Southern New Mexico Historical Review

ISSN 1076-9072 SOUTHERN NEW MEXICO HISTORICAL REVIEW Pasajero del Camino Real Doña Ana County Historical Society Volume XV Las Cruces, New Mexico January 2008 Doña Ana County Historical Society Publisher Rick Hendricks Editor Board of Directors 2008 President: Roger Rothenmaier Vice President: George Helfrich Past President: Dr. Chuck Murrell Secretary: Donna Eichstaedt Treasurer: Xandy Church Historian: Karen George At Large Board Members Buddy Ritter Felix Pfaeffle Marcie Palmer Leslie Bergloff Frank Parrish Richard Majestic Barbara Jean Neal Mary Lou Pendergrass Ex-Officio: Webmaster – Mary Lou Pendergrass Liaison to Branigan Cultural Center – Garland Courts Typography and Printing Insta-Copy Imaging Las Cruces, New Mexico Cover Drawing by Jose Cisneros (Reproduced with permission of the artist) The Southern New Mexico Historical Review (ISSN-1076-9072) is looking for original articles concerning the Southwestern Border Region for future issues. Biography, local and family histories, oral history and well-edited documents are welcome. Charts, illustrations or photographs are encouraged to accompany submissions. We are also in need of book reviewers, proofreaders, and an individual or individuals in marketing and distribution. Copies of the Southern New Mexico Historical Review are available for $7.00. If ordering by mail, please include $2.00 for postage and handling. Correspon- dence regarding the Review should be directed to the Editor of the Southern New Mexico Historical Review at Doña Ana County Historical Society, 16045 Las Cruces, NM 88004. Click on Article to go There Table of Contents Articles Coeds at War: State College Woman Do Their Part in World War II Martha Shipman Andrews ..................................................................................... 1 William and John Hudgens: Double Trouble from Louisiana Roberta Key Haldane ........................................................................................... 25 My Adobe Village: Doña Ana, New Mexico Joyce M. Brumley .................................................................................................. 38 A Documentary View of a Dispute over Episcopal Jurisdiction: Father José de Jesús Cabeza de Vaca and the Battle for the Church in the Mesilla Valley Rick Hendricks ...................................................................................................... 51 Southern New Mexico Historical Review Awards ....................................................... 77 Book Reviews Brian McGinty: The Oatman Massacre: A Tale of Desert Captivity and Survival reviewed by Lois Stanford ................................................................................... 78 Enrique R. Lamadrid: Hermanitos Comanchitos: Indo-Hispano rituals of captivity and redemption reviewed by Charles B. Stanford ......................................................................... 80 Corey Recko: Murder on the White Sands: The Disappearance of Albert and Henry Fountain, A.C. Greene Series reviewed by Rick Hendricks ................................................................................ 82 Frederick Nolan: The Billy the Kid Reader reviewed by Rick Hendricks ................................................................................ 83 Dave DeWitt: Avenging Victorio reviewed by Charles B. Stanford ......................................................................... 84 The Train Stops Here: New Mexico’s Railway Legacy by Marci L. Riskin. reviewed by Rick Hendricks ................................................................................ 85 In Memoriam Mary Taylor ............................................................................................................ 86 Georgia Clayshulte ................................................................................................ 86 Editor’s Page The present issue of the Southern New Mexico Historical Review offers several glimpses of “our” history in the century lasting from the middle of the nineteenth century into the middle of the last century. Some time ago, J. Paul Taylor asked your editor whether the Archivos del Arzobispado de Du- rango microfilm collection contained any information about Father José de Jesús Cabeza de Baca, long-time priest of San Albino’s in Mesilla. A diligent search revealed a wealth of information about Padre Baca and the tumultuous 1870s in Mesilla that led to an exodus of citizens from various settlements in the Mesilla Valley to found the town of La Ascensión in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. This was a story near and dear to Mary Daniels Taylor, and I consider this article my tribute to her memory. Roberta Key Haldane, one of this reviews most faithful contributors, tells the tale of William and John Hudgens, a pair of brothers from Louisiana whose arrival in New Mexico Territory coincided with the final throes of the Lincoln County War. Another war, the Second World War, serves as the back- drop for Martha Shipman Andrews’s article on the role of Aggie Women in the armed services. Martha mines the truly remarkable collection of correspondence generated by New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts’s School of Engineering, Daniel B. Jett, and former students of the college. The correspondence—numbering in the thousands of letters—forms part of the Records of the School of Engineering in the Hobson-Huntsinger University Archives of the New Mexico State University Library. Joyce M. Brumley shares an intimate and very personal remembrance of her life as a child growing up in the community of Doña Ana. She tells us, as she often tells her grandchildren, about living and dying in that small, southern New Mexico town in the years following World War II. All of her memories center around the “Little Yellow House” on Thorpe Road. Aficionados of Southwest legend Billy the Kid will not want to miss the review of Frederick Nolan’s new book, The Billy the Kid Reader. Those who love a mystery will want to check out Corey Recko’s detective skills in his Murder on the White Sands: The Disappearance of Albert and Henry Fountain. Rick Hendricks Editor Click for Table of Contents Coeds at War: State College Women Do Their Part in World War II Martha Shipman Andrews Take the woman into the armed service. .[and] who will then maintain the home fires; who will do the cooking, the washing, the mending, the humble, homey tasks to which every woman has devoted herself. Who will rear and nurture the children; who will teach them patriotism and loyalty; who will make men of them so that when their day comes, they, too, may march away to war. (Congressman Clare Eugene Hoffman (R.-Michigan)1 nd to show that this spirit was non-partisan, his congressional colleague, Andrew Lawrence Somers (D.—New York) registered his opposition Ato legislation creating the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps: “A women’s army to defend the United States of America? Think of the humiliation. What has become of the manhood of America that we have to call on our women to do what has ever been the duty of men?”2 Edith Nourse Rogers, republican congresswoman from Massachusetts, sponsored a bill authorizing the creation of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in May, 1941 to the loud and dismissive hoots of her male cohorts. Rogers had a useful ally and arm-twister, however, in Eleanor Roosevelt. Together they slowly injected doses of reason into the debate over the appropriateness of women in the armed services, treading lightly on the threatening, feminist issues of equality and rights. The best they could claim for women on this front was the right to manifest the same patriotic spirit as their fathers, brothers, and boyfriends by undertaking gender appropriate tasks within the services. WAAC advocates heavily promoted the practical advantages of women taking over administrative duties within the military, thereby freeing enlisted men for combat duty. Supporters of the WAAC bill also played upon the assumption that women would serve in the military only so long as national emergency existed, after which they would return to more acceptably female roles within their communities and families. When war evolved from threat to global reality, the participation of women in the military became a strategic necessity, one to which Congress could no longer condescend. The WAAC bill gained the support of the president and his War Department as a critical element in the mobilization for total war. Chief of Staff, Gen. George C. Marshall, lobbied vigorously and effectively for passage of the bill and so it did, in the spring of 1942.3 As world war threatened, the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (or State College as students commonly called it) maintained its bucolic, low-key pace. The occasional frat-boy, intent on escaping the final exam in an engineering class, still dropped out of school to enlist in the Armed Services. But, ROTC students drilling on the campus Horseshoe probably gave more serious thought to their futures as the local papers printed news of Hitler’s advances. The 1942 yearbook, The Swastika, reported a “noticeable increase of interest in classes and drill and a new seriousness of purpose has been evident.”4 One hundred forty-one boys that year were enrolled in the School of Agriculture. As usual no female students had breached this male bastion, unlike the two girls (among 98 boys) who had courageously enrolled in the Engineering program. On the other hand, women comprised 195 of the 289 Arts and Sciences students. Preparedness for war occupied

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