From New Mexico to Upperville, What a Ride

From New Mexico to Upperville, What a Ride

The family reunion was held this past October to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the sprawling San Simon ranch in New Mexico. Six months later, Mary Stokes was still glowing as she sat at the dining room table in her long-time Upperville home recalling that memorable weekend.

Mary grew up on that ranch, met her late husband, Tom Stokes, at a dance in a nearby town and was one of about 125 descendants of original owner Captain Claiborne Merchant who gathered to commemorate the anniversary and catch up with friends, relatives and neighbors they hadn’t seen in years.

“I’m a rancher’s daughter,” Mary said, “and I still love that place.”

What’s not to love? It’s located in the Permian Basin in western Texas and the southeast corner of New Mexico, noted for its rich petroleum, natural gas, and potassium deposits. The ranch, now managed by two of Mary’s cousins, is a beef cattle operation with 800 head grazing over a vast, arid area that includes the Chihuahan Desert.

San Simon also has a rich history. Merchant, a Tennessee native and captain in the Confederate Army, was Mary Stokes’ great grandfather. He gave Abilene, Texas its name, is considered the town founder and settled there after the Civil War.

Partnering with businessman D.D. Parramore, they purchased land in Arizona and New Mexico and ran cattle over their property. When they eventually split up with a handshake agreement, Parramore took the Arizona holdings and Merchant the New Mexico land.

One of Captain Merchant’s three sons was Mary’s grandfather, William Merchant. His son, also William, was Mary’s father and educated at Trinity College in Connecticut. For ten years, he taught at the Pomfret prep school in Connecticut, but eventually he and his wife, Mary Francis, who grew up on a ranch east of Carlsbad, returned to San Simon.

During the week, Mary and her sister Joyce attended school in Carlsbad, 60 miles from home, and stayed with their grandmother. Then they changed into jeans and boots and headed back to San Simon for the weekend. They learned to ride and occasionally went out on cattle roundups, riding “drag” in the far safer, and dustier, back of the herd.

“My parents were not going to have me marry a cowboy,” Mary said, the main reason she, too, went east to college in Boston. Instead, she married a Virginian, though they first met in New Mexico. Tom Stokes was in the Army and stationed at Ft. Bliss in El Paso.

He went to Carlsbad on leave in order to visit San Simon’s cattle operation and meet Mary’s father. While traveling out to the ranch he flagged down a truck filled with tires to get better directions to the ranch.

Mary Stokes at the entrance to her family’s San Simon Ranch in New Mexico, then and now.

The truck’s driver was Mary, wearing old Levis and boots. She didn’t introduce herself, but pointed him in the right direction. Later that night, Tom was back in town and properly introduced to her at a country club dance. He always liked to say he met the two sides of Mary in one day: Levis and boots and then a party dress, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Tom’s family owned Ayrshire in Upperville “and I’ve been in Virginia ever since,” Mary said.

She’s been back to the ranch many times over the years, including that October reunion, when Country Western singer Red Steagall presided over some of the festivities. Mary and her cousin

Claiborne, one of the ranch owners, were the first to hit the dance floor and she got a tad emotional just thinking about it.

“He had tears in his eyes,” Mary said. “I asked him why he was crying. He said, ‘because I’m looking right at my own heritage.’”

Clearly, it was a very special time to remember.