Charles Schreiner, III

Charles Armand Schreiner, III, known as Charlie, III, or Three Schreiner (January 6, 1927 – April 22, 2001), was a rancher and historian from Kerr County in the Texas Hill Country, a grandson of cattle baron, businessman, banker, landowner, and philanthropist Charles Schreiner, Sr. Schreiner, III, was instrumental in the preservation of Texas Longhorn cattle as the specimen faced extinction.

Background

Schreiner was born in San Antonio, Texas, thirty-four days before the passing of his namesake paternal grandfather. He was the only child of the former Myrtle Viola Barton (1896-1972) and Walter Richard Schreiner, I (1877-1933), one of eight children of the first Charles Schreiner. From his first marriage to the former Audrey Laura Lee Phillips (1928-1988), Schreiner, III, had four sons, Charles A. Schreiner, IV, and wife Mary Helen, rancher Walter R. Schreiner, II (1954-2014), and his wife, the former Teri Suzanne Richburg,^[1] Gus L. Schreiner and wife, Lori,^[2] and Louis Albert "Louie" Schreiner, II (1959-2001), and his wife, Christine. Louie Schreiner, also a rancher and a real estate broker, died at the age of forty-one of a heart attack in Kerrville, nine days before the passing of his father in San Antonio from congestive heart failure.^[3] From his second marriage to Karol Schreiner, his surviving widow, Schreiner acquired a stepdaughter, Deborah James, and her husband, Marty.^[2]

Schreiner attended San Antonio Academy, a private military school; his grandfather's namesake Schreiner Institute in Kerrville, and Texas Military Institute in San Antonio, now TMI — The Episcopal School of Texas, dates of attendance not available.

Career

From 1949 to 1976, Schreiner managed his family's Y. O. Ranch, on which he resided.^[2] The Y. O. is named for the first brands on the Longhorns at the time of the establishment of the ranch in 1880. Because his father died when Schreiner was only six years of age, it became the task of his mother and the ranch hands to school him in ranching.^[4]

In 1960, Schreiner was elected president of the 12,000-member Texas Sheep and Goat Raisers Association. For three years, he was the president of the Hill Country Boys Livestock Association, based in Kerrville.

In 1964, Schreiner founded the Texas Longhorn Breeders Association of America, which in 2001 had two thousand members in forty-eight states and Canada.^[2] He conducted a cattle drive in 1965 from San Antonio to Dodge City, Kansas, with a stop at the LBJ Ranch in Gillespie County, home of then U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. The drive was promoted as a centennial commemoration of the earlier Chisholm Trail drives from roughly San Antonio to Abilene, Kansas, which began in the middle 1860s.^[4]

By 1940, the Y. O. Ranch no longer raised longhorns, which had been essential to the early success of the ranch. Instead heavier specimens were raised to produce more meat. In 1957, Schreiner began creating a new longhorn herd in part as a tribute to his grandfather and his family ranching legacy. "No matter what the economy does, you can count on a Texan for two things. He wants to own a ranch, and he's proud of being a Texan. It's bred into us," said Schreiner.^[4] The ranch shrank from 500,000 acres in the heyday of the first Charles Schreiner to 70,000 acres in 1949 and 50,000 by the time of Schreiner's death.^[5] It survived because of the longhorns, visiting tourists, and hunters of both native and exotic wildlife. Unlike the windfall experienced on many other ranches, no petroleum was found on the cactus-laden Y. O. lands.^[4]

Schreiner also ventured beyond ranching to serve on the boards of First Federal Savings and Loan Association (1960-1983), location missing; Frost Bank in San Antonio (1961-1984), and Schreiner Bancshares in Kerrville (1952-1992). Governor Dolph Briscoe, also a Hill Country rancher and landowner from Uvalde, appointed Schreiner to the board of the Lower Colorado River Authority, which regulates the southern portion of the Colorado River of Texas, which flows into Matagorda Bay. Schreiner's tenure on the board extended from 1974 to 1980.

Legacy

Charles Schreiner, Sr., was from 1854 to 1857 a Texas Ranger and thereafter a private in the Confederate States Army. Moved by his grandfather's life story, Schreiner, III, worked to preserve memorabilia of the Texas Rangers and wrote extensively on the agency.^[4] Family members followed him in collecting historical materials on both ranching and the Rangers.^[1] Schreiner also had a $1 million collection of Colt pistols.^[5]

In 2013, more than a decade after Schreiner's death, his heirs began to squabble among themselves, with Charles Schreiner, IV, and his sister-in-law, Christine Schreiner, filing a lawsuit against the two other brothers, Gus Schreiner and the since deceased Walter R. Schreiner, represented by his widow, Teri Schreiner. The heirs disagree over the proposed break-up of the property and the status of the partnership. Two years later, two couples, Byron and Sandra Sadler and Lacy and Dorothy Harber, purchased 5,300 acres of the Y. O. for $12.3 million. The Sadlers and Harbers have announced plans to construct a restaurant and museum and to expand the Y. O. beyond the existing thirteen cabins. The facility will still be used as a hunting ranch but also as a corporate retreat. Byron Sadler said that he will take a "hands-on" role in the reconstruction of the ranch. "We're going to invest several million dollars to bring it back to what it had been," said Sandra Sadler.^[6]

After Schreiner's passing, the Los Angeles Times referred to him as "a bona fide cowboy who had the business savvy of Bernard Baruch, the showmanship of P.T. Barnum, and the Texas pride of Sam Houston". The publication attributed Schreiner to having saved the Longhorn from extinction and the Y. O. Ranch from bankruptcy with the introduction of the exotic animals for hunting, sometimes called "Texotics."^[5]

He is interred with other family members at the Y. O. Ranch Cemetery.^[2]

References