Carol C Taylor Blog

Corporal I.G. Coley

Posted on May 6, 2018 by admin

Corporal Irvin Greene Coley (center) with two of his fellow doughboys before returning to the United States in 1919. Those wool uniforms were miserably hot when they returned to Texas.

For the last six years I have enjoyed personal research on World War I. It’s the reason I started my blog and now continue it as well as my newspaper column. I am not a military historian nor am I a fan of what happened throughout the world between August 4, 1914 and November 11, 1918. But my paternal grandfather was involved in the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) after the United States entered the war in April 1917. As a child and teenager I listened to his stories, not about battles but about his life after the war as a surveyor for the U. S. Army.

He delighted in telling me about the events of November 11, 1918. Everyone on the Western Front knew that a cease-fire would take place at 11:00 AM on the 11th day of the 11th month. Every artillery officer wanted to be known as the one who fired the last shells. Finally at eleven o’clock that morning a deathly silence fell from the North Sea to the Swiss border. By three o’clock that afternoon the men heard the first birds chirping since they arrived in the summer of 1917. It was as if a giant sigh was released up and down the Western Front.

My grandfather, Corporal Irvin Greene Coley, served in Company A, 315th Engineers of the 90th Division, a division composed primarily of volunteers and draftees from Texas and Oklahoma. He celebrated his twenty-third birthday the day after the Peace Treaty. On June 27, 1919 he was honorably discharged from the United States Army at Camp Bowie, Texas.

During the war, engineers were responsible for barbed wire in front of the trenches, repairing the roads full of potholes and ruts, hastily constructing telephone lines across France and other issues. While he spent little time in the trenches, he carried a gas mask, a horrible looking affair that scared the daylights out of this child.

When the war was over, Coley and three of his fellow engineers were issued tripod and surveying equipment, pads and pencils for mapping, a bicycle for each man and a pistol for the group. Since my grandfather was the ranking non-commissioned officer it was his duty to carry the pistol.

The first night out the men knocked on the door of an Alsace family to ask for food and shelter. The family was suspicious of the Yanks. The only food was heavily watered down cabbage soup. Since communication was impossible, they all gathered around the fire to keep warm and guardedly watched others. At one point, when my grandfather shifted in his chair the pistol fell to the floor. He said he was never so scared in his whole life.

Shortly thereafter, the men found housing with other families. My grandfather stayed with a young miller, his wife, and two daughters who thought my grandfather was a super-hero. He always had candy for them in his pocket.

The men were ordered to map the entire region, especially roads. Many years later my grandfather met James A. Rutherford, my husband’s first accounting partner. Mr. Rutherford was a spotter pilot in WWII who used those maps. It was a heartwarming visit enjoyed by both men.

On May 19, 2018 I will present a program entitled “Life on the Texas Homefront” in Hallettsville, Texas at the Friench Simpson Memorial Library. Osa Brinkman will also speak about Gold Star Mothers. If you are in the area, stop by for the free lectures and a visit with the speakers. Times are 8:30 AM to 3:30 PM.

Posted in Genealogy, Historical tidbits, North Texas History | Leave a comment

Hello Girls

Posted on May 2, 2018 by admin

Only six women, working three at a time in 12-hour shifts, keep Pershing’s headquarters connected with the rest of the Army during the Battle of St. Mihiel. Helmets and gas masks hang from their chairs. Left to right: Berthe Hunt, Tootsie Fresnel, and Grace Banker. (Courtesy National Archives)

World War I was a venue for new experiments, new methods of doing things and new inventions such as wristwatches, daylight savings time, and using telephones for communication between supply depots and military commands. The use of telephones is one of those little secrets that only recently came to light.

General John “Black Jack” Pershing of the American Expeditionary Forces believed that good communication was extremely important, especially between Great Britain, France and the United States. Besides, men did not have the dexterity that women had using complicated switchboards and were needed more in the field. When a call went out for female telephone operators, some 700 American women volunteered. It was then that Pershing and the United States Army Signal Corps realized the operators must be fluent in both English and French.

By the summer of 1917, two hundred twenty-three young women who were already employed by Bell Telephone Company began taking physical training, enduring medical exams and inoculations, and took the Army oath. They wore regulation uniforms including the identity disc, the forerunner of dog tags. They agreed to follow strict military protocol, were subject to court-martial and often only a few miles from the front lines in the height of battle.

The women arrived at Brest, France, ahead of most doughboys. As quickly as the Corps of Engineers ran the ever-shifting networks of telephone lines across France, the Hello Girls, as they became known, were busy. General Pershing congratulated the young women on their jobs, later calling them a significant factor in winning the war. Hello Girls not only connected phone calls but also often stayed on the line to translate between the three armies.

After Armistice Day on November 11, 1918 many Hello Girls stayed in France to assist in making arrangement to get troops home. Some remained to translate for representatives at the Treaty of Versailles. The last of the Hello Girls returned to the U. S. in 1920. Their ability to function under pressure in complicated tasks has been tied to the success of the suffrage movement in the United States.

However, when they returned home they were in for a jolting surprise. The Hello Girls realized they were high-paid civilians who were known for their bravery and resourcefulness, but not veterans. They were eligible for no benefits, simply because they were women. No benefits, no medical care, no commendation, or honorable discharges. The Hello Girls did not have the right to wear their uniforms. There would be no military funerals.

What happened? Whether intentional or accidental, when General Pershing wrote up articles of military service for the women of the United States Army Signal Corps, the word male was present, as in male soldier. The Marine Corps and Navy had inserted Yeomanettes in their articles. It would take years of petitioning Congress for the Hello Girls to garner their rights. It was 1977 before President Carter signed an order granting full veterans status to the few survivors.

In her book, The Hello Girls: America’s First Women Soldiers, Elizabeth Cobbs blames “stubborn pride, bureaucratic arrogance, and belief that women simply did not recompense blinded senior staff officers to faceless female veterans.”

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War Service at Home

Posted on April 29, 2018 by admin

The American Red Cross in World War I was usually seen as a group of ladies who met weekly to fold bandages made of old bed sheets for the injured soldiers along the Western Front. However, in the fall of 1918 the Red Cross created a new job for Texas volunteers. The National Red Cross Home Service Institute held six-weeks sessions to train the volunteers in visiting and aiding families of soldiers and sailors who were at war.

The institute was the outcome of hundreds of appeals for advice and financial assistance from soldiers and sailors who were worried about the folks back home. To instruct in the care of their families, so that they will not feel like objects of charity, is the mission of the institute.

Each day presented new home service problems and the highest degree of efficiency in their solution can be assured only through a thorough training in modern methods. Social work as a profession was new, and never before had there been such a need for experts in this work. The Institute presented an opportunity for excellent training with soldiers’ and sailors’ families under the supervision of the instructors.

Seven Red Cross chapters sent volunteers to the National Red Cross Home Service Institute from Texas. They included Greenville, McKinney, Fort Worth, Amarillo, Memphis, El Paso, and Brenham.

Classes ran five days a week the first and last weeks, and four days, Monday through Thursday, on the middle four weeks. Dr. Ivan Lee Holt, chaplain of Southern Methodist University, was the director and lead lecturer. Others included home economic professors, supervisor of the Dallas Free Kindergarten Training School, the director of sanitation for the City of Dallas, supervisor of the United Charities, and Rabbi Henry Cohen, well known for his charity work in Galveston.

In addition to lecture times, twenty-five hours of related reading were expected each week. Volunteers were instructed in how to begin the interview, problems of the family and how to formulate a plan regarding them, and several sessions regarding food, disease, hygiene and sanitation. Before the volunteers were sent out into the communities, they must pass examinations.

It seems that most of the volunteers were women who could bond with the families. While in the twenty-first century we recognize the concern of soldiers and sailors about their families, such was not the case until fairly recently. The National Red Cross Home Service Institute was in the forefront of such solutions to the problems.

Posted in Greenville, Historical tidbits, North Texas History, Texas | Leave a comment

Land Speculators after the Civil War

Posted on April 25, 2018 by admin

Rosannah Matthews’ Confederate Scrip document on file in the Texas General Land Office.

One of the Texas land laws is very confusing. Supposedly women could not control property they owned or inherited. Women were seen as delicate creatures who needed a man to take care of all financial matters while the wife took care of the home, educated the children, and made the husband’s life easier, at home at least. Naturally this was not followed emphatically. During the Civil War many, if not most wives ran the business or farm/ranch.

Yet the law concerning women’s rights to property was in effect until changed in 1967 with enactment of marital-property section of the Family Code.

A definite side effect of the Civil War was the loss of so many men, leaving women alone. Some fathers, brothers, or elder sons if they had reached the age of majority took over. But such was not always the case.

In 1860 James C. Matthews and his wife Rosannah lived with their two sons on the boundary line of Tarrant and Parker Counties in North Texas. In 1862 James was drafted into the Confederate Army to guard the entry to Sabine Pass, Texas. While there he contracted yellow fever and died on January 14, 1864. Rosannah was left with three children under the age of five. In 1864 the State of Texas created Confederate Indigent Families Lists that provided assistance to families of men in service or who died in the service of Texas or the Confederate states. Listed under J. C. Matthews were six dependents. James and Rosannah had only three children, plus Rosannah so the identities of two persons in the home are unknown.

In November 1875 Rosanna sold 160 acres to T. P. Cummings for $350 in cash probably enough money to pay bills. No mention if this was all of the land she and James owned has been found.

In 1881 the Texas Legislature passed an act known as Confederate Scrip Grant on April 9, 1881. The purpose was to grant “to persons who have been permanently disabled by reason of wounds received while in the service of this States, or of the Confederate States, or to their widow, a land certificate for twelve hundred and eighty acres of land.” Vouchers provided relief to these individuals and families by allowing them to locate land or sell their certificate. All applicants had to prove that they did not have property valued at more than one thousand dollars. The program lasted only two years.

On August 8, 1881 Rosannah Matthews appeared before Judge R. E. Beckham and members of the Tarrant County Commissioners Court to apply for a land certificate for twelve hundred eighty acres under the act of the Texas Legislature approved April 9, 1881. The court approved the application with affidavits of R. L. Reynolds and H. T. Williams, two credible persons who agreed Mrs. Matthews met the requirements.

The 1280-acre survey was located in Webb County but was in conflict with a senior survey and relocated to an area located in Sutton and Crockett Counties. In 1886 Rosannah sold the Confederate Scrip Certificate to William Cassin for $150. Most likely Cassin was a land speculator buying and selling land certificates for pennies on the dollar. However, the move from Tarrant County to the small town of Encino would have been difficult for Rosannah Matthews, a fifty-five year old widow with three adult children who settled in North Texas.

Rosannah was able to sell the two properties without a husband or father to do it for her. When she signed the sale to William Cassin, her older son was a witness. No other evidence indicates they countered her decision. Some women managed quite well without a man’s advice.

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Striking Cotton

Posted on April 25, 2018 by admin

Andrew Baker from Texas A&M University Commerce will give the audience “The History of Cotton.”

On Saturday morning, April 28, the Audie Murphy/American Cotton Museum in association with the History Department at Collin County Community College will present the 22nd Annual Cotton and Rural History Conference at the museum located at 600 Interstate 30. Three great speakers are scheduled, all basically addressing the issue of farm labor in the late 19th and early 20th century throughout the South.

The program begins with Andrew Baker presenting background of the cotton industry, “The History of Cotton.” From what little I know and from what I have been told cotton farming was not all that wonderful if you worked in the fields or planned to make a fortune at it. Baker, who received his PhD from Rice in 2014, is on the faculty at Texas A&M University Commerce where he teaches some pretty neat classes.

Paul E. Sturdevant shares his research of women on cotton farms in his presentation of “Not Farm Women, But Farmer Women.”

Next in line is Paul E. Sturdevant who teaches American History at Paris Junior College here in Greenville. Paul will lead a discussion he calls “Not Farm Women, But Farmer Women.” In his presentation he will examine the roles of women on Texas cotton farms and elsewhere. Greenville and Hunt County were in the center of such scandalous ideas at the beginning of the 20th century.

The keynote speaker comes to us from University of Mississippi via Columbia University in New York City. Dr. Jarod Roll’s paper, “Striking Cotton: UCAPAWA’s Campaign to Organize Workers From Field to Factory in the Great Depression” examines Southern working people, black and white, their politics and faith. By the way, UCAPAWA is the anachronism for United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America. From 1910 through the next several years, there was a very concentrated effort to raise living and working standards in all blue collar fields. You may be surprised how successful the movements were here in Northeast Texas during that time.

Keynote Speaker Jarod Roll will speak on Striking Cotton: UCAPAWA’s Campaign to Organize Workers from Field to Factory in the Great Depression.

Dr. Roll is the author of Spirit of Rebellion: Labor and Religion in the New Cotton South (2010). His most recent contribution is a chapter on black and white radical farmer in the early twentieth century South in Populism in the South Revisited: New Interpretations and New Departures (2016). He is currently on leave from the University of Mississippi serving as Visiting Professor at Columbia University.

Later Dr. Jim Conrad, former archivist at Gee Library on the campus of Texas A&M University Commerce will lead a session known as “Eyewitness to History.” It is the time when the audience learns about cotton farming from those who lived it.

Registration begins at 9:00 with sessions from 10:00 to 1:30. Barbeque lunch will be served for $12.00. Deadline to register is April 25. For more information see www.collin.edu/history/cotton.htm or call (903)-454-1990 or (903)-450-4502. I hope to see you there; it should be a great conference.

Posted in Greenville, Historical tidbits, North Texas History, Texas | Leave a comment

Tar and Feathers

Posted on April 18, 2018 by admin

This photograph records the plight of German-American farmer John Meints, who was tarred and feathered on the night of August 19, 1918 in Luverne, Minn., under suspicion of being insufficiently loyal to the United States. He had refused to participate in a war bond drive to his neighbors’ satisfaction. (National Archives, Records of the District Courts of the United States.)

Tar and feathers, that’s what they did during the American Revolution, wasn’t it? A ghastly ordeal for the recipient, to say the least. But didn’t we as Americans become more civilized as our country grew? If you thought we ceased to submit a victim to such pain, you are sadly mistaken. Tar and feathers came back with a vengeance during World War I.

It is somewhat complicated for someone in the 21st century to understand. The federal government did not allocate millions of dollars to assist and then join the war with our allies, France, Great Britain, and off and on with Russia and Italy. Private citizens sent most of the food, clothing, canned milk and other necessities to war-ravaged Europe, from the onset in August 1914. When the United States entered the war in April 1917, the vast majority of funding came from Liberty Bonds.

Citizens were challenged or coerced, some might say, to buy Liberty Bonds. If they really could not financially purchase a bond, then they were expected to buy Liberty Stamps until they had enough to trade in for a Liberty Bond. The Red Cross was also soliciting funds to help care for wounded soldiers, citizens with influenza, and other catastrophes at the same time. Most Americans complied, especially in areas with few, if any German or other Eastern European immigrants. But many of many of those immigrants, their families, and certain religious groups refused to buy Liberty Bonds.

Wartime is a traumatic time for all citizens, whether supporters or adversaries. The Wilson Administration encouraged neighbors to spy on neighbors. Rumors were rampant.

When groups refused to buy the Liberty Bonds, even if they supported the Red Cross, they were seen as enemies to the United States. Some may have been, but most simply believed strongly in the First Amendment rights and believed they had the right to say no. That’s where tar and feathers entered the picture.

An example of early persecution of persons not supporting the war occurred in Brenham, Texas in late December 1917. Six farmers, all of German descent, who refused to join the Red Cross were taken from their wagons and flogged by a committee of the most prominent citizens of Brenham. No masks or hoods were worn in the incident during broad daylight.

In Kansas one citizen and two preachers were tarred and feathered for not supporting Liberty Bonds. One night in a rural Michigan community seventy-five persons drove to an isolated farmhouse. While the men bound the husband, twenty women tarred and feathered the wife for making hostile comments about the war.

Catholic priest Father Joseph Keller arrived in Slaton, Texas at the wrong time. The German native began his calling a few days after the entry of the United States into World War I. Father Keller was unable to make the sum the County Councils of Defense set for his Liberty Bonds. This issue was worked out but left many in Slaton suspicious of Keller. When Keller announced the church was expanding and planned to open a school in 1920, Protestant protestors felt it was time to teach the priest a lesson. Led by Baptist minister John P. Hardesty and state representative Roy Baldwin, a group of assailants forced their way into the rectory, tied the priest and dragged him to a waiting car.

Several miles from town where no one could hear the screams, the assailants removed the priest’s clothing, gave his twenty strokes with a leather belt before pouring hot tar on his head and back. Immediately they ripped open a feather pillow and spread the contents on the hot tar. At that point the assailants drove off leaving Father Keller to make his way back to Slaton. A local doctor removed the tar, a process that also removed the top layers of skin. He put Father Keller on the train to St. Anthony’s Hospital in Amarillo for further treatment. From there he went to Dallas to recover before joining the Diocese in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he died in 1939. Doctors believed the torture speeded his death.

In the 1920s state legislatures began to enact laws abolishing such horrific torture.

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Whiskey in the Big Red

Posted on April 15, 2018 by admin

Oak barrels had a tendency to float, even when filled with quality whiskey. Are those barrels at the bottom of the Red River near the mouth Black Bayou or did they float their merry way to Bourbon Street in the French Quarter? Steamboats.com Online Museum

The Red River between Texas and Oklahoma is definitely red. So red it is impossible to see the riverbed when standing knee-deep in water. Now suppose I told you there are 300 barrels of good whiskey somewhere in the bottom of the Red River near the old port of Mrs. Gaffney’s Landing just waiting to be found.

From the 1820s until the early 1870s, steamboats plying the Red River were the easiest, fastest, and maybe the safest way to get to New Orleans. That is if conditions were right. In dry spells there was not enough in the river to float anything but a little dingy, and maybe not then. With too much rain, the overflow caused even worse troubles.

Captain James Broadwell took on 300 oak barrels of good whiskey before stopping at Mrs. Gaffney’s Landing. But when he tied up there on May 1, to take 500 bales of cotton on the LaFitte, she had a draft of three and a half feet. Higher water was needed to float her off down the river.

Broadwell was not only captain of LaFitte, but also an owner who owed $1400 to his partner John Pasley. The steamboat and cargo were duly insured. Broadwell knew the note was due but it had been made out in New Orleans. Therefore, the payment was due in the Crescent City, not at Mrs. Gaffney’s Landing in Texas. If only the water level would rise, everything would work out for him. But Pasley was not agreeable. He demanded that the captain tie up the boat while Pasley went to Clarksville to hire a lawyer and obtain a writ of attachment for the boat.

Early on the morning of May 10th, Broadwell noted a rise in the water, ordered the engineer to get up steam, and just as the crew was ready to lift the gangplank, a deputy sheriff of Red River County jumped aboard with the despicable piece of paper.

Broadwell went ashore, posted a cash bond for $1500. But by the time he returned to the LaFitte, the Red had fallen again. Finally on May 24th water was high enough to set off again. But at the mouth of Black Bayou the steamboat was grounded, stranded, and wrecked taking the 300 barrels of good whiskey down with her. Broadwell’s case dragged on for seven years. Finally in 1866 the Texas court decided that jurisdiction was really in New Orleans, just as Captain Broadwell thought.

Residents, scavengers, and treasure seekers have combed the waters at Mrs. Gaffney’s Landing ever since, even though the channel has changed more than once. To this day, no one has ever recovered the 300 barrels of good whiskey.

Eugene Bowers and Evelyn Oppenheimer collected a wonderful assortment of stories from early Red River County. They were published in Red River Dust in 1968, all humorous and amazing.

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When Gloves Were Stylish

Posted on April 11, 2018 by admin

19th century woman wearing gloves (Public Domain)

If you are a typical Texan you might wear gloves to keep your hands warm in winter, or to prune rosebushes, or as a welder. They are not at the top of the list of sartorial accouterments. But at one time they were.

In Great Britain and fashionable cities like New York and Boston during the 1800s, gloves were iconic symbols of well-dressed individuals. Without the right style of gloves you were snubbed as being lower class. No self-respectable Victorian lady would be caught dead with bared hands. Boarding school required students, both male and female, to bring an assortment of about twenty-one glove styles to learn their proper roles as upper-class citizens.

Gloves were changed multiple times during the day. They must fit smoothly and be immaculately clean; the very rich bought new gloves instead of having them cleaned. Ladies stored their collection of gloves in boxes with sweet smelling sachets.

Strict rules similar to those for men and their hats were part of social life in the 19th century. No one should go out of the house without gloves on. However, there were two exceptions, dancing and eating. Men never wore gloves into the dining room but ladies did. Before the meal began, women removed their gloves with hands in laps. No one was to see this ritual. Gloves were put in the lady’s lap and covered with her napkin. When the final course of the meal ended, the lady dipped her fingers in the finger bowl or cup, dried them with her napkin in her lap, and put the gloves back on, all the while keeping her hands below the table. Most of the time, the gloves were elbow length.

Men could not offer a woman his gloved hand so where greeting others was expected, the man removed the gloves from his right hand only. In his home no man wore gloves. Gloves were worn outdoors for comfort and warmth, but again removed to shake hands. Yet it was impolite to offer a lady a cold hand. Country gloves were stouter, but made of kid with a perfect fit.

Woman, probably in mourning, wearing gloves (Wikipedia)

At a Victorian funeral on either side of the Atlantic Ocean, the family of the deceased provided gloves for those attending with no intention of guests returning them. If the deceased was a child, unmarried, or a woman who died in childbirth, the mourners received white kid gloves. For services of married adults, widows or widowers, the gloves were black. This custom often left the family hard strapped for cash.

The zenith of the glove protocol was 1900. Such strict guidelines were fading with society. With the arrival and upheaval caused by the Great War that we refer to as World War I today, leather gloves became more and more difficult to obtain. The depletion of leather by the war cause drove prices of gloves sky-high. It actually decimated the industry. Some fifteen years later World War II finished off the ritual of gloves. Fabric rationing and the rise of sensible dress as a fashion trend ended the century long custom. Yet, women continued wearing gloves and hats to church and some social events through the 1950s.

While these social regulations prospered among the elite in Europe and the East Coast of the US, frontier residents could have cared less. From the 1880s forward, wives of prominent businessmen, bankers, cattle barons, and cotton brokers emulated the fashion for some time. However, when was the last time you saw a man or woman wearing gloves at a social event?

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Spring Gardening Now and Then

Posted on April 8, 2018 by admin

Mesquite trees are great signs of the last cold spell. They do not normally leaf out before the weather is safely warm. I saw some mesquites just beginning to put on leaves this past weekend. (Author’s collection)

As I write this, it’s Good Friday with a chilly breeze in the air. As I look through my Farmer’s Almanac, I suddenly remember The Easter Cold Spell. I have tomatoes in the ground in my garden as well as onions. Five pepper plants are ready to go in the ground. And my weather app tells me the lows this weekend will be in the middle 40s. Yikes! I’m really pushing it with no empty milk cartons to put over the tomatoes. The onions will be ok and I haven’t planted the peppers yet.

Such are the thoughts of a 21st century backyard gardener. But what about those before us who had no weather apps, no radar reports, nor plastic milk cartons? How did they handle gardening?

First of all and most importantly, they knew weather signs. They knew to plant onions in the middle of February. They knew if March had April weather, April would have March weather. Does that mean we are in for wind and storms soon?

Did you hear any thunder in March? If you did, look forward to a fruitful year of garden vegetables, fruit trees, and livestock. But dust in March will bring grass and foliage.

Thunder on April Fools Day brings a good crop of corn and hay. Hmm, my weather app says clouds Sunday but no thunderstorm. We’ll have to wait to see.

A moist April brings a clear June; a cloudy April brings a dewy May.

Those wispy, thin clouds that look like jet trails from airplanes are signs of good weather. But cumulus clouds in morning or early afternoon that develop into thunderheads, the top of the clouds higher than the width at the base, indicate a chance of thunderstorms. We will probably have a rain shower in there is a rainbow in the west in the morning. One of my grandfathers born in the Chickasaw Nation remembered as a youngster seeing clouds form in the afternoon west of the house and hearing thunder, but the rain never came. This was during the 1890s when drought sent Texas cattlemen north into the Territory for better grass and water. The family moved back to Texas before 1900.

One last folk weather wisdom says that a ring around the moon means rain real soon. On the other hand in the children’s book Black Beauty, the boy feared that a ring around the moon meant that death would soon appear and take his beloved horse.

We can go on forever with these tales, but many do have scientific basis. When the earliest settlers headed west they brought with them a waterproof leather pouch filled with seeds. This bag was as valuable as the wife or children because it was the settler’s future. Before the harvest, the settler would survey his crops, pick seeds from the more prolific plants, and put them in the leather bag when dried. Settlers were known to “stop and raise a crop”. They needed food, seeds, and rest for themselves and their livestock. Finding a place with fertile soil and adequate water, they often set up camp, sowed a garden or wheat field, and stayed for weeks or months before moving on.

If you find an ancestor born in a state you know the family never lived in, the baby was probably born while its parents were “raising a crop.” However, I am very glad that my garden is a fun challenge for me. If we need fresh vegetables or fruit, there are several grocery stores in town.

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Pot Holes

Posted on April 4, 2018 by admin

Freight wagon pulled by six yoke of oxen. Crossing sandy creeks was a difficult process often taking two or three days with a long freight train. (Wikipedia)

I recently saw a listing of Spring Sightings that remind us springtime has arrived. There in the middle of the list was the phrase “Pot holes”. Really? It’s possible. Every spring it seems our favorite streets often look like battle zones where bombs carved out giant holes. We hear on the news, read in newspapers and on social media about the sorry state of our infrastructure throughout the country.

Later this spring or during the summer, road crews will pour gravel and dirt into the holes, and then cover them with a hot tar mixture. We’ll have somewhat smooth roads until the rains again wash the mixture down the drain. But is this a recent phenomenon or has it been around forever?

The earliest trails or roads in our country were actually footpaths first used by Native Americans. Later these paths were widened by about two feet, cleared of trees along the route, and called roads. Since most of these newly widened paths were used by the army, they became Military Roads running from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River.

After many Native Americans were removed to an area that became known as Indian Territory, the U. S. Military built roads across the Territory to connect with new military forts. During the Republic of Texas (1836-1846) the Texas Legislature conceived the idea to create the Central National Road to connect the U. S. roads at the Red River with the new Texas capital in Austin. Several surveying teams were organized to lay out the new road, cut trees almost down to the ground, and connect with other surveying teams. One such portion of the Central National Road crossed the northwest corner of Hunt County. For their work, the men who surveyed and cleared the road were given Land Certificates for certain amounts of free land for their labors but no actual currency.

As more settlers arrived other roads, such as the Jefferson Road, were created. Wagons loaded with coffee, sugar, salt, clothing, shoes and boots, whiskey, tobacco, medicine, and farm equipment left the river port of Jefferson for trading posts along the way to the Trinity River near present day Dallas. Returning to Jefferson they were laden with wheat, corn, cotton, hides, pork and lard. As many as ten to twelve yoke of oxen pulled the wagons through woods, up hills, across small rivers, and along dirt roads.

Did these large, heavy means of transportation encounter potholes? Yes, along with mud, sand, fallen trees, and any other snags that was imaginable. What did the drovers do? Very simply they altered the route. If they encountered mud holes, potholes, fallen trees or the like, they simply went around forming a new route. No need to fix the potholes, the mud holes would dry up and trees were hewn into firewood. Often the new route would involve clearing trees for a distance. But the wagoners and their oxen were tough creatures.

The coming of the railroad and the decline of the Jefferson Port caused the Jefferson Road to lose traffic. Today nature and humans have basically annihilated the old road. Potholes were a minor interference back then.