A Boot Collector Feature
A bootmaker who studied the stitching on his own saddle invented a toe and welt combination still used across the industry today — then sold the company that bore his idea to a family who kept it alive through a death, three moves, and a bridge project that bulldozed their shop.
Rod Patrick founded Mercedes Boot Company in 1975 in Mercedes, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, the town that gave the brand its name. He sold the business in 1989 to George Sossamon, who relocated it to Fort Worth. That same year, George married Debby, who joined the company alongside him. When George died in 2000, Debby kept the business running, and she's been its steward ever since.
The company spent 23 years in Fort Worth before the Trinity River Vision Authority needed its property for a bridge project, forcing a move to Ben Wheeler, a small town in East Texas between Canton and Tyler. Since then, the Farr family — Debby is now married to James Farr — has continued operating Mercedes Boot Company from a family ranch in Terrell, Texas, still building boots the same way through every relocation.
The company's real claim to fame belongs to its founder. Rod Patrick is credited with developing the full round toe and double-stitched welt combination now common across Western bootmaking, an idea he arrived at, by his own account, while studying the double row of stitching on one of his own saddles and adapting it to a boot. Today's Mercedes Boot Company still builds around that same attention to detail: custom lasts made for each individual foot, more than 250 handcrafting steps per pair, and a leather selection running from oil-tanned work leather up through ostrich, alligator, and camel — customers can even supply their own hides. As Debby puts it, the goal is a boot "as timeless as we can" make it, a classic look rather than a trend.
What stands out about this company isn't a client list, it's persistence: the same boot business has now survived a full change of ownership, its founder's death, and a literal act of eminent domain, without ever stopping production. Debby Farr, who has run the company since 2000, is also an accomplished painter of Western and equestrian subjects, an eye that shows up in a boot line built for a timeless look rather than a passing one. Rod Patrick himself, meanwhile, went on to found a separate, later company under his own name — a different Fort Worth-area bootmaker with its own story, and its own profile in this series.
Fifty years after Rod Patrick first adapted a saddle's stitching onto a boot toe, the company he started is still building boots by hand — just from a family ranch in Terrell instead of a shop in the Valley.
Pairs from smaller, custom, or long-closed makers rarely come up for sale, so this search may not find anything. It’s worth checking back now and then.