Uncle Harry Knowles
Engineer in Mexico
Dedicated to descendants of Shaler and Mary Knowles and those of “Wils” and Fanny Heacock who are interested in family stories.
With love to the Sterling-Heacock branch!
Mary (Heacock) Hunter, Bartlesville, OK, November 19, 1992
The Ianthus Shaler and Mary Dodge Knowles family lived in the pioneer town of Kingsley, Iowa in the late 1900's. Fanny Knowles, a daughter, was one of their twelve children and was my Mother. I used to like to hear her recite in a single breath the names of her brothers and sisters: “Clara, Eva, Charlie, Fanny, George, Harry, Frank, Ellen, Ralph, Fred and Charlotte”. Their birth dates spanned 1873 to 1891.
In the same town lived another family, not as large, but this family provided three spouses for three of the Knowles family. Joseph John Heacock was the father and Joseph Wilson, his son. “Wils” said he fell in love with Fanny Knowles as she skated, red scarf flying, on his Father’s mill pond.
The Knowles daughters graduated from Kingsley High School. Even in that era of male dominated society, two of them graduated from Grinnell College. They all married and had fine families.
The six Knowles men had their pictures taken together, seated on the grassy front yard. That picture became familiar to me through the years. The first was Uncle Frank, Civil engineer, who brightened my tenth birthday with a letter and windfall of a ten dollar bill; Uncle Charlie, inventor, who visited the Heacocks in his red Carmen Ghia, when he was in his nineties; Uncle Harry, civil engineer who worked as mining engineer in Mexico; Uncle Fred, renowned orthopedic surgeon; Uncle Ralph, who after military service operated a radio station; and Uncle George, mortician and merchant.
“Wils” Heacock and Fanny Knowles married in Kingsley in 1899 and after 1913 lived in Edinburg, Texas, lower Rio Grande Valley. Our family included six children, dates spanning from 1900 to 1919: Richard, Dorothy, Esther, Mary, Steven and Joe. “Mama”, I’d say, “How did your Mama manage a dozen children?” “Well,” she would answer, “We all arrived one at a time, then we all took turns helping with cooking, sewing, outside chores, washing, ironing, and helping in the hardware store”. Iowa relatives lived far away from us in those times. Cousins, double cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandma and grandpa Knowles faded in my memory.
It must have been about 1914 when the Heacock kids in Edinburg, out of school for the hot summer, were hosts to two of their double cousins, Hugh (11) and Ralph (6) Knowles. They went barefoot most of the time, as I did, and spoke Spanish like Rita our Mexican “girl”. Papa spoke of the boys as “smart”. I found them a little intimidating, hence exciting. They had spent all but one year of their lives with their parents in Gomez Palacio, Durango Mexico. Uncle Harry Knowles and Papa’s sister Marguerite were their parents.
Years later this visit by the sons of Uncle Harry sparked my interest in the many letters my Mother received from him in 1956. It seemed that Steven Heacock, family traveler-historian, had driven through northern Mexico that year, in the area Uncle Harry had lived with his family and worked as an engineer. Steven’s pictures and questions plus the many “primings of the pump” by Mother, brought sixty two (62) letters from Harry, about his work there. They were short letters. Each shifted in place and subject. They were like a jig saw puzzle to be put together for a vivid picture of life there until 1915.
In one letter Uncle Harry wrote, “I’d hate to edit these notes into chronological order!” I couldn’t, and did not. My story will be only a taste of his vividly remembered years.
Uncle Harry not once mentioned “Culture shock” which he must have felt, when he arrived in the state of Durango. He left friends and family, green fertile Iowa. This land was parched; sometimes only four inches of rain fell a year. Sierra Madre mountains closed in the high desert country on the east and west. Rivers were scarce; water courses began, continued some miles, then disappeared. Such was the Nazas River. Gathering run off from mountains in the west, it wandered through the parched land, giving green life along its banks, through Gomez Palacio and Lerdo then disappeared in stark canyons south of Saltillo.
“I boarded a boat for Galveston”, he wrote, “through Texas to Durango”. How simple that sounds. Not so simple in 1905 (?). Aunt Marguerite came to Mexico with him later, after he learned how connection were made by horseback or buggy, wagon or coach, or train if available. He told of a coach and six which met trains in Gomez Palacio. He must have used the rails through Texas to Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey, Saltillo, then Durango . . . . . . Coaches were not new to him. After Ames and Columbia in 1898, he and his brother Frank rode prairie schooner, mountain coach and saddle horses to explore Yellowstone. Forested Yellowstone was in sharp contrast to the desert country of northern Mexico with its cactus, mesquite, ocotillo, blazing sun reflecting on high, dry land.
His first job as mining engineer was with Turissimo, a boston owned mining corporation. Rich deposits of gold and silver were there, as well as iron, zinc, copper and lead. These metals had been mined from Aztec time to the Spanish conquest.
“At San Luis were four mines, values mostly in copper, some silver and a little gold. Some ore was shipped as is, some was crushed, run over concentrating wet tales and shipped to Velordena Smelter. We were penalized for any zinc in the ore . . . One mine north of Tlahualilo finally ran 35% zinc and was abandoned. But when the war (WW I) broke out he went back and shipped the ore, for the zinc made a million.”
Uncle harry writes: “This is not the story of a train load of silver bullion; it is the real McCoy. About 45 tons of silver in pigs was loaded into seven stock cars at Mapino, sold to American Smelting Co and thru Gomez Palacio was headed toward Monterrey, reached a point east where the train was burned. The silver melted and lay on the road bed 4" thick. There was no one near when I saw it first. Three months later Pancho Villa’s men were whacking at it, tried to sell it a most sea ports, no dice. The third time six months, I was bound for Gomez Palacio. The owners were cutting out one foot blocks square and hauling it away, using donkeys, I think . . . . . About this same location Potter and I were going toward Gomez on a Ry coach, eating good cold beans out of a can when over the N. 80 yards were THREE SKELETONS perfectly erect, bones polished by sun and sand. This will give you an idea what I meant at the beginning, saying that I would omit some things.
It was reassuring to know that the Knowles family had a “very comfortable house” in Gomez Palacio, “one long room clear across, then four rooms across the back. It even had electricity. At that location, next door, a rich man, Ugarde, built around a block with a back street coach entrance. At dusk the merry widow would regale in glittering attire and big grand piano, open windows so the public could view”. The only family guests he mentions were “Mama and Papa . . . Papa brought his hunting trunk”. That was 1907. Their son Ralph was born their in ‘09.
Chelina, the cook is mentioned in his letters several times. I doubt that Chelina would qualify after Aunt Marguerite came to Mexico, and had charge of the house-hold. He writes, “she (Chelina) 4' 9", 84 pounds and 84 years old, could roll a corn shuck with one hand and biscuits with the other. Got on a binge every two weeks. Once she was off a few days, had fallen in a ravine.
“A 1100 pound fat steer cost $11.00 for the commissary. Kept pretty good in that high and dry. One time I went back and noticed a leg bone a bit too animated and had it thrown over a cliff. Chelina was looking. The next day I walked into the kitchen, ‘Chelina, in the name of heaven what is that odor?’ She half covered her face. ‘Es mi caldo’!
“At 11:00 AM the children at Turrissima would carry the hot tortillas and dinners 1000 feet straight up the mountain to the miners. Chelina would scamper along. I knew of a ‘runner’ who would make 80 miles in 18 hours.”
“ . . . . I had my tents, camp and cook, a Chinese at Cordova. Did not get to Gomez Palacio except on weeks ends. Has a small steamer trunk on two short logs, 14" in diameter. Shoes etc. on dirt floor. I heard it raining hard. A flash of lightening revealed apparel floating about. I rolled over and got more sleep. I think it rained twelve inches that night. Right before the rain at midnight an old man right in front of the tent was singing, ‘Gracias a Dio-o-os’ over and over. Water had come down the canal to his little patches.” In searching for mineral properties Uncle Harry was involved one time in sleeping “in an enormous cave, and in a cabin on the side of a mountain so steep that rocks, loosened by goats above, rolled down and landed on the roof.”
Reduced prices for copper and lead in world markets shut down most of the mines. Uncle Harry was immediately engaged as engineer of the Compania Agricola and Colonisadora del Tlahualilio, state of Durango. Water diverted from the Nazas River would irrigate vast acreage for crops. The 200,000 acre plantations belonged to a British-American company, close to Lerdo and Torreon.
He writes: “The Rio Nazas drains a mountain area of 30,000 square miles and discharges in flood, 50,000 cubic feet per second . . . With water, the land is worth $150 or more; without water, $4.00.”
To oversee 20,000 acres of brush clearing and supervise the exact level of grading by hundred of laborers, required countless miles of horseback riding . . . . “I frequently made trips on horse, alone. I was going east across the level country. In the distance appeared two horsemen. I always had a Big Blue colt. Big shot Mexicans all carried a carbine or 30-30 in addition. As the two men came withing 150 yards they both reached down and pulled the thong which held their lariat. I know it was just in fun but I pulled the 38-44 into view and they passed on by. In this part of the country two horses passing that was would always stop of their own accord until the riders passed the time of day, week or month. . ‘Como esta su papa, mama, y mi compadre . . . Houses were generally 20 miles apart.”
“In the States we have a habit of ridiculing everything elsewhere. One day I was on the outskirts of Lerdo I noticed a heavy two wheeled ox cart come from the direction of Nazas. They unhitched and turned the oxen out to feed on grass. They had come 150 miles from the north of Durango, parallel the rail road, with about ten bales of cotton, competing with the railroad! . . . . When I was there, the city of Torreon passed an ordinance requiring all men to come to town with pants on. You see they had worn a sheet folded into a diaper.”
“One April 16 I was in the Pullman to Durango. Southwest of Nazas looking out at the fields, groups of peons planting corn, soil reddish black and beautiful, as we passed, the laborers knelt and touched the forehead to the earth. I asked an American by me what it meant. He raised his eyes to the man in the seat ahead; he was the Bishop who had visited all these places the week before to bless the earth, soil, people and all . . . you know where I get that ‘April 16th?’ Not from a diary, for I never even wrote down the day I was born, It should have been the day to plant corn!”
“One of my duties in 1907-1908 was to measure the water we received each day, about one half mile down our canal, also the kilometer readings of all 13 canals. It was an hour’s LABOR to lower just on the gate. I had one illiterate Indio, couldn’t even make a number, take a trip on the trolley and come back and from some marks (not even hieroglyphics, give me the canal reading in meters and centimeters, and they were right I checked!
Uncle Harry made a good life for his family and himself on the plantation. He writes, “The plantation was delightful with every modern convenience with tennis courts, automobiles and riding horses. Christmas dinners were something to dream about, topped off with burning plum pudding”. But there were boundary disputes and all kinds of threatening situations, especially as banditry worsened. He learned early to “be agreeable, act dumb, show your teeth, but with a smile”. In his daily work he used “as much diplomacy as engineering”. . . (Rex Hunter said the same thing for his engineering work in England . . M.H.)
“When Hugh was seven years old and Ralph was two, Hugh attended a German school with three other children in Lerdo. Not a log cabin but half a mud room. At the age of seven they all spoke perfectly three languages, chatter away in any of the languages arithmetic with equal facility and no confusion . . . We all belonged to THE German Club, American Club and Cosmopolitan Club in Torreon. The Cosmopolitan always in silk hats and tails and gowns from Paris. But the Germans were the honestest and soberest.”
The revolutionary movement began during the peaceful time of old Porfirio Diaz, when bands of the poor from the north Durango desert roved, burning trains and taking what they wanted and needed. That was rough on plantation life. Government soldiers (federales) tried to put down the revolt but destruction and unrest lasted from 1910-1917. Even in the Rio Grande Valley rumors of possible raids by Pancho Villa kept all on the alert. Uncle Harry writes, “These bands would drop in on us for food and money. To them the plantation was an oasis. I remember one year this direct loss amounted to $40,000. On one occasion they drove 500 of our best mules hitched to wagons loaded with provisions.
“Four carloads of us made a rainy drive to Lerdo. With no lights, all I had to watch was the lightning along the road tracks. 1500 rebels had been stationed at Campana all afternoon. The Colonel with 500 men at 7 PM advised he might not be able to hold out. I know it would be a hard trip; we later learned the rebels were within 200 yards at the bridge when we passed at 9 PM. The young Mexican driver and I were in the big black 1906 Maxwell. The other cars had gone on. In the car I had a trophy of a six shooter given me by a bandit and I had three shells to fit it. The car went dead with 19 miles to go. I fumbled with the Bosch Magneto to no avail; turned on the acetylene lights a second when “pow pow” overhead. They sounded like 75 M.M. the way they whistled. We jumped out and hid to see what next. Right alongside our big canal and I knew the country better than they did. Nothing happened. Saw a night fire of some irrigators ahead and off the road. Sent the boy driver to get a pair of mules to pull us to Lerdo. Reached there at 3 AM.
“When the revolt first broke out there was quite a colony of Americans at Valardena, well armed. When the rebels got in range, they cut loose and the Mexicans fled. The next day there were 1500 rebels, no shooting. The Americans were lined up to the wall, rebels raised their rifles a minute, lowered them, told the Americans to leave and stay left. Then minutes later the Americans crossed the border 500 miles away!
“Boundaries were changed and plantation confiscated. Where we fed 8,000 people, a thousand now starve. In 1915 I saw a 140,000 improved hacienda go completely to pot confiscated and didn’t feed 200. It was a horrible sight. I drove through it before and after . . .
The constant threat of raids, confiscations and physical danger made life difficult for the Knowles family and everyone else. In 1912 Hugh and Ralph traveled back and forth from Texas and Mexico between school semesters. In 1915 the whole family moved to San Antonio then later to Birmingham, closing their pioneer years in Mexico.
After the sixty two letters Uncle Harry wrote his sister Fanny, mostly during ‘56, his letters slowly came to and end. The more he wrote, the more fascinating experiences he remembered. He brought that pioneering, changing era to life; he showed respect for the abilities of Mexicans he worked with. Using his diplomacy and skills, he managed to successfully perform his work as mining and agricultural engineer. I wish I could have visited the family in Gomez Palacio, without the rebels!
Note: Attached to this story was a letter written to Fanny Heacock on 08/07/1959 from Harry.
Dear Fanny,
An inaccurate glance at the history of N. Central Mex. In about 1940 was “granted” by her Highness to the Marquis Kee de Arguaye, Durango, Coahuila Saltillo, Torreon and N to the big bend. Near Torreon the Rio Nazas divided Durango from Coahuila. In the Laguna District there were four major owners . . . . Lavin, a Spaniard married a Mexican had 4 sons in the 1870's. Our big canal went right thru his land nearly all the way and he fought its construction all the way. A large gorgeous well was reputedly poisoned 12 miles out, but never used again. It had a 14" X 14" X 34 fit poplar timber across the top and 3 ft above the oxen’s heads as they rotated the water out.
The oldest son dropped dead as he was pardoned and taken from the jail. (Right in front of my office.) I knew the others. Boy could they shoot a 45 automatic. The youngest born 1880 educated in St Louis and would mount his bride on a bronc. He ran the plantation 11 mi N. Of Gomez. Came in one evening and found no meal prepared, shot the cook. But when it came his turn to die, laid down with tears and begged his executioners to let him go, where that hujan (sic) just thumbed his nose.
Love, Harry
