Passing the Land and the Legacy

By Sue Hancock Jones

Ranching Heritage Association President Mark W. Kirkpatrick doesn’t have to search online for his family legacy because the history books provide a printed trail that takes the family all the way back not only to settling colonial Virginia but also through seven generations of Texas cattle ranchers.

Before they could raise a cattle herd, his ancestors had to join a minuteman battalion and be captured by the British, participate in Andrew Jackson’s defense of New Orleans, take up arms against Mexican troops, transport Sam Houston’s legal library from Louisiana to Nacogdoches, become a courier for Houston with messages to and from the Alamo, and serve as procurer for a growing Texas army. And that’s just the Slaughter side of the family before they built a Texas cattle empire.

The Kirkpatrick family side has five generations of cattle ranchers with many of the family still working cattle together on Stoker–Kirkpatrick Ranches and rearing their children on horseback. Mark’s great-grandfather was Kenyon Stoker, whose father was a McDade County jug maker who sold his wares in Austin. Stoker left home at age 14, moved to Breckenridge and became a telegraph lineman.

Stoker eventually bought a piece of property where drillers in 1921 brought in Stoker No. 1, the first oil well in a Stephens County oil field that produced in one year 15 percent of all the oil production in the United States and one-third of the petroleum produced in Texas.

When Breckenridge became a forest of wooden derricks and suddenly doubled in population, Stoker used his oil money to purchase Texas ranch land in Garza and Taylor counties in 1921. To remove his only daughter from the boom town environment, he moved his family to Abilene in 1922 and entered the banking business in addition to ranching. In 1924 Stoker moved the family to Pomona, Calif., but returned to Texas in 1927. Stoker lost the Taylor County ranch to settle the bank’s depository debts in the Great Depression.

Stoker’s daughter, Ruby, married Willard Kirkpatrick, which resulted in his ranch land passing down the Kirkpatrick line to become part of Stoker-Kirkpatrick Ranches operated by brothers Mark and Drew Kirkpatrick in partnership with their three cousins—Cliff, Will and Joel Kirkpatrick. Stoker–Kirkpatrick Ranches includes three ranches owned by Kirkpatrick Land and Cattle Co. and a ranch that belonged to Mark and Drew’s mother—the PLK, Inc.— which was one-fourth of the original Slaughter Ranch.

In 2021 the Garza County ranch that Stoker bought with his oil money celebrated its 100th anniversary. In 1998 the PLK land that passed from the Slaughter family through Mark’s mother celebrated its 100th anniversary. Her initials were PLK—Patty Lott Kirkpatrick.

Having two sets of brothers who are still working together and still operating four ranches as Stoker–Kirkpatrick Ranches is unique. What might look like a family reunion may be a partners’ meeting as Mark, Drew and Cliff—all living in Garza County—meet monthly with Will and Joel, who live in Crosby County. The amazing part is that they all get along.

“Everybody [10 cousins] worked on the ranch when we were growing up,” Mark says. “Spring roundup was planned around spring break so the children could be out of school to help with the branding.” Only five cousins stayed in ranching. When they work cattle today, Mark said the five cousins don’t need a lot of instruction and discussion “because we’ve all done it together for so long.”

Sorting through the family connections is complicated, but those connections also include the National Ranching Heritage Center. Mark’s grandfather—John F. Lott Sr.—was one of the NRHC key founders nearly six decades ago when he was selected in 1966 to serve on the original Ranch Headquarters Planning Committee. Lott helped identify, move, preserve and interpret the historical buildings in the early years of the NRHC and was a founding member of what today is the Ranching Heritage Association.

Lott served on the first RHA board of directors and his ranch brand is on five of the 19 impressive Longhorn sculptures that enhance the NRHC front yard. Lott was presented the Founders’ Award in 2004 and described as “a beloved man who was as much a part of the Heritage Center as the buildings he helped preserve.”

John Lott was the grandson of Texas cattle baron John B. Slaughter, Mark’s great-great-grandfather. The NRHC historic park includes Slaughter’s 1906 carriage house (see pages 18-19) where Mark’s great-aunt Mary Belle Lott Macy, a charter member of the NRHC Ranch Hosts, once dressed in period clothing to sit in front of the carriage house and greet visitors.

Mark has risen through the ranks of the RHA Executive Committee to become president of the membership organization just as the NRHC is taking a giant leap into the future with the new multi-million-dollar Cash Family Ranch Life Learning Center. The center will expand the NRHC mission to include not only preserving ranching history but also presenting the story of ranching today through the voice of Hank the Cowdog.

“Our target audience,” Mark says, “is the young families and bringing them into the Cash Family Ranch Life Learning Center.” The center will be a new indoor/outdoor extension on the south side of the existing museum, and John Lott’s grandson will be helping expand what his grandfather helped start.

Leadership is not a stranger to Mark Kirkpatrick, even going as far back as 1977 when he was senior class president and co-captain of the Post High School bi-district championship football team. Mark thought he wanted to be a veterinarian, so he enrolled in Texas A&M University and majored in animal science.

“It finally occurred to me that I could learn and do all the things I wanted to do without actually having to go to veterinarian school and then get up in the middle of the night and go help someone else with their cattle,” Mark says. “I got up and tended to our heifers in the middle of the night, but I didn’t have to do it for the public.”

Mark reluctantly joined the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets at the urging of his father. “I wasn’t crazy about the idea of joining the Corps, but I got there and absolutely loved it,” he says. “The regimen and discipline fit me, and I had a fantastic experience.”

Mark was wing commander in 1981 during his senior year and spent two years as a member of the Ross Volunteers, an organization of military distinction that serves as the honor guard for the governor of Texas.

Today he is on the board of Prosperity Bank, vice chair of the regional water planning group, president of the Garza County Heritage Foundation and a committee chairman at First Methodist Church in Post.

In 1984 Mark married Lisa Luttrell, a Texas A&M accounting major from Silsbee, Texas. Reared in the Beaumont-Port Arthur metropolitan area, Lisa had no ranch life exposure before she visited Post for the first time with the expectation of joining the family for a ski trip to Vail, Colo. Instead, Mark, Lisa and Mark’s father—K.W.—had to remain on the ranch to calve heifers and chop ice for 12 days during one of the coldest winters Mark can remember.

“Sometimes I look back and say, ‘Wow, that was a red flag,’” Lisa jokes while at the same time admitting “the thing I didn’t appreciate was the 24/7 aspect of ranching 365 days a year. This was not the way I grew up. My father was an engineer who had weekends off and we lived in the suburbs.”

Mark and Lisa have a beautiful home off the caprock outside Post where the flat Llano Estacado suddenly ends and a cascade of trees, rock and grass flows progressively downhill into the rolling plains of Texas. “We bought this place intentionally so that if we ever stop ranching it won’t affect the house,” Mark says. “I wanted a place that could be Lisa’s apart from the ranch.”

Lisa has worked for accounting firms in Dallas and Lubbock and was bookkeeper for the ranch until a few years ago. She serves as chairman of the Finance Committee at First Methodist Church in Post.

Their son, Kyle, lives in Post and works on the Garza County ranch. He and his wife Hayley have three sons ages 5 and under. His sister, Claire, and her husband, James Vess, live in Aledo, Texas, and have three sons ages 7 and under. That’s six more Kirkpatrick heirs.

Kyle is the seventh generation of ranchers in his family, and his generation has 13 cousins. That doesn’t include great-grandchildren. Like those before him, Kyle is working land that has been worked for over 100 years by other members of the family. “The only way you get a promotion around here is if somebody dies,” Mark says.

Today the Stoker–Kirkpatrick Ranch is focusing on enhancing the genetics of its cattle. “At this point the calves going to the feedyard and on to the packing plant are grading about 60 percent choice and prime, which is very unusual for a commercial herd,” Mark says. “We’re trying to make that better all the time. If I’m going to spend the time doing something, I want to do it the best I know how and that means raising the best genetics that we can in a commercial cow herd.

“The last set of heifers we checked was the first time we ever took DNA samples out of their ears. So, we’re going to get back DNA information on those heifers and then we’ll take that data and try to correlate it to the bulls we buy and plug the weak spots.”

Mark has been coaching in 4-H shooting sports for 25 years since Kyle started shooting. “I fit shotguns mainly for 4-H kids but some adults,” Mark says. “I make modifications to the guns so they fit the person instead of fitting the person to the gun.”

Mark is also part of a group that puts on a 4-H shoot every year in San Angelo, Texas. “Last year was our twentieth year,” he says, “and in those 20 years we have given away over a million dollars in scholarships to 4-H shooters.”

After an hour of answering questions about his family tree and trying to remember who did what, Mark brought it to an end. “This isn’t all about me,” he says. “If I didn’t have a family that supports me, I wouldn’t be doing any of this. Like the Bible verse says, ‘To whom much has been given much is expected.’ We didn’t earn any of this. We were blessed with it. It’s our responsibility to take care of it and try to pass it to the next generation.”

The seventh generation has 13 cousins, and the eighth generation has nine boys and three girls with more on the way. Passing the land and the legacy to the next generation shouldn’t be a problem.

This article appears in the Fall 2022 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.