Jo Ann Hill Whittaker of Cypress Hill Ranch

Jo Ann was born in Liberty, Texas to Elbert Coret Hill and Madie Marie Vinson. The Hill family have been residents of Liberty County since the mid-1850s and take pride in their family connections to many of Liberty’s pioneer families. Jo Ann’s great grandfather, Pleasant Coleman “P.C.” Hill, born in Stewart County, Georgia in 1839, moved to Florida with his family and then, according to family tradition, boarded a ship off the coast of Florida and sailed to Galveston about early 1855. They settled on the Moses Carroll Survey in what is now Chambers County. P. C. married first to Sarah E. Adair, daughter of Benjamin Adair and Mary Wiggins and together they had six children. He married secondly Elenor Lacour DeBlanc, the widow of Raymond DeBlanc and together they had five children. Jo Ann’s grandfather, Sidney, was the eldest child of P.C. and Elena’s children.  

P.C. served honorably in Company F of Spaight’s Battalion during the Civil War; he enlisted at Liberty on April 26, 1862, at the age of 22. “Spaight’s Ditch runs through the property,” stated Jo Ann. “Colonel A. W. Spaight had an 1102 acre plantation which he purchased in 1860 that was in the south east corner of the Jacob E. Self League. A portion of his land is included in our land. Spaight’s Marsh in Liberty County was owned by him. He had men with shovels dig Spaight’s Ditch to drain water from the marsh to preserve his crops; it was dug 3 months after he purchased the land at a cost of $720. So, there’s lots of history on our land, lots I don’t even know about,” she confessed. P.C. spent the majority of his life in Moss Bluff after the war. During the last several years of his life he served as a Justice of the Peace in Liberty County. P.C.’s wife, Elena Elenor Lacour, was the daughter of Jean Marie Corette “Joe” Lacour. It was Elena who was deeded 75 acres of the original Cypress Hill Ranch on October 12, 1889 from her uncle, Adolph Gillard. Jo Ann’s father, Elbert Coret Hill, carries the middle name of his great grandfather Jean Marie Corett Lacour. 

The daddy of Jo Ann’s Grandmother Agnes Hill was Leon Davis, and her mother was Julia Barrow, daughter of Reuben Shadrack Barrow who arrived in Texas in 1824 when the Mexican flag still flew over this great land. The Barrow name continues to be one of prominence in the rich tapestry of Chambers County. So, as you can see, the Hill family tree can boast of prolific prestigious foliage.

Jo Ann’s grandmother was quite comfortable on the back of a horse as that was the main mode of transportation during her early years. “I have my grandmother’s side-saddle which she rode in the photo of the Moss Bluff riders,” said Jo Ann. “it’s in horrible condition now. My husband Barry took it to the Harmon Saddle Shop years ago to have it repaired and they said they would have to re-do it completely. I wanted to keep some of it original, so I did not have it repaired; it is such a treasure to me,” said Jo Ann softly.  

“The Devers Canal runs through our property; I have canal front property; the canal is now owned by the LNVA (Lower Neches Valley Association). When my grandfather, Sidney Hill, was ten years old, he was the water boy for the men who dug the canal with the hand scoops. The canal is ten or twelve feet deep and was dug with hand slips pulled by teams of mules, they are metal and I have an example of one. The mules would drag them forward and the men would hold onto the handles and make sure the slips angled down into the dirt to lift the dirt up. It’s amazing what they did back in the day,” said Jo Ann with admiration for their grit and tenacity. Jo Ann showed me a well-worn slip quietly preserving the memory of bygone days from a place of prominence in her backyard.or all.

As we took a tour of the Cypress Hill Ranch property, Jo Ann pointed out a solitary tree standing proudly upon a little knoll. “This is one of the oldest walnut trees in this area,” said Jo Ann who expressed a desire to have a tree specialist come and calculate the age of the tree. “This spot is the old homestead of Jack Moss,” she added. Sheryl Shaw and I returned to the ranch and assessed the girth of the tree which measured an impressive 17 feet 4 inches. Walnut trees are not native to this area, but this one is evidently happy with where it was planted. 

“Grandpa Hill was easy going and fun-loving; he told jokes and made people laugh and everyone just loved to listen to his stories. I remember how he used to smoke a cigar every evening on the front porch. He would always make us stick horses, and they were so beautiful. He literally cut a straight limb from a tree, and he would peel the bark, and it would be swirly and he would carve and peel away a star or a heart. When we were playing cops and robbers, like Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, if someone stepped on the tail of our horse, they were in trouble,” Jo Ann stated dramatically. “That was fighting terms!” she added with a laugh.

“Grandpa raised about 50 head of range cattle of mixed breed. He would milk the cows and bring in the fresh milk, and I would help my grandmother churn butter. I still have her butter churn. She washed her clothes on a rub board. What was neat about that is she had beautiful gardenias and they would get black soot on them. She would wash her clothes and then pour the wash water over the gardenias and that would get rid of the black soot, or fungus. When she got an electric washing machine, she was worried,” stressed Jo Ann, “that the new fandangled thing was going to tear her clothes up. I loved to help her when she washed on the rub board, but I probably played in the water and made bubbles with my hands more than I washed clothes,” she confessed with a laugh. We had a little house out back, separate from the main house, that she would store all of her canned fruits and vegetables in. The most eery place on the farm to me was the smokehouse. It was always so dark inside. When the sausage links and bacon were being smoked small curls of smoke would float upward from the cracks in the walls. To me, the building looked haunted and was frightening and had a strange beauty all at once.   

“We would tie a rope around this post,” said Jo Ann pointing to the one near the steps. “I would hold the rope tightly as I was on the swing that actually was my stagecoach. We had to go fast because we had a schedule to meet or were being chased by robbers. Oh man, we would get to swinging so high,” she added with delight. Every Saturday, Mother would scrub that porch with soap and water and instead of working, we would slip and slide,” she recalled gleefully. 

“I loved sleeping in the feather bed at my grandparents’, we could hardly climb out of it in the morning,” recalled Jo Ann. “For me, when I was older, my goal was to stay up as late as my grandmother. She would cook and clean the dishes then come in and sit by the wood stove about ten or eleven o’clock at night, when she got through with her work, and rock in the rocking chair. If I could stay up as late as she did I felt like I had really accomplished something, but I rarely did. She would make smoke fires in the chicken pen to keep the mosquitoes away, and we would run and play through the smoke, of course we smelled like smoke and would have to take a bath.” 

“My grandfather raised sugar cane and provided all the molasses for Liberty, I have the old cane crusher. I never saw them making the syrup, as he stopped before I came along. Some of the men in the neighborhood would come by and help during syrup making time. This gentleman came by one time and said, ‘I just wanted to see if this place was still here. I helped your grandfather make syrup.’ My mother can remember because it was quite a precise process. They would cut the sugar cane in the field and bring it in a wagon to the cane crusher. The cane crusher had two metal plates and you would slip the sugar cane between them, the plates would crush it and squeeze the juice out. The juice would run down into troughs, and you built a fire under them to heat the juice. You had to tend the fire to make sure you didn’t get it too hot. The foam off the syrup would be like an alcoholic beer and the workers would sometimes drink some of it. Mother said she used to put a bandana over her head at that time because the flames and the smoke would make her face black. Grandpa would put the syrup in metal gallon buckets. After my parents died, we were going through some things and found a postcard from Carl Pickett’s grandfather. It said, ‘Sid, please save me ten buckets of syrup.’ Grandpa sold his syrup to all of the Liberty area and Mr. Pickett, who was away on business, wanted to make sure he got his syrup. I was raised on that sugar cane molasses syrup and it was the only syrup I knew existed for years. When I was in about sixth grade, I spent the night with my friend in the city of Liberty and they had fake maple syrup and I thought what is this kind of syrup!” she asked surprisingly with a laugh. 

“Along with sugar cane, Grandpa raised sweet potatoes. They would dig a hole and build a mound of dirt over them to store them during the winter. He would always take very good care of his sweet potato slips to start his garden with the following year. He also raised corn and peas. When the corn came in, everybody would sit under the tree, mother, my cousins, Aunt Lois, everybody had a part in that, that was fun. He raised regular field corn and we would make creamed corn out of the field corn. I’m sure the reason they raised field corn was because it was multi-purposed. It was used to feed the animals and to make stone ground corn meal. In “Mother’s” pie safe there was always fried bacon and biscuits, so you could always grab a piece of bacon and a cold biscuit if you got hungry. Every Sunday afternoon, coffee was served at 3:00 and you never knew how many people were going to show up, but folks would always come to Grandpa and “Mother’s” for coffee on Sunday afternoon. I still have her coffee grinder; she would parch and grind her own coffee beans. I also have the basket she would put her coffee grounds in and pour the water over it. I have them displayed on a shelf in my kitchen and I tell each of my grandchildren what they are. I said, when I die, these items are not antique trash, they are to always stay here,” she stated with soft reverence. 

“Grandmother Hill raised beautiful flowers, and we would love to cut zinnias or roses from her garden. they were always beautiful. I spent much time with her in her garden. We would get water from the hand pump on the front porch. It was such a simple, pure, organic way of growing up,” Jo Ann sighed nostalgically.

“My daddy and his brother, Sid Jr. always hunted, always! We always had squirrel and dumplings with cornbread. He was obsessed with ponds and dug a pond on our property and now the great white egrets are using it as a rookery; they have babies now. At the back of the property, we have an eagles’ nest, and they had two baby eaglets this year. That was so delightful to see. We have so many birds on our property, every now and then we get a flock of whooping cranes, they are on the endangered species list, but I have to say, of course the most special for me is the eagle because it’s our nation’s bird. Yesterday, Benicia and Bryan were out riding the ranch, and we have one spot we refer to as “the Nature Refuge” and she saw a little fawn in the grass and sent me a picture, that was precious.”   

“On our land we have wild hogs and deer, back in the day we didn’t have deer. Back then they had bears and panthers. I recently had the Garden Club come out and before we started our tour of the land, I said a little prayer to honor the land and the trees and the animals. We got to see the eagles’ nest and the great white egrets with their babies. The ladies were just in awe. I don’t take any of what I’ve been entrusted with for granted; it’s our slice of Heaven,” Jo Ann sighed contentedly.  difference!

“I have two daughters; Brian and Julie Feldott live in Austin and Brian is my chief financial officer, Benicia and Bryan Bendele live on the ranch, and they are the chief operating officers. Yes, we have two Brians/Bryans, and our girls married two months apart!” laughed Jo Ann. “I am blessed and highly favored,” she added with genuine humility and a deep sense of appreciation for her children.

“Every time we worked cattle we had to prop up fences and mend, it was a fiasco. When my husband Barry and I took over the ranch he said we will never ever have to prop up fences again. One thing I made Barry promise, when we took over the ranch, is we would never have another gap gate. Those gap gates were so difficult and that’s all we had . . . all we had!” she repeated, dragging out the word all for emphasis.  “Opening and closing them kept you strong, but that’s about it! You have to love cattle ranching because every day it’s work. Barry did a remarkable job taking care of the ranch and enhancing the property and leaving it much better than he found it. 

“Bryan and Benicia own the cattle operation, so I’m now their assistant; we have 135 mamma cows and six bulls. I’m there in the middle of working cattle and I ride the ranch every day in the comfort of my air-conditioned car,” chuckled Jo Ann. “In the summer I ride the Ranger with Rose dog, she likes to ride the ranch. I make sure there’re no calves in distress, and that the cows are all where they are supposed to be and not one with their head hung in a tree, which has happened, or in one of the hay rings. I’m very proud of the fact that my daughter Benicia and her husband, Bryan are fifth generation cattle ranchers in our family. Every time we work cattle, our grandchildren are working right beside us as well. They have a great work ethic and love for the land instilled in them. My two granddaughters just purchased a cow each to raise on the ranch and their father said, ‘that’s the way you get ‘em hooked.’” laughed Jo Ann. 

“There are so many cypress trees and that’s why our ranch is called Cypress Hill Ranch. There are just so many, and they give off such a positive peaceful energy. Everyone who comes out feels it.” 

“Every now and then I’ll douse with a dousing stick, a “Y” shaped stick used for finding water. That’s the way “Mother” and Grandpa used to search for water to know where to dig the well. They’d walk around and ask where the water was and if the stick sensed the energy and turned down, that’s where they would dig. I went to my special spot the other day and for the first time asked if there was a tribe of “little people” there and my dousing stick moved with a yes answer. I have no idea if it was a correct answer,” laughed Jo Ann, “but if I was a “little person’ I would love it there. I took a dousing class from Raymon Grace. He’s a guru douser, world renowned, and he had a friend in Canada named Winnie; she talked to him about the “little people.” I thought, well, why not “little people” at Cypress Hill Ranch. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll see a little tribe, and if there are great, and if there aren’t great,” she laughed matter-of-factly. 

“Cypress Hill Ranch is a very spiritual location, and I am so thankful I ended up here. Being in touch with nature and the animals can teach us so much about the important things in life,” said Jo Ann reverently. “Family is everything to me. My greatest hope is to set my children, my grandchildren, and the generations that follow up for success, love, and opportunity. I believe land and nature are gifts meant to be cherished and I hope my family always takes time to slow down and look at the birds and smell the flowers. If I have made this world a better place it will be through them; through the love, kindness, and strength they carry forward. They are my legacy, my purpose, my most treasured gift!” concluded Jo Ann tenderly.