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Christmas Eve 1926: authorities in Farwell, Texas discover the worst case of family annihilation this country has ever recorded after unearthing the remains of eight children and their mother

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“Texas, by God!” cried notorious killer John Wesley Hardin when he saw a Colt .45 pointed at him on a train in Florida. At the other end of the pistol stood Texas Ranger John B. Armstrong.

Found Inside: "On November 18, 1908, at the Bovina depot in Parmer County, Williams shoots Armstrong off his horse, killing him. The first trial results in a hung jury; a second trial results in Williams receiving a six-year sentence. The verdict is reversed ... ' Read more Look inside

"On a cold, windy December night in 1926, hell was unleashed on a tenant farm near Farwell, the last Texas town before the New Mexico border. Prone to the bottle and fits of rage, the burly man with the smiling blue eyes was in no mood to quarrel with his third wife over his bootleg whisky and sexual abuse of his stepdaughter.  He went from room to room in the house, killing his wife and each child with primitive cutting tools and his bare hands. By the time he concluded his bloody work, he had taken the lives of nine family members ranging in age from 2 to 41, committing what one local reporter called “the blackest crime” in the history of the West Texas Panhandle. ..." Read more Look inside

Dreams for a shared future united a modern rodeo cowboy and a nurse in West Texas ...

Found Inside: "He pulled the empty horse trailer north nearly to Channing, with no luck, then headed south and took 214 down to Friona. By the time he pulled in for a burger at the Tasty Cream, the only place he'd seen that had enough space for a horse trailer in the parking lot, he'd stopped and talked to seven people ... It was forty two miles out to his uncle's place from Friona" . . . Read more Look inside

Born the fifth child of poor Texas sharecroppers, young Charlie Phillips stumbled into one of the longest careers in country music history; writing a #1 hit single, receiving a coveted Gold Record, becoming Mr. Deejay U.S.A. and being inducted into the Western Swing Music Hall of Fame. Over the years, the poverty stricken kid from Farwell, Texas performed on stage with notables like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Brenda Lee, Hank Snow, Jimmy C. Newman, Minnie Pearl, Little Jimmy Dickens, Merle Haggard, George Jones, Ray Price and many others  . . . Read more

Memories, stories, and reflections on growing up in the extended family of Joe and Pearl Donaldson of the Oklahoma Lane Community near the small town of Farwell, Texas in the southwestern panhandle of that great state . . . Read more Look inside

Found Inside: "Christmas time in 1954, my parents received the news that my grandfather, George Pullmann, who was by then pastor of a congregation in Friona, Texas, had had a heart attack. I was quite surprised that my father makes no mention of this in ... " Read more Look inside

Found Inside: "... is naturally the center of the West Texas area; but supercilious people , when they hear the name, begin to ask where it is. This is a stupid question . Lariat, Texas is eleven miles northwest of Muleshoe, Texas. Such smart alecks deserve ... "  Read more

History Of Parmer County Texas: Indians, Ranching Families, Pioneers 1st Edition Large Hardcover, Photos, Family Histories, XIT Ranch, Bovina, Farwell, Friona, and Brands, 369 pp. + Appendix, Farwell Times Pictorial Section.

Wanted: Historic County Jails of Texas

Along with the settlement of the Texas frontier came rustlers, public drunks, gunfighters, and other outlaws. A jail in which to incarcerate the lawbreakers was thus often the first public building raised in a new town.

Found Inside: "In 1919 Muleshoe was voted the county seat, and in that same year, the commissioners' court approved spending one hundred dollars to buy and move a twelve-year-old secondhand wooden jail from Parmer County. Roy Barber was paid fifteen dollars to deliver it to Muleshoe. It is said that . . . " Read more Look inside

by Parmer County Historical Commission

The Historical Society presented this 599 page volume with a two-fold purpose. The first was "to publish as much local history as possible in a definitive volume of easy reading for the casual reader and a bundle of information for the student of research." The second purpose was to create a genealogical heirloom and that has most assuredly been done with almost 450 pages of family histories.

Found Inside: "The first roundup was thrown together on Frio Draw, seven miles east of the site of Friona town. Not counting calves, 4,300 head of cattle were counted out to Montgomery. He swung his wagon around and without loss of time was upon the trail . . . " Read more Look inside

The United States Government's photodocumentary project on American railroading during the Second World War

Found Inside: Our train is stopped ( above ) on the main line near Parmerton, Texas while a superior train uses the passing track to pull around it . The rear brakeman can be seen leaning out of the cupola window waiting to look over the opposing drag ... Read more

Found Inside: "The community in those early days was referred to as Ft. Wayne due to the home of many of the first settlers. However, sometime in the first couple of years the name Rhea from the proximity to the . . . " Read more

by M.M. Jane Estes

Have you ever wished you could go somewhere that you have read about or heard about to see for yourself what it is like? That is how this book began.

Found inside: "Their first teaching experience was in Lazbuddie, Texas. After two years there, they decided they wanted to see the world and sought an overseas job. That job took them to Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands with the U. S. Navy school. There ..." Read more Look inside

Welcome to the world of Texas ranching, where “come ’n’ get it” is the national anthem, the kitchen is the most important room in the house, meals become staff meetings, and the cook is a treasured member of the outfit ...

Found Inside: Friona Texas: M.C. and Ann Osborn

Today Ann and M.C. Osborn are almost models of the modern ranchers and are intricate members of their community in Friona and Parmer County . . . Read more Look inside

With a resonant sense of the period and culture, Douglas Bauer evokes the freewheeling feel of the old Southwest in the early part of the twentieth century and delivers an allusive commentary on the charlatans of our own era.

Found Inside: "Winter was a hapless drifter from Bovina, Texas, forty miles straight west of Ray White's Dimmitt. His ignorance took the form of an irrepressible energy. O'Malley sat across from Luther. He was a man of placid temperament whom everyone . . . " Look inside

Found Inside: "It was George Wright's massive 1906-1907 promotion and advertising of Parmer County that produced a boom in the southwest Panhandle. The old railroad switch of Frio became the 1907 post office town of Frio--or Friona the fair in the parlance of the boosters. Charles M. and Luisa Flanders and their four daughters moved to Friona at this time. They opened a photograph gallery that joined a bank, drugstore, hardware store . . . " Read more Look inside

Found Inside: "Will Anderson and his parents, Bob and Carrie Anderson: What a delightful day we spent with them in Farwell, Texas. Will went above and beyond the call of duty to introduce us to to people at the courthouse, shoot photographs, take us to locations we could not have found on our own and continued to contribute clues long after we had returned home. Also a big thank you to Adrian and Rose in the Parmer County Clerk's office" . . . Read more Look inside

The scarcity of surface water which has so marked the Great Plains is even more characteristic of its subdivision, the Texas High Plains. Settlers on the plateau were forced to use pump technology to tap the vast ground water resources—the underground rain—beneath its flat surface.

Found Inside: "Farmers of Parmer County who had 404,222 acres in 1958, were irrigating 318,647 acres by 1969 ... " Read more Look inside

Winner of the Belmont University Prize for Best Book on Country Western Music.

Found inside: "West Texas songwriters had increasing success beginning in the late 1950s. Farwell songwriter Charlie Phillips wrote and recorded "Sugartime", which became a hit for the McGuire Sisters in 1957" . . . Read more Look inside

Frank Paul Sauerwein: An Early Master Painter of the American Southwest : the Biography

Found Inside: .. of paintings, sketches and letters of Sauerwein donated to the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas, by the late Judge James D. Hamlin of Farwell, Texas. Judge Hamlin became interested in the artist after Sauerwein's death ...

Found Inside: "Following the storm , the team headed 30 miles ( 48 kilometers ) northeast toward the small Texas panhandle town of Friona . There , amid gale - force winds , a tornado formed . Rasmussen coordinated the team into position around it ... " Read more

Found inside: "In the farming village of Friona, in northwestern Texas, integration took place, with black children enrolling in a previously all-white school. Elsewhere in the South, segregationists denounced the Supreme Court ruling and called for ... " Read more Look inside   . . . for more like this please see Black Texans in History

Resources:

West Texas History & Memories

Early Life in Texas County by County

Books about Texas People and Places

Amazing People from Texas County by County

These Deceased Residents of Parmer County left a total $23,646 in Unclaimed Money for their heirs. Know the Heirs? Please Share this with your Family and Friends in Farwell, Bovina, Friona and Lazbuddie Texas to Let them know . . . Check the list