Mose Wesley Hays, 1015 West Agarita Avenue, San Antonio, Texas
Mose W. Hays was a foremost cattleman and business man of the Northeastern Panhandle country, and was one of the oldest residents in that part of the state.
During the quarter of a century in which he has known the Panhandle all the agricultural development and industrial changes have taken place there, for through all the ages during which Northwest Texas had been a portion of the new world continent its resources and its landscape features had never experienced such development and mutation as they have during the short time of white men's occupation and exploitation of this region. Mr. Hays has accordingly witnessed all the important history of that section of the state, and is one of the few men whose lot has been permanently cast with the Panhandle since 1877.
Born in Warren County, Kentucky, Mr. Hays at the age of two years was taken by his parents, N. M. and Sarah (Phillips) Hays, both native Kentuckians, to Jackson County, Missouri, about twenty-five miles east of Kansas City, and later the family became pioneer settlers of Colorado, in which state the parents spent the remainder of their lives. Mr. Hays became identified with the cattle industry in boyhood and it has formed his principal and most profitable pursuit throughout his active career. In 1871 he left the family home in Colorado and went West, spending five years in Nevada and California, during most of which time he was a cowboy.
From the Pacific slope he came east to Texas. With his brotherin-law, Joe Morgan, he drove a bunch of Mexican cattle from Corpus Christi, Texas, to the open range in the Panhandle country. This was in 1877, and he has lived in that part of the state ever since until the past five years, when he took up his residence in San Antonio, having retired from active business. It makes him one of the old-timers, as there are only a few now living there who were in the Panhandle as early as that. Up to 1902 his ranching operations were carried on mostly in Hemphill County, where for a number of years he had the noted old Springer ranch. His last ranch was located in the southeastern part of Lipscomb County, where he owned about thirty-five hundred acres of land, his residence and ranch headquarters being three miles south of Higgins. His ranch was known for its typical western hospitality as well as for progressive and enterprising methods of operating, which were everywhere in evidence. Mr. Hays has been uniformly successful in the cattle business and has attained a most satisfactory degree of prosperity. He was one of the three owners comprising the Higgins Hardware Company, which conducted the leading hardware store in Lipscomb County.
In numerous other affairs of public and business nature he has exerted his influence, and he is a man of recognized ability and integrity in whatever he undertakes.
Mr. Hays was married early in life to Miss Lou Turner of Mills County, Iowa, and has one child, Mrs. L. C. Kelley of Wichita, Kansas, who, as Bonnie Hays, attended the Mulholland School in San Antonio. In April, 1912, Mr. Hays married Miss Bessie Long of San Antonio (formerly of Owensboro, Kentucky) and for the past four years they have lived in their home in Agarita Avenue, Beacon Hill, building one of the first modern bungalows on that street.
Source: Trail Drivers of Texas: Interesting Sketches of Early Cowboys, compiled by John Marvin Hunter, published by University of Texas Press, 2010; Pgs. 372-374
