....We headed for the house. But the next evening we went back and I took these pictures:
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| Looking down the chute |
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| Me standing in the chute |
Now we've got tons of cattle pens around here with typical names like "Dog Creek Pens" or "The Robinson Pens"(named after the pastures they're in), but the name Borroum kinda sticks out.
So I set out to find why they're called The Borroum Pens! I dug around through our books and found Osage County Profiles and History of Ranching the Osage, looking for the name Borroum. And I found it!
In Osage County Profiles, it says:
My father, Jim L.
Borroum, first came to this area in 1900.
He was the third generation of Borroums ranching in Texas and old
Mexico, but the pastures of Indian Territory looked very much more promising
than South America, where he was planning to go. He was running a place south of Chautauqua
Springs Kansas when he and my mother, May Lewelen of Cedar Vale, were married
in 1905. Later, when Oklahoma became a
state, he leased and bought land at the location of our present ranch, which my
husband, Lincoln Robinson, has run since 1940.
The time and trials of the earliest settlers were past, but Oklahoma was
still rough, tough, Western country.
There may not have been “range wars”, but “lease wars” were waged
freely, bitterly, and sometimes, fatally.
Cowboys still carried guns and were expected to use them if
necessary. Several cowboy were poisoned
at the ranch when strychnine was put in
the bucket of drinking water that stood by the back door. Only the cook’s command that the victims eat lard saved their lives. Jim Borroum was a director of the Texas and
Southwestern Cattlemen’s Associations for a great many years and
through it promoted Osage County as the best possible cattle country. In 1928, saying he had been broke four times in his life
and didn’t want to be again, he stopped
buying cattle and handled cattle for the King Ranch of Texas, bring from ten to
twenty thousand head of steers to Osage pastures every summer until his death
in 1936. Jim and May Borroum had three
children, Llewllyn, May and Elizabeth, and six grandchildren; Elizabeth Ann,
Margaret, and Jim Robinson, Mike, George and Patricia Snedden.
And it also had two pictures of Jim & May:
Now in History of Ranching the Osage, it gave a list of the pastures that Jim leased:
1902 Osage Leases
J.L. Borroum,
Cedar Vale, Kansas
Pasture Numbers:
61, 70, 109
Pasture Names
Stich Buck
Creek(8,971 Acres)
Pappan Mud
Creek(5,280 Acres
North Pugh(8,251 Acres)
And had another little story about him...
Jim L. Borroum was born in Texas
during 1875. In 1900 he came to Cedar
Vale, Kansas from Texas where his family was in the cattle business. With the backing of
R. R. Russell of San Antonis, he was able to lease land in the Osage south of
Chautauqua Springs. Later he leased
Osage land south of Cedar Vale in the Carpenter Buck Creek, Carpenter West Dog
Creek and Carpenter Sand Creek
pastures. He became a director of the
Liberty National Back of Cedar Vale. In
1905 he married May Lewelen of Cedar Vale, who was born in 1883, the daughter of Madison
and Mary Wallace Lewelen. Jim Borroum
died April 26, 1936, his wife, May, died in 1944.
And told about his daughter Elizabeth..
She is the daughter
of Jim and May Borroum. She married
George Sneeden, and after the death of her father, she operated his 13,000 acre
ranch in northern Osage County. Later
her brother-in-law, Lincoln Robinson, would operate the ranch.
Then told about his son-in-law who later operated the Borroum(Robinson) Ranch:
He was born April 14th,
1909 near Boston, Massachusetts. On
November 25th, 1936 he married May Borroum daughter of Jim and May
Lewelen Borroum at Cedar Vale, Kansas.
They moved to Cedar Vale in 1940 to help operate the Jim Borroum Ranch. They are the parents of Elizabeth, Margaret
and James. May died January 29th,
1982 and the ranch was inherited by Lincoln and the children.
Now the Robinson ranch is where my friend Kate lives. And there are a set of pens near Kate's house where all These Pictures were taken.
All that country up there is where Jim Borroum ran his cattle and probably rode his horse many a mile across that prairie...
So that's the story of where the Borroum pens got their name.
Gotta love living in the heart of God's Country and being surrounded by Cowboy history ;)
