the Kings, Klebergs, Armstrongs, Kenedys and others

From a Family Business to a Corporate Environment. The last quarter of the 20th Century has brought further changes to King Ranch. Since 1977, all overseas ranching operations except for that in Brazil was sold. The King Ranch''s Corporate History statement credits James H. Clement and his successor John B. Armstrong with guiding the Company to eliminate debt and ""...through the difficult Texas business environment of the 1980s and (they) oversaw the painful, and sometimes stormy, transition from a family business enterprise to the present corporate structure with outside directorship and professional management."" Since 1988, the King Ranch Chief Executive Officer has not been a King family member, although the corporate board of directors still includes some descendants. By the early 1970''s, King Ranch holdings totaled, worldwide, approximately 11.5 million acres. In 1974, with the death of Bob Kleberg and Dick, Jr., in poor health, the Family selected James H. Clement, Sr., the husband of King''s great granddaughter Ida Larkin, as President and CEO. Together with successor John B. Armstrong (husband to King''s great granddaughter, Henrietta Larkin), Clement steered the Ranch though the difficult Texas business environment of the 1980''s. They also oversaw the transition from a Family business to a modern corporate structure -- based primarily on the lines of business established in the early years. Eventually, many of the foreign operations were liquidated as the focus shifted back to the traditional domestic lines of business. See: http://www.king-ranch.com/legend.htm See: http://archives.tamuk.edu/database/House.htm (Wedding Announcement - Henrietta Kleberg Larkin to Thomas Reeves Armstrong) Armstrongs mix gentility, old-fashioned Texas ranching Cowboys and candidates, princes and presidents have visited over the years By Mary Lee Grant © July 13, 1999 Caller-Times http://www.caller.com/1999/july/13/today/local_ne/3122.html ARMSTRONG - In the brush country south of Sarita, a few miles east of U.S. Highway 77, sophistication and political power have mixed with the independence of Texas pioneers. Here, 6-foot-4-inch Tobin Armstrong, the descendant of a Texas Ranger and a Yale scholar, and the petite brunette, Anne Armstrong, former U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, hold court. Guests at the 50,000-acre ranch have included former president George Bush; his son and presidential candidate Gov. George W. Bush, the Rockefellers and Prince Charles. Armstrong Ranch still is an old-fashioned Texas ranch, run by Tobin Armstrong, who oversees it by Suburban and mobile telephone. A colony of cowboys who live in houses surrounding the big house work the 2,500 Santa Gertrudis cattle while riding thoroughbred horses, the Armstrong version of cow ponies. ""One of the best things about this ranch is that it is a grandchild magnet,"" said Tobin Armstrong, who has five children and 12 grandchildren, who visit the ranch frequently. The Armstrong Ranch was purchased in 1852 and settled in 1882 by John Armstrong III, a Texas Ranger from Tennessee. He had come to South Texas to clean up the border and became famous for capturing the notorious outlaw John Wesley Hardin. His sons combined the sophistication of an East Coast education with the ruggedness of a ranch upbringing. Charlie Armstrong, Tobin Armstrong''s father, graduated from Yale in 1908 and returned to South Texas to manage the ranch. Charlie''s brother, Tom Armstrong, graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law School before going to work as an executive for Standard Oil Co. The Armstrongs were instrumental in bringing polo to South Texas, and when Prince Charles came to visit, Tobin arranged a match for him on the ranch''s polo field. ""I never rode a bought horse,"" Armstrong said. ""I raised and trained my own thoroughbreds."" Tobin Armstrong was tutored at home until he was 9, when he was sent to private school in San Antonio. He attended the University of Texas and Texas A&M University. Ties between the Armstrong Ranch and the King Ranch always have been close. Tobin''s older brother, John Armstrong, married the King Ranch''s Henrietta Kleberg, and his uncle, Tom, married her mother, Henrietta Kleberg Larkin. John Armstrong was the last family member to serve as president of the King Ranch. Despite the international circles in which they move, the Armstrongs are still ranchers to the core, talking of weather and rainfall as readily as business and politics. ""Look how green the grass is,'''' Anne Armstrong said on a recent hot day. ""We haven''t had it like this for several years. It will be good for the cattle."" Staff writer Mary Lee Grant can be reached at 886-3752 or by e-mail at grantm@caller.com ANNE LEGENDRE ARMSTRONG Armstrong, Anne Legendre (1927-...), was the first woman to serve as United States ambassador to Britain. President Gerald R. Ford appointed her to the office, which she held in 1976 and 1977. She had previously been the first woman to hold the Cabinet-level post of counselor to the president. She was named to that position by President Richard M. Nixon in 1972 and served under both Nixon and Ford. Anne Legendre was born in New Orleans and graduated from Vassar College. She married Tobin Armstrong, a Texas cattle rancher, in 1950. She served as vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party from 1966 to 1968. In 1971 and 1972, she was cochairman of the Republican National Committee. As counselor to the President, Armstrong was a member of the president''s Domestic Council, the Council on Wage and Price Stability, and the Commission on the Organization of Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy. Source: http://school.discovery.com/homeworkhelp/worldbook/atozhistory/a/723253.html CURRENT SEC FILINGS RE: ANNE L. ARMSTRONG: http://www.secinfo.com/$/SEC/Name.asp?X=anne+l%2E+armstrong ""Anne L. Armstrong"" Latest Filing: 3/29/0 as Signatory As: Signatory (Director, Officer, Attorney, Accountant, Banker, Agent, etc.) List All Filings as Signatory Search Recent Filings (as Signatory) for ""Anne L. Armstrong"" ""Anne L. Armstrong"" has been a Signatory for the following 11 Registrants: American Express Co American Express Co Capital Trust I American Express Co Capital Trust II Boise Cascade Corp Boise Cascade Trust I Boise Cascade Trust II Boise Cascade Trust III General Motors Capital Trust D General Motors Capital Trust G General Motors Corp Halliburton Co ANNE L. ARMSTRONG, 71, Regent, Texas A&M University System; Member, Board of Trustees, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Member, National Security Advisory Board, Department of Defense; former Chairman of the President''s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, 1981-1990; former Ambassador to Great Britain; joined Halliburton Company Board in 1977; Chairman of the Health, Safety and Environment Committee and member of the Management Oversight and the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committees; Director of American Express Company and Boise Cascade Corporation. Source: http://www.secinfo.com/dScRa.6Mx.htm 1931. Following his election to the House of Representatives in November 1931, Congressman Richard Kleberg asked Johnson to come to Washington to work as his secretary. Johnson held the job for over three years and learned how the Congress worked. See: http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/biographys.hom/lbj_bio.asp LBJ was a sleeper put in power by the King Ranch, which as was shown in part I of this series, is closely tied to Anne Armstrong, is a director of Halliburton. In 1942 until he left public office, LBJ was financed completely by Brown and Root, now part of Halliburton. In 1960 LBJ was thrust upon Kennedy as his vice president so LBJ could carry Texas for Kenney. LBJ had proved in 1948 that he and his team could guarantee winning the Texas vote. In 1963 Kennedy was killed most likely by an assassination network operated by the King Ranch group and Clint Murchison in Mexico. Murchison was, of course, very close to Rockefeller. As soon as LBJ became president, he escalated the war in Vietnam, which primarily benefited Brown and Root. If this year''s election fraud is allowed to stand, what does Halliburton, headed by Dick Cheney, have planned for us? Although individual men die a generation at a time, networks of families live on. That is what Cheney represents. Thus it comes as no surprise to see what is happening in the presidential election is focused at the moment on Broward and Palm Beach Counties, Florida. A network such as Cheney represents is always prepared for any exigency. This same network was prepared to carry the vote in 1948 when Lyndon Johnson ran for the United States Senate. But Johnson was a Democrat, you say! Not so. He was an egotist and a pragmatist-- he did whatever he had to do to promote Lyndon. His opportunity to broaden his horizons came during the Depression, when he was offered a job in Congress working for a man, seemingly not unlike George W. Bush, a scion of a wealthy ranching family in South Texas with no real abilities or interests, who was elected to Congress on his name and needed someone to do the work for him--Congressman Kleborg. Part One of this series showed the history of Congressman Kleberg, and the King Ranch which his family owned--a ranch which was acquired with profits made from the shipping of contraband munitions during the Mexican War--a war orchestrated by persons who used Barbara Bush''s ancestor, Franklin Pierce, to take the land south of the Nueces River from Mexico after Texas was annexed as a state. The ranches in this territory, owned by Richard King, Mifflin Kenedy and their partner Charles Stillman, operated as a buffer between the U.S. and Mexico. Resentful Mexicans, who felt their land had been stolen from them, engaged in continual raids across the new Rio Grande border. To counteract these raids, the Texas ranchers used the Texas Rangers, commanded by William G. Tobin to chase away the raiding parties. Tobin''s family has continued its ties with the King Ranch family ever since. The Tobin family is intermarried with the King-Kleberg family and with the Armstrongs of San Antonio, Texas. From the present generation springs Anne Armstrong, who is a director of Halliburton alongside Dick Cheney. She has also served on the board of American Express with Henry Kissinger and Vernon Jordan--not to mention having been in London as Ambassador to the Court of St. James. British banking interests have been interested in the King Ranch since as early as 1882 when Mifflin Kenedy sold his adjoining ranch to a syndicate of Dundee, Scotland, called the Texas Land & Cattle Co., Ltd. (See The King Ranch Tom Lea). Within a year of that sale, King considered selling to the syndicate, but the deal was never closed. Another syndicate of unnamed eastern capitalists attempted to buy the ranch in 1907, the same year that Bostonian F.S. Pearson was involved in building railroads from Mexico through west and north Texas to connect to St. Louis. In 1902 the ranchers turned to B.F. Yoakum, friend of Uriah Lott, the creator of the Tex-Mex Railroad. As a result, a corporation was formed with shareholders including the Kings, Klebergs, Armstrongs, Kenedys and others--with Uriah Lott as president. The railroad became the St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexican Railway--which like so many other railroads built by Lott was financed by G.H. Walker & Co. of St. Louis.

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