For a long time—at first sporadically but lately in hot pursuit—I’ve been looking for Sam. Sam is Sam Ravel, my paternal grandfather. I scour the indexes of history books for his name, search archives across the country for references to him, and probe the recesses of my memory for details of his life from family lore. But the artifact that has opened an entirely new and exciting aperture into my grandfather’s life was one I’d first seen decades ago.
Sam is my family’s patriarch, the immigrant who made our branch of the Ravel family American. But he’s notable for a more provocative reason: It’s long been rumored that when Pancho Villa raided the village of Columbus, New Mexico in 1916, he was looking to kill Sam.
Who was Sam? And how did this Jewish immigrant from Lithuania land in a dusty border town and get tangled up with Villa, one of Mexico’s most notorious figures?
Sam Ravel arrived at the port of Galveston, Texas in 1905—one of millions of Jews escaping economic hardship and antisemitic persecution in Eastern Europe. He settled with relatives in El Paso before moving to Columbus in November 1910.
Sam’s arrival in Columbus roughly corresponded with the start of the Mexican Revolution, a decade-long, bloody struggle to end an era of dictatorship in Mexico and establish a constitutional republic. As the leader of the División del Norte, Villa was one of the Revolution’s most prominent, and, to the U.S., proximate leaders.
Sam operated two retail businesses in this town just north of the border: the Commercial Hotel and the Columbus Mercantile Company, which he renamed Sam Ravel & Brothers once his younger siblings, Louis and Arthur, joined him in America. The store sold ammunition, appliances, cleaning supplies, clothing, food, fuel, guns, hides—you name it.
Like their merchandise, their customer base was diverse: Americans, including the local Army troops from Camp Furlong, Mexican civilians, and Mexican revolutionaries jockeying for power. With war south of the border came a military buildup that spurred population growth, which generally made for good business. But on March 9, 1916, the Revolution spilled north onto U.S. soil. Before dawn, Villa’s army galloped into town, guns blasting, shouting “¡Viva Villa!”
The assault that followed was audacious, and notorious—the only time in the 20th century that the continental United States was invaded by a major foreign army. The Villistas looted Columbus and set fire to several buildings, including the Ravel-owned Commercial Hotel, which burned to the ground. A gunfight erupted between the Villistas and the U.S. Army, and the Villistas retreated by daybreak. The casualties were substantial: Nine local military officers, 10 civilians, and approximately 78 members of Villa’s army lay dead in the streets.