Outstanding Beef Cattle

Posted on March 14, 2020 by admin

I enjoyed a delicious steak the other night, courtesy of some rancher who raises Wagyu cattle here in Texas. Without a doubt it was superior, but the price does not allow it to be daily or even monthly fare on the menu at the Taylor home. Yet, I also felt very guilty enjoying such a meal. You see, my family have been Hereford cattle raisers since the late 1880s.

The FWSSR 2020 Grand Champion Steer, Ryder Day, from Meadow FFA with a Polled Hereford!
(photo courtesy of Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo)

Back in February I saw on television that a young man from Meadow, Texas, and his steer he calls Cupid Shuffle, had won the Grand Champion Steer at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo. At the sale, the steer brought a record $300,000 price. The young man, Ryder Day, lives on the ranch where Cupid Shuffle was bred and born. He has raised and showed several steers, but this was the winner.

When asked what he intended to do with the prize money, he said he was planning to use most of the money for college. That may be a problem in the family household. His mother is a Texas Tech graduate while his father is an Aggie. Asked what he liked to do most, he replied work on the ranch. A true Texas cattleman.

Why was this so exciting? For those of you who are not familiar with the cattle business, there are two primary breeds of beef cattle, Herefords and Angus. For years Herefords were favorites. Imported from Great Britain over 200 years ago, the Hereford acclimated easily to our summer heat. It’s a docile animal, with a long lifetime and easy to spot in a pasture. Herefords are the red cows with white faces and white on lower legs. Early in the 20th century, ranchers began to dehorn their livestock. Today, they are naturally polled, with no horns.

However, you may be familiar with Angus cattle. The Angus Breeders’ Association has done an unbelievable campaign to convince Americans that Angus cattle are the best. Grocery stores flaunt the name Angus on their beef, as do restaurants. In my biased opinion, I believe both types of beef are equal if they have been raised and fed right.

For years, I always heard that Angus could not survive Texas heat, but their numbers grew. My great-grandfather bought a Hereford bull from the Isaac Ranch in Clay County around 1889. His ranch was in Montague County, just to the east. For years, Jeff Seay and two of his sons, bred Herefords. In 1912, my grandfather Virgil Seay, his brother Hardy Seay, and two cowboys walked a herd of fifty impregnated heifers from Montague County to the west part of Archer County. The other three men went back to Montague County, but my grandfather spent the rest of his life on what he called “the place.”

My brother raised steers and showed at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo while in high school. Every year when it was time to go to Fort Worth, there was bad weather. Many a time he drove over icy roads with his steer in the trailer.

The last Hereford steer to win Grand Champion was in 1982. It was a long dry streak before young Ryder Day and Cupid Shuffle took the honors. In addition to those two, the Reserve Champion this year was a girl who raised a Hereford. Things appear to be changing.

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Lion or Lamb

Posted on March 7, 2020 by admin
A wonderful memoir of life on the Caprock (a plateau in West Texas). Mrs. Fields’s work is a quick read about a time which we, as twenty-first Texans, might find extremely difficult to enjoy. It shows us how we can survive and appreciate life without numerous things. I highly recommend it, especially if your parents lived through the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.

This year March roared in like an angry lion. Gray clouds and roaring winds caused some power outages. But it set the stage for a wonderful spring when the weather will be like a lamb before the end of the month, we hope.

Here in northeast Texas we can expect storms for the next two or three months, maybe lots of rain, but the pop-up greenery of trees, flowers, and grass will delight us. March is notorious for its wind; wind like we find throughout the Great Plains, from Canada to South Texas. The wind and cold weather stopped early settlers; they skipped over the plains and mountains heading for the West Coast and gold. By the end of the Civil War, farmers and cattle men realized the wonderful soil in the region. Cattle grazed before tractors plowed the fertile soil that created dust storms, the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and loss of that wonderful farmland.

Helen Mangum Fields wrote about her childhood on the Great Plains. Her writing is an amazing description of that part of Texas before the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression when farmers prayed for rain at the right time and watched for ominous storms. Fields takes the reader through a whole year of her life on a small farm close to Ragtown in Garza County. A school from first through sixth grade, two churches, a couple of stores, and the post-office were the entire Ragtown. Storekeepers and teachers made up the population since everyone else lived in a four-square home built for them by C. W. Post, best known for cereal, but also involved in real estate, especially in West Texas.

Garza County is on the edge of the Caprock, the flat part of Texas. Fields gives very little information about the farming and housing arrangements. She stated briefly that she lived with Auntie and Uncle since she was a baby. Perhaps war, influenza, or any other disaster took her parents. Yet, she loved her family, her home and school, even though she had no siblings.

Fields gives a clear picture of life on the Caprock, where farming was the sole occupation. There was no running water, no insulation in the home, no radio, television, or internet. Refrigerators were unheard of, although Uncle bought an “ice box” at one point. Uncle drove her two miles each way every school day. She gathered eggs, also hating it like I did, helped to feed the small animals and worked with Auntie, her grandmother and another aunt in the kitchen. School was for learning, with two grades in one classroom. Everyone brought their lunch.

Summers were the most entertaining part of the year. Church revivals, picnics, visits to and from neighbors, and canning produce from the garden filled the days. It was also the time for hard work on the farm, chopping cotton, weeding the garden, taking care of baby calves, chickens, and hogs. Fields accepted the chores as part of life in West Texas and never complained.

Thanksgiving and Christmas were the big holidays. With no television, toys did not appear until just a week or two before Santa came. Valentines cards were made at school, nothing store bought. When school closed in May, it was a time for plays and programs and good-byes until Labor Day.

Helen Mangum Fields titled her book Walking Backward in the Wind. According to Fields a “West Texas child in the ‘20s pulled his cap more closely over his ears, buttoned his coat securely and waited for that special harbinger of spring, the bone-shattering thrust of the first sandstorm to knock him off his feet.”

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The Fall of the Alamo

Posted on February 29, 2020 by admin
Fall of the Alamo (en.wikipedia.org)

March 6 is a special day in the history of Texas. It marks the fall of the Alamo in San Antonio. For generations Texans have solemnly marked the crucial step in Texas History.

Published by Texas State Historical Association, The Texas Almanac of 2018-2019 presents a succinct, but accurate account of the days leading up to the early morning of March sixth. As more and more Americans settled in the Mexican state of Texas, the Mexican government became suspicious of their intentions. Conferences, Conventions and Consultations tried to settle issues, but the new Texans really wanted control of the vast lands. They wanted to Americanize the region north of the Rio Grande and annex it to the United States. Yet, no worthy of the name government was created by Texans. Sam Houston was named Commander of Chief of the Texas forces with little authority.

On the western edge of the state were several strongholds along the San Antonio River. In January Houston sent James Bowie out to determine if the old mission, the Alamo, was defensible. If not, Bowie was to destroy it and withdraw men and artillery to Gonzales and Copano. On February 8, frontiersman David Crocket and twelve men from Tennessee arrived to aid the revolutionary forces.

Four days later, Mexican president Santa Ana and his army crossed the Rio Grande headed for San Antonio. In the meantime, “governor of the Government” Henry Smith sent William B. Travis to San Antonio. Immediately a split in command of the Alamo garrison arose. Travis and Bowie were not calm, thoughtful men. Most of the men supported Bowie and Houston. Travis agreed to share the command of the roughly 150 men.

Arriving along the San Antonio River around the old mission, Santa Ana hoisted a blood-red flag, the traditional Mexican symbol of no quarter, no surrender, and no mercy. Travis and Bowie responded to the display with a cannon shot. The Mexican army surrounded the Alamo and constantly harassed the Texans with bombarding artillery pieces. Santa Ana planned the continual din in an attempt to destroy the Texans’ moral.

On February 24, Bowie became ill and relinquished his share of the command to Travis. No Texans were killed in the constant fire. They conducted several forays outside the walls to burn buildings hiding Mexicans and to gather firewood. Messengers made it through the Mexican forces. Thirty-two more reinforcements arrived from Gonzales to aid the Texans.

By March 5, Santa Ana had 4,000 men in camp, enough he felt to subdue the Alamo. At that point Travis informed the men of the bleak outlook. All but one vowed to stay and fight. At 6:00 AM in the morning of March 6, Santa Ana led his army to assault the Texans. Between 8:30 and 9:00 that morning fighting halted. All defenders were dead.

While Bowie disobeyed orders and stayed to fight in the Alamo, his decision gave Houston time to recruit more men, to move eastward to an open space along the San Jacinto River and attack Santa Ana and his men during their siesta.

If you would like to know more, I suggest Three Roads to the Alamo by William C. Davis.

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North Texas Missed the Fun

Posted on February 26, 2020 by admin
Yes, Texas did not allow the sale of alcoholic beverages after the Repeal. However, the law changed to no sale in counties where prohibition was in place before the 18th Amendment went into effect. (US News & World Report)

Every election year we hear a great deal about the U. S. Constitution. Should it be changed, is it fluid, or is it carved in stone never to be altered?

This column will not touch those topics but uncover a huge secret. In 1917 Texans voted for or against Prohibition as did the rest of the United States. But technically it didn’t matter. In 1876 Texas men voted to accept another Texas constitution. (Remember, women could not vote until 1919.) The 1876 constitution had a local option clause where communities could determine the wet or dry statue.

From then until 1917 there were numerous, or maybe countless, wet/dry elections in the state. Religious beliefs, cultural traditions, and plain old orneriness influenced the votes. Catholic churches and Jewish synagogues used wine in their services. Hispanic men supported the wets as did city residents in places like Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas/Fort Worth. African Americans in East Texas tended to vote wet. So that leaves a big chunk of the state with strong opposition to any kind of alcohol.

Imagine a line along Interstate 20 from the Louisiana border to New Mexico. Now think about the people who resided north of that line. That’s where the orneriness comes in. It was a sparsely populated area with families involved in various types of agriculture, from cattle and horses to timber and cotton. Family traditions and Protestant beliefs molded their politics. While it was okay for males to take a snort of whiskey every day or so, women were considered so dainty and fragile that not a drop of whiskey should ever touch their lips.

Guess how that part of the state voted in every election? At the early elections when votes were close the wets passed by a slim margin. In fact, at one point a woman’s club offered to campaign for dry votes and were turned down. After all, women were women and had no reason to be involved in such masculine issues. Gradually women gained more and more clout, especially with the surge of women’s clubs and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).

Looking at petitions in the Texas State Archives submitted here in Greenville and Hunt County between 1880 and 1910, women signed petitions, some on the line below their husbands but with Mrs. to identify them as married while others used a given name without a husband’s name nearby. Or maybe she was a widow or unmarried woman.

In Greenville dry voters won the contest in 1903. But not without a slight rebellion. All around the courthouse there were saloons, grog houses, and hotels where liquor flowed freely. On the northwest corner of the square was a saloon that sold groceries. Women used a door facing Lee Street to enter or sent their maids to shop. The biggest, most elaborate saloon was the House of Lords. Supposedly Carry Nation visited that watering hole and left her mark. On the south side of the Square was a saloon owned by one of the Shields brothers, one of the four brothers of exceptional height who traveled with the circus for several years.

The group of saloon owners tried to defy the vote. They petitioned the District Court under Judge A. P. Dohoney of Paris, a strong supporter of prohibition. Needless to say, their petition was not accepted, and Greenville went dry. When the 18th Amendment supporting Prohibition was repealed in 1932, the vote for repeal was not necessary. Greenville and Hunt County were dry and stayed that way for many, many years.

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More Than the Alamo

Posted on February 15, 2020 by admin
Change is an important aspect of history. It has become a focal point in History Day, held each year throughout the United States. (Photo complement of nhd.org)

Next Friday is History Day in Texas Schools. Schools all over the state participate and winners go to Washington in June for National History Day Competition. I have been a judge for years, since my son was in middle school. I have seen great improvement in the entries, the choices of presentations, and the enthusiasm of the students.

The program is entirely voluntary and done after schools are out for the day or on weekends. Coaches are usually history teachers and/or parents. Each year there is a theme – this year it is Breaking Barriers in History. World, national and state barriers from the ancient past to recent times can be explored. Once the student or team chooses a theme and time frame the research begins.

Over the years research techniques have changed immensely. At one time students went to the library to learn about their topic. But with the advent of the internet fewer print text is used. The new methods have created a new way to document research materials.

Not only does the student or team have to learn about their topic, they must create a visual means to share their information. Skits can perform a short play of the topic, posters are often used, lately videos have become a way to teach the audience about the topic. The choices picked are amazing. For example, I bet there will be at least five entries pertaining to women’s suffrage in both the US and Great Britain. Segregation, removal of Native Americans, controlling floods waters are topics I expect to see. There are hundreds of thousands other ideas.

Whichever venue the student chooses, he or she will have a brief amount of time to convince the judges their project is the best. As a judge I have watched short skits about the Boston Tea Party, videos of riots, a model of the Alamo. Students must have a valid reasoning for their choice. When I first began to judge there was a least one model of the Alamo, no matter what the topic was. I haven’t seen an Alamo if several years. But now I am amazed with the knowledge of both the topic and technology.

The projects are organized in groups by grades of students and type of presentation. The students and judges discuss the project with no intervention from teachers, coaches, or parents. No judge knows everything about history, so the project can be a learning experience for everyone.

This year History Day contestants from Fannin, Hunt, and Lamar Counties will compete with several schools in the Nacogdoches area at Texas A&M University Commerce. Then next year, students from this part of Texas will travel to Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches.

History Day in Texas is sponsored by Texas State Historical Association with cooperation of colleges and universities in the area. For a judge it’s a lot of fun. I have even been in the campus library when a student comes up and tells me he or she met me at History Day. Many of the college students who choose a major in History participated in History Day in junior or senior high school. History gives us a balance between the past and present.

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Let’s Talk Love: The Legend of St. Valentine

Posted on February 8, 2020 by admin
Americans probably began exchanging hand-made valentines in the early 1700s. In the 1840s, Ester A Howland began selling the first mass-produced valentines in America. Howland, known as the “Mother of the Valentine,” made elaborate creations with real lace, ribbons and colorful pictures known as “scrap.”

The history of Valentine’s Day – and the story of its patron saint – is shrouded in mystery. We do know that February has long been celebrated as a month of romance, and that St. Valentine’s Day, as we know it today, contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. But who was Saint Valentine, and how did he become associated with this ancient rite?

One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.

Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons, where they were often beaten and tortured. According to one legend, an imprisoned Valentine actually sent the first “valentine” greeting himself after he fell in love with a young girl – possibly his jailor’s daughter – who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter signed “From Your Valentine,” an expression that is still in use today. Although the truth behind the Valentine legends is murky, the stories emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic and – most importantly – romantic figure. By the Middle Ages, perhaps thanks to this reputation, Valentine would become one of the most popular saints in England and France.

At the end of the 5th century Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine’s Day. It was not until much later, that the day became definitively associated with love. During the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed in France and English that February 14 was the beginning of birds’ mating season, which added to the idea that the Valentine’s Day should be a day for romance.

Valentine greetings were popular as far back as the Middle Ages, though written Valentines didn’t begin to appear until after 1400. The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt. The greeting is now part of the manuscript collection of the British Library in London, England. Several years later, it is believed that King Henry V hired a writer named John Lydgate to compose a valentine note to Catherine of Valois.

In addition to the United States, Valentine’s Day is celebrated in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France and Australia. In Great Britain, Valentine’s Day began to be popularly celebrated around the 1600s. By the middle of the 1700s, it was common for friends and lovers of all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes, and by 1900 printed cards began to replaced written letters due to improvements in printing technology. Ready-made cards were an easy way for people to express their emotions in a time when direct expression of one’s feelings was discouraged. Cheaper postage rates also contributed to an increase in the popularity of sending Valentine’s Day greetings.

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The Roarin’ Twenties

Posted on February 1, 2020 by admin
Strictly in the city mode, most Americans were less spectacular. In the South smoking, drinking, and dancing were frowned upon by religious groups. Yet, social mores were less strict than a decade earlier. Americans celebrated surviving war, disease, and tragedy of the past.

Happy Days are here again. It’s 2020, time of the Roarin’ Twenties. When will the Flappers get to town? What about the “Bathtub gin” and happy times when women’s fashions were incredibly scanty for that time period and gentlemen wore suits and ties and removed their hats while inside? Hollywood brought jazzy music along with great movies, and incredible plots. It was the heyday of fun after the horrible War to End All Wars.

Life changed after the war. Young men had visited Paris (France that is) only to return home with a different outlook on life. The fact that each of those young men even came home was amazing to them, their families, and friends. The Spanish Influenza, which didn’t start in Spain, scared everyone when entire families suffered and died. It was a good thing when 1919 rolled into 1920.

But rolling in with the new decade came economic problems and Prohibition! For the first time in American history the consumption of alcoholic beverages was forbidden. To make certain this was enacted, police raided warehouses, bars, saloons, chicken houses, and everything in between including under the Baptist Church steps, to make certain all alcohol was poured down the drain.

This is where the fun began. In cities on the east coast and west coasts, in cities like Chicago and New Orleans, and other sites where imbibing alcohol was common occurrence, the wealthier crowds continued to imbibe and party away as if the Volstead Act didn’t include them. Movies and television shows have painted a fun, wild time in U. S. cities.

At first new inventions such as radios and refrigerators sold like crazy. Everyone who had a good job with money purchased those things as well as automobiles. How many radios and refrigerators did a family really need? Automobiles can be driven more than one year. Industries began to worry about marketing their goods. Prices increased and continued to increase.

But what about the core of the country, the South, the Great Plains, mining towns and industrial workers whose wages and work schedules did not provide for such fun? Throughout the Midwest rains didn’t fall as usual, crops dried up and livestock suffered. The farmers’ sales dropped when prices failed. Cotton suffered during World War I when textile mills in Europe were converted to defense plants. It took a long time for cotton to recover and some believe it never did.

Finally, the end came crashing down in the latter part of the 1920s. On October 29, 1929, or Black Tuesday as it is known today, all stock markets went bezerk. The Roarin’ Twenties came to an abrupt end. We know the end of the story, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, bread lines (even ones here in Greenville) and sheer misery.

I never really wanted to learn American history from 1918 through World War II, but I was selected to write a biography of a Texas senator from 1912 to his death in 1941. As I have researched, I have determined there was no Roarin’ Twenties in Texas. Good times had to wait for the “Worst Hard Time” to leave us.

When I was researching World War I, I set up a Facebook page I called A Century Ago. Well, it’s back up, but this time the Roarin’ Twenties of North Texas. Enjoy!

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Land Records in Early Texas

Posted on January 20, 2020 by admin
Mid-nineteenth century surveying tools. This one was U. S. In Texas surveyors used ones that calibrated Spanish/Mexican ranges. (Surveying.org)

Texas has a very unique legal heritage that differs in many ways from the other states in the Union. Because the first flag to fly over the area now known as Texas was the Spanish flag, many of our laws pertaining to land records were based on our Spanish legal heritage. For over three hundred years parts of Texas were under Spanish and then Mexican rule until 1836 when the Republic of Texas was formed. At that time the government chose to follow English Common Law.

Since laws pertaining to land records were already well established, the Spanish tradition continued for many years. Legal terms that historians and genealogists often find may be unusual and confusing. Such terms include empresario, league, labor (pronounced la-BOR) and varas.

An empresario was basically someone or some group that received land from the government with the commitment to bring settlers to the area. One of the first groups to settle around San Antonio was from the Canary Islands. Moses Austin and his son Stephen F. Austin are probably the best known empresarios today. The Old Three Hundred, as Austin’s colonists were called, are well documented. The last of the empresarios included the Peters Colony around Dallas and Tarrant counties and the Mercer Colony in the southern part of Hunt County.

When the Republic of Texas wanted to attract settlers, it offered land in the amounts of a league and a labor which were comparable to acres. There were three classifications depending on the date the settler arrived in Texas. The scale was also divided with more land for married settlers. When a man married, he was entitled to double the amount he first received. Additional land was given for service in the Texas Revolution.

When looking at a survey of this time period, the researcher encounters the term varas.

A vara was a length measurement equal to thirty-three inches, more or less. Through the years, surveyors have dropped the term in favor of feet and inches.

Spanish law was more respectful of women than English Common law. Under Spanish law, women were allowed to own property in their own name, something unheard in English law until well into the 19th century. As a result, Texas developed community property laws at a much earlier date than other states.

Two good references for land records can be found at the W. Walworth Harrison Public Library. E. Wade Hone wrote Land and Property Research in the United States (Salt Lake City: Ancestry Inc., 1997). It includes a section regarding the empresario system of colonization and where to locate the records. Another excellent source is Black’s Law Dictionary by Henry Campbell Black (St. Paul: West Publishing Co., 1968, fourth edition.) This is a wonderful source for interpreting legalese.

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Indentured Laborer or Orphaned Child?

Posted on January 14, 2020 by admin

Ten years ago, I tested my father for his DNA. His second great-grandfather was and still is an enigma for the family. William Coley was born in 1822 in South Carolina. About three years after the test, I received a phone call from a distant cousin whom I had met a few times. After customary greetings, he dropped the bomb on me. We were not members of the Coley family, but our DNA corresponded with that of a McLendon family who were originally from North Carolina.

Anyone, natural child or adopted, worked on the family farm. Children had chores early in life.

Two thoughts went through my mind. My father had died in 2012 so there was no possible way to redo the DNA test. The second thought was more bizarre. I had recently finished family history research for a gentleman in California. One of the lines I found was a McLendon who came to the colonies in the late 1600s.

While talking to the distant cousin, he asked if I had any ideas how this happened. My theory, to this day, is that the McLendon family had some sort of catastrophic event. Maybe one or both of the parents died or were killed. Maybe there was an illegitimate birth. Maybe there were too many mouths to feed, and the family gave the child to a family with no children. And there are numerous “maybes”.

The birth information I have came from a census record much later in the 1800s. But given that, and stories about the family living in the foothills of the South Carolina mountains, I believe they were a backwoods family. I had just read a biography of young Andrew Jackson whose childhood was unbelievably poverty stricken.

Using more census records, I believe that William never learned to read and write. He took the name Coley from the family who raised him with no legal arrangements, such as adoption. The first time I find him was in northern Georgia. From there he moved to Tennessee and Alabama. All are really short distances apart. He married and fathered several children, including my ancestor John Samuel Coley.

At the time all of this information popped up, I was up to my ears in a book I was working on. I gradually forgot about William and John Samuel and my genealogy family members passed away. Last weekend I was at a reunion in Merit, my husband’s family hometown.

I found myself talking to two delightful female twins. They were so cute, lively and happy. Someone told me they were in their early 80s. One of the ladies told me that she missed the genealogy articles I wrote. And then she told me a whopper.

Her grandmother was just a toddler when her mother died. The father was quite elderly but agreed to raise this child, would feed, clothe, provide shelter for her. He sent her to school and gave her a Bible. When the grandmother died many years later, the twins found a document verifying this agreement.

I have always thought that whoever raised William Coley had no money for the cost of an adoption but took the child into their home, gave him food, clothing, and care. The twins’ grandmother received the same care. Unfortunately for genealogists, we may never find the documents with proof. We must hope for more family stories.

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A Peek at Hopkins County

Posted on January 4, 2020 by admin
The Hopkins County Courthouse sits with grace and elegance in the very center of Sulphur Springs. Union soldiers moved the county seat from Tarrant to Sulphur Springs because the surrounding area of Tarrant was frequently flooded. Of course, this enraged many Confederate supporters. (Texas State Historical Commission)

Over the years I have accumulated several county history books, many telling stories of Northeast Texas. It is amazing that much of the history in one county, spread into one or more adjacent counties. Settlers may have located in isolated areas, but they managed to hear the latest news.

Once the Republic of Texas became annexed by the United States and renamed the State of Texas, one of the earliest tasks was to create counties in the vast regions of Texas. Settlers hurried into the state, wanting to claim the good land for farms, and begin a new life.

But those good farms were not free; the new owners had to pay taxes to the county where they chose to settle.

Texas was land rich but nearly destitute of funds to operate the new government. The legislature frantically worked to divide the unclaimed lands into counties. Two of the early counties created were Hopkins and Hunt. Hopkins County came into existence on March 25, 1846. Eighteen days later on April 11, 1846 Hunt County became the new county west of Hopkins.

Based on information in “A History of Hopkins County, Texas,” written and published by Gladys St. Clair, Hopkins County was named for one of three men of the Hopkins family. Yet she does not identify which of the brothers. Evidently part or most of the family moved into the area now known as Hopkins County in the winter of 1843/1844. As many early settlers did, the family came from Clarksville in Red River County. They followed the Middle and Southern branches of the Sulphur River into Hopkins County.

When the Act to Create the County of Hopkins was enacted in March 1846, James E. Hopkins was one of the five men appointed commissioners to find the center of the new county. The commissioners chose two sites, both within a three-mile radius of the center. Once the sites were located white male citizens gathered to select the county seat, to be named Tarrant in honor of Indian fighter General Edward H. Tarrant.

Ms. St. Clair mentioned that David Hopkins recently arrived from Clarksville. His brother Eldridge and cousin Eli were also active in the development of the county.

Eldridge was noted for killing three panthers on his way from Tarrant to Pleasant Hill. On another occasion the men of Tarrant formed a Masonic Lodge. With no stagecoach available, Eldridge took the initial report to Austin on horseback in 1851. In August 1861 Joslin Hopkins joined the Captain James W. Bruce Company (CSA) from Hopkins County.

Finally, Ms. St. Clair included the obituary of Mrs. L. D. King. She was the daughter of Eldridge who suffered long before her death in 1904. At the time of her funeral her cortege in 1904 the length of mourners was the longest ever in Sulphur Springs.

“A History of Hopkins County, Texas” is typical of countless numbers of county histories published in the past. Almost all writers include their biases, the oral histories taught them. Ms. St. Clair did provide documentation of her work. However, as all writers of that time period did, much that was unpleasant was omitted.

However, Hopkins County has one of the best genealogical and historical collections I have ever seen. Without a doubt there are at least ten people over there that can give a Hopkins descendant an accurate account of the Hopkins family. Hopkins County is extremely proud of its past.

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