Richard Rhea Rippy Family History
By Jan Looper Smith
This article is based on a work by Gayle Campbell, called "The Life and Times of John William Rippy." Gayle is one of John William's great granddaughters, as am I. Gayle did some excellent research by accessing original documents and newspaper accounts, as well as visiting local museums. She thoughtfully included background information on the various locations where the Rippys lived in order to set the scene. However, I found that the colorful details served to obscure the plain facts in my memory, and I was unable to repeat the salient details. Therefore, I have written a sort of top-level summary of the plain facts, which I’m hoping will make them more memorable.
First Generation
Matthew Rippy (1740-1817)
The story starts with Matthew, who was born in Ireland, and came to America with his family in 1744, when he was four years old. His father was named Edward Ross Rippy. His mother, Susannah Thomas, was born in Wales. The Rippys came here before the Revolutionary War, and settled in North Carolina, in the county of Orange. They were farmers.
About 1759, Matthew married to Nancy Ann Holliday. They had twelve children. Their daughters were named Frances, Susannah, Virginia, Jane, and Sarah. Their sons were John M., Thomas C., Edward, Matthew Jesse, Joseph H., and James.
In his mid-thirties, Matthew provided supplies to the American army during the Revolutionary War. Later, he was designated as a Patriot by the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Further research shows that the Rippys were slave-holders. According to his will, when Matthew died in 1817, he had $400 in funds, over 300 acres of land, and four slaves to pass on to his children.
Second Generation
Edward Rippy (1764-1828)
Matthew’s eldest son, Edward, was born in Orange, North Carolina. He married a woman named Nancy, like his mother. They had eleven children.
In 1811, when Edward was 47, he moved his family to Sumner County in Tennessee. He died there in 1828.
Third Generation
Thomas Matthew Rippy (1809-1884)
Thomas Matthew was born in Orange, North Carolina, before his family moved to Sumner County, Tennessee in 1811. He was a farmer. Thomas Matthew was married to Rosanna Williams and they had five children. He died in Sumner County in 1884.
Fourth Generation
Edward D. Rippy (1836-1902)
Thomas Mathew’s son Edward D. Rippy was born in Sumner County, Tennessee.
Edward was a farmer. He was married to Frances Lane. They had ten children in Sumner. Around 1884, when Edward was 48, he and Frances moved their ten children to Stony, which is in Denton County, in Texas. Another son was born there.
Denton is in Central Texas North, about half way between Dallas-Fort Worth and the Oklahoma border.
Speculation: Gayle wonders why anyone would move from the “lush, green hills” of Sumner, Tennessee to the dry, rocky land of Stony, Texas. “Perhaps it was the lure of cheap land, or maybe just getting away from all the other Rippys.” I think she’s right on both counts. The Rippy family were pioneers in sparsely populated Denton county, so it seems likely that land was cheap. Also, since families were so large in those days, young people were forced to spread out in search of farm-lands and wives.
I can’t find any documentation about this, but I’m speculating that Edward D. bought a large farm, which was then inherited by his eldest son, John William.
Fifth Generation
John William Rippy (1864-1941)
John William was the first-born son of Edward D. Rippy and Frances Lane. Like most of his siblings, John was born in Oak Grove, in Sumner County, Tennessee, but in 1884 when he was 20, he moved with his family to Denton County, Texas.
In 1886, when he was 22, John William married Louisa Griffen. He was farming in Denton, but he also owned a lumber yard. John and Louisa had four sons: Richard Rhea, Max, Herschel and Maud.
Louisa died in 1894, when her sons were all under 5 years old.
in 1895, less than a year later, John married Mary Anna Nail, called Anna. Anna and John adopted the daughter of a friend of Anna’s who had died, in addition to having four sons and one daughter together. That is ten children in total.
Also in 1895, John’s home was destroyed by fire.
In 1896, John’s lumberyard was damaged by a tornado.
By 1910 John and Annie had moved to Otter Creek, in Kiowa County, Oklahoma. John was 46 years old. This was the Rippy family’s first venture into Oklahoma.
By the fact that he later moved back to Denton, I speculate that John had retained ownership of their farm there, leasing it out to others while they were gone.
In 1920, John and Annie were living in Moore, in Cleveland County, Oklahoma, according to the census. Their adopted daughter Ruth was a school teacher there. Moore is close to Oklahoma City, and also to Norman, where the university is located.
In 1923, they were living in Shawnee, Oklahoma, which is a good size town in the same region. Their son Max owned the Pickwick Market there, and their son Herschel worked there as well.
In 1928, when he was 64, John and Anna were again living on a farm in Denton County. John also owned a filling station, probably on a corner of his own land, which he leased out. This “filling station” must have been a sort of community center; in addition to selling gas and oil, the mail came there, and there was a lunch counter. In July of 1928, John was accused of killing the fellow who leased the filling station from him, J. I. Hornsby. He was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in the penitentiary.
When it came to trial in April of 1929, the case against John was solely circumstantial. Several people had been passing through the area—bus-riders, bike-riders, drivers—who testified that they saw John near the station about the time of the shooting, carrying a shotgun. Hornsby had been killed by a shotgun. John testified that he had gone to the station to get his mail on the day of the killing, and had returned home through a field, stopping to shoot a rabbit with his shotgun.
John’s motive was supposed to relate to the lease on the filling station. Hornsby had been leasing the station for about six months, and since he didn’t want to extend the lease, John had found a new tenant, who wanted to take possession a week before the lease was up. When the tenant approached Hornsby about this, Hornsby said he wanted to hold onto the station until the lease was up. John said that was agreeable with him; however, a few people reported to the court that John was dissatisfied with Hornsby—because he wouldn’t sell beer or whiskey—and John had been known to make drunken jokes about giving Hornsby trouble. Many others reported that the two men were on good terms, and John Rippy was known as a law-abiding citizen.
Six months later, this decision was reversed and remanded because a witness for John Rippy had not been permitted to testify. A new trial was set for December, 1930.
In the second trial, the prosecution again presented many witnesses who saw John in the area of the filling station, and a few that who thought John felt some ill will toward Hornsby.
The defense offered testimony by George Smith and Will Drake who both said that they had seen Hornsby alive after the time that the State alleged he had been killed. Gayle’s report seems to mix the two men’s names, but one or both of them declared that he stopped at the station after the alleged time of the killing, and found Hornsby “standing in the door of the station while a white man and two Mexicans were there in a Ford touring car.” He said a shotgun was in the front seat of the car, and that the white man was drunk and was trying to trade a half-gallon of whiskey for some gasoline.
The drunken white man, therefore, was another potential suspect. Since it is known that J. I. Hornsby refused to sell liquor, it seems plausible that some sort of fracas might have broken out when the white man tried to trade whiskey for gasoline.
However, the jury wasn’t convinced. They convicted John again, and lengthened his sentence from 25 to 35 years!
John’s attorneys appealed the decision, so in 1934, over 3 years after the second trial, he was granted a third trial and a change of venue to Dallas.
John was convicted again, and sentenced to life in prison, but that trial was overturned a few days later because, during his summation, when referring to the fact that John had not testified in this trial, the prosecutor got the names of Hornsby and Rippy mixed.
A fourth trial was set, but John failed to appear and forfeited his bail.
John and Anna fled to Oklahoma, where four of their children were already living. Richard and Herschel were in Tulsa, Maxwell was in Shawnee, and their adopted daughter Ruth was in Cushing. Lloyd and John had already moved to California, and were living in Whittier.
In 1935, John and Anna had settled in Bristow, a tiny town, about halfway between Tulsa and Shawnee. They lived in town, as John was too sick to manage a farm. He went by the name of Bill, and that is the name on his grave in Bristol cemetery.
In 1941, John’s wife Anna, sometimes called Annie, was struck by a fast passenger train while walking into town with a neighbor. Annie was 77 at the time. Witnesses said that seeing the train coming, she had attempted to dash across the track, but misjudged the train’s speed. John died of natural causes later that year.
John William was Gayle’s main subject, so she concludes her story there. However, John's son Richard Rhea was my grandfather, so I’m going to piece together what I know of his story.
Sixth Generation
Richard Rhea Rippy, 1889-1959
Richard Rhea was born in Denton County Texas, the first child of John William and Anna.
The next recorded event in Richard’s life was when he married Lillie Mae Ragle in 1911. Toward the end of her life, Lillie wrote her own memoir, entitled Whistle and Hoe.
Lillie was born in Parker County, Texas. Her farming family moved to a few other counties in Texas, before becoming pioneer settlers in Olney, which is in Young County, Texas.
When Lillie was a senior in high school, her father rented their farm out, and the family moved into the town of Olney. Without her father’s permission, she began going out with boys, and she met Richard at a party there. When her father discovered her one night alone in a buggy with another boy, he beat her severely with three branches of a peach tree.
After a year, her father moved the family back to the farm. Lillie refused to go with them. She got a job at a general merchandise store, and a furnished room, and lived on her own for awhile.
The following year, 1910, Lillie’s family moved 400 miles west to the town of Ralls, which is in Crosby County, near Lubbock, and not far from the border with New Mexico, and her father persuaded her to go with them. She soon found a job at the Crosby County Courthouse in nearby Emma, as the Deputy County and District Clerk. Her main job was recording deeds and licenses.
After about a year, she got a letter from Richard Rhea asking her to marry him. He was farming in Stony, in Denton County, on a farm near John and Anna’s place. Although she wrote back that she wasn’t ready to get married, he came out to Emma anyway. They were married that very day by the judge at the County Courthouse where Lillie worked. Born the same year, Richard Rhea and Lillie Mae were both 22 years old.
Richard was a tenant farmer, leasing first one farm and then another. They raised cotton and grains, and Richard did some livestock trading as well. Every year or two brought another move, and another baby.
In 1912, they had one son: Jay William Rippy. The following year, Lillie lost a baby.
In 1914, they moved to the Ralls area, where Lillie’s family lived. They rented a farm of about 300 acres, and they had a daughter, named Hazel. The next year Lillie had another stillborn baby.
In 1917, during the First Word War, they had a daughter. They named her Dulon after Mrs. Dulon Assiter, who was very helpful to them at that time. She was the wife of the man who owned the land they were renting.
In 1918, when Dulon was 13 months old, their son Fred Rhea was born.
The next year was a good crop year, and they were apparently able to save some money, because in 1919, Richard and his brother John bought a restaurant in Ralls, and the family moved to town. However while they were there, Richard had rented a farm and had a Negro working it on the shares. This venture was a failure due to a hail storm, and they had to return to farming. That year, Lillie had another stillborn child.
In 1920, their son Russell was born.
In 1922, they had daughter that they named May Ellen. Both Richard and Lillie were 33 years old.
The Payne-Rippy Feud
In 1923, while they were living on a farm near Ralls, Richard, known as Dick at the time, got into a feud with David Leonard Payne, who was known as ‘Poppin’ because of his skill with a pistol. This feud has become something of a legend in that part of Texas.
This is the way it was reported at the time by the Galveston Daily News, and other newspapers: "The Vendetta between Payne, Sweaza and the Rippys began when Payne won their money in a poker game. The trio beat Payne with a cane-bottomed chair until they thought he was dead. The attackers summoned an undertaker to pick up Payne's body; however, when the mortician arrived he discovered that Payne was still alive. Knowing that Payne earned his nickname "Poppin" because he was an expert shot and fearing that he would seek revenge for his beating, the gang decided to finish the job by ambushing him as he approached a Ralls barber shop. Payne was wounded but survived this attack as well. Next, [switching to a shotgun] the trio fired upon him from an automobile as he worked in his garden in Ralls." Once again, Payne survived, and his attackers were put on trial for attempted murder in Crosbyton, Texas. During a break in the trial, Maud Rippy and Sweaza were at the east entrance of the courthouse conversing with their attorney when Poppin Payne killed them "by a fusillade of 45-caliber pistol bullets as they sat on the courthouse steps. Six bullets penetrated Rippy´s body, one of the shots going into his heart. Sweaza was shot twice, once through the heart. Poppin Payne…surrendered to Sheriff John McDermett in the Courthouse."
In 2014, the "Shootout on the Courthouse Steps" was re-enacted by high school students as part of Crosby County's celebration of the 100th anniversary of its courthouse. According to that version, the feud started with a poker game in the town of Dimmit, the county seat in Castro County. "Poppin Payne was sitting at a deal table with what seemed a kind of prohibition-era gang of three. The three were J. Sweaza and Dick and Maud Rippy. Poppin Payne was winning every pot, and finally the gang of three were completely cleaned out. It isn’t known if Poppin Payne laughed as he rose from the table with all their money, but it is clear the gang of three never wanted to see Payne alive again. They picked up their cane-bottom chairs and began beating him with all the rage their chagrin could inspire.
"Finally, he lay not only still, but dead. At least they assumed he was dead, and without fleeing the scene, they did what they figured was right — they called the undertaker to come get the body. But Poppin Payne wasn’t dead. He revived. And later…the gang of three feared revenge from a man they knew could shoot with deadly accuracy. There was only one thing to do — take out Poppin Payne. When he stepped out of a barbershop in Ralls, they were waiting. Apparently they got off just one shot, and it only hit Poppin Payne in a fleshy part of his arm. He was angry, and they knew it. A court trial had been set to deal with the issue, and Poppin Payne was the witness. They had to finish the job.
"This time, they picked a shotgun, which with its scattered pattern, couldn’t miss. Poppin Payne and his wife were working in their garden when the gang of three arrived for a kind of drive-by shooting. They hit him in the back with a load of buckshot, and that made it war.
"While he was getting the buckshot taken out, Poppin Payne learned the doctor had a 45-caliber gun. He needed a bigger gun for something he needed to do, he had said, and traded a small-caliber gun for the doctor’s .45." However, his assailants were in jail, so he didn't get a chance to use the pistol until the they were tried for attempted murder. The story goes on:
"At a break in the trial, two members of the gang of three — Maud Rippy and Sweaza — were sitting outside on the steps of the Crosby County Courthouse, and Dick Rippy was checking on something inside. Poppin Payne appeared with his .45 and quickly dispatched Maud Rippy and Sweaza where they were, because, as everyone knew, he was a good shot. Dick Rippy saw what was happening and fled out another door to hide in the restrooms, which were outside the courthouse at the time.
"Poppin Payne went inside the courthouse and surrendered to Sheriff John McDermett and was taken to jail in Lubbock. At his trial, the jury acquitted him, either because the jurors considered it self-defense after the fact, or else they just didn’t blame Poppin Payne for what he did."
Although this story is dramatic and memorable, it isn't credible. It appears the so-called "prohibition-era gang of three" was laughably inept at committing murder, and Payne was remarkably resilient. Moreover, the story has it that Richard and Payne, who both lived in Ralls, went all the way to Dimmitt, over 100 miles away, to play poker with Maud and Sweaza.
Just who were these characters, anyway? We already know that Richard was 34 years old, and the father of six children, one just a year old. His adversary, David Leonard Payne, was 50, and the father of nine children. Both lived in Ralls at the time of their quarrel. Maud, Richard's brother, was a County Commissioner in Castro County and lived in Dimmitt.
Digging around the web for information on J. Sweaza, I found long quotations from the "Sweazea Family History." The man known in the newspapers as J. Sweaza was actually James Franklin Sweazea. James was born in 1850, so at the time of the 'feud' in 1923 he was 73 years old. He was a widower, retired and living in Dimmitt, in Castro County, Texas. He was friendly with the Cone family, who lived a few miles down the road, and frequently helped them out. The way he got involved with the Rippys is that one of Mrs. Cone's son-in-laws, Maud Rippy, asked him for a ride to Ralls; Maud doubted that his old model T would make it 100+ miles, while James had a new touring car. Maud had heard that his brother Dick was having serious trouble with his neighbor Poppin Payne and wanted Maud to come help decide what to do.
The Sweasea Family's version has nothing about poker or cane-bottomed chairs. It says that when Maud and James got to Ralls, Dick and Maud must have decided that they had to kill Poppin Payne. "With James F. passed out from drink, they drove by Payne's house, and shot Payne with a shotgun." Although all three were charged the same, it looks like Maud did the driving and Richard did the shooting. They failed to kill him, and all three were arrested for attempted murder.
The Sweasea Family History goes on to say that during a recess in their trial, while they were sitting on the courthouse steps with their defense attorney, James and Maud were shot by Poppin Payne. Payne slipped up behind them and shot James F. In the back of the head. When Maud jumped to run, Payne shot him in the back; he fell, but continued to crawl, so Payne shot him several more times. Then he shot Sweazea again, in the forehead. He didn't get Richard because he was in the restroom.
The Sweazea version states that Payne was tried for manslaughter in the killing of James F., because James wasn't involved in the Payne-Rippy feud. According to a report on the Texas Rangers, who guarded the courtroom during Payne's trial, another indictment against Payne was pending for killing Maud Rippy. Payne received a sentence of seven to twelve years, but on appeal the sentence was reduced to three to five years, and Payne served his time.
Payne was 58 when he died of natural causes in 1932, nine years after Richard had tried to kill him.
The court documents from the trial of the Rippy brothers and Sweasea that have been quoted say nothing about poker, cane-bottomed chairs, or three failed attempts at murder. The three men were tried only for the drive-by shot-gun shooting. Nor was Payne considered 'not guilty' because the jury didn't blame him for getting his own revenge on his attackers.
The only contemporary source I can find for the colorful details in the legend of the Payne-Rippy feud is a short, sensational article in a big-city newspaper from the time. It appears to have been based on rumor and hearsay.
Richard's brother John, and his father John William, got involved when Payne was tried for killing James Sweasea. John wrote about it much later in a letter. Since the shooting had taken place on the steps of the Crosby County courthouse in Crosbyton, Payne's trial was moved to Canyon, a distance of about 100 miles.
John's story skips over the start of the feud, but he adds a lot of colorful detail of his own. He says that he came down from Oklahoma City for the hearing, where Dick would be a witness. Brother Max furnished him a 30.30 rifle, and brother Hershel gave him a 45 Colt automatic, "and I went out to kill." A sheriff was supposed to take Dick from Ralls to Canyon, a distance of about 100 miles, and the Rippy brothers apparently feared that they might be ambushed by Payne’s sons on the way. Dick and his father, John William sat in the backseat of the sheriff's car, and brother John sat in the front seat with the sheriff. John was the spokesman. "Before we started, I told the sheriff we…thought more of Dick's bull dog than we did of him and if he led us into an ambush I would put the first shot in him and I had the forty five in my hand cocked and ready.
"Nothing happened until we were almost to Canyon City. Then we ran into a road block. The sheriff slowed down and I told him to drive on. Papa, Dick and I had agreed to shoot it out and kill every Payne in sight. When we got close enough to the blockade it turned out to be four sheriffs and two Texas rangers who took over the situation, also our guns, and escorted us to a rent house where we were guarded day and night until the trial started."
The report on the activities of the Texas Rangers includes a quote from the judge who asked for them to guard the courtroom during Payne's trial that confirms the high level of tension surrounding the case. It says the judge understood that the killing grew out of "a bitter factional feeling in Crosby County, and that it is believed that the respective factions are well organized and determined against each other, and that in all probability there will be further trouble growing out of the situation, and it is feared that there may be some outbreak during the trial…"
Brother John recounts a comical incident that did take place during the trial. "Nothing happened until the second day of the trial just after lunch when someone tried to start their Model T and it back fired three or four times. Court broke up--they thought the fight was on. Spectators jumped through the open windows but it was soon over and the Judge called a recess for thirty minutes."
There is no report about the disposition of the case against Richard for attempting to murder Payne in the first place, but it appears it was dropped. It is notable that this feud caused the deaths of two innocent men, and ruined the life of Poppin Payne.
In 1924, Richard fled to Shawnee, Oklahoma, where his parents and a couple of his brothers were living. Lillie sold out in Ralls, and took the children with her to Shawnee on the train. Lillie doesn’t say what Richard did for a living in Shawnee, but since his brothers Max and Herschel had a market there, I’m guessing that’s where Richard learned the skill of meat-cutting.
Around 1925, Richard and Lillie and six children headed back to Texas to pick cotton, stopping in a place called Dozier. By the end of the season they had enough money to rent a farm for themselves. They raised cotton and feed.
They stayed in Dozier for about a year, then moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, a big city in the eastern part of the state. From Lillie's memoir, it appears they spent 1926 and 1927 in Tulsa. She doesn't specify Richard's occupation, but I'm guessing he worked as a butcher.
In 1928, they returned to Shawnee, again living in town. They were both 39 years old. Their oldest child, Jay was 16; Hazel was 13; Dulon was 11; Fred was 10; Russell was 8; May Ellen was 6. Lillie bore another son that year, that they named John. Richard worked for his brother Maxwell, who owned the Pickwick Market there, and his brother Herschel worked there as well.
They next moved to Sapulpa (which is between Shawnee and Tulsa), and then they moved back to Tulsa. Lillie doesn't say what Richard was doing there, but I'm guessing he worked as a butcher, probably with Herschel.
From Lillie’s memoir it appears that they were in Tulsa about nine years. After Richard's father John William was accused of murder, he lived with them for awhile. Both Jay and Hazel got married toward the end of that period.
In 1937, when they were 48 years old, Richard and Lillie moved to California. I believe they took all the children except for Jay and Hazel, who were already married and established in Oklahoma. I think that son John, known as Johnnie, was nine years old, May Ellen was 15, Russell was 17, and Fred was 19. I surmise that Fred and Russell were soon working and living on their own.
The family first settled in Fullerton. Lillie's story lacks detail, but it seems they lived in Fullerton until around 1945, with interruptions, and that Richard had one, or a succession, of butcher shops.
In the first four years, Lillie made six trips back to Tulsa, once hitch-hiking, though she was in her fifties. At one point during this period, they moved to a farm in Enid Oklahoma, where they bought and sold milk cows.
They lived in Enid a year, but when the man who was running the meat department at their store in Whittier, CA, was drafted, Richard returned to California to take over. Lillie sold all their livestock, and moved back to California with Hazel, Dulon, and Johnnie.
Richard and Lillie lived in Whittier, not far from the market. Hazel helped Richard in the meat department, and Dulon, with her husband Frank, ran the grocery and produce sections. The market did a pretty good business, and within a few years, Richard sold out to Dulon and Frank.
Richard was 64-65 years old when he retired. He and Lillie bought a house in Whittier and fixed it up. He lived until he was 70, but he was bed-ridden the last year before he died. Lillie lived to be 93.
