RO       Rowe Ranch     RO

Alfred Rowe a first purchased land in northeastern Donley County on Skillet Creek, founding the  RO Ranch in 1879.       Rowe was twenty-six years old at the time, having been born an English citizen on February 24, 1853, in Peru.   The original RO headquarters is now the headquarters of the Martinez Ranch.   His parents were prosperous English merchants.   He expanded the ranch with his largest purchase being 61 sections to the south in 1881, paying $18,300 of which $6,300 was paid in cast and three notes of $4,000 each were paid each of the following July 1st, carrying an 8% interest rate.   The ranch eventually grew to cover an area from McLean, Texas south to Hedley (originally named Rowe) and west to within five miles of Clarendon, Texas.  

Alfred was partners with brothers Vincent and Bernard who were manufacturers in Kansas City from 1883 unti 1898 when he bought them out.   Alfred owned fifty percent of Rowe Brothers, Vincent owned thirty percent and Bernard owned 20%.     At the same time, Rowe borrowed $30,000 from Western Mortgate Investment Co, paying 10%

Rowe was one of the few successful English ranchers in the United States and he lived on and ran the ranch until 1910 when he moved back to England with his wife and three children, leaving Jack Hall to manage the ranch.   He had married an English woman, Constance Kingsley in 1901 and moved the headquarters to a house just north of the Salt Fork of the Red River, northeast of Clarendon on land purchased from R. B. Edgell.   He made regular trips to check on his ranch.   In 1912, he gave the organ to the beautiful Episcopal church in Clarendon.    In April 1912, he booked first class passage on the magnificent luxury liner Titanic.    The story is he swam to a piece of ice and was later found frozen to death.   In any case, the body was recovered.

In 1917, his exector Bernard Rowe, sold the ranch and cattle to William Jenks Lewis for $565,113.26 and was around 58,605 acres of patented land plus 13,541 acres of school land.    The deed says "the price for which said lands are sold to said second party (W.J. Lewis) being $8.00 per acre, and the acreage to be determined by the records and etc., of Donley and Gray Counties, and the assumption of the second party for all of the State indebtedness on Schoool lands and unpatented lands, and the second party pays $25,000.00 on the delivery of these presents, and upon the delivery of a deed to said lands, together with abstracts showing merchantable title, second party is to pay 1/4 of the balance in cash, and the remainder to be evidenced by three vendor's lien notes, with 6% interest per annum, on the lands conveyed in said deed, and the further consideration, said second party is to execute a deed of trust to S.H. Madden, Tr. for the First party herein for the purpose of further securing the said due and payable in one, two, and three years after date, at the First National Bank of Kansas City, Missouri."

The Lewis family sold the last part of the RO that they owned in the teens.   The bulk of the ranch is now The Swamp, owned and run by the Jay O'Brien family.