Scottish farmer becomes rancher

Alexander Mitchell was 18 when he left home in Aberdeen, Scotland, for America. When he was the only one on board who showed up for breakfast, the ship captain asked how he was not sick like the rest of the passengers. He replied he grew up fishing on the North Sea by tying three of his mother's wash tubs together. Mitchell, born June 2, 1863, in Peterhead, Scotland, was the youngest of nine children born to George and Isabella Keith Mitchell. They were farmers. Mitchell first landed at Montreal, Quebec Province, Canada, where there was a processing station which required immigrants to wait several months before receiving official papers. After receiving his papers, he went to Boston, according to his son Malone Mitchell, who wrote stories told to him by his father in "Terrell County Texas — Its Past, Its People," a county book published in 1978. "In 1895, he came to Texas to enter in partnership with his brother James in Crockett County," Malone wrote. "In a short time he realized the two of them had to have more land to make it, so he decided to come farther west." After a trip of a month or more in which Alexander went as far as Alpine, he decided to purchase a ranch owned by Joe and Garrett Bean. He and his brother dissolved their partnership in 1897, and the next year he moved to what would become Terrell County. Terrell County was created in 1905 from Pecos County and named for Confederate Gen. A.W. Terrell. Alexander spent his first year camping, sleeping on the ground and cooking outside a small wooden building which remained at the Bean headquarters after a fire burned the original house. A year later, he built a four-room house with a porch...more