Frye

Henry Frye, rancher and Wheeler County pioneer, was born on October 6, 1851, in Rochelle, Virginia, the son of a Presbyterian minister. At age twenty-one he moved to Austin, Texas, where he worked as a wheat harvester. He used his earnings to buy cowboy equipment and went to work on the Chisholm Trail. In 1874 Frye joined William J. (Bull) Miller in herding cattle up the trail to Kansas, where he met Miller's thirteen-year-old daughter Lula. He married her in 1877 and left by wagon for the Texas Panhandle.

In July 1877 the couple settled in Hemphill County, where they ran 200 heifers for Lula's father. They lived in a half dugout on the Washita River but later built a two-room picket house, which Lula carpeted with towsacks. From the original herd of 200 head, Frye received one-half of the increase. He registered his Campstool brand in 1880. In 1879 he was among those who petitioned to organize Wheeler County; he also served as a juror. In 1882 he sold his Hemphill County home to Robert Moody and moved his family to a half dugout in Wheeler County. In 1884 he purchased about 1,000 cattle and built a two-room rock house on Sweetwater Creek. The seven Frye children received much of their early education at the Rock community school.