James Scully Colfax County, New Mexico

James Scully, a rancher living at Elizabethtown, was born in Ireland in 1840, and when but nine years of age was brought to the United States by an aunt. He was reared by a French family in Louisiana, and in 1861, responding to the call of the Confederacy, joined a military company known as the Louisiana Rifle Tigers. In an engagement he was captured and afterward sent to Chicago, where for some time he was held as a prisoner of war.

Following the close of hostilities Mr. Scully made his way westward, and was engaged at teaming at Fort Riley and at Fort Lyon. In 1868 he came to Elizabethtown, where he took up mining- claims and worked placer mining profitably for six or seven years, but believed that the cattle industry would prove a more profitable source of income, and in 1874 he purchased a ranch of Major Alford and began the conduct of this place and the herding and sale of stock. He now has between seven and eight thousand acres of land and a lease on thirty thousand acres of grazing land. He runs large numbers of cattle and horses, and is one of the well-known and prominent stock men and ranchers of the southwest. He likewise has five hundred acres of his land under cultivation and produces thereon abundant crops. In his farming operations he follows the most modern, practical and progressive methods and thereby secures good results. Both his farming and cattle business are proving profitable, and in addition to his property in Texas he owns real estate in Springer and Albuquerque, New Mexico, and in Louisiana.

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Source: History of New Mexico, Its Resources and People, Volume II, Pacific States Publishing Co., 1907.