Written by Clay Riley – One of the earliest settlers of Brown County was Jesse Blackstone Byrd. Through his descendants were names like Lewis, McPeeters, Strange and more Byrds of course. Three of these descendants were cousins that had more than relationship in common. It appears that that had inherited a gene that was included music and acting talent.

They all had rural backgrounds, where hard word and perseverance yielded great results.

They were all good horsemen and talented musicians. All great skills for western music groups and B grade movie actors.

Cousin #1 – Glenn G. Strange

Glenn Strange’s mother was Sarah E. Byrd, daughter of Jesse B. Byrd. Born in 1899, George grew up in Cross Cut area. Later moving to Oklahoma in the 1920s and eventually, to Arizona and California. Glenn was six feet four inches tall, a characteristic that both helped, and hindered his career in movies and later television.

His height was about 6′ 4″ or so, and he towered over everyone else in the scene. His size got him to Universal Pictures where he played the Frankenstein monster on three occasions.

Glenn Strange played “Sam Noonan”, the Long Branch saloon bartender, on TV’s GUNSMOKE. He appeared in 200+ GUNSMOKE episodes which originally aired from 1962-1973 on television’s CBS.

Cousin #2 – Taylor “Cactus Mack” McPeeters.

A cousin of cowboy actors Rex Allen and Glenn Strange, Taylor Curtis McPeters was the oldest son born to John and Leona Byrd McPeters in Weed (Otero County), New Mexico on August 8, 1899. He was the second of eleven children. Glenn Strange’s mother was Leona’s sister. Rex Allen was 21 years McPeters junior on his father’s side. McPeters and Strange learned ranching in Coke County Texas, before their families moved to Cochise County, Arizona. McPeters married Etta Sarah Jessee on July 4, 1922 in Tombstone, Arizona.

Taylor McPeeters’ own career as a singing cowboy actor may have been eclipsed by his more famous relatives, Rex Allen and Glenn Strange, but fondly known as “Cactus Mack”, he was one of the original cowboy singer/actors.

Cactus Mack’s last co-starring role was on a 1961 Gunsmoke episode. In one memorable scene he has a violent tussle with Amanda Blake (Miss Kitty). He later required abdominal surgery in late 1961. He passed away several months later in April 1962, while filming “The Ugly American” with Marlon Brando.

Cousin #3 – Robert E. “Rex” Allen

Rex Allen was born to Horace E. Allen and Luella Faye Clark on a ranch in Mud Springs Canyon, in Cochise County in southeastern Arizona. As a boy he played guitar and sang at local functions with his fiddle-playing father. Rex Allen’s paternal grandmother, Amy Adeline Cosper Allen, was sister to Cora T. Cosper McPeeters, who was the wife of Charles M. McPeeters, thus cousins to Taylor Curtis McPeeters and George Strange. (It took a while to solve the connection)

Allen wrote and recorded many songs, a number of which were featured in his own films.

Although late in coming to the industry, his film career was relatively short as the popularity of westerns faded by the mid-1950s. But he starred in a number of B-Westerns during the 1950s.

Allen has the distinction of making the last singing western in 1954. As other cowboy stars made the transition to television, Allen tried too, cast as Dr. Bill Baxter for a half-hour weekly series called Frontier Doctor. In 1961 he was one of five rotating hosts for NBC-TV’s Five Star Jubilee.

In 1983, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Rex Allen died on December 17, 1999, two weeks before his 79th birthday, in Tucson, Arizona.

This and many other stories are available at the Brownwood Public Library – Genealogy & Local History Branch at 213 S. Broadway. Volunteers from the Pecan Valley Genealogical Society are there to assist you in your family history research.

Clay Riley is a local historian and retired Aerospace Engineer that has been involved in the Historical and Genealogical Community of Brown County for over 20 years. Should you have a comment, or a question that he may be able to answer in future columns, he can be reached at; [email protected].