Ranch museum tells epic tale of pioneering Kenedy family

QUIET LEGACY
Ranch museum tells epic tale of pioneering Kenedy family
by John Goodspeed
SARITA - This lonely Brush Country berg on U.S. 77 holds the short end of the stick in
a state where prestige rides shotgun with bragging rights.
The population is somewhere between 150 and 200, depending on to whom you talk
and the time of day. Sarita's retail district resides in an alcove just inside the front door
of the Kenedy County Courthouse: a Coke machine that burps out soda at 55 cents a pop.
That's it - no gas station, no ice house, no Blizzard from small-town Texas' ubiquitous
Dairy Queen. "The only time we have a traffic jam is when my black Lab takes a nap
in the street," says Patti Fain, justice of the peace and innkeeper of the Great Kiskadee
Guest House.
But a new venture may give Sarita something to brag about for generations to come.
The Kenedy Ranch Museum of South Texas, which celebrates its grand opening
Saturday, will put faces on one of the state's most influential pioneering families, inter-
twining its story with the region's economic and cultural development and two and a
half centuries of ranching.
Created to preserve the little-known Kenedy legacy, the museum will underscore what
few outside the area know: That without Mifflin Kenedy, there would be no King Ranch.
That Kenedy pioneered steamboat trade along the Rio Grande, and that he and King
amassed a fortune during the Civil War selling and shipping Confederate cotton around
the world, bringing back arms and ammunition while running a Union blockade.
The first to fence a large ranch west of the Mississippi, Kenedy perceived railroads as
iron rivers promoting trade and was instrumental in linking the major cities of South
and Central Texas. Kenedy and his family also shared their wealth, donating vast sums
to build hospitals and churches and to fund Catholic charities across South Texas.
"One of our goals is to get people to know what the Kenedy Ranch is all about," says
Clayton Wolter, who manages the ranch for the John G. and Marie Stella Kenedy
Memorial Foundation. "We help a lot of people in South Texas with the money we gen-
erate from the ranch, from the oil and gas. We've given away about $175 million
throughout South Texas." The foundation - established in the will of Sarita Kenedy East,
the town's namesake and daughter of John and Marie Kenedy - owns and oversees about
235,000 of the Kenedy Ranch's 450,000 acres.
To tell the epic saga, the foundation is using the former headquarters of the Kenedy
Pasture Co., a two-story, 1927 Spanish Revival building across from the courthouse. "We
thought about having kiosks and high-tech equipment for a flashy museum, but that
would have taken away from what we are trying to portray," Wolter says. "You don't walk
into Sarita for a virtual reality tour. It's about as low-key and down-home as you can get."
Museum planner and designer Steve Harding of Houston, who worked on the Capitol
Visitors Center in Austin and the Nolan Ryan Center in Alvin, researched the history of
South Texas and the Kenedy family through books, King Ranch archives, museums and
old-timers. He discovered a story of adventure and intrigue, of murder, bandits, war,
cattle rustlers and Texas Ranger rights and wrongs, of friction and affection between
Anglos and Mexicans.
With few artifacts at his disposal, Harding used murals by noted Mexican artist Daniel
Lechon, life-size figures by sculptor Kim Crowley and a hand-held audio guide system.
The result is a museum unlike anything in South Texas and a pioneering effort for such
small facilities.
"It's a small building, but it's jam-packed with story," Harding says. "Traditionally a small
museum (Kenedy's is 1,800 square feet) will spring up and have a good story to tell, but
they empty out grandma's closet and you get all this old stuff spread around without a
well-told story. What we're doing here is pulling together the story of South Texas that
hasn't been told before, and the story of the Kenedy family, while hitting the racial divide
between the eyes and celebrating a small town in Texas that has a rich heritage."
The museum has three rooms, each dominated by roughly 10-by-30-foot murals depict-
ing scenes of ranching, revolution and daily life. The first room covers the birth of South
Texas through war and violence up until the coming of the railroads in the late 1800s.
The second room details the economic and social development of the region.
The third delves into the faith of three generations of Kenedy women, and their devotion
to the Catholic Church.
It begins with Mifflin Kenedy, a Pennsylvania Quaker who became a steamboat captain
in Florida and came to Texas in 1847 to run a steamboat on the Rio Grande for the U.S.
Army during the Mexican War.
He wrote a letter to his friend Richard King, inviting him to Texas.
"What was a friendship in Florida becomes a partnership in Texas, and they became part-
ners in the Santa Gertrudis Ranch, which is the King Ranch of today," Harding says. "They
made tremendous amounts of money in the steamboat business after the Mexican War."
They also cashed in on the Civil War, ferrying Confederate cotton under Mexican-flagged
boats in front of the Union blockade - and selling some of it to the North after a brief
stop in Mexico.
Kenedy married Petra Vela de Vidal, widow of an officer in Santa Anna's army with eight
children. They then had six of their own.
Kenedy sold his interest in the Santa Gertrudis and bought and sold other ranches, even-
tually amassing some 450,000 acres today known as the Kenedy Ranch. "His family was
raised speaking the language of the ranch, which was Spanish, in contrast to King's fam-
ily," Harding says.
There were other contrasts between Kenedy, a quiet but determined Quaker, and King, a
large, boisterous man. While Kenedy worked quietly behind the scenes, the King Ranch
became the stuff of legends through self-promotion and, later, commissioned books and
skilled marketing. Today there's even a Ford truck model named for the ranch.
Many say nurturing a grandiose legacy was not the Kenedy way, although the family had
more than its share of triumphs and tragedies.
Mifflin and Petra Kenedy's oldest son, Thomas, was killed in Brownsville by an assassin
hired by the husband of a woman seeking a divorce. A stepson, Adrian Vidal, fought
for both sides in the Civil War, had a distaste for military life and quit to become a bor-
der bandit. Vidal later fought with the Juaristas during the French invasion of Mexico,
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EXCELLENCE IN CRAFT
EXCELLENCE IN CRAFT
was captured by the Imperialists and executed, even though Kenedy tried to get him off.
Another son was trying to shoot someone when he accidentally killed a woman in Dodge
City, Kan. He was chased down, shot and captured by Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. He
eventually was acquitted.
The Kenedy saga continues through the railroads, the taming of South Texas, the discov-
ery of oil and gas and the modern era.
Sarita Kenedy East and her brother, John Gregory Kenedy Jr., were the last direct descen-
dents of Mifflin Kenedy, and both died without children. John Kenedy Jr.'s widow, Elena
Suess Kenedy, established the John G. Kenedy Jr. Charitable Trust, which, upon her death
in 1984, reunited both halves of the ranch. Later, Sarita 's will established the foundation.
"We're thrilled with the museum. It's a marvelous idea to preserve and teach something
of the history of this place and its people," says Oblate Father Francis Kelly Nemeck, a
member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, which received the 20,000-
square-foot Big House and 1,100 acres at the old ranch headquarters in Sarita 's will.
The Oblates have ties to the Catholic missionaries known as the Cavalry of Christ, who
traveled on horseback across South Texas and Mexico in the mid- to late 1800s.
Today people from a variety of faiths and from across the United States take a vow of
silence when they visit the Big House, now the Lebh Shomea House of Prayer, during
spiritual quests.
Nemeck is glad the museum is preserving the Kenedy family history. The museum
"imparts a consciousness, letting people know that there is humanitarian help improv-
ing the lives of people of God throughout South Texas, and especially the little people of
God. "Sarita used that phrase, 'the little people of God,' ... those among us who are not
as fortunate ... but who may in their own way have a great deal of spiritual wealth."
The museum highlights the three generations of Kenedy women - Petra Vela Kenedy; her
daughter-in-law, Marie Stella Kenedy; and her granddaughter, Sarita Kenedy East.
"Each brought a particular perspective of their way of living Catholicism," Nemeck says.
"Petra Vela brought the Mexican perspective. Marie Stella, who was from New Orleans,
brought the French-Louisiana perspective. And Sarita brought the Texas, or the Tejana,
perspective.
"And each of those perspectives is brought forth in the exhibits of the museum - and it
also reflects the boiling pot of cultures in Texas."
For Roy Cantu, the job of museum coordinator, running the day-to-day operations, is a
homecoming. He grew up just south of Sarita , where his grandparents lived. One of
his grandfathers was a foreman on the ranch, the other helped build the Big House. His
great-grandparents worked on the ranch, too.
"I didn't spend a lot of time with my grandparents. So now that they're dead and gone I
wanted to come see what I might have missed," Cantu says. "That's what's appealing to
me about working here. I knew a lot of the old cowboys (called Kenedenos) here
through my grandfather, and some are still here."
One is Amado Villarreal Mayorga, at 89 one of the oldest and the only old-timer born in
Sarita. His father introduced him to John Kenedy Jr. when he was a boy, and Kenedy
gave him a saddle.
The vaqueros, or cowboys, began working young, following in their father's footsteps to
learn the cowboy tradition. "We were on horses and ready to go at 4 a.m., and some-
times worked so late we were eating supper at midnight," Villarreal said in Spanish.
Their pay was $1 a day, with the ranch supplying housing, food and almost everything
they needed. "The vaqueros today don't work hard anymore," Villarreal says. "They're
home at noon."
"Part of our story is the celebration of small-town Texas," museum designer Harding
says. "A lot of people who knew and worked with the family have passed on," adds
ranch manager Wolter. "If we didn't gather this information now and put it into a story,
we'd lose it forever."
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