This horse whisperer from Fort Worth is the only Jewish person in Cowgirl Hall of Fame

Frances Elaine Rosenthal Kallison was a horse whisperer. From the age of 3, she was at home in the saddle, holding the reins.

Born in Fort Worth in 1908, she hopped on the husky draft horses that hauled her father’s furniture wagons from his downtown store on Throckmorton to the barn behind their house on Leuda Street. No cutting horses or palominos for little Frances. That would come later in life.

When the automobile age arrived, her mother was among the first women in Fort Worth to drive a car, a Studebaker. She offered rides to friends, saying, “I have a machine. We don’t have to worry about tiring the horse.” Care and concern for the animals was utmost.

Young Frances attended the Eighth Ward School, later renamed De Zavala, at 1604 College Ave. Although her family was Jewish and among the founders of Beth-El Congregation, she periodically went to Sunday school with her friends at College Avenue Baptist Church. Her parents, Rachel and Mose Rosenthal, believed that interfaith mingling and understanding were important. For their daughter’s senior year of high school, they enrolled her at an Episcopal girl’s academy in Dallas because the curriculum was more challenging and classes more rigorous than at Fort Worth’s Central High. They wanted Frances to have a shot at one of the Seven Sisters colleges. Their strategy worked. In the fall of 1925, Frances matriculated at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Despite Vassar’s prestige, Frances was not impressed. She found the curriculum limiting and her classmates elitist. She wanted to learn about Asian cultures, archaeology and international economics and to study on a coeducational campus. She transferred to the University of Chicago, graduating in 1929 with a degree in economics. She planned to go into banking, but the stock market crash of October 1929 ended those dreams.

On a family trip the next year to San Antonio, she was invited to a picnic for Jewish teenagers. There she met Perry Kallison, son of an immigrant-Russian harness maker and rancher. Frances fell in love with Perry and with the ranch, the Diamond K.

As the Great Depression gave rise to shantytowns on San Antonio’s outskirts, Frances was drawn to the social welfare programs of the New Deal. She joined San Antonio’s chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), a progressive group that lobbied the legislature for a minimum wage and an end to the $2.50 poll tax that kept Black and Hispanic people off the voting rolls. Her attempts to change the law got nowhere.

She had more success at the local level, pressuring San Antonio to open a prenatal clinic for the poor. As NCJW president, Frances spearheaded creation of Happy Hour Nursery for blind toddlers who lost their sight due to faulty incubators. With additional advocacy, the NCJW convinced the legislature to mainstream blind children in the public schools.

During World War II, soldiers stationed in San Antonio were invited by the busload to the Diamond K Ranch, where they enjoyed barbecue suppers and a ride in the saddle. By then, the ranch was raising palominos. Combining ranch life with public service and empowering women was what motivated Frances.

To that end, she was among the founders in 1947 of a blue-ribbon riding group — the Ladies’ Auxiliary to the Bexar County Sheriff’s Mounted Posse. The term “posse” implies vigilantes on horseback deputized to round up outlaws. As the Wild West grew tame, the posse evolved into a sociable riding club, often representing law enforcement in parades. The Bexar County Mounted Posse that Frances wrote about for the September 1951 issue of The Cattleman magazine, promoted “superb horsemanship, good sportsmanship, and perfection of mounted drills” as well as public service.

A “crack drill team,” the Ladies’ Posse performed at the annual stock show rodeo and at the Battle of the Flowers Parade, which honors heroes of the Alamo. The horsewomen gave exhibitions for soldiers at what is today the Brooke Army Medical Center. After one of their equestrian performances drew a crowd of 3,000 paying fans to Brackenridge Park, the profits underwrote a physiotherapy unit for the polio ward at the city’s children’s hospital.

The Ladies’ Posse enjoyed what Frances called “their share of glamour.” They appeared in a television episode of “The Cisco Kid.” They performed in two motion pictures — “Two Guys from Texas,” released in 1948, and “Rio Grande,” which opened in 1950. When “Rio Grande,” starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, held its world premiere at San Antonio’s Majestic Theater, O’Hara accepted an honorary membership in the posse.

Frances raised three children and served on local, state and national boards. After two decades of involvement with the Bexar County Historical Commission, she received an aristocratic title, Hidalgo de San Antonio de Bejar, a Spanish form of address reserved for the nobility. Despite reaching senior status, or perhaps because of it, historians, social activists, and researchers made pilgrimages to her San Antonio home for strategy sessions on civic issues and to record her recollections. She died in 2004 at the age of 96. Twelve years later, Frances Rosenthal Kallison was posthumously inducted into Fort Worth’s National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, its first and only Jewish honoree.

Hollace Ava Weiner, an author, archivist and historian, is director of the Fort Worth Jewish Archives.