Kleberg -- Robert Justus Page: 3 of 11
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dairy farming and brought blooded cattle from Missouri and Kentucky. To
accelerate his agricultural pursuits he set aside 40,000 acres for the townsite of
Kingsville and another 40,000 acres for the towns of Raymondville and Lyford.
He became financially interested in cotton mills and was a director of several South
Texas Banks. **Surviving beside his two sons are three daughters Mrs. Sarah Spohn
Shelton and Mrs. Tom East of Kingsville and Mrs. John A. Larkin of New York City.-
no Alice mentioned!!!!!
KRP-701-Robert Kleberg the first arrived in Texas n 1834 about the same time
eleven year old Richard King was making plans to run-away. Robert the 1st was a
Prussian lawyer who came from a line of merchants and lawyers who was born in
103. The noble connection to Simon Heinrich Sack (of Glogau in Silesai, a Royal
Attorney General gave the von Roeder/Kleberg clans a large dose of frontier
snobbery and scholarships and dowries for the children. The male descendents
were eligible for educational expenses and the females for dowries. The von Roeder-
Kleberg sons trained for le with Robert Sr. training at the University of Virginia.
Robert the 1st fought at San Jacinto and distinguished himself sufficiently to be
appointed as a Judge on the Land Commission by Sam Houston.-check out if he
helped to guard Santa Anna.
KPR-702-The three von Roeder-Kleberg sons became lawyers. Two of them
went on to distinguish themselves as legislators and congressmen. The present day
Klebergs like to describe Robert Sr. as a son of a San Jacinto hero, member of an
intellectually and physically vigorous family, whose fortune resided not in cash but
in character. Both Robert I and Robert Sr. married into families of mean. When
Robert and Alice married they were 32 and 24.
**Robert was never a cowboy but a lawyer who administered a rancho. His
contributions were intellectual, methodical and legalistic. (I would add scientific)
His motivation was dynastic.
KPR-703-His great strength was administration and the execution of visionary
projects. To run the ranch he installed competent managers. James Doughty, then
the legendary Sam Ragland. Under these managers there were organizational layers
of cow-bosses, horse-bosses and vaqueros. Under Kleberg King Ranch became a
classic patriarchal Mexican-Spanish style rancho. Kleberg was called "el abagao" by
the vaqueros-the Patrone was a lawyer not a cowboy. He brought water to the
rancho by drilling deep Artesian wells. He cried when the first well was drilled
knowing that the water would change things forever in this hot droughty landscape.
In 1891 Kleberg spend $1000 dollars on a rainmaker experiment conducted by the
Department of Agriculture and the 23rd Infantry. After there was water Kleberg help
devise the agreement with the railroad that had the railroad built through the
rancho property from Corpus Christi to Brownsville. The railroad in turn made it
possible to subdivide the land into farms and towns. They had to lay out
government, businesses, schools, a hotel and a lumberyard and a newspaper and
bank. Henrietta wanted the "right sort" so she stipulated that liquor was never to be
sold in Kingsville. Kleberg added vast new holdings in land to Mama's rancho. He
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Kleberg -- Robert Justus, text, 2010; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1841275/m1/3/?q=%22cat-bom%22: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.