Texas A and M University - Aggieland Yearbook (College Station, TX)

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HON. MARION SANSOM

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1907 THE LONG HORN 5 iHariott Ransom EXAS has no class of citizens more typical of all that is distinctly Texan, or more representative of all that is best in her heroic past an J l ler boundless present, than her successful ranchmen and stock- raisers. They are the descendants of a strong and rugged race of men. They are worthy sons of the daring pioneers who crossed the Louisiana wilderness, seized the inheritance of the savage, drove the Mex¬ ican beyond the Rio Grande, and consecrated these fertile plains to the cause of human freedom. In the clash of those early struggles and the stressful times that followed, amid the hardships, privations, and dangers of the frontier range and of life on the “trail, the law of the “survival of the fittest had ample opportunity to make itself felt. “Natural selection, with unerring precision, sifted out the weak and the vicious and left with us only the strong, the capable, the resolute. If you take the successful stockmen of Texas today, you will find them strong of body, keen of intellect, sound in judgment, and resolute of purpose. They are men of generous disposition, of infinite good fellow¬ ship, of great breadth of view, and of commendable public spirit. Such, in brief, are the most prominent characteristics of the successful stockmen of Texas. And to this tribe belongs Marion Sansom, the subject of this sketch. Few men among them are more typical of the class than he. A native Texan, his youth and young manhood, covered by the turbulent period of Civil War and reconstruction with its adverse conditions, he has slowly but steadily fought his way upward through all manner of obstacles and discourage¬ ments to success in business, to an easy competency, and to an honorable share in the public affairs of his time. The story of the Sansom family in Texas reads like a chapter from the history of the State. It begins with the Revolution and runs through the seven decades of the State’s independent existence. Marion’s father, R. P. Sansom, a Tennessee lad, thrilled with the stori es of the Texan fight for freedom, left his native land and reached the State before the struggle was over. Marion’s mother, Susan Manning Sansom, was a native Texan, born in Guadalupe County, near the town of Gonzales, the Lexington of the Texas Revolution.