The Story of Frances Baca — Threads that weave us together
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A sequence of events can occur in the most unexpected ways. An article titled “Folklore of Lincoln County Post Offices” brought an e-mail from two sisters in Indiana who were working on their family geneology. The thread that wove New Mexico and Indiana together was that their great grandmother had been one of the postmasters of Lincoln County in the early 1900s.
Although family oral history isn’t always totally reliable, Judith P. Hamilton and Kathy Anderson Goins thought their great grandmother had been postmaster (no gender quarrel in those days) in the late 1800s. However, Jim White of Farmington, NM, considered the state historian of post offices, found that Frances Baca Walters, born in 1855, became postmaster on November 16, 1901.
The family had heard stories that she had played with Billy the Kid when she was a child. They weren’t sure whether to believe that or not. However, a handwritten history by one of Frances’ daughters, Bess, makes it entirely believable.
Bess tells of her grandfather Baca having been shot in the back with an arrow, then falling over a smouldering campfire. His wife, Bess’ grandmother Virginia, now a widow, became a hired girl near Lincoln, leaving Frances to live with her grandparents. When Frances was seven her mother returned to take her to Tularosa. Frances scarcely remembered her and refused to go. That night she was getting a glass of water from the kitchen but ran screaming back saying she saw her mother in the kitchen. No amount of persuasion could convince her otherwise.
Very early the next morning a man came to tell them the Indians had surrounded the caravan on its way back to Tularosa and massacred all except the children who were old enough to ride. They were taken captive. Four year-old Jenny, a child of Virginia and her second husband, was one of those captured. She refused to tell Bess the story as “it was too horrible.” She did take her to visit an 85 year-old man, Mr. Cline, who had bought her from the Indians.
His story was that Jenny was the image of her mother and he felt he would know her if he ever saw her. Often, after the time when Indians were confined to reservations, they would come into town to trade. Mr. Cline would go among the Indian children trying to find Jenny. After ten long years he finally saw a young girl he was sure was Jenny. The Chief insisted she was Indian but Mr. Cline finally persuaded him to answer his questions. Eventually the Chief said they had been taken at a massacre at a tall pointed hill between Ruidoso and the Mescalero Indian Reservation.
When Mr. Cline found there had been seven wagons in the caravan, he was sure it was Jenny and asked the Chief to give her to him as he knew her parents. The Chief replied that he might sell her. They agreed then on five hundred pounds of shelled corn but the Chief cautioned Mr. Cline to tie her up as she thought she was Indian.
After much screaming and many tears, Mr. Cline was able to tell her some of the story. A vague memory of her childhood began to surface and when Mr. Cline told her if she would stay with him he would take care of her, teach her to cook and keep house. He would also buy her pretty dresses and send her to school. The last enticement was what won her over. She was then fourteen. She received an education equal to high school. Later she married and Mr. Cline lived in a small two-room house beside their home. Jenny and her half-sister, Frances, met only once in their lives.
Billy the Kid was friends with the family, too. Bess felt he was no outlaw or gangster but that when he saw a man who had befriended him shot down in cold blood, his horse killed and the murderers gallop away laughing and yelling, he swore he would kill every one of them. He did get all of them except two. Though his hands were small as a woman’s, he could shoot as well with his left hand as with his right and always carried two revolvers.
She gives this vignette of him. He and his gang came to her parents’ home and asked for corn for their horses. He told his men to not waste any corn as her father had worked hard for it and he, Billy, had no money to pay for it. He asked for enough bread for a day or two. Her mother baked biscuits for them and when Billy left he thanked her and said he would see her later. A week or so later a wagon drove up with something covered in it. The driver said it was a present from Billy. He had butchered someone’s beef and sent half of it to Bess’ parents.
Bess continues the family history and said that her mother, Frances Baca, was married to her father, James Volney Walters, when she was 13 or 14 and he was 42. They were married in 1869 in La Mesilla. He obtained a 160-acre land grant from the U. S. government for land near Lower Penasco. They first lived in a sort of cabin with one square window and a door with a knothole in it. Later they moved into a log house. Together they had twelve children, nine girls and three boys.
Another family member relates that Frances Baca Walters, in later years, contracted with the postal department to allow ranchers to pick up mail at her home in Lower Penasco. That probably was the precursor of her appointment as postmaster. Post Office Historian Jim White says it was a fourth class post office and political appointments were for two years. Evidently Frances Baca Walters was reappointed as she served for almost eight years.
Though Elk and the Lower Penasco area were at one time in Lincoln County, they are now in Chaves County after Lincoln County was diminished in size. New Mexico Place Names by Robert Julyan describes Lower Penasco as a settlement in Chaves County on the Rio Penasco. It had a post office from 1884-1917 but now receives its mail in Dunken. It had the second post office in Chaves County. (Roswell was first.) It was and still is a farming area, overlooking a deep gorge of the Penasco River. Another reference says the settlers succeeded in extending the Penasco for 25 additional miles by ditching it away from the sink holes and compacting it by driving cattle over it. A few miles farther to the west on U.S. 82 was the settlement of Elk, named of course for the many elk in the canyon. Originally it was called Yorktown. Archeologists have found there were much earlier settlers. Artifacts of black-on-red bowls date them about 1200. The 1800s saw many clashes between the homesteaders and the Mescalero-Apache Indians, as evidenced by the Baca-Walters family stories.
Frances Baca Walters’ demise was written about in a newspaper article from the area in an unknown publication. “The sad news reached here Tuesday morning that Mrs. Francis (sic) Walters was found dead in her bed at Mr. Albert Neatherland’s (ed note: later felt to be “Netherlin”) in Quavo. She was the P.M. at Lower Penasco, and was well known by every one throughout the country. Her death was due to heart failure and was quite a shock to her many friends. She leaves several children and many friends to mourn her death.” She was only 52 at the time of her death.
Today Lower Penasco isn’t even shown on a New Mexico map although Elk is. When you pass through these areas that no longer have enough population to appear on the map, you can know that pioneers like Frances Baca Walters and James V. Walters have left their marks even though neither they, nor their marks, are visible.
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