Gladden Clyde McAnelly

Biography

Gladden Clyde McAnelly, Sr was born on May 21, 1891, in Pleasant McAnelly Ranch, Medina County, Texas, USA. His parents were Pleasant Ernest McAnelly, II and Mary Janette McAnelly.

Gladden married Hallie Laura Nixon on January 12, 1913, in Yancey, Medina, Texas, USA, Yancey, Medina County, Texas, United States. Together they had the following children:

• John Ernest McAnelly, Sr;
• Anna Lee Fronczek Strait;
• Rusty Gladden Clyde McAnelly, II;
• Dora Mae Faseler (McAnelly);
• Hallie Lorine McAnelly;
• James William McAnelly;
• Charles Wayman McAnelly.

He died on December 3, 1968, in Hondo, Medina, Texas, USA, and was buried in Yancey, Medina County, Texas, United States of America.

The McAnelly Family History

The McAnelly family first moved into the Devine area in the late 1870s, Pleasant McAnelly, the old Texas Patriot [the first McAnelly to arrive], probably rode through this country in the 1830s before Texas was even Texas, as part of the group of men with Ben Milam that drove the Mexican army out of San Antonio in the Battle of Bexar. He was standing next to Ben Milam in the Veramendi house when Ben was shot in the head by a Mexican soldier. Pleasant picked him up and carried him into a back room. He later said, “When I saw his head fall back, I knew he was dead.” Pleasant rode with the Texas Rangers, Bigfoot Wallace, and Lon Moore. He was about twenty-five years old at the time. The large, wooden, bullet-riddled doors from the Veramendi house are still on display in the Alamo.

One of Pleasant’s sons, Pleasant Ernest (P.E.), moved into Medina County in the 1870s, and on Oct. 11, 1881, married Mary Jenette Redus, daughter of John and Sally (McLamore) Redus. John Redus, was a rancher who owed a Ranch along the Hondo Creek from FM 2200 between Devine and Yancey to Hwy 90 east of Hondo, some fifteen miles north. Mary grew up in the big rock house on Hondo Creek that is depicted in the Triple C Restaurant in Devine mural.

P.E. and Mary had eight children, all boys. In 1883, P.E. bought about 2,000 acres on the Hondo Creek between Devine and Yancey on FM 2200. The Old Spanish Road between Eagle Pass and San Antonio ran through part of the ranch. They built a sandstone rock house just west of the Hondo Creek with rock quarried from the big hill on their land just east of the creek. The house still stands and can be seen about one mile from the creek on the south side of the road. The walls are 18 inches thick, which helped keep it cool in the summer and warm in the winter. There are four rooms, two big and two small, each with a fireplace. One of the small rooms served as the kitchen, the other ones as bedrooms and a living room. There was a big covered porch across the front. A hand-dug cistern just out the back door provided cool water, while a windmill out in front provided water for the livestock and the garden. There was a water trough about five feet long, two feet wide, and eighteen inches high, hollowed out of a single piece of sandstone.

The couple raised cattle, goats, and boys. As boys will do, they spent many hours up on the roof, carving their initials, names, or latest love into the sandstone with a nail. Of particular interest to me is the one that says “Gladden & Hallie” – my grandfather, Gladden Clyde McAnelly, and grandmother, Hallie Loraine Nixon, daughter of John Phillip Nixon. (Hallie’s grandfather, Captain Robert Thomas Nixon, (CSA) was the man for whom the town of Nixon was named.)

John Phillip Nixon was a large ranch owner in the Yancey area, and he had another ranch in the Tarpley area in northern Medina County. He raised cattle and horses – good horses. He was a founder of the American Quarter Horse Assoc. He owned the fourth horse ever registered, Nixon’s **Joe Bailey, a beautiful stud that is still in the pedigree of many ranch horses in Medina County. Captain John Thomas Nixon also sold horses to the U.S Army at Ft. Sam Houston during General Pershing’s failed attempt to catch Pancho Villa in 1916. At one point, the army didn't pay for the horses, and some seventy years later, **my great-grandmother Frances Amanda Andrews found the bill and filed suit against the Army for the unpaid debt. She was finally awarded the money, at the agreed-upon price decades earlier of $35 each.

Going back to the P.E. McAnelly family of eight boys out on the Hondo Creek, when the boys reached school age, P.E. and Mary decided they needed a home in Devine so the boys could attend school. It was about ten miles from the ranch to Devine, and with no vehicles and only horses and mules for transportation, it was way too far to travel two times a day. So, they bought the property and built a house on what is now the corner of Hwy 173 and McAnelly Street, where the grey brick house stands across from the Dairy Queen and on the banks of Burnt Boot Creek. Mary would stay in town with the boys, while P.E. would travel back and forth to take care of the ranch. At that time, Burnt Boot flowed most of the time, and there was a big, deep hole right north of the present-day bridge under the big oak tree. That was the favorite swimming hole for many little boys in Devine, and according to my grandfather, Gladden, it is where he learned to swim.

As a citizen of Devine, P.E. McAnelly was an active member of the Methodist Church, was Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge, and served on the school board for Devine. It was while he was DISD School Board President in 1908 that they built a new school on College Street. It was complete with an indoor gymnasium, cafeteria, woodworking shop, and a free-standing Homemaking Building where girls learned cooking, sewing, and home management. That school – known for years as the “Green Alamo” – now houses the VFW. The Homemaking Building served until recently as the DISD Administrative office, and it still serves as office space for DISD.

The McAnelly children were very well educated, most attending college, including a very young Texas A&M. At DHS, my grandfather, Gladden, was Valedictorian of his class in 1909, exactly 80 years before my oldest son, Lance, graduated from Devine. Gladden was an excellent baseball pitcher – left-handed with a tremendous curve and great fastball. When he graduated, he was drafted by some team in the then-fledgling Major League Baseball Association. His father, P.E., told him, “A man should not be playing a boy's game,” and would not let him go. Unhappy with the decision, Gladden refused to go to college, got married, and started ranching. When he told me about it fifty years later, I could still hear the bitterness and disappointment of what may have been. I’m not sure he ever fully forgave his father for that.

Gladden and Hallie ran their ranch for years in a home with no running water or electricity. Hallie gave birth and raised seven children.

• Reference:
• *"Early Nixon's of Texas" by Pat Ireland Nixon, MD, Genealogies by Dr. and Mrs. Pat Ireland Nixon, Jr., Published by Carl Hertzog, El Paso, Texas 1956 Hathitrust Early Nixon's of Texas has the details about Old Billy and Frances Amanda Andrews filing suit for the bill against the US Government for the Horses not paid to Captain Robert Thomas Nixon, (CSA) Estate, it must've been a joint effort, evidently the some of the horses were also McAnelly horses not paid for in the lot to the government.
• [https://devinenews.com/the-mcanelly-family/]

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