USA > Texas > The evolution of a state, or, Recollections of old Texas days > Part 23
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ing to wind up the day's pleasure by bringing down a fine buck, I told Richardson to ride on and attract the atten- tion of the deer away from me while I crept up within rifle range. I slipped off my pony, and throwing the bridle over the saddle, turned him loose to follow on with the dogs. The deer caught sight of the cavalcade, and seemingly assured of its harmless intentions, contented themselves with watching it, while I, unobserved by them, crept up in good range and was just drawing a bead on a fine head of horns, when the band simultaneously threw up their tails and scampered away. Turning to see what had frightened them, I saw my pony dashing away toward home, pursued by Richardson and the dogs. "Let him alone!" I yelled at the top of my voice, but the dogs had by this time opened on the track and their clamor drowned my voice, and away they went, leaving me afoot. And worse still, I feared for the fate of my trusty pony if the dogs succeeded in overtaking him. The din of the chase died away, and full of wrath I shouldered my gun and started for home.
By and by I heard Richardson hallooing off to the left and knew that he was lost. The pony had made a bee line for home, taking a course that Richardson could not follow. I was so exasperated with him that I would not respond to his halloo, but kept straight on to the Mormon village, where I was relieved to find my pony safe and sound; he having been rescued from his pursuers by the inhabitants. I then began to feel some remorse for hav- ing failed to answer my guest's call for help. The night passed and still he did not put in an appearance, and I, having fully recovered from the annoyance caused by his mistaken effort to do me a kindness, was just getting ready to go out and hunt him up when he hove in sight, full of contrition for having failed to catch the pony for me.
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His gaze being riveted on the deer he did not see me dismount, and when the pony, after having stopped to graze a little, came trotting up behind him, he looked around, and not seeing me, naturally supposed the little mustang had run away from me; his first impulse, there- fore, was to catch him, which he could easily have done by walking up to him, but instead he made a dash for him, frightening the pony, hence this tale. Richardson, after wandering around several hours, stumbled upon a cow camp, where he tarried till morning, when he was sent on his way. He was a genial, companionable fellow, and I felt no shadow of resentment for the transitory incon- venience to which his good intentions had subjected me, and we parted the best of friends. But the story found its way to Austin, where it was considered too good to be lost. Ford, editor of an Austin journal, was anxious to write it up in style, but I laid an injunction on it. I never again had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Richardson.
Here, too, came Gail Borden, of condensed milk fame, whom I had known in old San Felipe de Austin away back in the '20s, when he was only a blacksmith. I had lost sight of him for years, when he drove up to my door at the Mormon mills, he in the meantime having been to Europe in the interest of condensed milk. He had also taken up the homeopathic remedies, and prefixed a Dr. to his name. His business in Burnet county, however, had no connection with his inventions or his practice. He had land located on Sandy creek, and there had been some particles of gold found in the sand, which created con- siderable excitement, which Dr. Borden was curious,to in- vestigate. The gold mines didn't "pan out." There was an old silver mine in the vicinity, which had been worked by the Spaniards, but it had apparently "petered out."
Dr. Borden imparted to me the great secret of his school
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of medicine as he understood it. Said he: "It is no use to be a doctor unless you put on the airs of one. Nine times out of ten sickness is caused by overeating or eating unwholesome food, but a patient gets angry if you tell him so; you must humor him. This I do by taking one grain of calomel and dividing it into infinitesimal parts, adding sufficient starch to each part to make one of these little pellets (exhibiting a little vial of tiny white pills), then glaze them over with sugar. In prescribing for a patient I caution him about his diet, warning him that the pills have calomel in them. Well, the result is that he abstains from hurtful articles of food, which is all he needs to do anyway. But I have strong medicine to use in cases of need." It struck me that there was a good deal of truth in his argument. After spending a few days with us Gail Borden, too, went his way and was lost to view. Another old time friend, one of the original three hundred, I found settied in Burnet county, Captain Jesse Burnham, with whom I had sojourned at his home near the site of the present city of LaGrange in the summer of 1827. He, too, had been "crowded" and consequently sold out and moved to Burnet, where he engaged in the sheep business, one of the first men in the country to try the experiment.
Burnet had by this time grown to be quite a village, although the military having performed its part had moved on. There were several stores, among them being one owned by Jack Haynie, a brother of Dr. Haynie of Austin. The first substantial building in the town was a two-story stone, built by Vandever & Taylor, the lower story being occupied by them as a store and the upper floor fitted up for the use of a flourishing lodge of Free Masons.
The Masonic hall was dedicated on the 24th of June, 1855, a grand barbecue and ball being among the attrac- tions of the occasion. The dinner was free to all and con-
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sisted of everything the country afforded, and in such abundance that after all'who would had partaken freely there were quantities appropriated by the outside element. I saw one fellow who I knew had not contributed one cent to the dinner riding off on horseback with a quarter of roasted beef on his shoulder, upon which, with the assort- ment of cake, pies, etc., his thrifty helpmeet had collected from the table, the family no doubt feasted several days.
The houses of the early Texans were small, but their hearts were large enough to cover all deficiencies. No candidate for hospitality was ever turned away. After the danger from Indians was over we had all outdoors in which to entertain our friends. If there was a wedding everybody was invited and a long table set out in the yard, around which the guests stood while partaking of the cheer with which it was loaded. Then if the bridegroom had relatives they gave an "infair" on the day following the wedding, at which the outdoor dinner was repeated.
Among the early social events I recall an infair given by William McGill to his nephew, Louis Thomas, and bride, nee Miss Kates; also a dinner given by Logan Vandever at the closing exercises of the school, which was the pride of the town, besides several Masonic and Fourth of July dinners. These free-for-all dinners were discontinued after a few years; the hungry hordes that swarmed in from all parts of the country, not content with a hearty dinner, filled their pockets, reticules, baskets and handkerchiefs with the dessert provided by the ladies, till they went on a strike against the imposition, and thereafter only those having the password gained admittance.
Barbecues were a feature of all political gatherings, the most notable one in that part of the country being given at the Marble Falls on the Fourth of July, 1854, prior to which time only the sound of the water leaping down the
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successive steps or benches that form the falls, and the voices of occasional small parties that had visited the spot, had awakened the echoes of the surrounding hills.
Preparations on a scale proportionate to the place and the occasion were inaugurated several weeks in advance. Meetings were held, committees appointed with power to levy contributions indiscriminately, everybody cheerfully complying with the demands thereof and faithfully carry- ing out the parts assigned. The mills were called on for flour, and some of the Mormon ladies who were famous cooks manufactured it into bread. The Burnet merchants gave freely of their groceries. Old man Hirston, who lived on the creek which bears his name, a few miles below town, was put down for a wagon load of roasting ears ; other farmers brought loads of watermelons and cante- loupes, together with such vegetables as were on hand. Huntsmen brought in venison and wild turkeys, and beef and pork galore were advanced. Nor were more delicate viands wanting; there were pound cakes worthy of the name, warranted full weight, that deluding inflationist, baking powder, not having, as yet, found its way into that neck of the woods. There were wild grape pies and dew- berry pies and wild plum pies; as yet there was no culti- vated fruit to be had except dried fruit, which was very scarce and high.
Several families from Burnet, among them the Vande- vers and McGills, ever foremost in such enterprises, went down beforehand and camped on the ground to superin- tend the final arrangements. There was a wide spread- ing arbor covered with brush, beneath which seats and a speaker's stand were arranged, the ground being carpeted with a thick layer of sawdust, which served for a dancing floor. People came from far and near, on foot, on horse- back, in carriages and farm wagons. None stayed away
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for want of conveyance, and the seating power of the spacious arbor was taxed to its utmost.
The first number on the programme was a national salute fired from holes drilled in the rock. The band, consisting of a lone fiddle manipulated by Jabez Brown, then played "Yankee Doodle" and "Hail Columbia," the only national airs in his repertoire.
The literary exercises began with the reading of the Declaration of Independence by the young son of the writer, a lad of fourteen, one of Professor Dixon's pupils, whom the professor had carefully drilled for the occasion.
Dr. Moore, the orator of the day, then took the stand. He was as long winded as a silver senator. His stentorian voice rolled out from his perspiring visage, contesting supremacy with the falls, while his rotund figure shook with the energy of his gesticulation. The sun mounted the zenith, and stooping far over to the westward, peered curiously beneath the arbor to see what all the noise was about. Still the doctor's sonorous voice rang out the paean of liberty above the nodding heads of the weary audience, mingling with the roar of the water and rever- berating among the distant hills. At last it was finished, and the famished multitude made a rush for the dinner which had long been waiting, the odor therefrom aggra- vating the impatience of the throng, to a large number of which the dinner was the principal feature of the oc- casion, they presumably having risen early and breakfasted on the anticipation of the feast. But there was enough and to spare for supper and breakfast for those who re- mained to participate in the sawdust dance which closed the performance. Long before night a space was cleared of seats and Jabez Brown took his place on the stand and sawed out reels, which he also called, until daylight the next morning, occasionally varying the programme by singing,
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in a strong, musical, though uncultivated voice, "The Maid of Monterey," and "The Destruction of Sennacherib."
It was the greatest event the country had every enjoyed, and we did have a royal time, some of the participants re- maining on the ground several days later, presumably to live it all over again in imagination.
Some months later Colonel Todd came out from Ken- tucky, purchased the land on the east side of the river, and laid out a town. He advertised a sale of lots on the ground, to which quite a crowd turned out. A number of lots were sold, some of them bringing as high as $200, but beyond one or two dwelling houses the city existed only in name when I left the country in 1861.
Camp meetings, too, became a recognized institution among the annual gatherings. The first one held in Bur- net county, if I rightly remember, was by the Methodists at Sand Springs on the road midway between Burnet and the Mormon mills, in the fall of 1855, Parson Whipple, an old Texas pioneer, being the chief priest. The hungry, both spiritually and physically, were freely fed at these meetings, the preachers dispensing the stronger spiritual meat of fire and brimstone first and tapering off the feast with milk and honey, while outside at every camp long tables were spread, provided with comfort for the physical man, where all were welcomed, an invitation to that effect being extended from the pulpit in the name of the campers whose hospitality was grossly abused in consequence. As other denominations took up the work, a regular chain of camp meetings every fall, with the incidental dispensa- tion of free grub, induced many not overthrifty people to become regular camp followers, and most of them being quite forehanded with children, they became a heavy tax on the good brethren. The meetings, however, were not then drawn out indefinitely, five days being the usual limit.
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There finally sprung up a sect in Backbone valley that discounted all others in spiritual manifestations. Protes- tant Metliodists they styled themselves, though just what the name implied I never learned. They had meetings every night, singing, shouting and going into trances, dur- ing which they spoke with tongues and played on imaginary harps, and, as a grand finale, springing to their feet and running as if pursued by the emissaries of Satan. Crowds of curious sightseers flocked to see the performance as though it were a circus.
On one occasion a stalwart, honest son of Ham, who, though a stanch Methodist, looked with profound contempt upon the performances of this latest addition to the good old family, was standing just outside the door while the meeting was going on. "If any of them try to run away, you must catch them, Jo," some one said to him. Jo waited till the spirit moved one of the entranced to rise running, making a straight line for the door, where Jo was supposed to be on guard, but instead of catching him, the disgusted and skeptical darkey stepped aside and let him go.
"Why didn't you catch him, Jo?" they asked.
"If God A'mighty make 'em run I ain't got no right to stop 'em," was the philosophical reply.
The men of the sect all felt themselves called to preach, and as the emoluments of office were not sufficient to sup- port the whole neighborhood, they had to make up the deficit by hook and by crook. A whole batch of them were once summoned as jurors. One after another they arose and pleaded the statutes in their favor as ministers of the gospel. The judge finally arose and blandly in- quired if there were any men in their neighborhood who were not ministers of the gospel. Shiftless at best, their hallucinations rendered them even more so; they had
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worked their credit for all it was worth and were almost on the verge of starvation. They had gotten into me for various amounts of breadstuffs and I decided to shut down on them, the more especially as crops were short that year and mill stuffs commanded cash.
One old fellow who had a large family had been particu- larly troublesome. Seeing him coming, I told the miller not to let him have anything more. With an empty bag in one hand and leading a thin, ill-fed looking little boy by the other, he assaulted my fortress with the usual re- quest for a bushel of meal on credit, reciting the failure of his crop, which, by the way, he had neglected to plant, and the destitute condition of his family in consequence. Without daring to look at the child, I put on a severe look and replied : "I can sell every dust in the mill for cash, Mr. - It is therefore impossible to accommodate you." The poor creature turned away, and taking the little boy by the hand, said in tremulous tones: "Well, son, we might as well go." I involuntarily glanced at the child, whose appealing eyes were raised to my face; tears stood in the blue baby eyes, tears of hunger. "Here, John, give Mr. - a bushel of meal," I said to the miller. I never got a cent for the meal, but the joy that lit up that little wan, pinched face and sparkled through the tears in those little eyes amply repaid me. I knew that the father was improvident, but the child was not to blame for that. Verily, "the sins of the fathers," etc. That same man denounced me as an "infidel." "Well," said one of his neighbors, "he's better than you are anyway, for the Bible says, 'He that provideth not for his household is wuss'n an infidel.' "
Had it not been for the large number of cattle that were being pastured in the country, many of the poor people would have certainly suffered; but milk will sustain life,
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and milch cows were to be had for the asking. My old- time friend, Peter Carr, who had obtained large landed possessions in Burnet and moved his immense herd of cattle thither, was certainly a great benefactor in allowing the poor people to milk his cows.
CHAPTER XXV.
After a few year's residence at the Mormon mills, I procured a fine tract of land down on the Colorado, eight miles below the Marble falls, removing thither in the fall of '55. Here I opened up a fine farm of one hundred acres of bottom land, and built the first frame house I had ever owned, thinking myself settled for life. "Man pro- poses, but God disposes."
My location was rather isolated, being on the east side of the river, midway between the Doublehorn and Hickory creek settlements. Doublehorn, the name of a little creek which emptied into the Colorado from the west, was derived from the interlocked antlers of two bucks found near the source of the stream by early settlers. The bucks, pre- sumably having met at the spring to drink, became en- gaged in a dispute, and in attempting to fight it out got their horns interlaced, and, being unable to extricate them- selves, starved to death. At the bold spring which is at the head of the creek, in a beautiful grove of Spanish oak, was the home of Captain Jesse Burnham, his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren living around in the vicinity. The other inhabitants were mostly Fowlers, one family of which, Levi Fowler's, were my nearest neighbors, the head of the family becoming my chosen companion in hunting bear.
The Doublehorn people were all in comfortable circum- stances and had an excellent school, presided over by
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Professor W. H. Holland, a Yale graduate. The holdings of the different families were large; their houses thus be- ing widely separated, the children had to go from two to three miles to school. The schoolhouse was four miles from my house, and across the river, but in order to give my children the benefit of Professor Holland's superior instruction, I mounted them on ponies and sent them on. The river in its normal stage was fordable, and when it wasn't they had to lose their time. Sometimes a sudden rise cut them off from home, when they had to be ferried over in a canoe, the horses swimming. Such were the difficulties we encountered in trying to educate our chil- dren in the sparsely settled frontier districts. The thirty- five pupils under Professor Holland's care ranged from four years up to twenty, their studies ranging over a cor- respondingly wide territory. I often think of that school when viewing the array of appliances deemed indispensable to the modern school. Among other things there was a large class instructed in the mysteries of astronomy, the only artificial agents to assist in which were maps, and hoops made of willow branches. Nature, however, came to the professor's aid, generously contributing an eclipse of the sun, I think, in '59, in which that luminary was fully two-thirds hidden, and a magnificent comet, the finest I ever saw.
My neighbors on the other side in the Hickory creek settlement were all in very reduced circumstances, though some of them had seen better days. They were scattered along the creek from its source to its mouth, each one hav- ing a little plot of tillable land. Some of them had a few cattle of their own, and others took stock to keep on shares, as the lower country became settled up. The families were mostly related either by blood or marriage, were all on an equal footing financially, all belonged to
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the same church, and, take them all together, seemed to be happy and contented.
There was one discordant element in the person of "Bunk" Turner, who was among the first to locate on the creek, having a few cattle, which multiplied and increased until with the influx from other sources the range became overstocked, a state of things which ."Bunk" warmly re- sented. That seeming the only thing to do, he concluded to migrate.
"Where are you going, Mr. Turner?" I asked.
"I dunno," he replied, dropping into a poetical vein-
"Whar the grass grows and the water runs,
And the sound of the gospel never comes."
There were others that had to seek fresh pasture for the immense herds that roamed over the hills in that vicinity. Levi Fowler's sons in '58 located a stock ranch on Pecan bayou, then away beyond the limits of settle- ment, taking thence 7,000 head of cattle. Thus was the advice of Horace Greely being acted on, the westward movement beginning with the stockman.
Among the Hickory creek settlers was an eccentric genius who was noted in that peaceful community for his profanity till a camp meeting gathered him under its wing, when he repented of his evil ways and faithfully tried to break off his vicious habits, succeeding fairly well in his laudable efforts till Satan in the form of a light-footed ox came to tempt him. In stooping to hobble the beast, Jack incautiously presented a tempting target within range of "Bally's" dexter heel. Whack! Visions of childhood floated across his mind, but quickly recovering from the confusion occasioned by the sudden blow, Jack pulled off his hat, dashed it to the ground, and after a momentary struggle with conscience, addressed himself to the ill-tem- pered brute as follows :
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"Well, Bally, I ain't swore none yet since I got religion, but - your soul." And with that he gathered a pole and proceeded to administer a more comprehensive re- buke. That was the story his brother-in-law told, adding his opinion that camp meetings would have to come often if they kept Jack straight. Contrary to experience, how- ever, Jack not only kept straight but turned preacher.
Just below my farm there was a fall in the Colorado which again aroused my penchant for mill building, and having previously disposed of the Mormon mill, I set to work in the winter of '57-8 to build myself a mill from the foundation up. Calling to my aid the full working force of Hickory creek, and a contingent from Backbone valley, together with stone masons, carpenters and mill- wright, we quarried stone, burned lime and coal and put in a stone wall three feet thick, forty feet long by thirty in width, twenty feet high, laying the foundation upon the solid rock which composed the bed of the river. On top of the stone wall we erected a heavy frame building two stories high, the whole surmounted by a hip roof. The frame was securely bolted down to stone work, the wis- dom of such precaution being demonstrated later. The natural fall in the stream being only about three feet, we put in a coffer dam; to facilitate the construction of which we built a boat of several tons burden, which we later em- ployed as a ferry boat for the convenience of customers beyond. The motive power was at first applied through the medium of an undershot or current wheel, which was replaced a year later by a small horizontal wheel known as the Littlepage wheel, the inventor himself manufactur- ing and putting it in. One wheel proving inadequate, I afterward put in a second. The mill was as well equipped as any in the country, and cotton raising not having then extended into the highlands, there was ample business to
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pay a handsome profit on the investment. And, by the way, I am of the opinion that farmers in the south will find it the part of wisdom to return to the raising of grain again, at least enough for home consumption.
The dam in the river made a pretty little lake above, which, with the boat above mentioned, became quite pop- ular as a means of recreation, along with fishing parties, who came to avail themselves of the schools of fish that ran up into the tail race while the mill was running and were left high and dry when the water was shut off. A party of the elite once went to the Marble falls for a day's fishing. They had fishing to their heart's content, but the fish failed to respond, and as the dinner hour drew near, and like those fishers of old, "only a few little fishes" were on hand, an emergency for which no provision had been made, a negro was forthwith dispatched to my place to procure the requisite quantity. Making the situation known, the darkey was sent to the race with a bag, when the obliging miller shut down the mill, and in a few min- utes the messenger was on his way back to the famished multitude with his sack of fine fish.
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