Author: Melinda Jo Ray

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Granbury College : The School on the Hill

Historic Granbury College, known as the School on the Hill, with former president D. S. Switzer in Granbury, Texas.

‘Far above the Brazos River,
On a Hallowed site,
Stands our noble Granbury High School
Bathed in golden light.
Raise the chorus, send it onward
Over hill and dale.
Hail to thee, beloved old high school,
Granbury High School. Hail!’

The above words are the words to the school song for Granbury High School and have been so since early in the twentieth century. However those words were originally been written about another school “far above the Brazos River” — Granbury College, the first secondary school in the city of Granbury — the school on the hill.

Granbury High School and College was begun by the Methodist Church District Conference in 1873, the same year as Ad-Ran College was opened in nearby Thorp Springs by the Churches of Christ. The two schools combined to make Hood County known nationwide as a center for higher learning in the latter years of the nineteenth century. Of both schools there are no physical remains save those that have been reused in the building of other structures. Of both schools few if any remain alive who have any actual memory of their existence. However, both schools were the seedlings – planted here in Hood County for a season – that were the foundation and beginnings of two long-time institutions of higher learning that still serve the students of North Texas and the world. Most people know that Ad-Ran College moved to Fort Worth and became Texas Christian University, but few remember or know that Granbury College which closed here in 1912, moved to Weatherford, and became what is now Weatherford College!

It may surprise many to learn that Granbury College and Training School, as it was known, existed at all. Even more surprising to some would be its location! Literally – far above the Brazos River on one of the highest points in the city of Granbury now stands – the Granbury Cemetery. Near the location of the middle of the current cemetery, where a water tower now stands adjacent to the oldest part of this hallowed site once stood the proud limestone structure of Granbury College. Believe it or not the college eventually was housed in a building that stood three stories high and measured 62’ by 80’. This was by comparison almost as tall as the current courthouse building minus the clock tower, and similar in size at ground level to the Nutt House Hotel building on the downtown square which measures roughly 50’ by 80’. It must have been an imposing sight up there on that hill above the town, and even more impressive is the fact that in an era when secondary education was still an opportunity often only offered to males, for its entire history – from 1873 to 1912 – the Granbury College was a co-educational institution!

In the summer of 1873, the District meeting of the Weatherford Methodist Conference was held in Acton. At that meeting, Rev. James Jones was the presiding elder. Many of the officials from throughout the conference recognized a need for an educational facility in this area of the state. Many expected it would be placed at Weatherford as that was the largest town in the area at the time. A strong presentation and proposal was made by the folks from the Granbury area, and it was decided that a District High School would be opened in Granbury instead.

Records indicate that the school opened that very fall in 1873, housed temporarily in a rock structure on the southeast corner of the square. The exact location and ownership of that building has been lost to the mists of time, but surely a debt of gratitude is owed to those unknown owners who lent their building to Granbury’s first institution of higher learning. A frame building was built on land given for the school to the north of town up on what is now the eastern most end of the Granbury Cemetery. The first headmaster of the school was Rev. W. P. Wilson and teachers were hired to teach students from grade school through what we would now consider community college level classes.

The school grew so much in the first two years that by 1875 it was a fully chartered and accredited school. It was originally intended that it would be a feeder school for the four-year Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. A few more terms and expansion of building space was needed. The citizens of Granbury recognized the value of having this institution of higher learning right here at home, and they rallied to the expansion needs, and in 1880-81 raised the money and built a three-story rock building measuring 42’ by 60’ on the land just west of the frame building. That building came into use in the fall of 1881. The elementary department covered grades one through seven, with an advanced eighth grade which is what we would consider high school today. The college department offered a two-year co-educational program offering a variety of courses including English, Latin, literature, mathematics, history, foreign language, music and art.

By 1883, the school had a total enrollment of 313 pupils and eight diplomas were granted in 1886. Rates were listed as board (including room), $10 to $12 a month with “washing” $1.00 per month. The school enjoyed several prosperous years until tragedy struck. The building and all of its contents were completely destroyed on January 9, 1887. Students had just returned from their Christmas holidays. D. S. Switzer (one of the college’s presidents) wrote of the distress of both faculty and students in the immediate aftermath of the fire. That despair quickly turned to hope as once more the town rallied around the school. Switzer wrote, “before the sun had set on the following day, a demoralized body of boarding pupils was pacified and ready to carry on their work. The Methodist and Baptist churches and Gordon Hall were engaged to provide classroom space and money sufficient to insure a better building was promised.”

The building that followed within the year was bigger and better with dimensions of 62’ by 80’, but with it came the huge debt. That debt along with the following years of drought and other problems brought the downfall of the college.

A 1909 Granbury College catalog lists expanded subject offerings including history, English, mathematics, Latin, science, Greek, German, a course in Bible and church methods, and a commercial course which included bookkeeping, penmanship, typewriting, et cetera. The school had a fine arts department, art department, and an athletics program which included tennis and baseball. There were two collegiate societies, the Phaino, a literary group, and the Aldelphian. Enrollment for that year was 124 and the cost for board, fuel, light and tuition was about $220 for the full term.

In the 1890s there was a terrible drought in the area. It was so bad that even the larger ranching operations were hard hit. An example is Jacob Nutt, who had a ranch out by Paluxy with over 2,500 acres. He had been running over 250 head of cattle on that land. In 1901 he was forced to sell off all but fifty head. The financial impact of the drought hit the families of many students hard. The resulting economic downturn had a disastrous impact on the school. Also, more and more communities were moving toward publicly funded schools located in each community and paid for through taxes.

The hard times for both local and far away student families caused enrollment to drop precipitously. After D. S. Switzer left as president at the end of the spring 1901 term, the school, over the next several years, offered fewer and fewer college level classes, as older students who chose to stay on finished their courses of study. It is thought the college formally closed its doors in 1912 and that some part of it went on to become (or already had become) part of Weatherford Junior College. Its effects like those of the other local college, Add-Ran, were great upon the local population and many enjoyed the quality education provided. The community at large also benefited greatly from the fine arts presentations made through the years by both faculty and students. The younger students continued their studies in newly constructed more centrally located public schools incorporated in Granbury and the various surrounding communities.

Granbury College Drama Production in 1880's
Granbury College Drama Production in 1880’s
First Limestone Structure built in 1881 that burned in January 1887.
First Limestone Structure built in 1881 that burned in January 1887.
Original Frame Building built in 1875 that was later the Girls Dormitory and the second larger limestone Granbury College Building built in 1887 after First Limestone Building burned.
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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Article: Lessons from the Greatest Generation in Hood County

Historic Cresson School with vintage family photographs illustrating a World War II era story from Hood County, Texas.

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO MY ARTICLE – A Tale Worth Telling

By Melinda Jo Ray

I just found this article written about fifteen years ago- floating around in my computer. I took a look, and since I wrote it for a relatively small audience back when, I thought it would be fun to share it with this group. Enjoy!

At the time this was written, I had the enormous pleasure of visiting with some friends of mine. I met them even MORE years ago when we were all singing in the same church choir here in Granbury. Phil and Dixie were a good deal older than I, members – like my parents and grandparents – of that stalwart group of folks referred to now as “The Greatest Generation”. At the time of the interview, I was working on an article on Memorial Day for the newsletter of a local group. Because Phil was a veteran of World War II, he was high on my list of folks I might talk to. But as I visited with my two friends, I kept hearing echoes of other stories told me by my mother and other friends of that age, and that little voice inside that speaks sometimes let me know that there was something bigger here than “just” a typical back in the day article.

Phil and Dixie and others of their era tell us through their stories and the examples set by their lives tales we would do well to listen to. Other cultures, throughout the world and throughout history, have often taught the young to revere the oldest, most experienced members of society. Their words are sought after and listened to and honored. Somehow, in America, we have often forgotten the value of that idea, and that is sad. – Because these folks have things to share that we need to hear.

When I first called to see if we could visit, I was a little apprehensive. I hadn’t seen these folks in a while, and Phil, especially, at age 93, is getting on in years. I wondered – would he feel like talking to me, would his memory be good, would he even want to share his story? Boy was I in for a surprise! I only hope that I am halfway as much of a go-getter NOW as Phil was at 93! What a joy to interview! He and Dixie both were full of details and enthusiasm and ideas! And after 2 cups of coffee and over an hour of great conversation, they escorted me to the back side of their property, a couple of hundred yards away, and showed me Phil’s workshop/garage, where he still worked almost daily on his FIVE antique cars! (That’s a whole other article!!)

But – back to the subject at hand – the World War II era. Throughout the years of the 1930’s, while America was mired in the worst economic depression ever known, the fires of war were being kindled in places all around the globe. By 1940 it was obvious what was coming. In 1941, a call was issued by the American Legion for all local outposts (over 10,000 of them) to ask for a registration of local World War (I) veterans. Most of these men were beyond the age of active combat service. But they were asked to sign up, giving their name, age, and areas of experience and expertise. It would be them who answered the call to teach and train quickly a new generation of warriors to once again fight for freedom and who would remain on the front lines at home as members of local Civil Defense units. The notice to Hood County Legionnaires was issued in the local newspaper on February 20, 1941. Less than a year later those former soldiers from all across the country found themselves on the job, teaching new, raw recruits.

Phil was one of those new recruits. He was an Agriculture major at Rutgers University when war was declared after Pearl Harbor was attacked in December of 1941. He and most of his friends went together to sign up for the Army Air Corps. Their motivation was a mixture of patriotism and pragmatism. They wanted to serve but also knew that if they volunteered, they could pick what branch of the military they were assigned to, whereas draftees had to go into whichever branch they were told to. “In those days, we all wanted to be pilots,” said Phil. “That was the glamour job, so that’s what we all signed up for. But of course we couldn’t ALL be pilots in the end. But we all got to fly. See, nowadays, with our computerized fighter planes, you’ve got one man – one plane and a computer. But back then… flying was a cooperative effort. It took nine men to fly a B29!” He went on to describe the teamwork and skills needed to fly just one aircraft… and my mind boggled.

This was a different world. One that lasted well into my lifetime – when scientists and pilots and engineers of that same generation sent men to the moon, using pencils and paper and slide rules, and humongous computers dumber than the most primitive cell phone. Phil described the cross-training among the five officers who made up the flight crew and the four enlisted men who manned the guns on what was then the most sophisticated aircraft ever built. All of the flight crew had some training as pilots. All the pilots and the navigator had some training on the mechanics of the plane that were monitored by the flight engineers, and they all had to know something about navigation using only landmarks and a compass by day and a sextant and the stars at night. Phil’s specialty became navigation. These young men, often with less than two months of training in the beginning, flew aircraft all over the world, across vast oceans, in all kinds of weather conditions, with navigators using only the centuries old practice of measurements off of three stars or points of land, and time flown. To be a navigator required knowledge of mathematics, geometry, astronomy, geography, and the ability to do mental calculations with lighting speed and accuracy, often while being shot at and or tossed about in a violent thunderstorm. Pilots flew planes with few if any automated features. A steady hand, a keen eye, and the ability to think and act quickly in 3 dimensions were everyday requirements. The flight engineers kept all systems operational using only the simplest of gauges and line of sight observation, and all had to ready to take over the others’ positions at a moment’s notice. The gunners had their marksmanship tested moment by moment, as they used only human eyesight and reflexes to aim and fire a variety of weapons from one bouncing moving platform at other bouncing moving platforms!

The young men in each of those planes formed a bond of trust and teamwork with each other that transcended military rank and civilian background. Their first job was to look out for each other- they were- each of them, by necessity, their brothers’ keeper! They were also their mother’s sons, their fathers’ heirs, their wives’ and girlfriends’ beloveds, and their children’s fathers. Thus, the determination to support their efforts and each other became a way of life among the civilians back home.

At this point in the conversation Phil and Dixie and I diverted from the military focus for a time and regaled each other with stories about the home front. They told of years of rationing and shortages and moving from place to place as Phil’s base of operations changed. And that brought into focus tales from my own family about the war years right here in Hood County, how every element of the community was focused on the cooperative effort to support the war effort and look after each other here at home.

Times were hard, and the sacrifices asked of the home front population were huge! We marveled as we recalled what they had experienced, and I had heard about the spirit of cooperation in those days. I remembered my mother talking of those childhood years and saying, “Even us kids knew that it was us or them. We knew that if our country was going to survive, we had to all work together. We didn’t worry about who was rich and who was poor, or what church people went to, or whatever. We were all in this together, and we had to help our country and support our troops, or Evil would win, and it would be a horrible thing.” When I repeated this to Phil and Dixie, they agreed emphatically, and said that was absolutely the way most everyone felt, for four long years of war, and beyond.

Civilian sacrifices were demanded that seem impossible today. Rationing was implemented on almost all products. It wasn’t voluntary; it was required by the federal government for the good of the nation. Can we even imagine the outcry over such a program today? Butter, sugar, coffee, shoes, tires, gas, cars, and nylon hose- all these and countless other items were on the list. Ration books were issued monthly to every adult citizen. People who needed a new car could sign up for a car lottery at the beginning of the year in the county where they lived. One year in Hood County the local car dealers were told they could sell 100 cars. Over 400 people signed up for the lottery. Names were drawn and winning tickets given out. The other 300 people had to try again next year.

Once a person’s ration tickets were used for a particular item, it was illegal for that person to be sold any more of that product until the next month’s booklet was issued. But neighbors helped each other. My grandparents’ garage, next to their house in Cresson, burned in December of 1942 – literally days after they moved here from Kansas. The local people from the Cresson area turned out in the middle of the night to help put out the blaze. They contained and put out the fire and saved the house, but the detached garage was a total loss. My grandparents’ only car and my grandfather’s work boots were lost in the fire. My grandmother had just used their shoe ration tickets for school shoes for my mother and her sister. The morning after the fire was a Sunday. When they opened their door to leave to walk to church, they found an envelope tacked to the door. In the envelope was a winning car lottery ticket and ration tickets for a pair of work boots. Upon their arrival at community church in Cresson, where they learned all denominations attended with a different preacher each Sunday, my grandfather began to ask around, saying he wanted to find the benefactor and make arrangements to pay off the debt owed over time. My nine-year-old mother was standing next to him and always remembered George Glasscock’s answer. “Now, Mr. Bole, don’t you worry about that. Here in Hood County, we take care of our own.” She always said, no matter where she lived in her life after that, she always thought of Hood County as Home.

The memories of those years stayed with that generation for a lifetime. Newspapers of the day were filled with reports of War Bond Drives, and Collections for the Army Widows and Orphans fund. Young and old alike are exhorted to bring their scrap metal and old tires to be recycled for the war effort. Forty years later, my mother still had the habit of saving used aluminum foil and foil gum wrappers in a big ball to be recycled. Efforts to raise dollars and materials were turned into community projects and get-togethers. Housewives left their homes to work in factories and munitions plants, and men with specific skills remained home as civilian workers in essential industries like oil and gas, agriculture, and structural engineering for the river authorities.

When the was over a very long four years later, a weary yet grateful nation buried its dead, gave thanks for survival, and welcomed its troops home. But war has a price and an aftermath, and once again my visit with Phil and Dixie had a surprise in store. What, Phil asked me, do you think happens to all the stuff-the ships, the planes, the tanks, the jeeps, and the weapons – when the war is over? There was a moment of silence, then another. “Well,” I said, “I guess I don’t know. I never really thought about that part of it.” He nodded. “Most people don’t!” And so he began the part of the World War II story I had never heard before- the story of the Sunset Project.

After the war was over, on all islands all across the Pacific, and all those countries all over Europe, there were planes, and tanks, and jeeps, and weapons- many of them older outdated models that had seen less and less use as technology progressed during the war. Also, there were scores and scores of them- many more than would ever be needed during peacetime. Well, we couldn’t just walk away and leave them to clutter up the world. Also, some held technology with secrets that still needed to be kept. So, before letting all its manpower go, the U.S. military had one more HUGE job to do- to gather up all that material, and bring it home- either to be reused, recycled, or destroyed. The operation to do that was known as The Sunset Project and it lasted for almost five years. Phil’s final years of military service were spent bringing B29 bombers – the workhorse planes of the early war in the Pacific, home to the U.S. to be burned by the hundreds on airbases across the western United States. The columns of smoke of the Sunset Project marked the end of a remarkable era in American history.

Phil and Dixie and I all agreed that all war and its causes were terrible things indeed, and we talked about the fallacy of romanticizing or glamourizing those times. But we also spoke of the lessons to be learned, not about global politics or international affairs, but about teamwork, can-do optimism, the value of and willingness to do hard work, the importance of community and looking out for one another, and the drawing together and unification of a nation. Those are lessons worth talking about and if you’re lucky enough to have a member of that generation still alive in your family and able to share their memories that greatest generation still living them – right here in Granbury and Hood County. If you are lucky enough to know any of them, seek them out and make time to hear their stories. Who knows? Their tales might spark an idea or two about how to navigate the challenges of our own era. – I know this one does, even a decade and a half after the telling! Thanks, Phil and Dixie, for sharing your story!

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Hood County‘s First County Judge : Abel W. Landers

Portrait of Abel W. Landers, Hood County's first county judge and one of the founders of Granbury, Texas.

Editor’s Note: Abel W. Landers is often remembered simply as Hood County’s first county judge. Yet his influence reached far beyond the courtroom. Drawing upon years of research, this article explores the remarkable life of a pioneer whose leadership helped shape the founding of Granbury and the future of Hood County.

I want to tell you about Abel W. Landers. I mean, I really, really do. For me, it’s almost personal. Twenty years ago, when I set out to write a novel about the Nutt brothers and the beginnings of Granbury, I had in my mind this older uncle, who was getting on in years, who came with them Texas and kind of hung around like some honorary grandfather on the periphery of events. Then, I read an article by one of his descendants and amended that to cantankerous honorary grandfather. Then I read T. H. Ewells “account” and amended it to ornery, eccentric and cantankerous…but still basically a “minor” character. Then, I got into serious research about the background and span of this man’s life, and he reached across and through the mists of time and grabbed me by the collar, got in my face, and said “Missy, I may be a lot of things, and you can be right up front about all of’em. But I am not, nor will I ever be ‘a MINOR character’!”

Twenty plus years, five books, and hundreds of hours of research later I am absolutely convinced that the people of Granbury and Hood County owe more of who we have been and who we are to this one man than to any other single human who ever walked the tops of these limestone bluffs or gazed across the majesty of valley of the “River of the Arms of God.” Abel Landers got that eccentric, cantankerous caricature label from a single paragraph mention in T. H. Ewell’s 1895 History of Hood County. Writing twenty plus years after Landers’ death, Ewell basically dismisses Landers’ almost twenty years of leadership during the formation of the community that became Granbury, and portrays his tenure as our first county judge as that of a legal hack. One has to wonder what axe Ewell had to grind – or if he even bothered to research the background and actual history of this man whose career and contributions he made such light of for the sake of an entertaining story.

This is not to say that Abel Landers was of docile character, or that he didn’t have a forceful personality, or even that he was above pushing hard and engaging in political hard ball in pursuing a course he believed to be right. But he was an honorable man, an educated and astute man, and was well-thought-of by those who truly knew him, and also- surprisingly- by those who only knew him by reputation. So how did this happen? And who was Abel Landers, really? What can we know about someone who lived so long ago, from what records remain of the sum of his life? I’ve read those records, everything I can find. My journey has taken me from Kentucky and Tennessee westward to Missouri and finally onward here to Texas. And what I have found is the story of a man of remarkable character, who still – across all these years – comes to us as a REAL human being.

Abel Landers was born in 1796 in Warren County, Kentucky, where his father Christopher had received a land grant. Both of his parents were descended from very successful, landed colonial families, his father from a Norman British family whose name was originally spelled Landis, and his mother Phoebe from the famed Lee’s of Virginia. His parents had met and married in North Carolina, in 1793 and moved to Kentucky sometime prior to his birth. Born only 4 years after their marriage, he was nonetheless their third child, being proceeded by two older brothers. Sometime after the turn of the century, Abel’s father acquired by grant a larger amount of land in Bedford County, Tennessee, and the family moved there to what would be his parent’s permanent home. It was there that destiny began its work. Young Abel met and forged friendships with two other boys there, David G. Nutt – another son of a family with deep North Carolina roots, and Amon Bond – son of a young Quaker couple from Baltimore, Maryland. These three lads were of an age, all born within eighteen months of each other, and all of their fathers owned and farmed the land. They all grew up with a growing appreciation of the prosperity that the land, properly nurtured could bring. They watched and listened as young teens to the men around them plan and dream as they built the nearby county seat town of Shelbyville – the place that became one of the first in the new nation to build a prosperous business district on a plan that became known as “the Shelbyville model” – a central town square with the courthouse and seat of government at the center, surrounded on four sides by a block of retail and service businesses facing inward, surrounded by blocks of residences, parks, churches, and schools – the model that became the blueprint for a nation.

These three young men listened well, and observed much, including the differences between their families. While they shared much in common, one large difference was the Quaker faith practiced by Amon Bond’s family. While all three sprung from devout, church-going folk, the Quakers stood out in that Tennessee of so long ago, not just in their language and their dress, but in another very important way- they didn’t believe in slavery. And the records show that example apparently spoke not only to the conscience of young Amon Bond, but to his friends Abel Landers and David Nutt as well. Upon reaching adulthood, the three young men worked as laborers for their fathers, apparently earning a stake- a startup of land for themselves. Each one shows no record at any point in their lives, from that beginning forward, of ever owning slaves for labor.

Amon shows no record of ever owning slaves in his lifetime. Abel and David both inherited a small number of slaves from their fathers as part of their inheritance. Both were young married men at the time, with land and families. Abel had apparently also done some study of the law, and had begun to do some legal work, mostly for family members, dealing with estate matters. But he was keenly aware of the legal ramifications of his and David’s situations. It would do no good for them to free their slaves in Tennessee, since Tennessee law did not recognize emancipation. Even a former slave with signed and witnessed emancipation papers could be picked up at will by anyone and declared property by that person. Also, it was illegal for slaves in Tennessee to be taught to read, write or cypher. To release the people in their care under those circumstances would be tantamount a sentence of death, or imprisonment, or both.

Correspondence with his wife Sally’s Shipman relations in the new state of Missouri provided Abel and his now brother-in-law David Nutt the answer they needed. Emancipation was legal and honored by the law in Missouri. Quietly, Abel saw to it that the slave families he and David had inherited (plus another orphaned black child he purchased apparently on impulse to keep her from being sold into a lifetime of captivity) were educated and taught job skills to equip them for freedom. In 1837 emancipation papers were signed and the two men sold their land, gathered their families and worldly goods, and struck out via covered wagon almost 500 miles across the Ozark mountains to the newly forming settlement of Neosho Missouri. Their newly freed slaves traveled there as well. Abel gave each of them, his and David’s slaves alike, $35 (a sizable sum back then) in start-up money. Both white and black members of the party purchased land and set up farms in the area, worked by all of them and several of their now grown or teen-aged sons and daughters.

Abel also began doing legal work, and soon became active in community affairs. In the latter, it is apparent that he quickly brought insights and information from his Shelbyville observations that impressed his fellow citizens. In 1838, his new hometown of Neosho, situated on Hickory Creek, was named county seat of the new county of Newton, and Abel’s input was apparently valued. In 1839, he was appointed to the independent commission that selected the site for and made the initial plans for the county seat of the newly forming Barry County, Missouri. The city of Carthage was established on the banks of the Spring River in the new Barry County, and remains the county seat today. In 1841, another county, Jasper, was forming, and once again Abel Landers was chosen as one of the commissioners who would choose a site and do the initial planning. The town of Cassville was placed on the banks of a small spring fed creek known as the Roaring River whose origins have only recently been traced to deep within an Ozark mountain cave system, miles away.

In addition to serving on these planning commissions, Abel also served during these early Missouri years as a tax assessor and Justice of the Peace. Then in 1842 he ran for state office and won. He was elected to three terms as a member of the Missouri State House of Representatives and served one term in the Missouri State Senate. In a total of 8 years out of the next ten he worked as a moderate in the Missouri Legislature. A supporter of an end to the expansion of slavery and a gradual end to slavery nationwide, he worked with Senator Benton and others to rally support to that end, often treading a fine line with some of the slaveholders in his home district. Seeing the tide turning toward war with the passing by Congress of the Missouri compromise in 1854, he chose not to seek another term in the Missouri Senate.

About this time, Amon Bond and his family, also seeing the tides of war rising, decided to head for the frontier lands of far-removed Texas. Amon invited his old friends to join the adventure. There was land for the taking, and Amon’s son Ed had already procured a start, a grant on the west bank of a river known as “El Rio de los Brazos de Dios” – The River of the Arms of God. The free land beckoned, and the fact that Abel knew of a certainty of Texas governor Sam Houston’s staunch opposition to secession gave hope of a war to be avoided. Over the next few years the majority of the Nutt and Landers family members came to agree that removal to Texas was the right thing to do. A quick mass exodus was delayed by illnesses, tragedies, marriages, births, and business concerns. But in the spring of 1856 Amon came back to Neosho to lead the first small group to Texas. Abel’s relative Logan Landers and his family, Abel’s daughter Elizabeth and her husband, Jesse Nutt- one of the blind brothers, and Abel’s middle son Henry went with this small group. Their plan – to get land claimed and cabins built for a much larger party to follow in a couple of years.

The advance party arrived in Texas and wrote back to Abel with glowing reports. But he was getting on in years and his wife, Sally was in fragile health. The unsettled times made the selling off of property a challenge for both him and David. But finally, in the spring of 1858, a long line of wagons rolled through the Neosho square. The Landers and Nutts and many kinfolk and friends were pulling up stakes one last time and were “gone to Texas”! Upon arrival, Abel, Amon, and Jesse Nutt quickly became leaders of the fledgling little community on the banks of the Brazos, known as Stockton Bend.

The first years were incredibly hard. The hardships of the frontier proved too much for Abel’s beloved Sally, who died in January 1859. 18 months later secession and war came in deadly earnest. The Confederacy instituted the first military draft ever invoked on American soil, and most of the young men, except for the blind Jesse and Jacob Nutt were caught up in it. All told, Amon, Abel, and David sent nine sons off to fight in a war for a cause they didn’t support. Only five of those sons came home.

During the war, Abel Landers worked tirelessly with Johnson county officials to be sure that war widows and orphans in the western areas of the county received the assistance they needed. Beginning with the hotly contested elections in 1860, he led local efforts to ensure universal voter registration of all eligible voters and free and open access to the polls for same. He had a reputation for finding common sense solutions to sticky problems and was already looking forward to the coming end of the conflict, when he knew that population increases, and distance would probably lead to the formation of a new western county. At an age when most men, including his friends David and Amon were content to retire and leave the hard work of governing to the younger generation, Abel brought a depth of experience and expertise to “growing a new place” that was badly needed during those early years, when so many of the young and middle-aged men had been lost too soon. To illustrate – the sparsely populated Johnson county had sent over 600 men off to war. Almost 300 of those men did not return.

The post-war shenanigans involved in the formation of Hood county are described in several local history books. Nowhere were the political maneuverings of various factions more complex than those regarding location of the county seat. Citing his experience and reputation for honorable and moderate politics, Abel – a local man – was elected county judge and head official in the new county in 1866 and this was approved by the reconstruction government. That approval was not always readily given in those times and the people of Hood county knew it and breathed a sigh of relief. But there were no less than five locations vying to be the site of the new county seat. Even today, resentments and might have beens pop up in conversation. There was and is talk that Abel blocked due process, and refused to validate elections etc. The pure unvarnished truth when one looks at the situation objectively is this – First, this was not Abel’s first rodeo, it was his fourth – fifth if you count his original observations in Shelbyville. He knew better than anyone the requirements, both by law and logistics, for a new county seat.

The contenders were Glen Rose Mills, Acton, Thorp Spring, Lambert Branch, and a foothill at the base of Comanche Peak known as “the Center” (as it was literally the geographic center of the county). State law required only two things, that the county seat be named Granbury, and that it be located within 6 miles of the geographic center of the county. Two of the contenders, the two oldest settlements- Acton and Glen Rose did not fall into that 6-mile requirement. Other logistical requirements included an adequate and readily available and easily defended water source, and adequate space for expansion over decades. The “Center” was too far from the river for it to be a viable water source, and todays residents of the area can testify to the inadequacies of its ground water situation. That brought realistic consideration down to Thorp Spring and Lambert Branch.

At this point Thorp Spring had the larger population and a town already started. Lambert Branch had more open land and was located admittedly on Nutt, Landers and Bond family land holdings. But this writer believes that there were other factors that Abel’s experienced eye could see. One was that Lambert Branch would be a fresh start, and an open community. The other was its location on the high point above the river with a ferry crossing and potential bridge location at each end. When election failed to resolve the issue in a manner he felt was satisfactory (they kept choosing the Center (that hill where Lakeside Baptist Church stands today), with its inadequate water situation. Abel did the same thing his predecessors in Missouri had done – he persuaded the county commissioners to appoint an independent commission of men from outside the county and those gentlemen looked at all the factors and chose Lambert Branch. And the rest as they say, is history.

Abel was also instrumental in guiding the young county and its property owners through the beginnings of an almost twenty-year long legal battle with Milam County over ownership of School Lands located in Hood County. Abel was instrumental in retaining the respected and highly qualified A. J. Hood of Parker County as legal counsel for both individual defendants and the county in the matter. In the years from 1868 to 1872, his personal dialogue with Representative William Henry Sinclair, who became Speaker of the Texas House in 1871, obtained much needed State intervention in the matter to provide, at least for a time, the stability the new county needed to grow.

Abel was now past 70 years old, a long life in those times. Although he resigned as judge in mid-1869 in protest over a disqualification of duly elected commissioners by the Reconstruction Government, in his final years he oversaw the layout of the plats and lots, working with men he had raised up to understand and share his vision. Prior to his death in May, 1873 he witnessed the beginnings- those first wooden buildings going up, that first stone courthouse being built, all on lots in a quadrangle atop bluffs of limestone, overlooking the River of the Arms of the God he loved so well – his final gift and legacy to us and to the ages – our town, Granbury, on the Brazos.

“The towns that Abel built….”

Carthage, Barry County, Missouri

Cassville, Jasper County, Missouri

Neosho, Newton County, Missouri

Granbury, Hood County, Texas

Until next week,

Melinda Ray

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Festival Parades from Days Gone By: Granbury’s Texas Independence Day & San Jacinto Celebrations (1923–1924)

Historic collage of Granbury's 1923 Texas Independence Day and 1924 San Jacinto Day festival parades featuring schoolchildren, horse-drawn wagons, period costumes, and community celebrations around the Granbury Square.

Featuring Photos From:
Texas Independence Day 1923 and San Jacinto Day 1924

Well folks, if you didn’t know it already, let me share something with you! GRANBURY HAS ALWAYS KNOWN HOW TO THROW A PARADE!!! As we gather for the year’s July 4th Parade and festivities around the Granbury, it seems a good time to share these photos I collected of past festivities during my years of research and working with the good folks at the old Hood County Jail Museum. Join me in visualizing a couple of Granbury Festivals of years gone by! We’ll have a blast! Like most of our festivals today, these were duly reported in the local newspapers and the folks who were in charge took lots of pictures! So, come with me, as we go down to the Square to wander around 1923 and 1924 to catch some glimpse of the celebrations on TEXAS INDEPENDENCE DAY and SAN JACINTO DAY!

On both March 2, 1923, and April 21, 1924 – It is a fine spring day on one of the state public holiday when we celebrate Texas winning her War for Independence from Mexico! As always in Granbury, the parade is set to come right down Pearl Street from the school to the square, make that turn up Crockett, and then left on Bridge right back down to the schoolhouse! We’ve got the perfect seats right here in front of the Nutt Hotel! Uncle Henry Nutt and his wife, Aunt Euna, have made us welcome, as citizens from all over Hood County crowd the limestone sidewalks! Many are jostling to get a good view of their children and classmates!

All of the schools in Hood County have signed up to participate in the parade! Assisted by their teachers and the ladies of the Granbury Parent Teacher Organization, the children have constructed an extravaganza to honor 100 years of Texas History! This Pageant of Texas is designed to give the children and all of us a greater appreciation of the wonderful history of our state! If you look at your program you will see the names of the various children and adults involved in each part of the celebration.

“Oh, look here they come now!!!” The parade is led by three pupils portraying OLD MAN TEXAS, accompanied by the ladies PROSPERITY and OPTIMISM! And following them are the six wonderful floats! Oh, look, all the children are in costumes and so are the adults, all depicting a special part of Texas history. At each school, all the students helped with researching the proper costumes and the details that needed to be shown on each float! Oh, my goodness, there is Frank Gaston, that fellow who owns the Granbury News!! Let’s look over his shoulder and see what he has to say about this scene!

“Our teachers, pupils, and the ladies of the Parent-Teacher Association have reason to feel proud of the success of the historical pageant… celebrating San Jacinto Day. We are glad to say the program was carried out exactly as advertised and in every feature was far better than the public expected! In six episodes of Texas history the costuming was historically correct, older people in the audience recognizing the true representations of costumes and manner of life in some of the episodes, especially those of the Confederacy. In this latter was a unique feature, the slave section being represented by Barney Hightower and Aunt Judy Anderson, two ex-slaves, with a number of children from the negro school, in an old-fashioned wagon and riding on a bale of cotton.

Other features were also specially attractive, and none more so than the pioneers, with the old moving wagon, even with the cow being led behind, the young ladies representing the red, white and blue, those representing the colonies and the states of the union, the boy scouts, the future citizens, and especially the little tots representing the Texas state flower, ‘The Blue Bonnet’. The individual characters listed in the program were also well represented in their costumes and actions. The parade consumed nearly an hour, being well timed so as to give the best effect, and upon returning to the school building there was a program of splendid talks, with some music and readings, all in harmony with the great historical occasion. To carry out such a program required much study of detail and all connected therewith have reason to feel a just pride in its universally pronounced success!”

PRESENT DAY — Wow, that just about says it all! It was so much fun seeing all the pictures of the children and adults involved! So many of the children became leaders in our community in the years to come. But, the truly remarkable thing about this moment in Granbury history is the shining example of its inclusiveness. In a day when segregation, Jim Crow, and the KKK were tearing nearby communities apart, in Granbury the people, young and old alike, of all colors, joined together for a day-long celebration of our common history.

The newspaper account goes on to tell in detail about the program and how ALL of the people gathered to share a meal and see the program put on by students from ALL of the schools! A point was made to show the spirit of community and fun shared by all, with anecdotes of highlights of contributions from every part of the county! The mere fact, preserved in print, of this celebration reminds us of just what a remarkable community Granbury/Hood County has always been! “Where Texas History Lives” is our motto and, when we look to our past, we are blessed to have the example set by the folks from “around here” back in those days. It’s so remarkable that they were already celebrating that history, even in those bygone days of just over 100 years ago! The tradition lives on!

CLICK TO ENLARGE.

Collage Caption: A collage of pictures showing some of the time period groups from each year. Featured here are: Indian Era – 1924, Texas War for Independence – 1923, Pioneers 1923, Slavery – 1923, Civil War -1924, Citizens of the Future – Boys and Girls – 1924

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The Bon Ton – Early Eatery Brings Twenty Years of Good Eats

Historic collage featuring The Bon Ton Restaurant on the Granbury Square, founder Ralph Bowden, and vintage scenes from downtown Granbury, Texas.

 

In 1891 Granbury businessman Ralph Bowden decided to open an eatery on the Granbury Square. His new restaurant would not be the first on the Granbury Square, but it would become one of the longest lasting in those early days. The Bon Ton Eatery opened on the west side of the square in the building that now houses another business that offers great food and drink in a unique atmosphere — The Silver Saddle Saloon! The new eating establishment joined a hodgepodge of eating choices available to the early citizens of our community.

Several small establishments known as lunch stands were operating in the spices around the downtown area. Also, several of the saloons had opened lunch counters as well. But The Bon Ton set out to be a real full-service restaurant. The Granbury citizens took note and a twenty- plus year love affair began. The Bon Ton offered a wide variety of cuisine, including the apparent culinary obsession of the time, fresh fish and oysters! This was apparently a big deal – as almost every eating place in town boasted about their fish and oysters in their weekly newspaper ads. The Bon Ton also mentions steak, ham and eggs, sandwiches, fresh fruit in season, canned goods, and fresh bread as part of their daily offerings.

Also, on the menu are listed a wide variety of desserts- including cakes, pies, cookies, and a whole confectionery shop full of candy! Apparently, the desserts were a hit. In one local paper there is an ad soliciting 500 eggs. The restaurant offered cash payment in the ad to any local persons with eggs for sale! It should be noted that one could make a good living in those days selling eggs, milk, and butter to local restaurants and grocery stores.

Coffee, tea, and cigars rounded out the menu but that wasn’t all one could get at this very special eatery. In the offering of customer service, the Bon Ton apparently was the forerunner of the modern-day Starbucks! In addition to all the food they also sold newspapers, magazines, and the latest novels!

Mr. Bowden owned the Bon Ton for almost fifteen years, all the while running several other businesses on the side. Around 1895 he announced that the restaurant would begin serving evening meals as well as lunch. Even today, that is a lot of hours for a restaurant to be open each day, and one has to wonder how Mr. Bowden did it all.

In 1903 he purchased the local phone company and decided to sell his restaurant business in order to devote all his time to expanding local phone service. The Bon Ton was sold to two young men, Rochelle Daniel and Henry Williams. They continued to operate the restaurant for several more years. Apparently, Mr. Bowden kept his interest in the confectionery end of the business, as he and his wife were still running a candy store on the Square as late as the 1940’s.

Today, the Silver Saddle Saloon occupies the Bon Ton’s old home on the west side of the Granbury Square! It is part of a thriving Culinary District that continues the tradition of good food and beverages along with good service that began over a century ago with those tiny lunch stands and The Bon Ton. Through the years we’ve seen long time favorites like the Nutt House Dining Room and the Merry Heart Tearoom and Rinky Tinks become part of the fabric of the community in their day. We’ve even had a famous chef or two among us, such as Grady Spears. Be sure to go downtown and check out the menus! — You’ll be sure to find some great folks continuing those traditions of down-home good times, great beverages and wonderful food, right here – on the Granbury Square!

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Captured But Never Defeated: The Incredible Story of Josephine Cavasos Barnard

Josephine Cavasos Barnard on horseback, a survivor of Comanche captivity who became a pioneering settler in Hood County, Texas.

 

Josephine Cavasos Barnard – Captured But Never Defeated – PART ONE

This is the story of Josephine Cavasos Barnard, who was wrenched from all she knew and suffered abuse and great trauma, before being rescued – by the man she would go on to build a life with. Josephine (or Juana, as she was called by many) and her husband Charles Barnard were among the earliest settlers in the area that now straddles the line between Hood and Somervell Counties. .Many don’t know that area was within the original boundaries of Hood County when it was established in 1866. But Juana’s story begins many years before… in a time long before Texas was even a State.

Josephine Maria Cavasos was born June 24, 1824, in the Canary Islands of Spanish-Italian ancestry. Her parents, Juan Jose and his wife, migrated from there to Matamoros, Mexico because his father, Don Narciso Cavasos, had received l06 leagues of land or 601,657 acres from the King of Spain. This was the largest land grant ever made in the New World and later part of it became part of what is now northern Mexico and south Texas.

In August 1842 Josephine was 18 years old. Texas was still part of Mexico then and friends and relatives passed freely back and forth across the Rio Grande. Josephine was great friends with a girl named Mary Alice whose family lived on the north side of that great river. As was the custom in those days, visits lasted days or even weeks. So, Josephine went to spend a few days visiting with her friend. While she was there, a band of Comanche attacked the house. Chaos ensued. Josephine ran from the house as the thunder of hoof beats filled the air. She hid in the woods nearby, but was found by a young Indian brave, who grabbed her by the hair and slung her across the horse in front of him. Over the course of the next few hours she saw him kill a mother and baby with his tomahawk and endured many miles of travel over rough terrain. Every moment she feared a downswing of the tomahawk that would end her life. Finally, they stopped at a dry creek, where she was thrown to the ground and tied to a tree. As night fell, Josephine heard sobs and cries from nearby. She recognized the voice as that of her friend, Mary Alice. She struggled against her bonds and called out to her friend. She received a fist in the face for her trouble.

This was the beginning of a harrowing nightmare of years of captivity. The band of Comanche first stayed in the area of south Texas and tortured the girls, trying to get them to tell them the location of the largest horse ranches in the area. Fearing for their fellow settlers, the girls at first refused, but later, in desperation, concocted a story hoping to lead the Indians astray. The raiding party returned, empty handed and furious. The girls were badly beaten. Mary Alice cried and begged for mercy and Josephine was made to watch as she was brutally killed.

In defiance, Josephine glared through her tears as a brave approached her, knife at ready. “Go ahead, do it!” she hissed.

Startled by her courage, he stopped, placed his hand over her heart, and said, “Brave, like Comanche! No kill!”

Alone now, Josephine was determined to survive and escape. As the Indian band turned north, she was tied each day to the horse she rode but was allowed to swim when water was available. She had experienced and seen horrific brutality, yet she was never brutalized again. She was befriended by one of the old women of the tribe and from her learned to live as the Indians did. She learned to cook and eat their food and how to soften skins for clothing. Other women joined in to teach her about herbal medicine, how to speak Comanche, and how to wash with soapwort.

Winter that year was spent on the Guadalupe River. A family trying to pass through was captured. The family was killed, except for a small boy. The Indians entertained themselves by holding the child’s bare feet in the flames. Josephine, unable to stand it, burst past the laughing Indians and snatched the boy. The Old One who had befriended her motioned that she come and bring the boy to her teepee. She not only dressed the child’s feet but salvaged some food for them. She told Josephine that she had insulted the Indians and she and the child were to be abandoned to starve. The next morning all the other Indians were gone and Josephine and the child were alone. After some period of days, the Indians returned; but the child was dead and Josephine was near death. Again, the Old One adopted her and nursed her back to health.

For most of the next two years Josephine lived with the Comanche. She was expected to work hard, but was allowed freedom to swim, shoot, and ride wild mustangs. She became so skillful at breaking horses that some of the braves became jealous. Because she understood Comanche, she learned of a trading post on Tehuacana Creek that treated the white man and red man the same.

George Barnard had established trading posts near Marlin Falls and Tehuacana. His brother, Charles, had come from New York to join him in the venture in Texas. They had made friends with Sam Houston and were well known for their business and trade with both Indians and white settlers at all their establishments. It was said by 1845 that relations with the Indians were so bad that settlers hardly slept except in the areas where the Barnards and their associates, the Torreys, had established a relationship with the Comanche.

On February 7, 1846, at Comanche Peak, the federal agents had called for a powwow. The Indians accepted many gifts and exchanged some polite talk, but the treaty with the Indians did not materialize. Instead, another meeting in May at Tehuacana Trading House was set.

By April, Indians were gathering on Tehuacana and Trading House creeks. All the Indians, including the women and children, attended, but Josephine was left in a canyon 20 miles away to tend The Old One — the woman who had protected her. Despite Josephine’s best effort, she died. When this happened, Josephine was taken to join the others. One of the activities was a sort of rodeo with each tribe entering its best riders. The ponies were wild; but one in particular had never been ridden. On the second day, Josephine leaped past her watchers and ran to the wild one. Grabbing its hackamore, she leaped aboard and rode the wild mustang until it was exhausted.

Charles Barnard was watching. He realized that this was not an Indian. As she leaped from the tamed horse, the tribe circled round Josephine, preventing anyone from approaching her. But she had seen Charles. As she was led away she was able to send a look which was unmistakably a cry for help.

End of PART ONE.

Josephine Cavasos Barnard – Captured But Never Defeated – PART TWO

This is the story of Josephine Cavasos Barnard, who was wrenched from all she knew and suffered abuse and great trauma, before being rescued – by the man she would go on to build a life with. Josephine (or Juana, as she was called by many) and her husband Charles Barnard were among the earliest settlers in the area that now straddles the line between Hood and Somervell Counties. .Many don’t know that area was within the original boundaries of Hood County when it was established in 1866. But Juana’s story begins many years before… in a time long before Texas was even a State.

Charles and George Barnard quickly came up with a plan and tried to bargain for the girl they had seen with the Indians at their Trading Post, but at that time she was not for ransom. A treaty was signed May 16, 1846, for a definite line some distance west of the westernmost settlements. Indians were to stay west; settlers were to stay east. During these negotiations, Josephine was nowhere to be seen. Just as the Indians were preparing to leave, she was taken to the trading house. There Charles and George Barnard were behind the counter with the chief and tribal leaders on the other side. The counter was covered with piles of blankets, knives, beads, flour, and sugar. Negotiations began. George was the bargainer. The Indians were very demanding. Each time the Chief would shake his head, George would nod and Charles would add to the pile. At last the chief grunted and left with his men carrying the bounty, leaving Josephine free for the first time in over three years.

Josephine was placed under the care of an Irish lady named Katy. Charles Barnard became a regular visitor at Katy’s home, and romance quickly blossomed between Josephine and her rescuer. But the decision to marry him was made difficult because of the life he had planned. He wanted her to go with him to establish a new trading post far up the Brazos River to the north in the shadow of the mesa called Comanche Peak where the tribes had gathered the year before. She would be the only white woman in the remote area. In 1847, Charles left to go start building the new post, while Josephine pondered her decision.

Love won out over fear and she and Charles were married in October of 1848. While the construction of the post continued, Josephine and Charles began married life with his traveling between his new post on the Brazos, and George’s post in central Texas. In August,1849, their daughter Maria was born. Shortly afterward, she and her mother joined her father on the Texas frontier. Josephine and Charles began their long life together in the log and limestone house on the banks of the Brazos in what is now southern Hood County. Their second child, John, was born the next year. He was the first child born to white settlers in the area. Throughout their marriage, Charles and Josephine were devoted to each other. He always allowed her the freedom to indulge her need for open spaces and ride fast horses. She bore him fourteen children, but in the way of those days – only four lived to adulthood.

In 1851, friendly Indians settled in a village across the creek from the trading post. They farmed, hunted, and were peaceful and enjoyed horse racing gatherings with Charles and Josephine and other folks passing through. There were no schools in the territory, so Charles (a Harvard graduate) tutored the Indian children right along with his own. Later they attended the Acton Institute and then Baylor College in Waco. The Acton Institute was housed on the ground floor of the 19 Acton Masonic Lodge, of which Charles was a charter member. That building also doubled as a church meeting house for the various denominations in the Acton community. After many years of neglect, it was restored in the 1970s and is now the chapel of Good Shepherd Anglican Church.

In 1854 the Indians were removed to the reservation at Fort Belknap. Prior to that time it was common for the Commanche to come to Josephine for medical help, as her skills in that realm were remembered by their people. At one point, three Comanche brought a sick child to Josephine. She recognized him as a Mexican child, deathly sick with pneumonia. After nursing him back to health, she and Charles raised Ambrosio Hernandez and treated him as their own for the rest of his life.

At the age of 37, with his work with the Indians finished, Charles built a mill on the Paluxy River. Known as Barnard’s Mill, it took four years to build and cost $30,000.00. One winter afternoon at the mill, Josephine recognized the voice of Capt. Sullivan Ross, a friend who was a Texas Ranger. He and his men had captured a white woman with a baby who was a captive of the Comanche. The only thing they could learn from her was that she was Peta Nacona’s widow. Cynthia Ann Parker finally allowed herself and the baby to be bathed and accepted some clean clothing. When she left, she told Josephine, speaking for the first time in English, “You are kind, and I thank you.”

The mill was sold some years later to T. C. Jordan who changed the name to Glen Rose.

Near the trading post there was a shallow, stone-paved crossing on the Brazos where thousands crossed on the Chisholm Trail. In 1870, a large herd came from South Texas on the way to Fort Dodge, Kansas. The trail boss learned that the Brazos was on the rise and did not want to lose even a day. After the river became fordable, he went across to the trading post to thank Charles for giving them permission to camp. When Charles went out to greet the trail boss, Josephine heard him speak and recognized the voice of her twin brother. She screamed, “That’s Juan! That’s my brother!” At that Juan leaped for the porch and a 28-year-long separation had ended. In 1872, he bought land from Charles and came to live nearby.

During her many years in what is now southern Hood County and northern Somervell County Juana became known for her excellent midwifing skills. Taught her skills by the women of the Comanche, she saved the lives of many women and children across the area, continuing to travel on horseback to care for women in childbirth. She was respected and treated with admiration for her skills, even by many of the medical doctors in the area.

Charles died June 23,1900 and is buried in the Barnard Cemetery which is now in the middle of land long used as a peanut field.

Josephine lived on and spent part of each day riding her horse, Pigeon. On February 1, 1906, Pigeon was led to the mounting block so that she could visit two of her sick friends. When she arrived home before sunset, she sat a moment on Pigeon looking across the fields toward the river she loved. About midnight she was heard moving around. When asked what was wrong, she replied that she needed to rub some white liniment on her head because it was hurting. As she was talking, Josephine stiffened and fell backward and was gone. She had met death as she had lived life — never giving up, never backing down — with the same bravery and determination that her Indian captors had seen in her all those years ago.

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THE NEWSPAPERS OF OLD: News, Social Media, and Your Neighbors’ Blog – Wild West Style

Historic Granbury newspaper illustrating how early newspapers served as the social media and community blogs of Hood County's past.

My mother used to say, quite wisely, that there are no new sins. And in the same vein… that people are just people, the same as they’ve always been. As a student of history, I basically agree. In my study of the contrasts between our fast-paced modern world and the slower-paced world of the past, the assumption has often been put forth that the 24-hour blow by blow news cycle and the seeming lack of privacy brought on by Cable News, Facebook, Twitter, and your neighbors’ Blog Posts are a modern issue. Likewise comes the accusation that the voracious hunger and thirst of the populace for all this juicy detail is a fallacy of the 21st century mentality.

NOT SO! Such thinking shows a woeful disregard of the existence of those stalwart predecessors of Facebook and ALL the news, both real and fake: Community and even City NEWSPAPERS!

Frontier newspapers are a hoot to read! If your eyesight is still fairly decent and you are looking for amusement – you could do worse than checking out a website called Newspapers.com – and calling up some densely printed, usually faded microfilm images of actual copies of literally hundreds of thousands of entire newspapers from 120 or more years ago. You will be amazed at what you will find!

Most of the papers followed a particular pattern. For you avid local news junkies and readers of all the local blog posts, the fun begins right on the FRONT PAGE! Unless something REALLY major had happened, like war being declared or a Presidential assassination (or the Governor being involved in a Gunfight or Duel), the Front Page is ALL LOCAL NEWS!

Are you filled with a burning desire to know who is visiting your neighbors, what they had for dinner, how many people (and animals) came to someone’s birthday party and who they were and who they were with? — All those juicy little tidbits about our fellow citizens’ personal lives that we devour on social media sites every day…? They are all right there, on the FRONT PAGE of the local weekly or biweekly newspaper. Are you a fan of those Buy, Sell, Trade websites? Check out all those ads around the outside edges of the Front Page! Then look along the bottom of that very same page, and you will find all these notes from people around town saying things like- “I am looking to breed my prize bull. If you have a good cow, inquire at……” or “Mrs. Ben Morris says the Dr. Watkins Cherry Tonic is just the thing if you are feeling poorly. It will perk you right up!” The variety of information available is usually astounding! There is usually a whole column reporting all the goings on at all the schools and churches, all with blow-by-blow descriptions of who all were involved. And get this — The hotels published lists of the people who had checked each day, where they were from and usually what they were in town for and for how long!

Who needs privacy, eh? There was usually a similar list of all the local folks who were away traveling out of town, including the mode of transportation, where they were going, who they were going with and who they were going to see. AND how long they planned to be gone. Another nearby bit is sure to inform the curious reader who in town was sick, what they suffered from, how long they had been ill, and what the prognosis might be. Sound familiar?

Page TWO and THREE are right behind, and it is here that those Cable News junkies can find THEIR type of news! WORLD NEWS from all over the globe was duly reported in amazing detail, and feature articles described foreign cultures, history and customs. National Issues and Politics are also reported in GREAT detail with issues-oriented articles often going on at great length! Political cartoons also pop up from time to time, and there are usually some spots where local citizens are quoted – stating their often strongly felt opinions about the issues at hand! There’s a fair amount of sensationalism too. You’ll find SCANDALS in Washington like the duel between Andrew Jackson and the man who insulted his wife, and stories of violent acts of terror such as John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry abound, all illustrated by lurid drawings depicting dramatic versions of the same.

Further back – the FAKE NEWS folks could often get their jollies by checking out the SERIAL TALES where Outlaws and Famous Indian Fighters and Lost Gold Mines abound! The folks of Legend are found here — Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, the James Brothers, Wyatt Earp, and Butch Cassidy — real folk whose embellished exploits were turned into serialized cliff-hangers that were read aloud by many a fireside, as readers nationwide waited breathlessly for the next installment! Fifty years on those same stories became fodder for two new entertainment mediums: radio and the motion picture.

Further back there were market reports, sports reports and even puzzles and games for children and adults alike. The latest notable deaths, local and national and even international were reported in great detail on the Obituary page, and there was also usually a Religion page, with Bible lessons and excerpts from famous and local sermons. There were articles on history, and animals, and latest scientific discoveries. Sounds a lot like the lineup on your cable tv or Internet Media service doesn’t it?

So, we 21st century folks think we have no privacy? We think fake news and scandal are new inventions. We think people being obsessed with other folks lives, both near and far, is something new. Not hardly! Those things are as old as time itself. It is just the media that changes. Another family saying, this one from my grandmother sums it up. “It takes all kinds of people to make the world, and they are ALL here!” It’s true! Just check out all those channels and websites from across the world. Or go online or to a local museum and browse through an 1895 edition of the Granbury Tablet or Fort Worth Star! They’re all there too! Take a look and see!

Before Facebook and Instagram, Granbury residents shared news, announcements, advertisements, and community happenings through the pages of local newspapers.
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A History of the Acton Community

Historic collage of the Acton Community featuring the Acton Public Square historical marker, community gathering, church, bell monument, and Elizabeth Crockett statue in Hood County, Texas.

From the Columnist, Melinda Jo Ray:  Sometimes in research one finds a piece of writing so appropriate that it must be shared in its original form.  It provides both a glimpse of Acton’s early story and insight into the impact of growth and development in the modern Hood County we know, spawned by the 1969 damming of the Brazos River to form Lake Granbury. ENJOY!

In Her Own Words – An Article by Mary Lou Watkins – Written in 1975. A History of the Acton Community Prior to the War Between the States, the center of the present-day agricultural community of Acton was known as the Comanche Peak Post Office, Comanche Peak, / P.O., a designation chosen for its proximity to the highest point in the area some three or four miles to the west of Acton, Comanche Peak — a mesa clearly visible from the Acton community. Between Comanche Peak P.O. and Comanche Peak lay the Brazos River. Its fertile valley provided ample food and water for early travelers, and on its east bank the newcomers were relatively safe from marauding Indians. The Comanche Peak P.O. site was, therefore, a sensible terminal for settlers seeking a home in the west.

Moreover, the site was near (if not on) the old Spanish Trail which came up from South Texas and crossed the Brazos River near the present site of Granbury. This was probably the trail followed by the Butler and Lewis Expedition which set out from New Orleans Oct. 22, 1845, to make peace with the Indians. The Expedition got lost and ended up in Oklahoma. Meantime the Congress of the United States had voted to bring Texas into the Union; so, by the following March when the Expedition finally arrived back at Comanche Peak for the appointed meeting with the Nations, there was the important news that henceforth the Nations would be dealing not with the Republic of Texas, but with the President of the United States who had sent gifts. The Comanche, Delaware, Creek, Cherokee, Wichita, and Wacoan tribes were represented by their Chiefs and others camped on and around Comanche Peak. (Details of this meeting can be read in The History of Comanche Peak, Vance Maloney)

Previous to these attempted negotiations, Sam Houston had met on October 9, 1844, with Chief Buffalo Hump and Chief Old Owl in an attempt to define the line between the Indian hunting grounds and Texas proper. The Chiefs wanted the line to begin on the Brazos River and pass directly over Comanche Peak on its way south to the first stream west of the Colorado River below the San Saba, plus three days ride on a fast horse. (Frank Gaston Informal History of Texas.) Such a demarcation would, it appears, have put San Marcus in Indian territory, and Mr. Houston could not agree to it.

Nevertheless, these conferences do establish the fact that Comanche Peak was well known by name and by location to both the Anglos and the Indians in the early days of Texas, and that the Comanche Trail passed along the west bank of the Brazos River at that point (a mile or two south of Granbury). It seems quite natural, therefore, that the first white settlement within sight of the mesa should be called Comanche Peak even though that settlement was across the river from the Peak. The Comanche Peak P.O., later the Acton Square, was never a thriving business location. It was not on a waterway, a railroad, or even later on a major highway. Acton was and is the community center of a loosely knit agricultural area.

In his 1895, History of Hood County, T. H. Ewell “In those ante bellum days (half forgotten by the survivors) there were in this section many men in connection with whose lives and conduct doubtless many incidents of interest worthy to be recorded existed; but so vaguely remembered as to defy absolute verification. “We know only that men came west and settled at Acton, were followed by their families and friends, and by 1855 had formed an isolated but fairly strong little community. There were Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and Reformed Christians who built a church near Walnut Creek for services held once a month. Between this Union Church and Buchanan, then the seat of Johnson County, there was 15 miles of uninhabited prairie. Adjacent to the church was a cemetery where they buried first the wife of Mr. Wash. Hutchinson.

In the fall of 1855, Aaron Farris settled a mile below the church to build a water mill and a still house. Presumably the  community was then complete, since in 1856 it was granted a U.S. Post Office named Comanche Peak. The first postmaster was James Plemmons. In May of 1857, Clarence P. Hollis was named postmaster. According to Ewell, the village of Acton was given its name by a Mr. Hollis, its first merchant; yet not until March of 1868 was the post office known as Acton. We postulate, therefore, that sometime between 1859 (James Allison replaced Hollis as postmaster) and 1867 (see deed ref. to Acton Square) the town of Acton was laid out and the Square donated by Clarence P. Hollis. (Hood County courthouse burned in 1875 and records were destroyed.)

Acton was never incorporated. It never concerned itself with lawmaking bodies or taxes or sewage or city water systems. The people lived apart — independent, self-reliant, yet giving freely to one another in time of need or stress. And the town was their gathering place. By horseback, buggy, and wagon, later by car, the solitary farm and ranch families came into Acton for mail, a few modest supplies, and to hear the gospel
preached on Sunday. There were singings and cemetery workings, burials and lodge meetings. Acton remained a community, a place called home, and the Square is its symbol. The people of Acton want to mark their Square. It is the central point of the oldest settlement in Hood County, Texas.

Ewell History of Hood County pages 98, 99, and 100 of Ewells work tell the story of the Acton Masonic Institute, a Greek Revival stone structure presently being re-built by the Episcopal church. The grave of Elizabeth Crockett, wife of Davey Crockett of Alamo fame, is within a stones throw of the old Masonic Institute. This gravesite, in the Acton Cemetery, has the distinction of being the smallest state park in Texas.

Five years ago, the Brazos River Authority completed a dam across the Brazos River at DeCordova Bend (a bend of the river named for Jacob de Cordova who owned that land in the early days), creating a lake 34 miles long. The dam site is below Acton, but residential development is occurring all the way up the lakeshore to Granbury. For the most part, the new residents are retired people and commuters seeking a rural lifestyle. They are being absorbed into the community with a minimum of change.

Pecan Plantation and De Cordova Bend Estates built by the Leonard brothers (of the Fort Worth store by the same name) are perhaps the only two typically upper-middle-class suburban developments; in the area. Their ubiquitous golf courses and country clubs surrounded by 50 x 100 foot lots serve a need and have made it possible for many week-end people to build lovely homes in the area. In general, however, and in spite of the affluent times, the rural pioneer spirit prevails. Even the lake was built by private enterprise. There is no federal money in it, so the people can own and care for their land right up to the waters edge — a condition which makes for a minimum of empty cans and picnic trash.

The Acton Public Square is still the center of a typically Texas rural community. The people may bank in Granbury, shop in Fort Worth and Dallas, vacation in Canada, Mexico, or Europe — but Acton is still the place called home.

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Dust, Mud, and Plywood: Back in the Day on the Granbury Square!

Historic photographs showing early Granbury Square with dirt streets, original storefronts, and the Nutt Brothers mercantile in Granbury, Texas.

About twenty years back the city of Granbury undertook a massive street and sidewalk renovation project to keep our Historic Square a living and vital part of our community. During the project some “fun” things happened that were reminders of the square that once was and that “historic” Granbury was not always exactly as we sometimes picture it.

Visitors and locals alike, spoiled to relatively level and clean asphalt roadways and concrete sidewalks, had to be reminded that “construction zone” Granbury Square, with its dust, unlevel dirt, and sometimes muddy streets, makeshift pedestrian crossings, temporary signage, and plywood or gravel temporary egress from some buildings was MUCH more like the actual reality of the REAL Granbury Square of the late 1800s than the pristine jewel we have long created here in our historic district. In the REAL historic Granbury, the streets were hardpacked dirt that turned to and churned as mud during the spring rains. Sidewalks were sporadic or non-existent and made of every available variation of material from wood planks to limestone.

And signage — oh my goodness the signage! This author must admit to a hardy laugh from time to time over the vehemence which characterizes the enforcement of the “SIGNAGE” regulations on today’s storefronts around the square! Photographs provide the proof: signage on the real square of the late 1800s was LARGE and mostly made of simply lettered sheets of wood. Outside those storefronts, under equally crude wooden awnings, were porches, mostly cluttered with displays of merchandise. TRAFFIC was a morass of parked and moving wagons and carriages pulled by live animals that answered nature’s call as it occurred and intermingled with lots of pedestrian traffic, made up of folks who sloshed through it all to sell and buy their goods. There was no air-conditioning in the summer and no relief outside from the messy consequences of inclement weather. In the fall and winter the air was filled with the smell of nearby cotton gins and smoke from the wood and coal fires that heated the interior of the shops and businesses. Yet still, the people came; commerce, entertainment, eating, and worship all took place; and our town grew and prospered.

While we are talking realities – another misconception is that the current relatively pristine assortment of late Victorian era buildings is “how it has always been.” Another hearty laugh pops out upon hearing folks talk of events that happened in the 1870s or even the early 1880s as having taken place in this building or that one, when the reality is that there is not a single structure on the square that existed prior to 1883 although the town began in 1870-71. That means for twelve or more years, the citizens of Granbury were living and working out their stories in structures that no longer exist.

One of those old wooden structures, was preserved for a long time – Frank Gaston’s newspaper office, was moved many years ago to a site adjacent to the Old Granbury Light Plant behind the current post office. For decades you could drive by and take a look and imagine thirty or so such buildings on the lots surrounding the Courthouse Square! Unfortunately, it finally deteriorated and is no longer there. There is a photo that still exists from sometime in the 1870’s that shows the Nutt Brothers’ original frame mercantile building and a part of the stone barn that housed the original livery stable/wagon yard they ran behind it. They were located where the east side of the current Nutt House Hotel and north side of the current Wagon Yard Antiques businesses are located today.

And then, of course, there’s the Courthouse! The 1890 Hood County Courthouse has become the iconic symbol of all things Granbury and Hood County. Yet, note that date….1890! That means that for 20 years the centerpiece of our town was much different in appearance! For the first few years a tiny log structure occupied the site. Then, in the years between 1872 and 1889, smaller, 50’ x 50’ two story limestone courthouse stood on that site. It is this writer’s belief that the oldest buildings in Granbury are that north wing of the Wagon Yard building shown in the picture behind the Nutt’s original mercantile and the Yeats-Duke cabin that sits just across from it on Crockett street, just north of the square, which dates to the mid-1850s. The oldest buildings facing the square, standing on their original site, are the Hannaford-Baker Building (once called the ”Arch-block” building) and the first section of the First National Bank that stand diagonally across from each other on the northwest corner of the square. They were built between 1881 and 1883.

In every photo, look at those DIRT streets!

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Peter Garland: Villain or Hero?

Historic portrait of Peter Garland with vintage Western design and the title “Peter Garland: Villain or Hero?” exploring controversial Hood and Erath County history.

Few figures in the history of old Hood and Erath counties are more controversial that Captain Peter Garland. To some a vile, violent, hate-filled man, – to others a hero. Garland’s story is still capable of sparking strong emotions in the descendants of some who knew him, even 150+ years after his death.

Capt. Peter Garland of Texas was born in 1805 in Henry County, Virginia, the grandson of Col. David Garland of the Revolution and son of Maj. Peter Garland of the Virginia 64th Regiment in the War of 1812. A family written biography describes Peter’s connection to this heritage by saying, “His grandfather and father had wars to fight. Capt. Peter Garland, some say, created his own war against the Indians of the Texas frontier.

After leaving Virginia, young Garland was first married to Lucinda Goff in Tennessee and second to Louisa Phillips in Mississippi as he moved westward to Texas. Over the years he fathered a total of at least 12 children. Before coming to Anderson County, Texas, in 1850, Garland was a Deputy Sheriff, Circuit Court Clerk, and saloonkeeper in Tishomingo County, Mississippi. In 1857, the Garlands braved the raw frontier of Erath County along with several other families, including the Thorntons, Hightowers, and Wylies. Ten years later, in Hood County, Peter and Louisa 16-year-old daughter, Melissa Virginia, was married to James Goodhope Thorp, eldest son of Pleasant and Nancy Thorp, founders of Thorp Spring.

The reasons for Peter’s zeal regarding total removal of the Native Americans from the area is unclear. There is some tradition that he had family and close friends who had been killed by the natives during his early years in Erath County. Certainly, as the Civil War loomed, bloody Comanche raids on the settlers of the frontier area continued and would for another decade, despite removal of all Indian tribes from northern Texas to the reservations of what is now Oklahoma.

Peter and Louisa (Phillips) Garland moved from near Stephenville in Erath County to Hood County in 1860, settling on Stroud’s Creek near Thorp Spring. Controversy followed the volatile Garland to Hood County, and some historical writers still debate the part he played in the early history of this  part of Texas. As a captain in the Frontier Guard, Garland has alternately been condemned as an Indian hater of the first order and murderer and hailed as a fearless Indian fighter, defender of the frontier, leading citizen, and hero. In retrospect, out of the context of the times, it is doubtful that controversy will ever be resolved.

Much of the controversy stems from an incident that occurred in August of 1859, when Garland and a group of men responded to news that a white woman had been kidnapped by a roving band of Indians. This was later proven to be a mistake – the woman was safe and sound at a friend’s house – but not before a tragedy of epic proportions occurred. Garland and a band of men set out to find and rescue the woman and punish (some said, annihilate) her kidnappers. Imagining the poor woman and her probable treatment at the hands of the Comanche, Garland and his men were already in a frenzy when they received a tip from a young man that he had seen some Indians camped with a white woman in their camp on the banks of a nearby creek. Garland and his men found and attacked the encampment. It was only after most of the camp had been leveled, no white woman found, and all its inhabitants but a few young children killed, that their bloodlust cleared enough to realize to their horror that possibly a mistake had been made. Most of the dead were squaws, old men, and children.

Confronted by the rancher who had given the small band of peaceful natives permission to camp on his property while their men hunted, Garland and company were accused of a senseless massacre. Feelings ran high and they departed the area in haste. News of the “massacre” spread and Indian troubles increased. According to family accounts, Garland was distraught over the incident but insisted he and his men had acted in defense of a neighbor on the basis of the information they had to hand. A descendent of the rancher quite recently described him as a mean recalling the story as told by his great-grandmother during his childhood.

In the fall of 1869, Peter Garland was one of the men from Thorp Spring involved in The Point of Timbers Fight, an incident which involved the killing of eight natives and one white man in what became known as the last Indian fight in Hood County. And so, the controversy lives on. In his History of Hood County, Thomas Ewell commented that Garland was honored and trusted by the people who knew him best and were personally cognizant of all the events. This must have reflected the views of many of Garland’s contemporaries, as he was elected Hood County Treasurer in 1872 and was serving in that post at the time of his death. He certainly had a profound influence on later history of the area, as several of his children married into prominent Hood County families.

Children of Peter Garland and his wives Lucinda and Louisa:
Thomas (m: Martha Wylie)
William
Mary Anna (m: Daniel L. Thornton)
Lucinda (m: Joshua L. Hightower)
Jefferson
Joseph
Melissa Virginia (m: James G. Thorp)
Susan Avarilla (m: David L. Nutt)
A. A.
Allison Nelson (m: Mollie Wright) Daniel T.
Martha Olive (m: J.C. Brown)

Capt. Peter Garland died in 1873 in Thorp Spring at age 69. He is buried there in the old Thorp Spring Cemetery.

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John St. Helen – The Myth and the Mummy – The Final Chapter

Historic images of John St. Helen connected to the question of whether an assassin lived in Granbury, Texas

If you are just joining us please find part 1 & 2 here.

John St. Helen – An Assassin in Granbury? Part One

John St. Helen – An Assassin in Granbury? Part Two

THE FINAL CHAPTER

Now is where this story crosses the line from mysterious to bizarre. In 1903, in Enid, Oklahoma, a local house painter with a fondness for drink and for reciting Shakespeare, going by the name of David E. George, had committed suicide by ingesting a large quantity of arsenic. Shortly after George’s death, Rev. Enoch Harper came to view the body and relayed a story to the undertaker who was embalming the body. In April 1900, George had reportedly confessed to Mrs. Jessie Kuhn, the reverend’s fiancé, that he was John Wilkes Booth. Mrs. Kuhn had then dismissed the confessions as the product of drug-induced delirium. George was also quoted as saying, “I killed the best man that ever lived.”

The undertaker, William Penniman, hesitated to have George buried until the body could be claimed. On December 31, 1902, George had drawn up a will with local lawyer Niles Houston, and it was filed with the local probate court on January 16, 1903. However, the property listed in the will proved to be non-existent, and the body remained unclaimed and unburied at Penniman’s. The arsenic embalmed body sat for eight years on display in Enid at Penniman’s establishment. Penniman had tied the body to a chair, opened its eyes, and placed a newspaper in its lap, creating a spectacle for passersby in the Enid downtown. A local boy led dime tours into the funeral home to view the mummified body where it lay on a shelf. According to Penniman, 10,000 people viewed George’s body in Enid, including a few who clipped hair, buttons, and one even attempted to remove his ear.

Other papers found on George requested Finis Bates to be summoned. On January 23, 1903, Bates identified the body as that of his old acquaintance John St. Helen. Ultimately, with no one else to claim it, and after years on “display”, the body ended up in Bates’ care. Bates stored it in the garage of his home in Memphis, Tennessee, and toured the alleged mummy of Booth in circus sideshows for years. The body was shown at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair but was rejected by the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. In 1920, Bates tried to sell it to automaker Henry Ford for $1,000, but Ford declined. A carnival barker named William B. Evans rented the mummy in 1920, paying Bates $1,000 every five months. That year, while traveling to San Diego, the mummy came out unscathed in a tragic train wreck that claimed eight lives.  Before Evans could restart his tour, the mummy was stolen. Evans ran ads offering a $1,000 reward for its return. Eventually, the kidnapper himself turned in the mummy for its reward.

Evans wanted to return it to Finis Bates, but Bates had died in 1923. Bates’ widow sold the mummy to Evans for the usual sum of $1,000. Evans displayed the mummy at his farm for several more years. Kansas City lawyer, James Wilkerson, an expert on John Wilkes Booth, examined the mummy in 1928, comparing its scars to those of Booth, and began touring the Southwest with it.  Enraged by its presence, Veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic threatened to lynch the mummy. Wilkerson and Evans were often run out of town by health officials and policemen and, ultimately, the two disbanded.

In 1931, the Chicago Press Club hired six doctors led by Dr. Orlando Franke Scott (1885–1950) to examine the mummy. Part of their description described, “a scarred right eyebrow that arched upwards, a thickening on the knuckle joint of the right thumb, and a piece of skin missing from the back of the neck” and “X-rays of the head, hands, and legs showed a thickening of the tissues over the right eyebrow, a thickening in the bones of the right thumb, and a marked thickening of the left fibula at its lower end, indicating an earlier fracture.” The results were not conclusive nor widely accepted. The event was viewed as a publicity stunt, and the doctors did not examine other elements such as height and facial features.  X-rays from this examination were later displayed with the body, which now had a large opening in its backside as a result. Somehow, the concept that this had once been a living, breathing human being had been lost long before.

In 1932, the maudlin journey continued as Joseph Harkin bought the mummy, then named “John,” for $5,000. Joseph and his wife, Agnes, shared the back of a truck with “John” by night and displayed him by day. After some years the mummy was seized as collateral for debt repayment. It next surfaced in the 1950s, when “John” was stored in a Philadelphia basement. A man purchased “John” from a female landlord who had held it as collateral for $15.00 and went to Philadelphia to claim it, but when he arrived, the entire neighborhood had been razed, and “John” was gone. It was last seen in a midwestern carnival in the late 1970s. Though rumors surface from time to time, the final or current resting place of the remains of this man who may have changed the course of history remains a sad question for the ages.

But even more questions remain. Back in 1865, when government doctors did the autopsy on the body from Garrett’s barn, before sending it off for burial they removed two vertebrae to keep as “evidence” for posterity that Booth had indeed been captured and killed. Those vertebrae are still “on file” at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. Over the years, four different times the Booth family descendants have petitioned to exhume the body of Edwin Booth, John’s brother, to obtain DNA for comparison with DNA from the vertebrae. Every time (most recently in 2011) a local judge approved the exhumation, but a federal court overruled, refusing access to the vertebrae “on the grounds of national security.”

Many people take this repeated denial as proof that the federal government has always known that the body at Garrett’s barn was not Booth. The last living descendant of Ida Booth, Booth/St. Helen’s alleged daughter, died in 2011, before DNA science advanced enough to prove descent from so many generations removed. So again, unless the mummy can be found, any provable answers are lost to the mists of time. Some suggest that John St. Helen, the man who confessed to being “John Wilkes Booth” to attorney Finis Bates, is a different man from the person who married Louisa Payne. My research suggests they are the same man. This man, Jack Booth/John St. Helen/David E. George, was either a deluded and deceptive man who pretended to be John Wilkes Booth for over four decades or, as many descendants of the Booth family and countless others have believed, this man who shouted Shakespeare from a tabletop in Granbury, Texas, was actually the man who shot Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth himself.

Melinda Jo Ray historian, author, and retired school teacher and librarian from Granbury Texas writing for the Nutts About Hood County History blog
Melinda Jo Ray, historian and author of five published books, writes the Nutts About Hood County History blog for the Bridge Street History Center in Granbury, Texas. Ray is a retired school teacher and librarian who has dedicated years to researching and preserving the history of Hood County.
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John St. Helen – An Assassin in Granbury? Part Two

Historic images of John St. Helen connected to the question of whether an assassin lived in Granbury, Texas

During his time at the McDonald farm near Glenrose Mills in 1873, John St. Helen would travel with his landlord on occasion to Dallas, hauling crops by wagon. It was noticed that he made himself scarce if serious law-enforcement, like the Texas Rangers, came around. In late 1873, a local young lady announced her engagement and imminent marriage to a Texas Ranger. Learning that the couple planned to make their home in Glenrose Mils, St. Helen left overnight just prior to the wedding in the spring of 1874, even leaving some of his belongings behind. He had met and befriended a young lawyer from the nearby town of Granbury at a picnic, so he headed north up the Brazos. He appeared in Granbury, was hired as a bartender and lived forover a year in a log cabin located near the town square and owned by merchant A. P. Gordon.

Now to take a moment to dispel some misconceptions. The Granbury that John St. Helen came to in 1873 bore very little resemblance to the town we know today. First of all, there were NO massive stone buildings on theso-called town square, except for the two-story limestone courthouse built in 1871– the first really substantial building to be built on this land whose title was at the time under dispute. There MAY have been six to ten log/frame/partial stone one-story buildings scattered on the lots that had just been laid out a couple of years before. Granbury was only recently incorporated, and most if not all governmental power rested with the County Police Court headed by J. B. Spears and the County Sheriff A.J. Wright. A. P. Gordon, St. Helen’s new landlord, had a small grocery store on what was designated as the lot on the southeast corner of the infant town square, at the intersection of the almost imaginary Pearl and Crockett streets. Over on the southwest corner, where Pearl intersected the equally imaginary Houston St., stood the beginnings of the Stringfellow Hotel and diagonally across from it was the log house known as the Black Hawk saloon – most likely St. Helen’s original employer, in an equally small, primitive structure. There was no “opera house” at that time. While the popular myth goes that St. Helen’s drunken diatribe of memorized Shakespeare on April 14, 1874, and possibly again in 1875, took place on the Opera House stage, the early recorded recollections of people who were actually here at the time describe him standing on a tabletop in the saloon.

The strange thing about St. Helen’s assassination anniversary monologue, and what apparently made it so memorable, was that it apparently broke his usual pattern of behavior. He was described a quiet sort, almost to the point of being taciturn, and, unusual in a bartender, he was an avowed teetotaler. During his almost two years in Granbury, St. Helen apparently presented the same cultured persona he showed when living with the McDonalds. As the tenth anniversary of the Lincoln assassination approached, he would have been thirty-six years old.

St. Helen apparently knew many of the men of the town due to his bartending job, but befriended few, and confided in none. The exception to this appears to have been his young lawyer friend who was also from Tennessee, Finis Bates. Bates was by his own admission a grass green, ambitious young attorney, who had come west to make his mark on the world. He saw in St. Helen a fellow Tennessean, an educated and cultured well-read man, and St. Helen apparently saw the same thing in kind. The two hit it off and became close friends. But Bates could tell his friend was a man with secrets. Following the code of a society full of people seeking a fresh start, he respected his new friend’s privacy and didn’t press for his secrets.
“Saint,” as he was apparently called, for all his cultured teetotaling ways, did have one notable vice, foreshadowed by his threat to his young stepson a few years before. He had a formidable temper and was apparently fully capable of violence. There is a stunning and dramatic story documented in a sworn affidavit given to federal investigators in the 1920s by an elderly David Lee Nutt. The Nutt brothers’ first mercantile store on the Granbury Square was a smallish one-story wood structure backed by a livery stable on the
northeast corner of the square one-block directly north of A. P. Gordon’s grocery store.

Apparently young David Lee, then aged 26 or so, was on duty with his blind brother Jesse Nutt at their store sometime in early 1875 when a man ran in the front door of the building with “Saint” in pursuit – wielding a knife. There was a skirmish at the back of the shop, and then as the sheriff approached, “Saint” fled, leaving the man bloody but with only minor injuries. In the way of things in those days, since the man’s injuries were minor, St. Helen got off with a warning. What the outcome might have been had the sheriff’s imminent arrival not intervened no one knows. But certainly, again, here is a man obviously capable of deadly violence.

After the stabbing incident, “Saint” was apparently on thin ice with his landlord and now, employer and, according to Gordon’s own statement, he was seriously considering firing and evicting the man. But cold weather arrived, and fate intervened. Sometime toward the end of the winter of 1874-1875, St. Helen became seriously ill with what was probably pneumonia. Convinced death was near, St. Helen sent for his
friend, Finis Bates. In the late afternoon, as the sun headed down and the light grew dim, John St. Helen made his confession to his friend, telling his identity, and revealing details of the assassination, including where he had hidden the “second derringer” that he had planned to use on Lincoln’s bodyguard, but the man was passed out drunk — which apparently saved his life. Additionally, St. Helen begged Bates to find a priest come and hear his confession and give him absolution. No priest being available in the vicinity, Bate and others found a “local man of the Godly persuasion” to do the deed.

Oddly enough, Finis Bates’ account of St. Helen’s story does not have any mention of the woman St. Helen presumably married and left behind. Bates departed late that evening, knowing he had to leave for an out-of- town court date and would be gone for several days. He found St. Helen’s landlord, A. P. Gordon, and gave him money to pay for St. Helen’s burial, vowing to return and settle up any further expenses required for his friend’s care. He left, never expecting to see his friend alive again. He was right, just not in the way he expected.

As promised, he showed up to inquire after his friend a few days later. Told that St. Helen was gone, he nodded and inquired as to the place of burial. At this point, Gordon replied, “No, you don’t understand. His fever broke the night you were here, and the next morning, even though he was weak as water, he rode out of here before sunup, with just some saddlebags and the clothes on his back.” The note St. Helen left, some other personal items, and a derringer that matches the other of the pair from the same set, that was used to
shoot Lincoln, is still owned by the Gordon family.

For the next twenty-plus years, St. Helen wandered the far western areas of the United States, the name popping up occasionally in the public or anecdotal record. He actually met in California on at least two known occasions with members of the Booth family who had known John Wilkes Booth well, and they became convinced that he was indeed the man they had known. But he was always elusive, secretive, still conscious of the very real threat of the gallows should he be captured and his identity proven.

Stay tuned to PART 3 next week.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR MELINDA RAY
Some may question the veracity of the information mentioned in this tale of the man those in the Granbury and Glenrose area knew as John St. Helen between 1873 and 1875. I have spent almost twenty years exploring the tales of early Granbury and Hood County and their inhabitants.  I began my investigations into the St. Helen tale as an avowed skeptic. After reading Finis L. Bates recounting of the tale, published in 1908 as the book The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth, I was intrigued. Bates had spent the thirty years between 1875 and 1905 working as a reputable attorney, who dealt on a daily basis with issues of truth and the law. For someone who had spent his life that way to put their reputation on the line by going public with what was sure to be dismissed by many and even by the government as at best a tall tale…got my attention. So, I proceeded to follow in the steps of those who had searched before me, and what I found blew me away.
I found the record of and photos of Booth and Louisa Payne’s marriage certificate from February of 1872 in the courthouse in Franklin County, Tennessee. I also found the tale of their marriage as told by both Louisa’s son, McCager Payne and his half-sister, who lived her entire life as Laura Ida Elizabeth Booth. And then I learned that the federal government of the United States sent 2 Secret Service agents to Hood and Somervell counties in the 1920’s to interview anyone who was still alive who had known St. Helen. There are 25 sworn affadavits from those folks were taken, all signed by a Texas notary. Here are just a few of the names on the list – Ashley Crockett, B. M. Estes, D. C. Cogdell, David Lee Nutt, Katherine Doyle and Sadie McDonald Rylee. The affadavit transcripts and other documentation can be found in two places- the originals are housed in the archives at Georgetown University, and certified copies are held here in Texas, in the collection of the library at San Angelo State University, alma mater of the attorney daughters of Texas native and Federal Judge E.H. Swaim who was involved in the investigation into the case.