February 3, 2026
Introduction: In this third of a four-part series, James Pylant tells his own genealogical journey, that started when he was 11, about his vast Meador family and their many connections and stories – including the Medders, who lived the life of the super-rich before it all came crashing down. James is an editor at GenealogyMagazine.com and author for JacobusBooks.com, is an award-winning historical true-crime writer, and authorized celebrity biographer.
Recap: In researching his Meador family connections, the author has uncovered many stories about his Meador(s)-Meadow(s)-Medders relatives who hoped that kinship would bring them wealth. (Note: spelling of the family surname varies, with Meador, Meadors, Meadow, Meadows, and Medders all being used.) The tale starts with Spindletop, the famed oil strike outside of Beaumont, Texas, on 10 January 1901 with a well called Lucas No. 1 erupting into a massive gusher producing about 100,000 barrels of oil a day. Anthony Lucas, who struck the gusher, had deeded a one-eighth undivided mineral interest to Ephraim Garonzik, who transferred it to James Meadors in 1911.
One of the most outrageous stories concerns Ernest Medders and his wife Margaret, who got to experience the life of the super-rich before it all came crashing down.
Online family trees call him Ernest Leeberry Medders, though his World War II draft registration card leaves a blank space for his middle name. The signature on that card spells his first name Earnest, but elsewhere his name is commonly found as Ernest.* He was born on 25 March 1910 in Fayette County, Alabama, to Ruben Early and Sally (Vick) Medders. His father farmed there until relocating his family to Arkansas, where they grew cotton. Ruben Early Medders died during a visit to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1940.
Ernest, who had a third-grade education, would gain fame for his rags-to-riches story. Long before that saga unfolded, he and Annie Lee Posey were married in Crittenden County, Arkansas, on Christmas Day 1933. They had two children. He moved his family back to his native Alabama, where he found employment with the WPA as a laborer in Jasper County.
The couple divorced, and some years later Ernest married Margaret Smiddy Riggs, a widow with four small children. Her first husband’s death in the late 1940s left her “virtually penniless.” She moved from Jellico, Tennessee, to Memphis, where she placed the children in St. Peter’s orphanage but persuaded the nuns to employ her so she could be close to her children. She worked as a nurse’s aide at St. Joseph’s Hospital.
In 1950, Ernest and Margaret lived with his brother Ruben Medders near Memphis. Ernest worked as a mechanical helper for Gulf Gas & Oil.
In 1959, word spread through the Medders family that they were heirs to a vast fortune.
This article reports:
Margaret Medders and her husband found Camelot. On credit, and lost it again.
During six years, sometimes heavenly, sometimes hectic, they blew $3 million of other people’s money.
They thought they were the heirs, or might be the heirs, to a contested Texas oil fortune. On the basis of that they found people offering to loan them money. Credit exploded on their poor world.
They sent their children to exclusive schools, bought two homes. One a farm and the other in the city. They hobnobbed with dignitaries and dined once at Lyndon Johnson’s White House. They even flew home to Texas on Air Force One.
Then suddenly Camelot crashed. Creditors came by the legion.
Attorney W. T. Weir of Philadelphia, Alabama, convinced 3,000 people that they were the rightful heirs of Ruben Meadows/Medders/Meders and “that they should be wealthy people.” Rather than a measly million, it was five billion dollars, an amount mushrooming with each retelling.
“I didn’t believe – until I heard these lawyers,” said Ernest. He began collecting documentary evidence of his kinship with Uncle Ruben. Weir represented him, filing suit in Beaumont, Texas, in 1961.
Word spread fast.
“Almost overnight the Medderses had people lining up to extend them credit,” wrote journalist Steve McVicker. Among the least likely lenders were Catholic monks in Arkansas. In 1962, the same year The Beverly Hillbillies TV show debuted, the monk folks told them to move away from there; Texas was where they ought to be. So, the Medders loaded up and moved to Muenster, Texas.
The above newspaper article reports:
Once in Muenster, they wanted to buy 185 acres of land [in 1962]. It cost $60,000 over four years. The Poor Sisters of St. Francis Seraph Inc., of Mishawaka, Ind., put up the money.
The Medders built a 20-room house, dubbing it Colonial Acres, and the nuns footed the bill.
Ernest made out a will. It said that in his lifetime he intended to give $10 million to the order, and, if he failed to do so, the sum should be given to the order from proceeds available at his death.
The Medders were Baptists, but to impress the nuns, they converted to Catholicism. Muenster, with a population of 1,190, was about 90 percent Catholic. In November 1965 came the inaugural “barn-warming” for their recently completed show barn that doubled as a ballroom, where 800 guests dined and danced at an elegant gala, with gallons of bubbling champagne flowing from a fountain. Their extravagant party was front-page news.
The photo caption reads:
Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Medders, left, pose with their guests, Congressman Graham Purcell (who flew in from Italy for the party) and Mrs. Purcell, from Wichita Falls.
This article reports:
If you’ve never been to a black tie barn-warming, be sure to accept the next invitation that comes along – especially if it’s as elaborate as the one given by Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Medders of Muenster.
The Medders, who moved to Texas from Memphis, Tenn., in 1962, have just completed a huge showbarn on their 1,000-acre Colonial Acres Farm… and a showbarn will seat 800 for dinner and dancing.
Guests arrived for Tuesday’s party from all over the state (and as far away as Virginia, Illinois and Arizona) by bus, auto and planes (both private and commercial), and many were ferried to the ranch by helicopter.
The barn, illuminated by hundreds of candles and the flash equipment brought along by the man from Life Magazine, was filled with tables covered with orange, yellow and green cloths. Centerpieces alternated between 4-foot-tall arrangements of yellow and bronze chrysanthemums and candles and lower arrangements of candles banked with fresh mounds of oranges, lemons, apples, bananas and limes.
…Glenn Allen, maître d’ from the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel, brought along the goodies for the evening, including: a Greyhound bus and two trucks borrowed from Walter Jetton, 250 pounds of roast beef, 320 pounds of butterball turkey, 160 pounds of baked Virginia ham, 3,000 biscuits, 1,500 cold canapes, 1,500 hot hors d’oeuvres, 2,000 shrimp on ice, caviar, stuffed eggs, barbecued Chinese ribs, and tenderloin of beef on skewers… and that’s just the heavy hors d’oeuvres served during the cocktail hour. They were washed down with gallons of champagne which bubbled from a fountain near the buffets.
The entire Medders family greeted guests at the barn-warming party, as shown by this front-page photo.
The photo caption reads:
FAMILY NIGHT – Muenster, Tex. – Mrs. and Mrs. Ernest Medders, at right, were assisted by their six children in the receiving line at a gala party-dance “barnwarming” to officially open the Colonial Acres horse show barn here Tuesday night. The children are, not in order: Sara, Marye, Frank, Cathy, John and Gene.
“They had been the poorest of poor people,” recalled Betty Henscheid. “All their parties were black tie. And I guarantee you, she didn’t know what a black tie was before she got here,” Mrs. Henscheid said of Margaret.
Margaret’s sudden penchant for all things shiny and new included a $65,000 ring, an $80,000 necklace, and the most expensive mink coat yet, valued at $75,000, all from Neiman-Marcus in Dallas. The store placed a hold on future charges when the bill topped $300,000. Caterers, photographers, florists, grocers, and liquor dealers also clamored for payment.
There was one slight problem.
A month before the barn-warming party, on 11 October 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court had dismissed the Medders case; every appellate path had been exhausted, dashing all hope of receiving any inheritance from the Pelham Humphries (Spindletop fortune) estate. As author Roger L. Shafer noted, it “didn’t put a damper on the barn warming festivities, their visit to the White House, or any other gala Medders’ events in the coming year.”
“The cousins and uncles who had been party to that old lawsuit decided that somehow Ernest must have grabbed the whole inheritance for himself,” wrote David Nevin in Life magazine.
In October 1966, Ernest’s sister-in-law, Margery Medders – widow of his late brother Rubin Isom Medders – requested an accounting of the $40,000 monthly payments she claimed Ernest had been receiving from the Pelham Humphrey estate’s oil, gas, and sulfur production.
This article reports:
“I’ve never received a dime from an inheritance,” said Ernest Medders. “I don’t know how things like this get started.”
Ernest admitted in court that his empire ran entirely on fumes: substantial loans from banks, plus $2 million alone from the ironically named Poor Sisters of St. Francis, an Indiana order of nuns.
“Ernest has never received a dollar of this so-called inheritance,” Margaret said in an interview with the Knoxville News-Sentinel. “He still believes he will, but I never have,” an astonishing confession considering her lavish spending.
The admission left Ernest with no choice but to file bankruptcy; however, he refused to include his 185-acre Colonial Acres home, citing a Texas law that a homestead cannot be seized to satisfy debts.
Creditors settled on 1½ cents on the dollar. The Medderses sold Colonial Acres and moved to nearby Gainesville before returning to Tennessee and leasing a Memphis home. They arrived in a chauffeur-driven Cadillac. “The maid and cook came with us,” Margaret said. Later, the Medderses moved to Brownsville, Texas, where Ernest lived for the three remaining years of his life. His death from a heart attack on 14 November 1975 made nationwide headlines. He was 65.
Ernest’s death didn’t leave his widow in the shadows. Margaret’s rollercoaster ride was far from over.
Stay tuned for more!
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Note on the header image: “Heywood #2 Gusher,” Spindletop, Beaumont, Texas, 1901. Credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
* Earnest Medders, serial no. 1026 (1940), “U.S., World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947,” online database with images, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com: accessed 15 December 2025).
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