Most of the people we know are cut off from the past, even their own past. It is
unimagined except for the nostalgic tourism of reminiscence. We walk about oblivious to the
reality of what made the present: the personalities, the work, the effort. We do not know of
strained and sprained muscles, of perspiration, of suffocating heat and unrelenting cold. We have
conveniently forgotten noisome insects, scars from missteps, the loneliness, confusion, the aching
frame in which we lay down to sleep, the occasional tear-sodden pillow from which we rise.
Memory turns the volume way up on laughter; the pain, if it is heard at all, is a groaning whisper
in the back of a crowded hall. And yet, the present probably exists more because of the efforts and
pains of the past than from the laughter.
There is a wistful longing for an imagined past, cleansed from the sad, purged from the
dreary: the banal and prosaic unremembered. Everyone over the age of 40 can remember a time
when things were "better." Houses were cheaper, interest rates were lower, food more flavorful,
more natural. One of the chief virtues of a past enjoyed nostalgically is that it does not have to be
taken seriously. Tour bus guides glibly tell the tale of the Alamo while we ride along in air
conditioned comfort. Cinematic costume dramas portray "historic" characters who are winsome,
clean and who have straight teeth. Most of us know that these presentations make only vagrant
nods to the truth, but we still enjoy them. They seem more vivid, more exciting than the present
commonplace reality, so often crowded with apparent inconsequential tasks and events.
This keepsake celebrates the lives and efforts of three generations of McKellars who left
friends and family and moved to a challenging land. There, through enterprise and work, they cut
from the wilderness a ranch, self-sustaining and economically vibrant. They fashioned the ranch
from the raw materials at hand: earth, water, stock, effort. In turn, the ranch sculpted some of the
personalities and biographies of the men and women of the ranch they called La Mariposa. These
lives, the men and women of La Mariposa, contain the stuff of the historic reality of what was La
Mariposa. And what of these lives? What of their reality? That reality exists in the journals,
records and papers of the Mariposa Ranch, all 25 feet of these records, standing stoically in boxes
in Cushing Memorial Library at Texas A&M University. Open a box of these manuscripts, and voices
speak.
Many of the voices heard from these boxes have a distinctly Scottish accent. Texas and
other frontier areas were the beneficiaries of Scottish financial genius. The myth of Scottish
tightfistedness is more than balanced by the historical evidence of financial shrewdness and
success. Eight of the thirteen British joint stock companies and partnerships controlling ranches
in Texas were Scottish. The Matador Ranch, the JA Ranch, the Prairie Cattle Company, the
Texas Land and Mortgage Company and many others had significant participation by Scottish
financiers and others from Great Britain. Scottish capitalists invested heavily in Australia as well.
The brothers John and David Harkness McKellar developed a financial network in Australia that
was to serve them well in the future. They immigrated to New Zealand, introducing sheep
ranching to the islands and becoming some of the most prominent citizens of the West Otago
District. John McKellar bought Brooksdale (a substantial manor in the district) from his father-in-
law in 1867. Ten years later, the father-in-law moved to New Mexico and John went with him.
David Harkness McKellar took over Brooksdale, improved it and turned it into something of a
Highland manor in far-off New Zealand. As both sides of the family were Scottish, it seemed
only natural. Picnics, fishing expeditions, dances and generous hospitality marked Brooksdale
during David Harkness' tenure. Visits by neighborly McKays, MacKenzies, McNabs,
McPhersons, and Galloways as well as others of non-Scottish ancestry punctuated the era. But
David Harkness yearned to follow his brother to the Americas.
An investor in some properties in Mexico, he had been a biennial or triennial visitor to his
ranches in that land. In 1881, Peter Learmonth and David Harkness McKellar effected the
original deed to what was to become the Mariposa Ranch. Traveling from New Zealand to San
Francisco on the Mariposa, the McKellars eagerly looked forward to life in a new country.
The Mariposa, a 3,000 ton steamship built in 1883 for the Oceanic Steamship Line,
the financial child of sugar barons Claus Spreckels and his two sons John and Adolph, journeyed
from San Francisco to Australia and New Zealand via Hawaii. When the McKellars arrived in
Coahuila, Mexico, clouds of butterflies filled the branches of the trees and covered the ground.
The travelers, intrigued by the butterflies, asked their Mexican hosts about them. Learning that
"butterfly" in Spanish was "mariposa," coupled with having sailed over in the recently built
steamship Mariposa, suggested the name of the ranch.
Tragically murdered in 1892, David Harkness McKellar was succeeded by Peter
Learmonth and his sons, Stanley Learmonth and James Allen Learmonth. About the turn of the
century, Ernest F. Black (David H.'s son-in-law) assumed management of La Mariposa.
Struggling with poor health and Mexican political instability, Black nevertheless managed to
wring profit from the ranch. Succumbing to tuberculosis in 1919, Black left the ranch in the midst
of Mexican civil strife. Black's successor, David Skene McKellar, managed the ranch until 1953.
Skene was a meticulous record keeper and able manager who enhanced the fortunes of the ranch
during revolution, agrarian reform and depression. His son, Alden Scott McKellar, assumed
leadership of the Mariposa fortunes until the ranch was divided and finally sold in 1962. A.S.
McKellar kept the ranch papers until he donated them to Special Collections in 1990.
Other voices speak of work; the labor involved in surveying, fencing, digging wells and
stock tanks, the labor associated with stock raising and the marketing of stock. It was and still is a
muscular activity, a vital life out-of-doors, frequently on horseback. This kind of work began
early in the day and early in life. A.S. McKellar commented that his familiarity with horses began
so early in his life that he has almost no recollection of it. By the time he was 12, he rode like a
veteran cowboy, worked like one and felt like one in every consideration except age.
But the physical labor of running a very large ranch is only one aspect of this work. The
Mariposa Ranch was first, foremost, and until its sale, a business. A business, not incidentally,
that made money. Boxes of business correspondence with factors in Mexico, Texas, Missouri and
elsewhere regale the reader with the very real work of wringing profit from the land, animals and
heavy amounts of creativity, judgment and know-how. The business of business is here detailed
with a completeness infrequently found. The family kept daily summaries of weather conditions,
rainfall, ranch and family activities and visitors. Sterling C. Evans made visits to the ranch and
Skene McKellar returned the favor; both enriching each other with discussions on minutiae of
ranch operations. In addition to these journals, regular reports to Learmonth family stockholders
in Australia provide literate evidence and commentary on the labor of ranching and analyses of
economic and political trends in Mexico.
Lastly, open one of La Mariposa's boxes and you hear the voices of stamina, commitment
and optimism. The attitude of people toward what is possible form them is called confidence. As
everyone knows, you have an advantage if you believe in yourself. So it was with the McKellars.
Many - if not all - of the accomplishments of the McKellars result from that family's attitudes.
During the instability of the Mexican Revolution, most if not all of the Mariposa neighbors threw
in the towel and waited out the turmoil from safety across the border. But Ernest Black did not,
and Skene McKellar did not. Bandits robbed the ranch, despoiled it of horses and other stock.
Some were threatened and succumbed to those threats. The Mariposa endured. That endurance
represents the kind of stubborn tenacity that built the ranch and sustained it.
The Mariposa Ranch is a tissue of the people who managed it for 60 of its 70-year life:
the McKellar family. The ranch's bone and sinew are the men and women of that family. The 25
feet of inventories and indexed manuscripts, diaries, photographs, and correspondence of the
Mariposa echo of work, creativity, stamina, Caledonian courage and generosity of the McKellars.
Reprinted from Keepsake no. 21, Friends of the Sterling C. Evans Library, 1992
