Answer and Paragraphs:
Six hundred and forty eight miles of dust, daily
peril and daunting cattle trail faced Margaret Heffernan
Dunbar Hardy Borland when she left her ranch in
Victoria, Texas, and led 2,500 longhorns, drovers, two
young sons, an even younger daughter and a
granddaughter, up the trail to Wichita, Kansas, in 1873.
No woman had ever run a trail drive before, but it was
not the first time Margaret Borland had faced dangerous
challenges head on.
She was only 5 years old when her family came
to Texas by ship, with the first wave of Irish immigrants
in 1829. They settled in San Patricio, in the prairie
of the Coastal Bend, where her father was
killed in an Indian attack when she was
twelve. With no time to grieve as the Texas
Revolution broke out, her widowed
mother grabbed the children and ran in
front of the advancing Mexican armies,
taking refuge in the fort at Goliad.
Somehow they escaped the massacre
there , possibly because their fluent
Spanish helped them pass as Mexicans.
After Texas had won its freedom, the
family returned to San Patricio to renew their
lives. At nineteen, Margaret married Harrison
Dunbar -- the first of her 3 husbands. Within a year, she
was both a mother and a widow, when Harrison was
killed in a pistol duel on the streets of Victoria.
Margaret married Milton Hardy a few years later,
and they built their combined 2,912 acres into a
prosperous cattle ranch. Four children followed, one
dying in infancy, as was tragically common back then.
Cholera then took the life of her second husband and
her lone surviving son. For the next 4 years, she ran the
ranch herself, with some help from her brother.
In 1860, just as the Civil War broke out, she was
already a wealthy and fearless woman when she met
and married one of the richest cattle ranchers in South
Texas, Alexander Borland. Between them they had a
herd of 8,000 longhorns when word of trail drives to
Missouri and Kansas had reached South Texas. The army
needed beef to feed its soldiers, and for many, the pay
was worth the peril. But the Borlands stayed at home,
having more children and living a full Texas ranching
lifestyle.
Margaret's challenge was to find a way to
get more money for her remaining steers
than the $8 per head paid at the San
Antonio market. Hearing that she could
earn $23.80 per head in Kansas, she
decided to push part of her herd north,
for richer markets.
So, at age 49, Margaret packed up
children and supplies and headed up the
Chisholm Trail to Wichita. When she arrived
two months later, her unique feat earned her
headlines in newspapers everywhere, but it was "the
end of the trail" for Margaret's health as well. On July 5,
1873, she died of what a doctor named "brain
congestion" and "trail driving fever". Selling the herd
was left to her young sons, who then brought their
mother home to be buried in Victoria Cemetery.
To this day, Margaret Borland is the ONLY
woman known to have driven a herd up the Chisholm
Trail, serving as her own Trail Boss. Margaret spent her
lifetime facing down calamities, overcoming misfortune
and seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and suffering
the deaths of many loved ones. Her courage and will to
not simply survive, but to succeed in an alien and often
hostile territory earns her special distinction as one of
the frontier women who personified the "can-do" spirit
that settled the West!
