Erastus (Ras) Elijah LeForce was born in 1870, the fifth child of John Bradley & Amanda Blankenship LeForce. He came as a young man to the Cherokee Nation around 1886 & settled northwest of Vinita with his family. He began a partnership in the cattle business with his older brother Sam around 1887 that lasted until their deaths.
Mr. Ras never married (an unhappy love affair in his youth, so the story goes), & was able to devote all his energies to the cattle business. It was said of the LeForce Brothers that they made & lost many fortunes. Their losses never seemed to give them much worry. The story is that they had a train load of cattle in Kansas City for the Monday market, when the market broke. Mr. Sam was at the First National Bank to receive the call at noon from Mr. Ras who had ridden to Kansas City in the caboose of the cattle train. Mr. Ras was overjoyed that they were only losing $50.00 a head!
The brothers, feeling perhaps that the cattle business was enough of a gamble, never gambled officially but once. At a matched race between on of their horses & a horse belonging to a gentleman from Arkansas, they won handily, leaving the Arkansan not only penniless but forced to find his way home on foot, having lost his horse & buggy also. Feeling that they should quit while they were ahead, they never gambled again.
Mr. Ras along with Mr. Sam & their nephew Lowery LeForce, made many trips into Louisiana, South Texas & Mexico to buy cattle. They made many friends among the ranchers in these areas.
Mr. Ras was active in the cattle business until he suffered a stroke in 1955, & remained an invalid until his death in 1958, at the age of 88.
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