Today finds us, in the midst of all the news on the Kaiserschlacht, back on the border with Mexico. The Neville Ranch Raid occurred on this fateful day of 1918.
The Neville Ranch was an isolated ranch in West Texas that was run by Edwin W. Neville. Neville lived there with his son, Glenn, his Mexican servant, Rosa Castillo, her husband and their three children. There were, ironically, more Mexicans living on the small isolated ranch than there were European Americans. That hadn't always been the case. Mr. Neville had a wife and two daughters, but after the Christmas Raid on Brite's Ranch he moved them to Van Horn, Texas and stayed on with his son and Mexican help. After all, a ranch can't simply be abandoned but must be worked, and he likely felt that this left him with enough help to work the ranch and that his Mexican employees were likely safe.
This particular raid was not without warning. Warning came earlier in the day to Captain Leonard Matlock, 8th Cavalry, that a Mexican (the exact nature and allegiance of the raiding force is still not known) raid on Neville's ranch was planned and he accordingly sent out a patrol. The patrol was detailed to go to the ranch and warn Neville, but he wasn't there when it arrived as he was in Van Horn, where his family otherwise lived, and buying supplies there. He learned that something was going on and rode back to his ranch with his son, Glen, an eight hour ride by horse. When he arrived he discussed the situation with his ranch residents in his ranch house when the raid broke out. The party took refuge in a ditch near the house which was better protected but Glen was shot in the head and severely wounded. Mrs. Castillo was also shot and mutilated by the raiders in sight of her children, something that seems to have been at least a feature of other similar raids in which Mexican raiders took vengeance upon the Mexican employees of American ranchers. The raiders then took to looting the ranch, which was also common, and Edwin, in a state of shock over his dying son and murdered female employee wondered off into the desert.
Mr. Castillo rode for assistance and found the 8th Cavalry patrol about six miles distant from the ranch. That patrol, under a Lt. Gaines, returned to the ranch just after the raiders had departed and he sent word to his superiors of what had occurred.
As noted, the identify and even the exact purpose of the raiders remains unknown. It is felt that they likely were Villistas, and they were well armed as they were carrying German made Mauser 98 rifles (the left some in the raid), the common military rifle used by all sides in the Mexican Revolution. That latter fact, however, has lead some to suggest a German connection with the raid, and of course German military advisors were a feature of the Mexican Revolution. The raid may have been in reprisal for the Porvenir Massacre as well. Or maybe looking at an exact cause of a single raid on the border in this era is simply asking for too much.
This story didn't end with the raid itself, which is often cited as the last "serious" raid across the border in this era (it isn't). With Neville lost and then found deranged in the desert, Glen dead, and Mrs. Costillo murdered, the raid was a human tragedy that served no purpose for the raiders. It did, however, result in the mustering of the 8th Cavalry. Shortly before Lt. Gaine's patrol arrived back at the ranch the raiders withdrew, loot in hand, to Chihuahua. But that didn't see the end of things.
Neville would live into the 1950s. But not on his ranch. He opened a cafe in Marfa, but held a vendetta against the murderers of his son for the rest of his life.
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