You know the Elks, Masons, Knights of Columbus. But the Mystic Knights of Bovinia?
Everyone has heard of the Elks, Masons, Optimists and Knights of Columbus. Fewer have heard of the Odd Fellows or Woodmen of the World. These are all fraternal organizations that date back to before your granddaddy’s time, when every red-blooded American male belonged to at least two or three organizations and maybe a bowling team, too.
It is doubtful if anyone today has ever heard of the Mystic Knights of Bovinia. This was a uniquely Fort Worth fraternal order organized in 1899 in preparation for the coming of the Cattle Raisers’ convention to Fort Worth the following year. It was the brainchild of Fort Worth Dr. John L. Frazeur, who enlisted his cattlemen pals. The “Bovinia” in the name says everything we need to know about their focus (cows), and the titles they gave themselves indicate their droll attitude toward fraternal mumbo-jumbo: The president was the “ranch boss;” his chief lieutenant was the “Wagon Boss;” members were “fence riders” or “line riders.”
Their sole purpose was to organize the entertainment for the visiting cattlemen. The Cattle Raisers’ convention was separate from but coincided with the annual Fat Stock Show in March. Their meetings during the year were irregular until the run-up to the convention. They kept no membership rolls and collected no dues. Their membership in the months before the convention might swell to a thousand or more. Anyone willing to work for the cause and have fun was welcome. Their budget was whatever they could raise through subscriptions and arm-twisting, which amounted to about $10,000 in 1907.
The entertainment program was always the top priority when it came to planning one of those conventions, which a handful of cities competed for every year. Fort Worth won the honor 10 years out of 15 between 1900 and 1915, a testimonial to Cowtown hospitality. The number of attendees could range from 1,000 up to 5,000, and it was important that the city put its best foot forward. Most of them stayed for the Fat Stock Show that followed.
The Bovinians assumed full responsibility for entertainment for the first time in 1907. The program they put together included a smoker, dance, fiddle contest, and barbecue, with special activities for the ladies, to be chaperoned by the Bovinians’ wives. It was a winning formula they would use for future conventions. They also decorated streets and storefronts to welcome the out-of-towners.
During the weeks leading up to the convention and the three days of the convention itself they dressed up in ridiculous costumes (calico Mother Hubbard dresses and bonnets!) and fanned out across town grabbing unsuspecting visitors off the street.
The police chief went along with the fun by loaning them the paddy wagon to bring the “mavericks” to the “ranch house” (Board of Trade building). There the mavericks were initiated into the organization (“branded”) and fined $7.50, which went into the entertainment fund. No one was safe from these “roundups,” not mayors or senators or even governors. In 1913, Gov. Oscar Colquitt was whisked off the street and initiated. He took it all in good humor, even the “fine.”
The organization bragged that every prominent cattleman in the United States was a Bovinian, and that may have been true because anyone who had ever attended a cattlemen’s convention in Fort Worth had been “lassoed and branded.”
The 1907 convention was counted a huge success when it closed March 20; they even had a surplus in the treasury that they planned to donate to the Fat Stock Show the following year. Then two days later in the midst of the Fat Stock Show, tragedy struck when County Attorney Jefferson McLean was gunned down on Main Street by a disgruntled gambler. The shocking crime ended the Fat Stock Show early and did for Fort Worth what the Kennedy assassination did for Dallas 54 years later, blackening its public image.
The city rebounded and got the cattlemen’s convention back two years later. Bovinians continued to serve as an unofficial convention and visitors’ bureau for two more conventions. Since the conventions were iffy, in 1910 they announced that henceforward their mission was to “entertain or assist in the entertainment of any and all organizations which may come to the city as the city’s guests.” Unfortunately, by that time the Mystic Knights of Bovinia had been replaced in the public consciousness by the Bovinian Rangers, a militia company that stole their name. (The militia boys changed their name to the H.E. Finney Rifles in 1911.)
The final blow came when their civic mission was co-opted first by the Chamber of Commerce and later by a full-time convention and visitors’ bureau that relied on paid employees who brought a level of professionalism and organization to the job that the fun-loving Mystic Knights of Bovinia never could. But membership in the fraternity remained a badge of honor for many years.
Author-historian Richard Selcer is a Fort Worth native and proud graduate of Paschal High and TCU.