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Maxwell Grant is to-day dotted with towns, timber claims,mines, farms, and ranches, and at an extremely modest estimate is worth fifty million dollars.
Maxwell built a palatial home at Cimarron, where for he lived in a style of baronial magnificence. Here he dispensed lavish hospitality, and the guests who came and went in endless procession included traders of the Santa Fé trail which passed his door, cattle kings, governors, merchants, army officers, and men distinguished in public life and international affairs in Europe and America.His cellars were stocked with liquors, champagnes, and costly vintages, and his table was laid each day for two dozen guests who ate their food from dishes of solid silver and drank their wines from chalices of solid gold.
Owner of great herds of sheep and cattle, this feudal lord of the old frontier finally sold his vast estate to Jerome B. Chaffee, David H. Moffat, and Wilson Waddington for the reputed sum of $750,000 and lived to see the purchasers sell out to an English syndicate for $1,350,000, almost twice what they had paid him. Maxwell founded the First National Bank of Santa Fé, which he sold in 1871 to Stephen B. Elkins, Thomas Catron, and others. He lost a quarter of a million dollars which he invested in a corporation for the construction of the Texas Pacific Railway. Other investments proved unfortunate.Generous, improvident, picturesque, this magnificent old pioneer retired to Fort Sumner, where he died comparatively poor in 1875.
Mrs. Jaramillo passed her childhood in frontier luxury on her father's estate at Cimarron. Her mother died in 1881. The other Maxwell children were Pedro, Odila, Amilia, Virginia, and Sophia. Pedro, known throughout New Mexico as Pete Maxwell, lived, until his death, at