Yee Haw! Panhandle Princess From The Prairies Of Texas! Aleene McFarland!

While living in Texas, this esoteric had an opportunity to meet some of the most fascinating women I have ever had the pleasure and honor to know. To clarify, some of them were living, whilst others were no longer on this mortal coil.

There is something quite unique about the women of Texas.  Their Southern gentility, underpinned by a spicier, perhaps more raw element of attitude.  The duality of panhandle & Paris!

For me personally, I love their ‘piss & vinegar’ approach to things.  Mind you, these traits tended to belong to those societal matriarchs that drifted across my path like so much Texas tumble weed.  No doubt their sisterhood on a lower social economic scale are liked minded, but this does not signify for our purposes.

One in particular makes us take notice based on her rise from prairie to princess, one Miss Aleene McFarland.  Daughter to Charles McFarland and Eloise McAfee; she grew up in the vastness of Texas, before venturing east for her education, and then to Europe to be ‘finished!’

It was while in Europe that she stumbled across her future prince.  Hailing from the tiny principality of Liechtenstein, he was poor on ‘dinars’, but long on pedigree.

Throughout her time as Princess von und zu Liechtenstein she made various appearances in the headlines of the press.

She’s fascinating to be sure.  One article compares her to a famous cartoon strip character of the time ‘Boots’!  Apparently, ‘Boots’ said ‘no’ to her comic strip prince; Prince Franz of Grandalia, whilst Aleene said yes to hers.

No doubt you will find her as entertaining as I did!

Aleene McFarland

25.I.1902 – 10.III.1983

SHE TOOK THE CHANCE

THAT ‘BOOTS’ TURNED DOWN

Life Is Funnier Than The Funnies

And To Prove It, Here’s The True

Story Of Pretty Aleene McFarland

Finishing School Reared Daughter

Of A Texas Rancher, Who Married

Prince Johann Of Liechtenstein

World’s Tiniest Principality

By Helen Welshimer

The Sunday Morning Star

September 20, 1931

ALEENE McFARLAND took the chance that ‘Boots’ turned down.

The favorite of the funnies could have been a princess living in a castle in a funny little kingdom with a great gold moon and a lot of peasants who sang songs and hoed in their gardens.

All she needed to do was say, ‘Yes, Your Highness,’ or whatever it is you say when you tell a prince that you like the idea.

But Boots didn’t.  She answered, ‘Oh, gee, Mr. X., I couldn’t.’ or something of the sort.  Aleene McFarland, however, said yes, when Boots said no.

And while Boots was coaxing Willie to steal the royal airship and get her away from Grandalia before she changed her mind – for the prince was a very handsome young price, you understand – Aleene was changing her name and liking it.

The marriage of Aleene McFarland, the daughter of the late Charles McFarland, a millionaire Texas cattle king and oil promoter, to Prince Johann of the principality of Liechtenstein might have been taken from a light opera libretto.

You could probably lose the prince’s kingdom in a corner of the western girl’s ranches.  But a prince is a prince!

ALEENE always wanted to marry a prince.  Type, size, country . . . . They didn’t interest her so much.  A prince was a prince.  The cowpunchers were nice, but they wore sombreros and lassoed cattle.  There wasn’t a single story in her book of fairy tales that ended with the heroine riding away with a man from a rodeo.

Aleene was slim and tall, with dusky eyes and very dark hair.  Her family had some royal blood of its own in its veins.  The McFarlands traced their ancestry straight back to the ancient Earl of Lennox in Scotland.  Besides, they could tell you what every McFarland had been doing since 1296.

The cattle man’s daughter started to write stories – all about girls who married handsome sons of mighty kings and rode away to live happily ever after, while the cannons were fired and the church bells rang.

After a while she left her home in Weatherford, Texas, and went east to school.  The name of the Spence School in New York had a magic touch.  It was exactly the place where the girls who might have a chance of meeting royalty went to learn how to address them.  It had a very high standard of scholarship and a very, very strict code of conduct. Boys weren’t part of the program.

The girls didn’t go to the games and dances and drift around the campus with the gang as Boots has always done.  They embroidered and learned French verbs and dreamed of romance.

Once upon a time a youth sent a very affectionate telegram to a girl in the school. Right away she was asked either to announce her engagement to the young man or leave the school. 

And it was a mighty good thing that she did, for she danced her way right up the steps to the throne.  She attended Columbia University.  But so far she didn’t have a prince on her list.

Back in Texas the cowboys sat on the long porches of the rancher’s houses or took the castle kings’ daughters to the dances under the star-strewn sky.

Aleene wasn’t very interested.  She spent her time mostly in New York and foreign cities. 

One night in Paris, Mrs Robert Shutte of New York gave a dinner party.  She asked Aleene.

‘The Prince of Liechtenstein will be there,’ she said.

Somebody got out a map and looked up Liechtenstein.  It made a very small spot on the painted sheet.  Just a dot along the right bank of the Rhine opposite the Swiss Canton of St. Gaul.

There were mountains all around it, just as in the case of the countries which are featured in fairy tales and comic operas.  The population was just 10,000.  The romantic principality was 65 miles square.

There are 265,896 square miles in the Lone Star state.

ALEENE decided that she would do a special dance in honor of His Highness, the Prince, of 65 square miles of land.  Princes’ were human young men.  They liked first-row seats at the Paris shows.

Besides, she couldn’t dance for a prince every day.  Since thrones were using collapsible chairs a girl had to make the most of her chances.

So the future Princess Aleene danced – alluringly, gracefully, charmingly.

It might have been a feature from a light opera.  The scene was so very much the same – a watching prince, a girl who had always wanted to belong to royalty.

And it worked.

The prince leaned forward.

He applauded.  That girl was worth meeting. He asked his hostess to present him.

So that very evening the two met.

The Prince found that the dancer was a very pretty American girl, and the American girl found the Prince was a mighty nice young man.

He wanted to see her again.  She agreed that it would be interesting.  And after a very few dates he asked her the question that belongs in every good play.

But meantime the girl who had written fairy tales had grown up.  She wasn’t going to let the lure of a prince’s estate blind her.  Not even an estate which could be set down in the middle of one of her family’s ranches!

The prince had come, but she set out to test his love.  Time and distance were good aids. She wanted to make sure of her own, too.

She proposed a test, which was worthy of Boots herself.

‘We shall wait to see if our love is real before we are married,’ she said.

One year passed.  Two years.  Three, and four and five.

And the Prince stayed as devoted as any young ranchman ever could do. Once or twice every year Aleene McFarland went to Europe.  Prince Johann always came to an English port to meet the ship, and accompanied the heiress to Paris.  He was in love with all the devotion of Mr. X.

Her prince has exactly the kind of kingdom that she had imagined for her fairytale suitors.  The people are all happy. They bow down in front of the ruler who in turn, supplies the government buildings, churches, dykes, against floods, roads, and all other utilities from his own pocket.

He does it mostly through the sale of postage stamps.  The postage stamps, which are flamboyant and gaudy, are changed every little while.  Stamp collectors always order them.  And the revenue comes in. The people themselves don’t use many of them, for they live shut in together so closely that the stage never brings much mail.

Princess Aleene learned that there are towers and battlements and winding stairs up the castle walls, cow bells and mountain peaks and wayside shirnes.

It was like a setting from a light opera.  She wanted to box it and take it home to Texas.  Since she couldn’t do that she brought home the Prince instead, on a wedding trip.

Five years had passed since she had told him to wait until she was sure whether she loved him, and he loved her, with the enduring kind of love.

Princess Aleene, had kept as still about her engagement as Boots did about her meetings in the park with the Prince of Grandalia. 

When she decided to marry him, that was different.  Now she could take him home to Texas and show the neighbors how a real prince looked.

Cattle and cotton raising are the two chief industries in Liechtenstein as well as Texas, so she knew that there was a common link somewhere. Of course there are probably two cows on the McFarland ranches for every one that browses along the cow paths in the principality.  But a cow is a cow anywhere.

After all, a prince is a prince and they are getting scare.  Boots might have done pretty well for herself if she had crossed the Atlantic on the arm of a prince, as the other girl did, instead of looking at the moon – and thinking about him.

TEXAS GIRL IS WED

QUIETLY TO PRINCE

Cattle Baron’s Daughter

Joins Liechtenstein Royalty In London Ceremony

Couple To Visit America

Bride Educated In New York

At Miss Spence’s School

And Columbia University

The New York Times

LONDON, July 29. – Prince Johann, member of the reigning house of the tiny principality of Liechtenstein, and a pretty young American woman, Miss Aleene McFarland, of New York and Texas, were quietly married at the Church of Our Lady of Assumption here today.

They stole a march on the crowds waiting for a glimpse of them by entering the church through a side door, and the wedding was half over before it was known the bridal pair had arrived.  Father Waterkeyn officiated.

The bride wore a green ensemble, with close fitting hat to match, and a large silver fox fur. She is 29 years old, the daughter of Mrs. Charles McFarland of Weatherford, Texas.  Her father, now dead, was a wealthy Texan, with interests in ranches and oil.

The Prince is 31.  His young brother, Prince Ferdinand Andreas, married Miss Shelagh Brunner, daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Roscoe Brunner, here in 1925.

WEATHERFORD, Texas, July 29 (AP),- This venerable West Texas hamlet, where melon wagons idle about a court house, could hardly grasp the sudden honor thrust on it today by the marriage in London of Aleene McFarland, to a member of one of the oldest reigning families in Europe.

Dark-eyed Aleene was born here and went to school in the little red schoolhouse in Weatherford.  Her father, the late Charles McFarland, was lord of many acres and ruled many cowboys. The McFarland home overlooks the landscape from a hilltop south of Weatherford. There the Prince and his bride will be welcomed by Mrs. McFarland when they come to America in a few weeks on their honeymoon.

FORT WORTH, Texas, July 29, (AP) – The marriage today in London of Miss Aleene McFarland, daughter of an old-time ‘cattle baron’ of the Texas prairies, who died in 1928, to Prince Johann of Liechtenstein culminated a romance which began five years ago in Paris.

Mrs. Charles McFarland of Weatherford, the girl’s mother, said the Prince met her daughter when she appeared as a dancer at a dinner party at the home of a friend.

‘I was thrilled when I saw her and was not happy until I met her,’ the Prince later told Mrs. McFarland.

Other meetings followed and the two became engaged.

The girl was educated in the East, attending Miss Spence’s School, and Columbia University, and was later socially prominent in Fort Worth. She has two brothers and three sisters.

One sister, Mrs. R. L. Dixon of London and Dallas, returned recently from London after spending five months with Miss McFarland.  Mr. and Mrs. Dixon spend several months each year in England, where his parents reside.

PRINCE TO SEE

BRIDE’S RANCH

Will View In West Texas

Domains Larger Than Own Principality

The Pittsburgh Press

August 16, 1931

WEATHERFORD, Tex, Aug. 15 – West Texas is thrilled because an American girl will bring her prince-husband here in two weeks to show him where her father once ruled as a pioneer cattle king.

The girl formerly was Aleene McFarland, daughter of the late Charles McFarland, who two weeks ago married Prince Johann of Liechtenstein in London.  Now spending their honeymoon in Eastern United States, the couple will visit the home of the bride’s mother in Weatherford.

The prince and his bride will be entertained in the great mansion on the highest hill south of town, overlooking the large ranch where the late father of the Princess ruled the range.

The Prince will see ranches larger than the principality which he may rule. 

Will Get West’s Hospitality

He will be entertained in Western style.  The bride’s mother, Mrs. Charles McFarland, is being aided by Fred McFarland and Eloise McFarland, brother and sister of Princess Aleene.  Another sister, Mrs. R. L. Dixon of Dallas, will entertain when the couple arrives there.

The Princess’ family history can be traced back to 1296 in Scotland.

Marriage For Love

Mrs. McFarland has been termed by Prince Johann ‘the most beautiful woman in America.’ She gracefully counters with a high regard of her royal son-in-law and explains the marriage was for love and not for royalty or money.

‘Prince Johann said all he wanted was the girl,’ she said.  ‘Aleene married him because she loved him.  There was no dowry.’

Princess, A Former

American, Divorced

The Milwaukee Journal

January 22, 1943

Fort Worth, Tex. – (AP) – Princess Aleene of Liechtenstein was granted a divorce from Prince Johannes here Thursday.

In a property settlement, the Princess, formerly Miss Aleene McFarland of Weatherford, Tex., retained real property and oil royalties valued at approximately $100,000.

The Prince got $875, a light truck and the Crown silverware of Liechtenstein, which he inherited from his grandmother.  Princess Aleene did not seek restoration of her maiden name.

Texas-Born Princess

Is Almost Kidnapped

For Television Show

The Evening Independent

December 3, 1949

LOS ANGELES – (AP) – An attempt to get a Texas-born princess on a television show nearly turned out to be a kidnapping case.

The Princess Aleene, former wife of Prince Johannes of Liechtenstein, told police Thursday, that a man telephoned her at her hotel, saying she had won an automobile in a San Francisco drawing and made an appointment to meet her.

She and a woman friend got into a car, but became suspicious and got out.  The car sped away, but they got its license number.

Police Lt. Harry Didion said the owner of the car was a television producer, who explained he used the scheme to ‘get a real, live princess,’ on his show.  No charges have been filed.

The Princess married Prince Johannes in London in 1931 and they were divorced 10 years later. She is the daughter of the late Charles McFarland, Weatherford, Tex., cattle raiser.

NR

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