Jowell House as an example of a fortress home meant to protect a wilderness family from Indian attacks and other dangers.
Leanna Jowell was home alone with her baby in 1872 when the horses began neighing and the cattle moved about restlessly. Feeling uneasy, she stepped outside to check on the animals.
Remembering her father who had been killed and scalped earlier in the year, Leanna shouted for the hired man to saddle their horses. She grabbed her baby, and the three of them rode fast and furiously to a neighbor’s house.
Like many Texas ranchers coming home from the Civil War, Leanna’s husband George Radcliffe Jowell was away on a cattle drive when his wife and baby were alone in the cabin. Long cattle drives away from home were an economic necessity for ranchers who returned from the war and found their cattle scattered or stolen. The now-feral cattle were the only resource and the markets were hundreds of miles away.
Many of the families that waited at home had to deal with Commanche and Kiowa who came to the house to steal horses and cattle. Sometimes the raiders took captives and often they killed.
George Jowell was four years old when his family reached Texas in the days of the Republic. He was 15 when they moved to Palo Pinto County in 1855. His father, James Jowell, served with Capt. Jack Hays’ Texas Rangers during the Mexican War. George served with the 14th Texas Cavalry during the Civil War. His sister, Cynthia Ann Jowell, became the wife of Texas cattle baron C.C. Slaughter whose Long S cattle roamed a million acres.
According to a history of north and west Texas published in 1906, George Radcliffe Jowell was “a Texan of the purest water” who grew up with Texas and helped shape its cattle heritage. Before marriage, George Jowell was accustomed to joining other Palo Pinto residents in a stockade erected across the street from the courthouse for protection against Indian attacks. In 1870, he married Leanna T. Dobbs and moved to a site that he named Jowell Creek about 15 miles northwest of town. He built a log cabin and began his ranching career with long cattle drives to railheads. When George returned home from a drive in 1872, he found his family safe but his cabin burned to the ground.
As a result, George determined to build a fort-like stone home that the Indians couldn’t burn.
The 1875 Jowell House in its original location in Palo Pinto County, Texas, showed evidence of deterioration not only from weather and age but also from vandalism.
While he and his family lived with neighbors, George paid $1,000 for a 494-acre tract of land on Sept. 16, 1874, to build his home and establish the JOLY Ranch on Bluff Creek, 16 miles northwest of Palo Pinto. George hired a stonemason to construct a two-story rock house on his new property at the southwest edge of Possum Kingdom Lake.
Jowell used stone and cedar for construction and covered the interior walls with a plaster of lime, sand and horsehair. The limestone was probably quarried at Rock Creek, three-quarters of a mile northwest of the house. Sandstone was substituted when craftsmanship was important. The fortress-like stone house was always called the JOLY ranch house because of the brand Jowell used.
The two-room house had rifle slits above the main door to protect a horse corral in front of the house. These openings were cut at an angle so an arrow could not enter the room during an attack. A trap door was cut in the second-story floor and a ladder kept nearby so the family could climb to the top floor. After the threat of Indian attacks had passed, the Jowell family added a wooden outer staircase to access the second floor.
George had no way of knowing there would be no further attacks on his family. By the time the house was finished, most Indians in the area had been sent to reservations. The family lived in the stone house until 1881 when George sold the property to I.W. Stephens who in turn sold it in 1889 to the firm that became Ewen, Small and Taylor, founders of the SET Ranch. In 1910 the property was sold to L.E. Seaman, a prominent rancher, banker and merchant in Mineral Wells, Texas.
The open range lured the Jowell family to Stonewall and Jones counties, and then the family moved to Deaf Smith County where they established the Lucky Hit Ranch. Jowell was the first county assessor of Deaf Smith County. Records show he was a founder of the city of Hereford and brought the first herd of registered Herefords to the county. After his wife died in 1898, he married Ella Lowe Coston in 1906 and moved to a plantation in Mexico where he died in 1912.
Victoria Jowell Brooks lost six of her 12 children after she and her husband settled on the frontier in the late 19th century. Lambs carved on stone markers above the names of her children help remind 21st century visitors that deprivation, loss and isolation were a high price to pay for settlement west of the Mississippi.
The house became unoccupied after 1900, leaving the structure vulnerable to vandals and weather. The heirs of its last owner, L.E. Seaman, donated the house and materials from the site to the NRHC in 1973 in memory of Seaman and as an example of a fortress home meant to protect a wilderness family from Indian attacks and other dangers.
The problem with the two-story stone house, already partly destroyed, was how to move its 90 tons of hand-cut limestone and sandstone several hundred miles to the NRHC historic park in Lubbock and then reassemble the house as if it had never been disturbed.
Initial archeological work on the structure revealed that the site had at least eight associated structures in addition to the house. One mound of dirt near the house turned out to be the remains of a meat and milk house. Archeologists also found a cistern. Both structures appeared to be almost in front of the house door.
To accomplish moving the house and assuring accurate restoration, stones in the walls were carefully marked and tagged before the house was disassembled. Additional stones and cedar from the area were used in reconstructing the upper part of the house and its roof.
After 120 days of work to reassemble the structure, the ranch house finally stood exactly as it had once stood and even faced in the same direction. Both the cistern and the meat and milk house were reconstructed near the door of the house, and the historical Jowell House complex was dedicated on Aug. 4, 1979. ★
feature photo: Cindy Brashear has volunteered as a ranch host at the Jowell House since 2013 when she retired and looked for a way to give back to the community. During Candlelight at the Ranch last December, Brashear churned butter near the fireplace in the stone house as she portrayed what life might have been like for Leanna Jowell in 1875. (Photo by Ron Mouser)
This article appears in the Winter 2023 issue of the Ranch Record. Would you like to read more stories about NRHC and ranching life? When you become a member of the Ranching Heritage Association, you’ll receive the award-winning Ranch Record magazine and more while supporting the legacy and preservation of our ranching heritage. Become a member today.
