USA > Texas > Harris County > Houston > A thumb-nail history of the city of Houston, Texas, from its founding in 1836 to the year 1912 > Part 4
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the war the engines were handled by negroes under control of white officers.
Mr. T. W. House, Sr., who was Mayor of the city in 1862, organized the first Houston Fire De- partment. The Department was composed of Pro- tection No. 1, Hook and Ladder No. 2, and Liberty No. 2. Mr. E. L. Bremond was made Chief of the Department, and H. F. Hurd and Robert Burns were appointed First and Second Chiefs. The De- partment was not a great success and did not last long. There was friction between the companies and so each one pulled out and acted independently and the Department died a natural death.
It was not until 1874 that another and successful attempt was made to organize a Department. That year Mr. J. H. B. House, son of the organizer of the first Department, succeeded in getting all the companies in the city to consent to the organization and he formed a really strong and efficient Depart- ment. Mr. J. H. B. House was unanimously elected Chief, and Messrs. Z. T. Hogan and C. C. Beavens were elected First and Second Assistants, as named. Mr. House and Mr. Hogan resigned before the end of their first term, and Mr. W. Williams was elect- ed Chief, C. C. Beavens, First Assistant Chief, and Fred Harvey, Second Assistant.
Following is a synopsis of the report of the cele- bration of San Jacinto Day, taken from the files of the Houston Telegraph of April 22, 1875. The celebration was gotten up by the new Fire Depart- ment:
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THE CITY OF HOUSTON, TEXAS
There was a great street parade in which were large delegations from several interior cities, mostly from points on the Houston & Texas Central rail- road. Col. J. P. Likens delivered an address during the afternoon. The following local companies were in line:
Protection No. 1-Charles Wichman, foreman; L. Ollre, first assistant; S. M. McAshan, president; Robert Brewster, secretary; R. Cohen, treasurer.
Hook and Ladder, No. 1-H. P. Roberts, presi- dent; L. Blanton, vice-president; William Camer- on, secretary; O. L. Cochran, treasurer; Dr. Thom. Robinson, foreman; J. C. Hart, first assistant; G. W. Gazley, second assistant.
Stonewall, No. 3-Joseph F. Meyer, foreman; L. M. Jones, first assistant ; F. J. Frank, second as- sistant; W. Long, president; F. Ludke, vice-presi- dent; W. E. Smith, secretary.
Brooks, No. 5-I. C. Ford, foreman; William Alexander, first assistant; J. C. Thomas, Jr., sec- ond assistant; J. C. Thomas, Sr., president; I. Snowball, vice-president; S. L. Mateer, secretary; Thos. Milner, treasurer.
Eagle, No. 7-John Shearn, Jr., foreman; Wil- lie Van Alstyne, first assistant; Ed. Mather, sec- ond assistant.
The Telegraph added the following bit of infor- mation about the companies taking part in the pa- rade :
Protection No. 1, organized in 1836.
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Houston Hook and Ladder No. 1, organized April 17, 1858.
Liberty No. 2, organized 1860.
Stonewall No. 3, organized in the late sixties.
Brooks No. 5, organized in the late sixties.
Mechanic No. 6, organized October 28, 1873.
Eagle No. 7, organized in 1875.
At that time the Department had two steamers, one extinguisher engine, two hand wagons and one hook and ladder company. It cost about $9,000 an- nually to run the department.
The old volunteer department existed as a whole for nineteen years, then, in 1893, it became a part pay and a part volunteer department. That prov- ing unsatisfactory, the city took over the whole de- partment in 1895, with the result that Houston has, today, one of the most useful and efficient Fire De- partments in the South. There are thirty pieces of fire-fighting apparatus, of which nine are powerful modern steamers.
In 1875 it cost $9,000 annually to run the de- partment; today it costs very nearly $125,000.
For some years after Houston was founded there was little or no necessity for crossing to the north side of the bayou. Very few people lived on that side and these came and went on small foot bridges which answered very well for the requirements of the limited travel. It is true that there was a grow- ing wagon trade with other parts of the State and Houston but this was easily accommodated. All the trade from the west and northwest came in over
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the San Felipe road. That from the north came into the city by Stockbridge's ford, which was sit- uated at the foot of Texas Avenue, while trade from the San Jacinto and Trinity came by the way of the Harrisburg ferry. The old San Felipe road re- mained unchanged to the end, but the trade from other parts of the State soon grew to such large pro- portions that the primitive methods of ford and fer- ry had to be abandoned and in 1843 the first bridge over Buffalo bayou was built at the foot of Pres- ton avenue.
That bridge stood for ten years, but was swept away by a great flood which occurred in 1853. The bridge that was constructed in its place was remark- able for its height and length. Its builders deter- mined that it should not share the fate of its prede- cessor, so they built its center very high and extend- ed its ends high up on each bank of the bayou. It was appropriately named "Long Bridge," and though seriously threatened by high water on sev- eral occasions it always escaped destruction. Final- ly, in the great flood of 1878, it was so badly dam- aged that it became necessary to remodel it and the present Preston street bridge is the result. At about the same time that the Preston bridge was built a bridge was built across the bayou at the foot of Milam street and another across White Oak bayou at the same point the present White Oak bridge occupies. These bridges were originally cheap wooden structures, but were remodeled and iron work substituted for wood, except in the White
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Oak bridge. It is utterly impossible to estimate the value of goods and produce that have passed over these bridges. For years everything grown in Texas for the outside markets was brought to Houston over them, while all goods and groceries shipped to the interior went out by the same routes. In time the Preston bridge became of chief importance, be- cause the section north of Houston became more rapidly developed and the trade was consequently immense in that direction.
Of course when the railroads were built, the bridges were no longer needed for the purpose for which they were originally built, but by that time the city had grown and extended so that the bridges became equally as necessary for intercommunication between the various section of the city as they had been for communication with the interior of the State. More bridges became necessary and more were constructed until now there are half a dozen passenger bridges and numerous railroad bridges spanning Buffalo Bayou, while an immense bridge is being constructed at the foot of Main street so as to connect with the Fifth Ward.
CHAPTER THREE.
The First Railroad-How Mr. Bremond Accom- plished the Impossible-Railroad Development Before and After the War-Early Physicians and Lawyers-Sketch of the Courts.
Ask ten men and the chances are that nine of them will say that the first railroad ever built in Texas had its start in Houston. This is no doubt due to the fact that the first road that ever amounted to anything, in the early days, the Houston & Texas Central, actually did have its beginning here. As a matter of fact, railroad building began (though nothing was accomplished) thirteen years before work on the Houston & Texas Central commenced. The mistake is quite natural for Houston has been the starting point for so many of the things that have made Texas great that it seems safe to credit her with being the mother of them all.
Now, as a matter of fact, the first railroad con- struction ever done in Texas, if grading a few miles of track may be called construction, was at Harris- burg in 1840. Mr. A. Brisco was the moving spirit in that enterprise and he formed a company, putting up as a bonus a number of lots in the City of Har- risburg. The company he formed had no charter nor did they try to get one. Their idea was to build the road from Harrisburg to the Brazos and, after they had earned enough money by the traffic from that rich section to justify them in doing so, to ex-
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tend it further west towards Gonzales. A large force of negroes was put to work grading the road bed and nearly two miles were completed and ties purchased for that length of road when it was found that the cost of the iron rails would be too great, so the undertaking was abandoned. The next year, however, they took out a charter under the name of the Harrisburg Railroad and Trading Company. Though they had a charter now, they made no fur- ther attempt to actually construct the road and everything was allowed to lie dormant until 1847 when General Sidney Sherman associated himself with a number of prominent Houston and Galves- ton men, secured the lots offered by Mr. Brisco, and after being assured of financial support by New York capitalists, he reorganized the road and secured another charter for it under the name Buf- falo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado railroad. That road afterwards became the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio railroad of today.
Though General Sherman and his associates or- ganized in '1847, it was not until 1851 that actual work was commenced. The preparation of the road- bed was commenced and pushed as rapidly as possi- ble, but it was a year before rails were laid. That part of the work was done rapidly, however, and before the close of the year the road was actually completed as far as the Brazos, 32 miles from Har- risburg. No stop was made, but the road was pushed forward, and in 1860 Alleyton, 79 miles from Harrisburg, was reached. Here a halt was
JOHN H. KIRBY The Man Who Put Houston on the Financial Map
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made and before work could be resumed the war came on and nothing further in the way of construc- tion was possible.
The Houston men who had taken a leading part in the construction of this first railroad were W. M. Rice, W. A. Van Alstyne, James H. Stevens, B. A. Shepherd and W. J. Hutchins.
These same men and others had organized a pure- ly local company at Houston, one year before con- struction had begun on the Harrisburg road, and had obtained a charter under the name of the Brazos Plank Road. Their object was to grade a road from Houston to some point on the Brazos and then plank it over so as to enable the ox wagons which were the only means of transportation in those days to reach Houston easily at all seasons. That was in 1850, and the work of grading had extended the road twenty-three miles, though no planks had been laid, when some of the citizens of Chappell Hill, Washington County, issued a call for a great meet- ing to be held at Chappell Hill in the interest of building a railroad. Houston was invited to send delegates to that railroad convention, and a meet- ing was held in June, 1852, at the old Capitol Ho- tel for the purpose of discussing the question.
The meeting was largely attended, the stock- holders in the Plank Road project being conspicu- ous. They had something of a double interest in the meeting, for while they knew the value of a rail- road they also knew that a railroad would complete- ly destroy the value of their plank road. However,
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that fact seems not to have influenced their action, for they voted for sending a strong delegation to the Chappell Hill convention. This action was taken not without opposition, however, for while making no direct attack on the proposed railroad, Dr. Fran- cis Moore, the editor of the Telegraph, made a vig- orous fight for the plank road, which he argued was a present necessity and one, too, which could be sup- plied at once, while it would take years to secure a charter for a railroad and again years to build the road after the charter was secured.
A fact worthy of special mention is that at that meeting Mr. Paul Bremond took a most prominent part in advocating the building of the railroad. This was his first appearance as a railroad advocate, and it deserves notice for it was he who was destined to become the real pioneer in railroad building in Texas. He had been one of the incorporators of the railroad chartered in 1848 under the name of the Galveston and Red River railroad, which road, after many changes and amendments of its charter, fin- ally became the Houston and Texas Central.
Mr. Bremond opposed adhering to the plank road if it was going to delay the building of the railroad, and advocated speedy action on the latter proposi- tion. The whole situation was gone over at that meeting with evident good results, for while neither the plank road nor the Washington County rail- road was ever built, there was started a movement towards railroad building that resulted in work be- ing actually begun on the Houston and Texas Cen-
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tral railroad, January 1, 1853, Mr. Paul Bremond having the honor of throwing the first shovel of dirt.
Now it may seem strange that any one should have raised the least objection to railroad building at a time when the urgent need of a railroad was so obvious. That, however, may be explained by the fact that the Houston merchants had become used to the means of transit then in vogue, namely, the ox-wagon, and had seen such good results follow- ing it that they were beginning to feel that they could do very well without other means of trans- portation. It must be borne in mind that the wagon service was not desultory nor intermittent. It was slow but it was certain and regular. For fourteen years it had been in force and was thoroughly or- ganized. Its very magnitude and the numbers en- gaged in the business rendered the service almost continuous, and while individual teams might be subject to unreasonable detention and delay, there were so many others to take their place that such gaps were not noticeable.
As remarked, at the date of that Capitol Hotel meeting, the wagon service had been in force for fourteen years; had answered very well and met all conditions except that of speed and it is not to be wondered at that the ox-team should have had its advocates among those whose fortunes it had contributed so largely to build.
The service was indeed of great magnitude for it extended as far west as the Colorado and up to Austin; as far as Waco to the northwest and to all
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points in East and Southern Central Texas. There were three or four thousand wagons engaged in the traffic and as each wagon required from sixteen to twenty-four oxen, an idea of the amount of money involved may be formed. In those days every bale of cotton, every bushel of corn, every hide and everything else raised in Texas for the market came to Houston while all merchandise and groceries used in the interior, were hauled away from Houston by ox wagons. The business was a gigantic one.
But the success of starting the Buffalo Bayou and Colorado railroad and of actually constructing 32 miles of it in 1852, was too great a demonstra- tion of what could be done and it spurred the Hous- ton people on, so that, as already remarked, Mr. Bremond actually threw the first shovel full of dirt for what was destined to become one of the great- est roads in the country, on January 1, 1853.
The story of Mr. Bremond's trials and tribula- tions has been told so often that it is needless to re- peat it here. He accomplished something that was never accomplished before and has never been at- tempted since. He built fifty miles of good rail- road on very little cash and a great deal of faith. He had absolute confidence in himself and in his own honesty and, some how, he managed to inspire others with his own faith and confidence. He was the first railroad builder to water the stock of his road, but his method was different from that of his
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successors for he used faith, faith and then more faith, and that was all.
Mr. Bremond had hundreds of Irishmen work- ing for him as section hands, and it is no exagger- ation to say that before the expiration of the first six months he knew everyone of them by sight, if not by name. This was not because of any great democracy on his part nor was it because of the prominence of what is called good "mixing" quali- ties in him. It was based on something more rea- sonable and useful, for it was a measure of self-pro- tection on his part, for he used his knowledge of his men to enable him to keep from coming in con- tact with them. They were so unreasonable as to want pay for their work, and tiring of promises, they began to take matters in their own hands, with most unpleasant effects for Mr. Bremond. No one ever knew how he accomplished it, but he actu- ally built the road as far as Hempstead, fifty miles from Houston, with scarcely enough money to build ten miles, but with promises enough to have built the road to the north pole.
When the road reached Hempstead it struck a rich territory and began doing a large and lucra- tive business. Mr. Bremond's first care was to ful- fill the promises he had made to his men, and their claims were the first that were settled. No man who ever trusted Paul Bremond, whether willingly or unwillingly, as those Irishmen did, ever lost a cent by doing so.
Twenty-three years later, in 1876, Mr. Bremond
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undertook the construction of another great road. He tried to get sufficient outside backing to en- able him to build it without any of the friction and worry he had encountered with the Houston and Texas Central. His success in getting the financial aid he sought was only partial, but he had made up his mind to build the road and he did so. Again he threw the first spadeful of dirt, and before he got through with his work, he had added the Houston East and West Texas railroad to the iron ways cen- tering at Houston. When the war began Houston had made considerable progress in railroad build- ing. The Texas and New Orleans had been con- structed for about 111 miles, the Buffalo Bayou and Colorado had been extended to Alleyton, also about 80 miles, and had been connected with Hous- ton by the Columbia Tap road which extended from Houston to Columbia on the Brazos, fifty miles. The Houston and Texas Central had been extended to Millican, 81 miles from Houston, while the Gal- veston, Houston and Henderson road connected Houston and Galveston. The last named road was of the greatest military importance and was therefore kept up, in some way, during the four years of the war, but it was the only one. The other roads were, necessarily, al- lowed to go to ruin and when the war ended it was flattery to speak of them as "streaks of rust." The roadbed and right of way were about all that was left of them. The owners of the roads were in about as bad shape financially, as were the
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THE CITY OF HOUSTON, TEXAS
roads physically, with the result that through reor- ganization and other methods, by 1870 about every railroad in Texas had changed hands.
With the completion of the Houston and Texas Central to Denison and its connection there with the Missouri, Kansas and Texas, thus forming a through line to St. Louis, and the completion of the Texas and New Orleans line to New Orleans, and the extension of the Galveston, Houston and San Antonio to San Antonio, Houston be- came a railroad center at once. Then the Inter- national and Great Northern was built and since the late seventies nearly each year has seen additions to Houston's railroads until now there are seventeen roads centering here and Hous- ton is now one of the greatest railroad centers in the country.
It is interesting to note the difference in the rail- road situation in Texas, and in Harris county, in particular, since the close of the war. As noted in the foregoing there were, at the close of the war, less than 370 miles of railroads in the whole State. Today Harris county alone has 450 miles within its limits, valued at $20,000,000, and, of this there is invested in terminal facilities at Houston about $12,000,000.
According to the census report there are 2,843 trainmen and clerks and 3,000 shopmen, or a total of 5,843 employes of the railroads paid off here, the total amount of their salaries and wages footing up $7,000,000 in round numbers. Really Mr. Bremond
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should be allowed to come back to life just to see what has grown from that first shovel of dirt he threw up on that January morning, 1853.
The real importance and magnitude of the rail- road situation is shown much better by the terminal facilities and trackage of the roads within the city limits. Placed end to end these sidetracks and switches would make a line of railroad 275 miles long, or just about the total length of the Houston and Texas Central railroad.
The Houston yards of the Southern Pacific road are the largest in the Southwest, having a trackage of 131 miles and a capacity of 10,000 cars. The Harriman tracks in Houston accommodate 123 dif- ferent industrial plants, handle over 50,000 cars monthly and employ in that work 547 men. The round houses contain 72 stalls and 1,600 men are employed in the round house and shops of this com- pany. Twenty-two switch engines are kept con- stantly in use in these yards, taking cars to and from the industrial plants and in making up trains.
The Southern Pacific has 738 switches in the yards here. Among the other properties of the Southern Pacific are water tanks, for the locomo- tives, with a capacity of 100,000 gallons, and fuel oil tanks with a capacity of 225,000 barrels. The pay roll of the Harriman interests in Houston is $4,000,000 annually.
The Houston Belt and Terminal company's ter- minals aggregate trackage of about fifty-five miles. Among other properties of this company, in addi-
H. BALDWIN RICE The Great Mayor of a Great City
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tion to the handsome passenger terminal and the convenient freight depots, are a round house and machine shops, oil tanks and water tanks. Over 200 men are employed in these yards and shops. The company uses five switch engines, all of which burn oil. Practically every industrial plant in the city is reached by these tracks.
The Houston Belt and Terminal company facili- ties are used by a number of the roads entering Houston. The Missouri, Kansas and Texas, the Santa Fe, the Trinity and Brazos Valley, the Frisco lines east and the Brownsville line all use the pas- senger station. The same lines, with the exception of the Katy, use the freight facilities.
The International and Great Northern has fifty- six miles of track in its local terminals. Its yards are mostly located on this side of the ship channel, though several miles are in the north side, where they touch a number of Houston industries. The principal shops of the company are located in Pal- estine, but fifty-seven men are employed in the re- pair shops here. About 120 other men are employed in the yards. The tracks of this company touch eighty-three different industrial plants. There are twelve switch engines operating in these yards, which accommodate 2,500 cars. The oil tanks of this company in Houston have a capacity of 190 barrels and the water tanks 75,000 gallons. There are six stalls in the round house and 194 switches in the yards.
The Missouri, Kansas and Texas has about fif-
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teen miles of track in its yards here. These yards have a capacity of 1,500 cars. Forty-three men are employed in the car department of the shops here and nine men are employed in the round house, which has six stalls. In the yards there are forty- five men employed. Five switch engines are used in the yards constantly. The water tanks of this company here have a capacity of 100,000 gallons and the coal chutes forty tons.
The San Antonio and Aransas Pass has a yard track mileage of thirteen miles. Over 1,100 cars can be accommodated in them and three switch engines are necessary to handle the business. Nine- teen men are employed in the yards. This company maintains a freight depot here, but its passenger trains enter the Southern Pacific depot. This com- pany is also closely allied to the Southern Pacific and can touch most of the local industrial plants on the Harriman tracks.
All the other lines entering this city operate very little yard trackage, but have agreements with some one of these roads. The Galveston, Houston and Henderson and the Santa Fe both have small stretches of track here, but the mileage is small.
It must not be supposed that land transportation occupied the attention of the early Houstonians to the exclusion of everything else. Water transpor- tation was given a great deal of attention, though in that direction not so much was required. There was plenty of water in the bayou to float the largest steamboats of that day, but there were one or two
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