Tag: Hood County

Posted on

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!

Posted on

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

Posted on

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

Posted on

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.
Posted on

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!

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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

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

Next Tuesday night, April 14, 2026, at about 9:15 in the evening, Granbury citizens might want to pause to
remember that it was at that hour 161 years ago that the man many consider to be one of America’s greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln, was shot and killed by the stage actor, John Wilkes Booth. Many believe that man became one of Granbury’s most notorious residents – John St. Helen. Many believe he was the stage actor, John Wilkes Booth, and was the principal player of a story that before, during and after that tragic event is still, 161 years later, shrouded in mystery, conspiracy, inuendo, and enough plot twists to make it one of history’s most convoluted and tragic whodunits.
John St. Helen – An Assassin in Granbury?

Part One

A shot fired. The President dead as a nation mourns.
The manhunt begins, and ends, in a smoky blaze of fire. In Tennessee, a wife with infant child wait – abandoned.
In far-away Texas, a young girl stores memories – of the well-dressed stranger who lives with her family briefly on a farm near tiny Glenrose Mills. In frontier Granbury, a young lawyer befriends that stranger – who becomes the cultured teacher in whose temporary courthouse classroom Granbury College began and whose pupils performed a costumed, Shakespearean drama. Come summer, the stranger becomes the volatile, Shakespeare quoting bartender and saloonkeeper who drank only once a year, on the eve of the ides of April.

Decades pass, and relatives tell of the assassin believed dead – met on San Francisco’s streets, seen in a western mining camp… And finally, news of the death by suicide of an elderly Oklahoma man in in 1903, and a final call to that former Granbury lawyer, Finis Bates. Then – a human body – identified, mummified, displayed, disappeared. Bones held in secret, unopened graves shielded by federal courts. Fifty years on, federal agents are deployed – taking the sworn affidavits from 25 of Granbury’s most prominent citizens, collecting tales of a stabbing in his family’s shop…, of a deathbed confession…, of an empty bed – found after the sound of hoof-beats in the night.

And still today, a Nation wonders, awaiting the final act in the crime that shaped its fate – the play’s ending, perhaps forever – unknown. These are the elements, the bare bones – if you will – of a story that has spanned over 161 years, and still has no ending – no certain reality to finally close the book on the story of that greatest of American tragedies: the Civil War. For that is what this is. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln was the final ambush of one brother citizen against another in the nineteenth century war whose divisions our nation still grapples with today. The fact that the true fate of the assassin that waged that last attack is still shrouded in mystery is surely one of the great question marks of the American story.

At the center of this tale is the less than three-year glimpse of a man, that mysterious stranger, John St. Helen. In the spring of 1873 he appeared, arriving from the deep South, to linger here in the valley of the Brazos River on the frontier of Texas. He was alone, yet not alone – one of many immigrants to the area from what had once been the heart of the Confederate States of America. As such he should have felt himself among friends, and perhaps he was, as he soon made a deal for room and board with the family of farmer William McDonald, whose land was on the west side of the river near what is now Glen Rose in Somervell county. Or perhaps it was the cash he always paid with that made him welcome since, by all accounts, St. Helen was – at best – what my grandmother would have called “an odd duck.”

To say he did not blend in with the majority of the locals would have been an understatement. His ready cash was an anomaly in a culture where seasonal crops and or livestock were the primary sources of income. William McDonald’s daughter, Sadie McDonald Rylee, described him in recollections made almost seventy years later: “He was well-educated, and had fine manners, and he always wore the finest kind of clothes,
broadcloth and linen and silk. We would get mail only about every two or three weeks, and he would get lots of mail each time, and some of it would be fine clothing, and we were sure, though we didn’t know, that he got money through the mail. When we and other people of the community would have parties and entertainments, we would get St. Helen to read for us, which he did wonderfully. He was always poised, and he seemed to know Shakespeare by heart. Unless he were hiding out, it would seem strange for a man like him to be in a rough frontier country.”

Who was this cultured, dark-haired stranger; so suddenly appeared, so silent about his origins? Over the last sixteen or so decades a partial answer, most of it supported by some form of actual evidence, has been found. But the final answer, the one that matters, still eludes us. To put flesh on the bones of that story described in the summary above is to give substance to ghostly mystery, for the man called St. Helen appears then disappears again from history like a paranormal wraith in the night. Our only certainty is in the beginning — we know the event from which this man himself claimed John St. Helen sprang.

On April 14, 1865, several years before St. Helen’s arrival in northeast Texas, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was shot and killed by a derringer wielding assassin as he attended a performance in Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. The assassin was a Shakespearean stage actor named John Wilkes Booth. Booth was a member of the then famous Booth family acting dynasty and was one of the most prominent and famous actors of the day. He was also a known Confederate sympathizer. Once Booth leaps from the Presidential box to the stage, and flees into the night, the mystery begins. We know he had accomplices; we know other murders were planned and attempted that night. We know Booth had a well-planned escape route. We know he had knowledge of a people across the Potomac in Southern territory ready to help him vanish. We know he had his broken leg tended by Dr. Samuel Mudd, and we think we know that, at least for a time, he hid in a barn owned by a farmer named Garrett. We know federal troops surrounded the barn. We know they fired multiple shots into the barn. We know the barn caught fire, either set or from a broken lantern, and partially burned. We know there was a body found in the barn afterward.

From there forward are myths and mystery. The myriad versions of the story of how government troops knew of Booth’s supposed presence in the barn, how long he was there, and what exactly transpired that evening do little to assure history of the veracity of the official government version of the tale. Even more staggering are the wildly divergent descriptions from many supposedly reliable sources as to the description and identity of the man who died there that day. But for the purposes of our story, let it suffice to say that descriptions vary from sworn statements that the body
matched the detailed description of John Wilkes Booth who clearly had dark hair and olive skin, to descriptions from supposed eyewitnesses who later swore the body they saw had reddish hair and fair, freckled skin.

From the Virginia confines of the barn on the Garrett’s farm, Booth fled, according to our tale. Heading first south and later west. For the next five plus years he wandered in the shadows, from “safe house” to “safe house,” moving often, and avoiding places where law enforcement or federal troops gathered. Finally, around 1871, he appears in the area of Franklin County, Tennessee, using the name John St. Helen. At this point he apparently decided enough time had passed that he could risk staying put for a while.

Louisa J. Payne was a Confederate Civil War widow. Her first husband, Confederate soldier C. Z. Payne, died in 1865 toward the end of the war. Louisa was left to care for her young son McCager (or Cage). Louisa worked as a seamstress for the recently opened The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. In 1871 Louisa met a man named Jack Booth who claimed he was a distant cousin to John Wilkes Booth. Louisa fell in love and she married Jack in February 1872. However, after the wedding, Jack told Louisa that he had a past, and his name was not really Jack. He confessed that he was actually John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of the Republican President. Louisa, a devout Christian and southern Democrat, could forgive her husband for his war actions and personal deceptions to her, but she insisted that he sign their marriage certificate with his God-given name. And so, on February 24, 1872, a new certificate was signed in the presence of Rev. C. C. Rose, listing the marriage of John Wilkes Booth and Louisa Payne.

The late historiographer for The University of the South, Dr. Arthur Ben Chitty, did extensive research into Louisa Payne and her marriage to the man claiming to be John Wilkes Booth. Dr. Chitty eventually discovered the marriage certificate itself, located in the Franklin County Courthouse in Winchester, Tennessee. Dr. Chitty archived at The University of the South several audio tape interviews of men who personally knew McCager Payne, who in 1872 became John Wilkes Booth’s stepson. Dr. Chitty discovered that McCager had intimate knowledge while a youth that his stepfather was actually John Wilkes Booth.

As a newly married couple Louisa and John Wilkes Booth moved to Memphis, Tennessee, because, as Louisa would later say, “my husband had been told he would be paid a large sum of money owed him for his official work on behalf of the Confederacy.” While in Memphis, Louisa overheard some men on the street discussing her husband and pointing out where the “skunk” was now living. Louisa informed John that the men knew who he was, and his life was in danger. John told Louisa that it would be better if they separated for a season. He would go to Texas, and she should go back to Winchester, Tennessee, until things cooled off. John promised Louisa that he would return to Tennessee after things settled down.

Louisa went back east to Payne’s Cove, Tennessee, and the man claiming to be John Wilkes Booth headed south. Unbeknown to the couple at the time, Louisa was pregnant with John’s child. Louisa Payne would give birth to Laura Ida Elizabeth Booth, named after one of John Wilkes Booth’s sisters, while living alone in Tennessee in early 1873. Her second husband, the man who claimed to be “John Wilkes Booth” had gone to Hood County, Texas, and would change his name to John St. Helen.

Back in Tennessee, during 1873 Louisa Booth received financial help from the family of her deceased first husband. She went to work caring for her son, McCager, and her newborn infant girl. Louisa kept hope that her husband would return to her from Texas, but she never heard from him again. In 1879, 36-year-old Louisa Payne was burning leaves in her front yard when her dress accidentally caught fire. Louisa ran to a nearby creek to douse the flames, but her burns proved fatal. Before she died, Louisa called her six-year-old daughter Laura Ida Booth, and her fourteen-year-old son, McCager Payne, to her bedside. The mother informed her children that Ida’s father was John Wilkes Booth.

McCager Payne would later tell friends that he already knew John Wilkes Booth was his stepfather because of conversations he had overheard between his mother and the man when he was a boy. Caught once listening by his stepfather, McCager recalled being threatened by the man. If he told anyone his stepfather was Booth, the man told the boy, “I will kill you”.

Stay tuned to PART 2 coming Tuesday April 14th. 

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.
Posted on

PLEASANT THORP: PIONEER AND VISIONARY

Pleasant Thorp and wife Nancy, pioneers of Thorp Spring in Hood County Texas

A hardy pioneer from Virginia, Pleasant Earl Thorp settled on the west banks of the Brazos River in 1854.  Naming the spot for himself and nearby springs in a branch of Stroud’s Creek, Thorp envisioned not just another settlement but an important town, and he spent almost the next forty years making the dream come true.  At his death in 1890, the eighty-one-year-old pioneer had lived to see his vision become reality. In that year the town’s population was over 1,000, and it was known statewide. Many later, lesser settlements are now familiar names. But Thorp’s dream blossomed only for a short, glorious season, then withered.  By 1980, the population of the once-vibrant town was estimated at 184.  Pleasant Thorp could not have been pleased. 

The young blacksmith wandered to the wild place called Tejas while it was still under Mexico’s oppressive rule.  He fought in the 1836 revolution for the Republic of Texas, married a young widow named Nancy Hicks Oldham McEwen, and started raising a family in Burleson County of the lower Brazos Valley, beginning a lifelong love affair with the country along the banks and bluffs of the Brazos River. But he was not yet content to settle down.  He dreamed of more and better land, for running cattle, horses, with some set aside for farming…perhaps a great rock house on a gentle slope…maybe even a settlement, with his name on it.  Thorp’s vision was northwest, upriver, in the heart of Comanche country. Pleasant knew the spot – he had seen it. In January of 1841, he rode with Brig. Gen. Edwin Morehouse’s Indian hunting expedition, penetrating far up the Brazos.  The expedition proved futile, but Thorp wouldn’t forget what he saw upriver around a majestic double-mesa, the river weaving a pattern around it.  He saw the land he wanted — a certain spot, beside a stream with a natural spring nearby. Pleasant knew that someday he would be back to get it.

Someday came in the early 1850s. At last, Thorp made his move.  Over the years, he grew his stack of land certificates – trading, buying–adding to his 340-acre land grant in what would become Hood County.  In 1853, he made the long ride upriver to survey his more than 18,000 acres as well as Nancy’s father’s claim of 1,280 nearby. It was a very different place “where the Cross Timbers seemed to struggle between mountain and valley for room.”  It was a land to test even hardy pioneers. Treeless for miles, then thickly wooded. Rising above it all was the ancient double-mesa companion to the Brazos, Comanche Peak, which loomed just a few miles from Pleasant’s land.

In 1854, the family became the first settlers on the west banks of the Brazos in that area.  Shortly after the move, another girl was born – Nancy Elizabeth, “Lizzie,” was the first white child born in a brand-new frontier outpost called Thorp Spring – Pleasant’s town. Setting aside land for the townsite, Thorp feverishly pursued his plans.  Streets were laid out forty feet wide; and work was started on the big stone house, with Thorp’s few slaves providing most of the labor.  But after five years, there were only a few families settled at the village.  But there were still other settlers nearby and Thorp was not discouraged. 

The year 1860 was hard for the area that would become Hood County.  Storm clouds of the Civil War were gathering. Pleasant didn’t suffer financially, for he was frugal.  In that “bad” year, his real estate was valued at $56,000 and personal assets at $18,000, a fortune at that time.  And even more land came to the family when Nancy’s father died, leaving her an adjoining 640 acres. But with secession came realities of war and frontier conditions deteriorated.  Most young men joined the Confederate army.  Federal troops left the area, inviting Indian attacks. Many frightened settlers deserted the area.  But Pleasant was not about to abandon his dream or his land – the Thorps were there to stay.  

After the war, a semblance of “normalcy” came. More settlers pushed into and past Hood County, and relative peace settled into the area. More people soon settled in and around Thorp Spring; and, to Pleasant’s delight, the town began to flourish.  He came to be known as “Col. Thorp,” an honorary title often given to flamboyant or powerful figures.  And the spacious house, begun before the war, was finally completed. It was “a showplace of rock and boards brought from New Orleans by ox-cart,” — a real mansion for its time.   Shaded by a towering live oak, it boasted a panoramic view of the town, Comanche Peak, and Pleasant’s beloved Brazos River.

In the 1870s, a colorful character appeared. Capt. Sam Milliken, a Kentuckian who had plied the Ohio and Mississippi rivers as owner of several steamboats, was lured to Thorp Spring by its location and excellent water.  Milliken invested heavily, buying a large portion of Thorp’s acreage.  Some of Milliken’s land was on Sulphur Spring Branch, and his vision was to promote the springs as a summer resort.  The place was already known, having been a rendezvous for frontier soldiers.  Families vacationed there, and it was not unusual to see up to 100 campsites in the area. Milliken opened a feedlot and livery stable in anticipation of stage coach teams, and travelers’ stock.  He built a comfortable house to welcome tourists, a springhouse and bathhouses to accommodate the visitors he hoped to draw for bathing, swimming and boating. His wife welcomed overnight guests with appetizing meals and clean beds.  The venture became a great success in the 1870s, attracting a large share of the traveling public.

The town square boasted a variety of enterprises and, of course, the post office.  Local religious sentiment did prohibit the saloons found in nearby towns. Nonetheless, the village became a relay point for mail coaches on the Texas – Fort Yuma stage route, longest in the world in 1879.  Originating in Fort Worth, with the Concord coach and six-horse team to Thorp Spring often loaded with tourists as well as mail, it switched to a two-horse surrey going on westward. Pleasant’s vision was becoming a busy, well-known place, and not just as a resort.  In 1872, Pleasant decided on a bold move – to build a school – not just a cabin for one teacher, but a college, with one fine building at first.  He chose a six-acre site west of his house, on the highest point of the townsite, built a two-and-a-half story white limestone building. and began a search for staff.  The story of the college which prospered for many years in Thorp Spring is told later in this volume. But suffice it to say that for a time both the college and the town prospered, the population peaking by 1890. In that year, Col. Thorp died, with most of his dream intact.

There were many other contributors to the town – farmers, ranchers, doctors, lawyers, shopkeepers, teachers, and preachers.  However, the leaders in the early days had been two men of different, though complementing, styles – the stoic Thorp, with land and capital, and the flamboyant Milliken, affable promoter-speculator.  What this partnership lacked was the personality or inclination for “playing politics.” There were two bad omens of things to come and both events were largely the result of a lack of political influence.  After Hood County’s boundaries were defined in 1866, Thorp Spring came in second in a hot political war that ended up locating the county seat in Granbury, then called Lambert Branch.  Later, aggressive politics again came into play when the all-important Fort Worth & Rio Grande Railroad route was also set through Granbury. Those two defeats didn’t seem to matter for a time, though there were lingering bitter feelings. But they eventually emerged as the first two strikes against the stability of Thorp Spring.  The third strike came as a series of other events just prior to the turn of the century.

Capt. Milliken was killed trying to stop a team of runaway horses. Larger and finer vacation spots were developed, tourism dropped off sharply at the resort on Sulphur Spring Branch, and it was closed.  The cotton gin burned and, with the coming of the railroad through Granbury, stagecoaches were phased out.  The loss of Milliken and Thorp, the prime movers, was a blow.  But, in 1895, the decision was made to relocate AddRan Christian University to Waco and that was the final blow from which the town would not recover. There was a gradual withering.  Some businesses closed or moved away.  After AddRan left, Thorp Spring kept a college for years, but never so large, and the school was closed for the last time in 1930. Pleasant and Nancy Thorp’s “showplace” home was occupied for years by their son Jim’s family. Jim’s son, John, died there alone in 1935. In disrepair, the house partially collapsed and was finally razed.  

What remains of a pioneer’s vision sleeps by the swollen Brazos near where it becomes a full lake and water backs up to cover the springs that bubbled up cold sulfur water.  There’s no downtown, just a smattering of churches, a grocery store, and a couple of service stations along the highway.  The hilltop where Thorp’s first college stood is bare; the nearby university campus a lonely sight. A few ancient structures and foundations barely suggest the grandeur of a bygone day. The stop on the major stage route no longer has a post office.  Acreage Thorp gave to the county for a park at the spring sits untended by backed-up water. Pleasant and Nancy Thorp are buried with many descendants and other pioneer settlers in the old cemetery right outside of “town” on a hill above Blue Branch of Stroud’s Creek, under the ever-watchful eye of Comanche Peak, and just a stone’s throw from the Brazos River — always the river…

Written By Melinda Jo Ray

Posted on

THIS HOUSE WE CALL HOME

nutts about granbury history, the D L Nutt House, historic house, the bridge street history center home

 

THIS HOUSE WE CALL HOME
A History of the David Lee Nutt Family Home.
By Melinda Jo Ray  March 12, 2026

This house the Bridge Street History Center calls home
was never “just a house”. It was built as, and always will be – in one way or another, a Home. This historic photograph shows an early Granbury home with a windmill and large wraparound porch, typical of residential architecture in Hood County during the late nineteenth century.

David Lee Nutt, the man whose family built this house 1879 and lived in and loved it for over 120 years, was the youngest child of one of Hood County’s earliest pioneer families. He and his three brothers, Jesse, Jacob, and Abel all figure prominently in the story of Granbury and Hood County’s first sixty years of existence. The descendants of these men and their many family members have continued to play active rolls in business and civic leadership in Hood County and Granbury to this day.

David Lee Nutt is perhaps most well-known for his business partnerships with his blind brothers, Jesse and Jacob in the Nutt Bros. Mercantile, and the Nutt Ranch as well as the boarding house/hotel he and his wife Sue Garland (Sudie) Nutt married in 1872 and built this home and lived there from 1879. From the earliest years they boarded students from nearby Granbury College. During those years David Lee also became active in local politics, serving multiple terms on the Granbury city council. He was active in the local Masonic Lodge, and he and Sudie were founding members of the First Methodist Church of Granbury, and they were instrumental in its sponsorship and founding of Granbury College. David and Sudie lived in the house on Bridge Street until their deaths in 1929 and 1920. Their eldest son, Henry Lee Nutt took over both the mercantile and hotel businesses sometime around 1910 inherited the home and he and his wife, Euna Barefoot Nutt lived in the house for the entirety of their lives together and raised their three children there.

Euna Nutt lived for almost twenty years after Henry’s death in 1854. During her final years, aniece, Mary Lou Watkins (daughter of Henry’s sister, Mary Sue) came to live with her. When she came to care for her widowed mother and elderly
aunt, Mary Lou found Euna, the family home, and the family’s grand old hotel on the square all in need of some tender and loving care. And that is exactly what she gave all three. Euna was well cared for at home for the rest of her days, and both the old family home and the grand old Nutt Hotel on the square were in good hands with Mary Lou.

Under Mary Lou’s care the family home received a total renovation, as did the building on the square. Both became vibrant examples of the revitalization of the entire town of Granbury during the 1970’s and 1980’s. The Bridge Street History took over stewardship in 2011.  Today is is open to the public on Saturdays, with exhibits, multi media presentations and docent tour.

Recorded Texas Historic Landmark – 1967

Posted on

Granbury Founder A. P. Gordon: Merchant, Civic Leader, and the John St. Helen Mystery

A.P. Gordon Granbury founder and merchant with historic photo of his dry goods store on the Granbury Square
A.P. Gordon Granbury Texas Founding Father. Historic building, home and obituary.
Images of Granbury founder Alonzo Peyton Gordon including his portrait, mercantile store on the Granbury Square, the Gordon home (now the Dora Lee Langdon Cultural Center), and the Texas Historical Commission marker honoring his legacy.

March 12, 2026
By Melinda Jo Ray

Granbury Founder A. P. Gordon: Merchant, Civic Leader, and Landlord to the Mysterious John St. Helen (aka John Wilkes Booth)  

What do the Langdon Center Property, the building on the southeast corner of the Granbury Square that now houses a candle shop, and John St. Helen (aka John Wilkes Booth) all have in common? They are all connected to one man – Alonzo Peyton Gordon. Most folks who have been around Granbury very long have heard the name A. P. Gordon. His name is now on the historical markers located at his house, which now is headquarter of the Dora Lee Langdon Cultural Center, and the limestone building on the southeast corner of the Granbury Square began its existence as Gordon’s mercantile store! Gordon was also member of several early Granbury city councils and also figures prominently in local legend as the owner of at least one local saloon and landlord of the mysterious John St. Helen, the drifter who claimed to be Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln.

But Alonzo Gordon was much more than just an old-time saloon owner and landlord to a shady character. Indeed, Mr. Gordon was one of the “movers and shakers” in the town of Granbury almost from the moment of his arrival in 1871. Hailing from Georgia and a veteran of the Confederate Army, Gordon spent the first years after the war teaching school. A frugal young man, he steadfastly saved his meager salary, watching his nest egg grow, and dreaming of a more prosperous life as a businessman in some new and growing town “out west”. Finally, in 1870, he took his tidy sum of savings and headed westward to the little newly declared county seat of Hood County, Texas – Granbury.

Taking a teaching job quickly to pay room and board, Gordon used his funds to purchase two lots on the southeast corner of the brand-new Granbury town square. Like most during this time period he soon learned of the title dispute associated with the town lands, and chose, for the time being, to erect buildings using wood not stone, because of the cost. He also acquired the land east of the square where the Langdon Center is now, and homesteaded it, building a log cabin where he lived until his marriage. In 1873, contemplating marriage, Gordon added a living-quarters to his store building. He lived either behind or above the business for several years with his wife, Lana, until they built the large home on the property east of the square that is now the Langdon Center headquarters.

As one of the first business owners in Granbury and a well-educated man, Gordon took an active role in the city and county politics, serving on several early city councils in various capacities.  He was also active in the local Masonic Lodge, and other area organizations throughout his life. Around the time of his marriage, sometime in 1873, a stranger new to town came to Gordon to inquire about renting his vacant log cabin. Sober, well-spoken, standoffish, and hot-tempered are all words that were used to describe John St. Helen, the mysterious fellow Southerner who Gordon signed on as tenant from 1874 to early 1875. St. Helen had found employment as bartender and later manager of two local saloons.  The man had a policy of never indulging in the liquids he sold, “Saint” — as he was called — only got drunk (according to local lore) only once during his tenure — on April 14th in 1874. Tales were told later of him standing drunkenly on a table reciting lines from Shakespeare. It is said that after Saint was involved in a fight with a local man that spilled from the saloon to the street and across the square into the Nutt brothers store, where Saint actually pulled a knife and stabbed the man, that Gordon considered evicting St. Helen. Alas, he never had the chance, as St. Helen took ill a short time later, made his famous “deathbed” confession to Finis Bates, recovered, and disappeared in the middle of the night, leaving behind most of his belongings. Gordon family lore says that during his illness, St. Helen revealed, in his delirium, his true identity as John Wilkes Booth. As soon as he recovered, he fled, leaving behind a note to Alonzo Gordon, and one of two used derringer pistols used by Booth the night of the Lincoln assassination. That gun is still owned by A. P. Gordon’s descendants.

One can wonder if all the hoopla surrounding St. Helen was part of what inspired A. P. to scale or sell his interests in the saloon and focus on his grocery and dry goods store, and his shares in a local prosperous cotton gin enterprise. His wife was Lana Wright, whose father A. J. Wright was Hood County sheriff at the time of the marriage in 1874. He and Lana enjoyed many years of a good marriage together and had eight children. They were founding and long-time members of the Granbury First Methodist Church. Indeed, one of the stained-glass windows in the old Mission Style church that used to stand where Granbury Square Plaza is now was dedicated to their memory. After Lana died in 1903, A. P. married Susie Baker in 1907. They had 14 years together before his death in 1921.

In addition to his businesses and building the house and two buildings on the southeast corner of the square in the 1880’s, Gordon was also among the leaders who took bold steps to secure Granbury’s future during those formative years. He was among the group of businessmen who put up a total of $50,000.00 for the start-up of the First National Bank. In addition to his terms on the city council, also served as an early superintendent of schools, and as a local representative to the Texas Legislature for one term.

In the early years of Granbury, Alonzo Gordon was among the local men known for their prowess at hunting. Apparently, he and his fellows were not averse to travelling as far away as New Mexico in search of areas with plentiful game. Thomas Ewell tells the tale of one such trip in 1878 when Gordon and friends killed between them eighteen bears and literally 100’s of wild turkeys, 100 + by Gordon himself. Here’s hoping all of Granbury benefited from their efforts that year!

At the end of his days, according to accounts in the local papers, A. P. Gordon surely had one of the speediest funerals ever held anywhere. He died in his home early on the morning of November 9, 1921, and by four o’clock that afternoon he was in the ground at the local cemetery. His obituary notes that his funeral was held at the Methodist church, and burial with full Masonic honors was immediately after at 4 p.m. with a large number of family and friends in attendance. In spite of his speedy interment, his contribution to the fabric of Granbury has certainly been long lasting, as the home and buildings he built continue to be a vital and vibrant part of our community.

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. Melinda is a retired school teacher and librarian who has dedicated years to researching and preserving the history of Hood County.

 

Posted on

Welcome to “Nutts About Hood County History” Blog

Nutts About Hood County History granbury history hood county history historical images and stories

March 4, 2026
Written By Melinda Jo Ray

An Introduction

Greetings Readers and Friends!

First off, thank you to the board members of The Bridge Street History Center for allowing me to contribute to this websites blog on a weekly basis.

Welcome to a blog dedicated to doing the very thing our mission statement describes – sharing the stories of the people, places and events of our local past. As the writer of five books on this subject, I combined my love of history and of this place where I live with my passion for education and storytelling and the research skills acquired as a career teacher and librarian. Now this new project brings the opportunity to continue that journey. Now I look forward to sharing a delightfully wide variety of true stories about the people and events that made a difference here – from the early days of pioneer settlement through the nearly 175 years of change and growth since then. “Nutts about Hood County History” will strive to introduce you to some of the lesser- known people and aspects of our county’s quintessentially American story while not neglecting to share some of the little-known stories about some folks you’ve probably already heard of. There may even be a few tales featuring some really famous people with connections to our story that most people today have never heard about. Throw in a good mystery or two and I think we can all have a great time together!

So check back here each week and spend a little time with me poking around to see what went on around here in those “days gone by”. You just never know who we might meet up with – Wanderin’ round the Hood!

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.