They dared to enter a male-dominated world, wanting to do more than just sew, cook, and clean. These Southern cowgirls were unintentional leaders, reshaping the worlds they lived in while shaping a future for the generations to follow. Working as hard as their male counterparts, they could often outride and outshoot even the best cowboys south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Some were early pioneers, cowgirls before the term was even coined. Others continued paving the road for women in a man’s culture of rodeos and ranch life. But all had the spirit of a cowgirl and a good amount of grit.
- Lizzie Johnson (1840-1924) After working as a teacher and bookkeeper for local cattlemen, Lizzie Johnson became one of the original Texas “Cattle Queens,” branding her own herd of cattle.
Known as one of the original Texas “Cattle Queens,” Lizzie Johnson’s sharp mind and entrepreneurial spirit led her straight to success in a world dominated by cattle kings.
Born Elizabeth Ellen Johnson on May 9, 1840, in Clay County, Missouri, her family moved to Texas when she was merely four years old. The Johnson family eventually settled in Hays County where her parents, Thomas and Catharine Johnson, opened the Johnson Institute, a boarding school where Johnson herself began her teaching career after earning a degree from the Chappell Hill Female College. Years later, she opened her own school in Austin.
It was also while in Austin that Johnson’s interests shifted toward her future in ranching. As somewhat of a side job to supplement her teaching salary, she worked as a bookkeeper for local cattlemen. It wasn’t hard for her to see there was money to be made in the industry, and in 1871 she had earned enough to purchase ten acres of land for her very own herd. It was unheard of at the time for a single woman to embark on such an endeavor. But she did. And with flair. Johnson became the first Texan woman to drive her own branded herd along the Chisholm Trail.
When Johnson married Hezekiah Williams in 1879, she requested a prenuptial agreement keeping her in control of her holdings (and future income), and it is believed that she had a strong hand in her husband’s dealings as well. Upon Williams’s death in 1914 the couple had amassed a fortune in cattle, investments, and real estate, but it seemed the loss of her partner was too much for Johnson to enjoy the fruits of her labor. After his death Johnson isolated herself, becoming known as a recluse and a tightfisted one at that. The once lavish attire of the cattle queen began to wear significantly as she began to more closely resemble a pauper, keeping primarily to herself until her own death ten years later.
- Lucille Mulhall (1885-1940) Lucille Mulhall learned the ins and outs of riding and ranch work at an early age, having little desire for the “girly” things her family’s wealth provided.
Will Rogers once called her the world’s greatest horse rider. She’s also been called the first cowgirl after proving a girl could hold her own in the boy’s rodeo arena. But to Lucille Mulhall, she was just a girl following her heart and chasing a dream.
From early on at her family’s sprawling Oklahoma ranch, Mulhall wasn’t interested in the porcelain dolls or the other girlish trinkets that seemed to keep her sisters’ attention. The young girl had a close relationship with her father, Colonel Zach Mulhall and often accompanied him on his duties along with the cowhands. By the time she was ten, she was riding alongside the men, roping and branding the family’s cattle, and shooting her rifle with the best of them. At thirteen, her father decided to showcase the rare talents of his daughter, along with the likes of others such as the then-unknown Will Rogers, in Mulhall’s Congress of Rough Riders and Ropers.
The crowds hadn’t seen anything like her before. With her ladylike appearance and petite frame, she looked out of her element and out of her league competing amongst men twice her size and double her experience. She refused to ride side-saddle, as was proper for ladies of the time, and she wore a divided skirt so as not to slow her down. And to the delight of her audience, and much to the chagrin of her male counterparts, she outperformed every man in the show.
Mulhall’s career spanned the golden age of rodeos, capturing the attention of audiences from the West all the way to Madison Square Garden, receiving gifts from none other than Geronimo and befriending vice-presidential hopeful Teddy Roosevelt. She rode in several famous rodeo groups and in vaudeville, and for a brief time had her own show. But the silver screen gave way for a different breed of star, and as she found less and less work in rodeo she eventually retired back to the family ranch she knew so well. In 1940, despite all of her stunts on the rodeo circuit, her death came with four wheels. Mulhall died in a car wreck roughly three months after her final public performance.
- Hallie Crawford Stillwell (1897-1997) A painted portrait of Hallie Crawford Stillwell stands tall at the museum dedicated to the legendary cowgirl of the Big Bend
No job proved to be too large for the woman affectionately known as “Miss Hallie.” From a wife and mother to Big Bend legend, Stillwell wore plenty of hats over her lifetime—a long lifetime that gave her ample time to tell her own story. And what a story it is.
Originally from Waco, Crawford was thirteen when her family loaded up and moved to Texas’s Big Bend region. Leading the convoy at such a young age, it probably came as little surprise when six years later she strapped on her father’s six-shooter and headed to the unfriendly border town of Presidio on the Rio Grande. Her father, familiar with the spirit imbedded in his daughter, told her she was merely heading off on a wild goose chase. The hard-headed young woman quickly responded to her father’s accusations, “I’ll gather my geese.”
After a year of avoiding Pancho Villa’s raiders in the area, Crawford accepted a position in Marathon. It was there she met and eloped with Roy Stillwell in 1918, a rancher known for drinking and gambling, and twice her age. After moving into his one room cabin on his family’s 22,000-acre ranch, Crawford entered a world of hard work where women weren’t always welcome. So she adjusted her life, working as hard as the cowhands and becoming a mother of three to boot. But despite everyone’s expectations for her and her marriage, the pair rode together for thirty years before his death in 1948. With her husband gone, Crawford picked her reins back up and ran the Stilwell ranch herself.
In 1964 she handed those reins over to her two sons and moved to Alpine. From there, Crawford worked as the Justice of the Peace for Brewster County, as a columnist for the Alpine Avalanche, and eventually as the owner of a general store and RV park—all to save the ranch she had worked so hard to maintain, the same ranch that had challenged who she thought she was and gave her more strength than she knew she had.
Hoping to relay her stories of early life to her children, she wrote her autobiography, I’ll Gather My Geese, and a later sequel, My Goose Is Cooked. But what this cowgirl unintentionally did was offer a connection from the old Texas to the new, establishing herself in Big Bend lore. Miss Hallie lived until just shy of her 100th birthday in 1997.
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