Captain J. A. Brooks, Texas Ranger

13. Falfurrias, Brooks County

Judge James A. Brooks, who preferred to be called “Captain” for the rest of his life despite three decades on the bench, worked diligently to make the county named after him a viable entity. He presided by virtue of his office over the county commissioner’s court and as exof ficio superintendent of the public school system that he helped create . He oversaw the initial laying out of the county roads and the bridges, and in 1912 steered the county citizens through a deadly smallpox epidemic. On a monthly salary of $150 plus $600 annually as school superintendent, Brooks led the groundwork that established the new county. A courthouse was built in 1914 on the Falfurrias town square and the captain was honored at the festivities for his efforts to bring that project to fruition. The original plans for a courthouse had been shelved when most of voting Precinct Four was carved away into the new Jim Hogg County, and a construction bond issue of $68,000 did not pass until February 1914. Construction began in the spring and was completed on October 29, when two cornerstones were laid under the watchful eye of the county judge; meanwhile, court sat in session in the Donaho building near the square. On November 5 schools in Falfurrias were closed, the citizenry gathered behind the high school band as 190 FALFURRIAS, BROOKS COUNTY For some reason kind Providence has been good to me for which I am truly thankful. 13 Falfurrias, Brooks County 191 County Judge Brooks with Ranger captains William Gillette and W. W. Sterling, ca. 1920. Courtesy Brooks family. they paraded around the new edifice, and a brief ceremony took place prior to a community picnic served on the school grounds.1 Brooks County was not the only new county of that period, for the huge influx of new residents into that area and the subsequent power struggle among the South Texas bosses—Judge Wells, Don Manuel Guerra, Archie Parr, Ed Lasater, Brooks’s Ranger colleague A. Y. Baker, and John Closner—led to a melee of political lobbying activity in Austin to carve out new kingdoms. Willacy County was sliced away from parts of the old Cameron (1848) and Hidalgo (1852) counties the same year as Brooks County organized, and Jim Wells County followed the next year as it bit off a portion of Nueces County surrounding Alice. Archie Parr and his cohorts failed to create what would have been named Dunn County in a 1913 legislative battle, but Jim Hogg and Kleberg counties came into existence that year, the former wrenching 990 square miles away from Brooks County. Obviously in opposition to the move by powerful Brooks County rancher W. W. “Bill” Jones to split the new county and diminish the power of the Lasater political machine, Judge Brooks wrote to the state legislature that the proposed county “would be absolutely dominated by men who are wholly concerned in holding it as mere ranch properties and in perpetuating intolerable conditions which have existed and now exist in Zapata and Starr Counties.” Despite the efforts of Brooks and Lasater, Jim Hogg County peeled away, with Hebbronville as its county seat. The final division came eight years after the initial flurry of activity when Kenedy County was incorporated in 1921 as Willacy, Cameron, and Hidalgo—together with Starr County known collectively as “the Valley”—were reorganized by the state legislature.2 The Prohibition issue rambled through Texas and the country for the next two decades; Brooks County voted itself “dry” in December 1912, long before the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1919. Brooks preferred to stay publicly neutral on the subject, although there was little doubt among family and close friends that his Captai n J. A. Brook s, Te xas Rang e r 192 “marriage” to bourbon whiskey was insoluble; his daughter castigated him for his drinking all of her adult life. Judge Brooks outlasted six county attorneys, five sheriffs, and three county clerks during his twenty-eight years in the courthouse. In his first bid for reelection, the captain ran a vigorous campaign in the Democratic primary race during the summer of 1913, defeating Dr. Henry M. Bennett by a count of 148–119, and running uncontested in the general election. In fact, for the next two decades Brooks ran essentially unopposed. However, in 1932 L. A. Dickey...