Lunching with Lizzie Johnson Williams

I am sipping my afternoon Earl Gray at the Driskill Hotel in downtown Austin when Elizabeth Johnson Williams strides into the cafe, diamonds dangling from her ears like the peaches ready for picking in the Hill Country. Her dark hair is expertly piled on top of her head with a small pearl comb tucked in on the side to corral any stray curls. I struggle to imagine this jewel-besotted grand dame driving a herd of cattle up the Chisolm Trail, and yet, that is precisely why I have sought her company today.

“Please, call me Lizzie,” she directs as she extends her gloved hand.

After pleasantries, ordering some small sweets (gooseberry pie for her, fruit pudding for me), I express my condolences on the recent loss of her husband Hezekiah “Hez” Williams. Perhaps best known for his gregarious charm and fondness of alcohol, Hez’s health had deteriorated despite seeking comfort in the Hot Springs of Arkansas and the dry climate of El Paso.

“He wasn’t much of a business man, but I loved the old buzzard,” Lizzie confides.

What Hez lacked in business savvy, Lizzie made up for in spades. Born in Missouri to two educators, Lizzie started her career like most women of the day as a school teacher. To make a little extra money, she also kept the books for many of the local cattlemen.

“Keeping the books for those cattle barons taught me two things: one, I have a good head for numbers. And two, there was a lot of money to be made in cattle and I wanted to be the one making it.”

When she wasn’t teaching or balancing accounts, Lizzie was busy writing short stories. “No one would buy fiction written by a woman, so I made up pen names and submitted them to publications like Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly.” Lizzies guards the identity of her published stories, but reliable sources have revealed that titles such as “The Sister’s Secret,” “The Haunted House Among The Mountains,” “Lady Inez” and “The Passion Flower, an American Romance” all belong to Lizzie.

In those early years, while Lizzie juggled teaching, bookkeeping and writing, she also shrewdly saved over $2500 which she invested in the Evans, Snyder, & Bewell Cattle Company of Chicago. Three years later, she sold her interest for an astounding $20,000.

“Money and investing came quite easily to me. I could be patient and quite tight with my dollars, but I saw how the cattlemen invested their money to make even more money. So I took that $20,000, chose the name “CY” to register my brand and started buying cattle.”

Not long thereafter, Lizzie met Hez, a retired Baptist minister and widower with several children. Hez’s smooth talking and winning smile charmed Lizzie, even if his constant drinking and gambling worried her. Before Lizzie agreed to marry Hez on June 8, 1879, she had him sign a prenuptial agreement, through which she retained rights to all her property brought into the marriage—a first at the time in Texas.

While Lizzie maintained her daily scripture reading and Hez upheld his daily drinking routine, the couple had a great deal of respect for one another. Both Lizzie and Hez bought and sold cattle, but Lizzie was far better at business and oversaw the finances for both of them. On occasion, Lizzie loaned Hez money, but insisted he repay her. Rumor has it the two were also very competitive; ranch hands report that Lizzie would often order Hez’s calves to be marked with her brand, while Hez would simultaneously instruct the same workers to mark her calves with his brand.

“It’s true, I might have taken one or two of Hez’s cattle,” Lizzie sheepishly confides. “But you know, he was just going to lose them anyway.”

During the Civil War, Lizzie shrewdly grew her herd by any means possible, including “brushpopping.”

“At that time a rancher could keep any unbranded cattle they found wandering around,” Lizzie explains. “Given that most of the men were off fighting in the war and few ranchers could afford much fencing, I knew there were a lot of cattle out there, free for the taking, if you knew how to find them. So I told my ranch hands to scour those thickets for wandering cattle. It was just a matter of rustlin’ them out of the bushes, and marking them with my 'CY’ brand before herding them back to the ranch. Wasn’t really much effort at all.”

But to make money off all those cattle, Lizzie knew they needed to get to Kansas City, which meant someone needed to drive them up the Chisholm Trail. Lizzie didn’t trust Hez to oversee her herd, so she decided to make the trip herself, following the herd in a horse-drawn buggy. Other ranchers trusted Lizzie, too, and soon she was in charge of overseeing the “community herd” as they traveled north.

Life on the Trail was not for the faint of heart. Lizzie and her cowboys endured almost daily encounters with rattlesnakes, skunks, Indians and storms.

“I remember one storm around Yukon that was so terrible that even the cowboys took off their spurs for fear of being struck by lightning.”

At the end of the Trail, Lizzie and Hez spent the fall and winter months in St. Louis, where Lizzie once again made extra money by keeping accounting books for other cattlemen. Those extra dollars also enabled Lizzie to treat herself to some of the fashionable clothes and jewelry in the city.

“After all that dust and red dirt, a lady likes to put on something a bit finer,” Lizzie confesses. “I would see something I fancied in one of those Parisian magazines and take it to the dressmaker in St. Louis who had bolts and bolts of those lovely European silks. I felt like I had earned it.”

Lizzie continued to grow her herd and acquire more and more real estate in Texas around Austin. But over the years, the increase of barbed wire fencing, quarantines and increased access to railroads made the drive north more difficult and ultimately less profitable for Lizzie and other ranchers. Ever quick to pivot when business circumstances changed, Lizzie began shipping her cattle beef from Galveston to Cuba.

With their increased wealth, the couple was able to travel, including to Cuba, to oversee their trade. Traveling to Havana also gave Lizzie the opportunity to shop for beautifully designed dresses inspired by the latest European fashions, silks, satins and jewelry. Purportedly, Lizzie has been known to spend $10,000 on jewelry on a single trip to New York, but her penchant for fashion proved to be the least expensive diversion during her time in Cuba.

One afternoon while Lizzie was reviewing the entries for the couple’s cattle business in her hotel suite, one of their associates rushed into the room to announce that Hez had been kidnapped! A ransom of $50,000 had been demanded for Hez’s safe return. Distraught and a bit disgruntled, Lizzie agreed to pay the ransom.

“I didn’t want to see Hez get hurt, but it hurt me to write that dang check,” Lizzie grumbled to me. “ And honestly, I wouldn’t put it past that old scheister to have himself kidnapped just to get a little spending money of his own!”

Maybe it was all the years of drinking, or perhaps the stress of travel and the kidnapping, but Hez’s health began to decline rapidly. Soon after their return home, Lizzie decided to take Hez to Hot Springs, Arkansas to see if the waters would help. Neither the restorative waters or the drier climate of El Paso made a difference, and it was there in El Paso that Hez passed away on July 26, 1914. Lizzie brought Hez back to Austin for burial, buying the most expensive casket available. On the undertaker’s bill, she simply wrote: “I loved the old buzzard this much.”

We’ve talked for over an hour, but all of this reminiscing has made Lizzie tired and she abruptly announces that she must go.

“You will forgive me. My husband was the outgoing one. I prefer to be alone with my numbers and my books.