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A Short Sketch- History 
 
 from Personal Reminicences 
 of Early Days in 
 
 Central Texas 
 
 BY 
 
 F. M CROSS 
 
 THIRD EDITION 
 December, 19 10. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Having been solicited by my many friends to 
 ■writeups short Sketch-History of the. early set- 
 tling of the central part of Texas, I have decided 
 to give the reader a brief account, mostly from my 
 experiences, of the very earliest happenings in the 
 territory now divided into the seven counties as 
 follows: Milam, Bell, Coryell, Lampasas, Hamil- 
 
 ton, Comanche and Brown. 
 
 This little book will give you some idea of 
 the hardships the old pioneers had to bear with 
 and the privations they underwent; it also tells 
 something about the game that was found in the 
 country, and the Indians and their depredations. 
 
 As I never thought of writing a book like this 
 until very recently and am doing it almost entire 1 
 ly from memory, I may possibly make a few mis- 
 takes with regard to names and dates, but should 
 any occur they will be honest mistakes and will 
 make little or no difference in substance. 
 
 Hoping that the following pages will give gen- 
 eral satisfaction and prove of interest to those who 
 may read them, I am, 
 
 Yours truly 
 
 F. M. CROSS. 
 
A Short Sketch-History 
 
 Ataining an account of the settling of that portion 
 Central Texas comprising the counties of 
 Milam, Bell, Coryell, Lampasas, Hamilton, 
 Comanche and Brown. 
 
 MILAM COUNTY. 
 
 I was born in Pontotoc County Mississippi, in the 
 year 1834. My father moved to the State of Mis- 
 souri when I was but a child and from there came 
 to Texas landing in the town of Cameron, in the 
 fall of 1846. Cameron was the county seat of the 
 most western organized county of that belt of coun- 
 try. The improvements of the town consisted of a 
 court house made of clapboards a hut 14x16 feet in 
 size; one dry goods store kept by C. N. Huby, and 
 one grocery store run by Uncle Joel Blair, who died 
 long ago in the town of Belton. I would guess the 
 capital stock of those two stores combined would 
 have amounted to $600, though the supply was 
 sufficient for the population at that time. The 
 population of the town was C. N. Huby and family, 
 Joel Blair and family, and one Mr. Iglebarger and 
 family, who lived in a log cabin, and as people were 
 passing by that way they got dinner with him, so 
 his house was called the hotel. There was a family 
 by the name of Stokes living a half mile from the 
 store, who claimed citizenship in the town, and we 
 were willing to recognize him as a city lad, for he 
 had the only mill to grind meal for us all and every 
 
man had to do his own grinding. It was a steel 
 mill and run by physical power. 
 
 Those four families, with one Dr. Flemmin, 
 who was a bachelor, constituted the popula- 
 tion of the town until our arrival, which 
 added four more families to it, to-wit: J. M. 
 Cross and family, T. J. Nabors, wife and two 
 children, Uncle James Blair and family, and one 
 Mr. Trotter and wife. This man Trotter put up a 
 shop and went to work, arid being a fine gunsmith, 
 was kept busy, as everybody had to have firearms 
 in good condition in order to. protect themselves 
 from the red men. 
 
 When my father landed in Cameron he 
 bought two lots and paid for them with a 
 brace of pistols that cost him $12.50 in Spring- 
 field, Missouri. On one of those lots he built a log 
 cabin in which we lived during that winter and the 
 spring of 1847. A great many emigrants came into 
 this part of the State and located on the Brazos and 
 Little Rivers, so my father, desiring to go a little 
 farther to the front, sold those two lots for $25, 
 thinking he was doing well to double his money. 
 The sheltering in the log cabin through the winter 
 paid for the erecting of it, (but let me say just here 
 that I was in Cameron about twenty years ago and 
 the two lots with the frame buildings on them were 
 worth three thousand dollars.) We went on up the 
 Little River and stopped in what is known now as 
 the John L. Marshall Valley, and there built another 
 log cabin and planted a little corn crop on Knob 
 Creek, near the Pilot Knobs, and made good corn 
 
without any fence. We kept the buffalo run off 
 through the day, there were no other stock nearer 
 than the three forks of Little River, and they seb 
 dom came down there, so in the fall this crop was 
 gathered and we moved nine miles above the three 
 forks of Little River and settled on the Lampasas 
 River, on what is now known as the old Shanklin 
 Ranch, about 30 miles west of Cameron, which was 
 still under the jurisdiction of Milam county. 
 
 I am just giving you a history of the sparsely 
 settled wild country, as it was when I came to it. As 
 to the wild game, there were buffalo, bear, deer, ante- 
 lope and all kinds of smaller game from the lobo 
 wolf down. The rivers were full of aligators and 
 fish of all kinds. My father bought aud settled four 
 places in the country before Bell county was or- 
 ganized. During that time we had a little school 
 one mile above the three forks of Little River, 
 taught by Ed. Good, who has long ago gone to his 
 reward. I will give the names of all the pupils of 
 that school so far as I can recollect, that are still 
 living, to-wit: W. B. Cross, now of Brown county; 
 
 S. E. Wills of Bell county; Joel and W. B. Blair, and 
 Mary Blair of Bell county; Mary Blair’s maiden 
 name was Roberts, and myself. These sis are all 
 that I can say are now living. Though from a short 
 letter in the Belton paper, written five or sis years 
 ago by W. B. Blair, giving all the surviving ones, I 
 think there must be a few others, if I could locate 
 them. 
 
 When my father settled on the above named 
 ranch, he and Uncle Jack Nabors were the extreme 
 
 A rt 
 
 y l 
 
— 6 — 
 
 frontier settlers on the Lampasas river. Below us, 
 on the Leon river, there was a widow Taylor, living 
 in what is still called the Taylor Valley. At the 
 three forks of Little River was Mose Griffin, below 
 him was the Fulcher Colony. Nat Shields, Jeff Reed 
 and wife and William Reed; they were all in that 
 immediate settlement. Just below the Reed Settle- 
 ment were John Dunlap, John Earley, and Uncle 
 Bob Childress, who died near Temple, several years 
 ago. Still on down the river was old Major Bryant. 
 That place was called Bryant’s Fort, as it was a 
 place of resort for the above named settlers in time 
 of Indian trouble. On Dunaho Creek, in. the south- 
 eastern part of Bell county lived an old man by the 
 name of Wills — his given name has slipped my mem- 
 ory. He was the father of W. R. Wills, whose 
 widow lives near Killeen. Also on this creek lived 
 Uncle Billy Connell, the father of Geo. T. Connell of 
 Brownwood. 17 
 
 Now as the emigration was coming in so fast we 
 decided to organize a new county. I leave it with 
 citizens of Milam county to figure up the difference 
 between 1846 and 1910, and hope that some one 
 there may write me at Blanket, Texas, giving an esti- 
 mate of the population of your county at the date 
 of this book. 
 
 As to the Indian troubles, I will not say any- 
 thing about that, except when it may be necessary to 
 speak of them in some particular incident, as the 
 Wilbarger History of the Indian Depredations in 
 Texas is so true that no man living can give it more 
 correctly. 
 
BELL COUNTY. 
 
 After having spent two years in Milam County 
 and its territory, the emigrants were coming in so 
 fast, we thought it expedient to organize a new 
 county. It is the above-named county we organized, 
 to-wit : Bell County. It was joined by McLennan 
 
 County on the North and Williamson on the South. 
 These counties being already organized, their of- 
 ficials willingly came to our assistance in organizing 
 this new county. Uncle Bill Reed was the first sheriff 
 of Bell County, and Billy Stephens was the first 
 magistrate. George Richards first County Clerk; 
 Stickney, first County Judge ; and a man by the 
 name of Bailies, the first District Judge. The taxes 
 were assessed and collected by one man. I think 
 that office was filled by Milt Dameron. I was a 
 small boy at that time, and may have made some 
 mistakes in naming those officials, but if so it is an 
 honest mistake. The date of this organization I 
 could not give without seeing some of the old re- 
 cords. I think it was Sam Bigham, who surveyed 
 the county lines. The Jury Commission that locat- 
 ed the town of Belton was composed of Joe Denis, 
 Melvin Wilkerson, James Blair and my father, J. M. 
 Cross. The first boards used in covering a roof in 
 the town of Belton were made by one Simon Odell, 
 W. B. Cross and myself. Odell was a man my father 
 hired to assist in improving his place. These boards 
 were to cover a shed for the Widow Loller, who was 
 to board the hands who erected the first building in 
 Belton. 
 
— 8 — 
 
 The first mill put up for grinding corn in 
 Bell County, was financed and erected by my father 
 and Bob Childress. It was a little tub wheel water 
 mill, on the spring branch, where the old Shanklin 
 Mill was later built. I used to run that little mill. 
 It would grind about twenty bushels of corn in a 
 day, yet it was sufficient for the population then, for 
 two days’ run a week was sufficient for the entire 
 country adjacent to it. They came as far as thirty 
 miles to this mill for grinding. This place is spoken 
 of before as the Shanklin Ranch, but my father sold 
 it to Joel Blair, and it was then called the Joel Blair 
 place, and while Blair lived there a man by the name 
 of Supples put up a little store on the place, that was 
 four miles South of Belton, on the Lampasas River. 
 When the county site was located, John Pain bought 
 Mr. Supples’ stock of goods, and moved the little 
 business over to the town, it was the first store in the 
 town of Belton. The next was a log cabin grocery, 
 run by Joe Tounsoll, the next business addition to 
 the town was a store put up by a Mr. McCorkle, the 
 father of Dr. McCorkle, who was killed at Killeen 
 when that place was but a small village. In the 
 settling of this country, I thought it was the grand- 
 est scenery I had ever looked upon in all my life. 
 Up to that time it was one vast open prairie country, 
 covered with green grass and decorated with beauti- 
 ful floAvers, and to add to the oenefit of the new 
 early settlers it was full of game of all kinds, buffalo, 
 deer, bear, turkey and antelope. The streams were 
 full of fish of all kinds. The first deer I killed was 
 three miles South of where Belton now is. You may 
 
• 9 — 
 
 imagine how great General Stonewall Jackson felt at 
 the head of his army, but his greatness would have 
 sunk into insignificance compared with my own, con- 
 sidering my feelings when I viewed that dead deer. 
 
 Shortly after my father moved to the territory 
 of Bell County, some men he knew matched a wild 
 race on some fine horses; stock that had been 
 brought from the Old States. I was a ten 
 year-old boy at the time and my father being 
 somewhat of a sportsman, had trained me to ride 
 races. I know this is no credit to me, though it is a 
 fact. The race took place down on Little River near 
 the old Fort Bryan, mentioned previously in this 
 book. One of the parties, Nat Shields, asked my 
 father to let me go down and train his horse 
 about three weeks and ride the race for him. On the 
 day the race was run Captain Ross of Waco and his 
 little boy, Sullivan, were there, also John Harmon of 
 Cameron ; each of these men had brought a fine 
 horse, running stock. They were short-distance 
 horses and had a five hundred yard race to run the 
 next week. Mr. Harmon asked me to go with him to 
 Cameron and ride the race for him, which I did. 
 Captain Ross came over from Waco the day before 
 the race, bringing his horse and his rider, Sull Ross, 
 his boy. The race track was one mile below Cam- 
 eron on Little River at what was then called the 
 Monro Tracks. On the day of the race everybody 
 was there. The people would go as far to a horse- 
 race those days as they will now days to a show of 
 any kind When we got on the race track the judges 
 were arranged at each end of the tracks, and Sull 
 
— 10 — 
 
 Ross and myself mounted the horses. Harmon had 
 hold of the bridle just at this time, he gave me a 
 dollar and said to me: “Tell that boy that you will 
 
 bet him a dollar that you win the race.” This he 
 did to encourage me in putting the horse through 
 “Alright,” I said, and held up the dollar, and said: 
 “Sull, I will bet you a dollar I get there first.” By 
 the time I had spoken the words Captain Ross hand- 
 ed his boy a dollar. We gave the money to old Uncle 
 Willis Bruce to hold for the winner. I beat the race 
 by twenty-seven feet. Here I can say I won the dol- 
 lar off of a boy who in after years made one of the 
 best Indian fighters Texas ever had. It was he, Sul- 
 livan Ross, that rescued Cynthia Ann Parker, a white 
 woman captured by the Indians at the old Parker 
 Fort. After the Civil War he served the people of 
 Texas as Governor. Sull Ross, as he was always 
 called, was a good friend of the writer and I am glad 
 to hear of his honored life. He was the president of 
 a High School in East Texas when called to his re- 
 ward in the great beyond. 
 
 Finally we got to where we had to have a court 
 house, and they built a clapboard house, about such 
 a one as the house described in Cameron. The first 
 murder case tried in that house, was Shadrick 
 Howard who was charged with the killing of one 
 Mr. Lanear. The tragedy occurred at or near a 
 little mountain on the Lampasas river, a few mile* 
 above where Young’s Fort was later located. After 
 being in court about three years the defendant was 
 acquitted. 
 
— 11 — 
 
 The next murder case was that of Jas. Stilman, 
 eharged with killing one Mr. Alexander. The 
 defendant was acquitted after a jail life of eighteen 
 months. Those were all the criminal cases of any 
 note that were tried while I was a boy. 
 
 Now my dear reader I will give yon an idea of 
 the disadvantages in building a town in those days. 
 My father and Joe Dennis opened up a lumber yard 
 and had their lumber hauled from Bastrop mills, 
 twelve miles below the town of Bastrop, this lumber 
 was freighted on ox-wagons and ye scribe drove one 
 of those teams. The first trip was made by W. B. 
 Blair and myself. This same W. B. Blair served Bell 
 County as its Treasurer, for twenty years or more, in 
 his later days. I made some trips after lumber on 
 that lonely uninhabited trail without any companion 
 except my four yoke of oxen and an old wood axle 
 wagon, though the Indians were not as hostile then 
 as in after years. 
 
 Now as the people of the old states be- 
 gan to emigrate to the new country, and towns be- 
 gan to grow, the government saw that the Lone Star 
 State was determined to grow in spite of all oppo- 
 sition, and after defending ourselves with our own 
 State Rangers for so long a time, Uncle Sam decided 
 to send the old pioneers some protection. So the 
 government sent a line of United States troops to 
 Texas. One company was stationed at Fort Graham 
 on the Brazos River, one on the Leon River 18 miles 
 below where the town of Gatesville stands, and one 
 company near the Colorado River, right where the 
 town of Burnet is today. At that time, it was called 
 
— 12 - 
 
 Fort Grogan. The Camp on the Leon River was call- 
 ed Fort Gates in that day and for a number of years 
 afterwards. This line of stations was above all set- 
 tlements at that time. At this time I was not yet 
 grown, but drove a team in company with others, 
 hauling forage from Little River and Diers Creek in 
 the lower part of Bell County to the soldiers at Fort 
 Gates. About this time there was a man by the name 
 of 0. T. Tyler, who lived in Washington County I 
 think. I know it was in one of the lower counties. 
 He had been up in this country and located a great 
 deal of land. When Bell and Coryell Counties were 
 located, this same 0. T. Tyler contracted with my 
 father and Uncle James Blair to sod 100 acres of land 
 on Leon River, two miles above old Fort Gates, near 
 Leon Junction. My older brother, R. Y. Cross, W. 
 B. Cross and Joel Blair and myself were the boys 
 who plowed the first furrows in Coryell County, 
 though the County was not yet organized. I will 
 state just here, that after the County began to settle 
 up, 0. T. Tyler built a house on this farm, and it was 
 in that house that the Honorable George W. Tyler 
 was born, who has since become one of the leading 
 lawyers of the state. 
 
 Now having made mention of Senator Tyler, who 
 was reared in Bell County, I will also give you the 
 names of the first attorneys who practiced at the bar 
 in Belton, to-wit: X. B. Sanders, one Mr. Flint and 
 Captain Bradford. All noble young men. Judge 
 Battle, of Waco, was the first District Attorney. X. 
 B. Sanders has crossed the Jordan of Death. Cap- 
 tain Bradford is yet in Belton. Flint and Battle I 
 
— 13 — 
 
 cannot tell their whereabouts, they may be dead, but 
 will say they were all high-toned, scholarly gentle- 
 men. Flint and Sanders defended the first two cases 
 tried in Belton, which have been spoken of before. 
 
 Let me give you an idea of how children were 
 reared to man and womanhood in those days, and the 
 disadvantages they had to contend with. The first 
 sermon I ever heard in Texas was delivered by an 
 old hard-shell Baptist by the name of Wheat, who 
 has a great number of offspring yet living in Bell 
 County. This discourse was delivered at my father’s 
 house, at night. I will never forget that sermon, 
 there was an old lady there by the name of Perkins, 
 who was a Methodist, and I being a small boy, was 
 sitting close to the old lady. When the good brother 
 got into an old-fashioned exhortation, the old lady 
 sprang up slaping her hands and shouting at the top 
 of her voice, I tell you reader it just simply scared all 
 the fool out of me. I had never heard anything like 
 it in all my life. At that time society as it is in this 
 day was a stranger in that new country, but the few 
 setlers of the new country began to build up society, 
 and set to work to build a clap-board school house 
 where the little store was ; this, as before mentioned 
 tioned was later moved to Belton. In this house we 
 organized a Sunday School and soon secured a local 
 preacher by the name of Cook to come and preach 
 once a month. He was a Methodist. Then every- 
 thing for the betterment of society seemed to be 
 coming our way. This was the second school house 
 built in the country. The next thing in order was a 
 singing school. We engaged a man by the name of 
 
14r — 
 
 Elliott to teach the school. It was taught by the 
 old four-note system. After this we had a literary 
 school taught by one Mr. Stickney. I say Mr. be- 
 cause the word professor had not been attached in 
 that day. This man has been spoken of before, as 
 the first County Judge. After his school was out, 
 he got up a writing school at the same place. Now 
 we began to think we were getting up into the pic- 
 tures, and gaining fast in refinement, and while I 
 was only a wild, rattling boy, I enjoyed the rapid 
 progress of society. We soon became strong enough 
 to organize a Methodist Conference. Our First Cir- 
 cuit Eider was one Rev. James Fergison, who died 
 long ago in the town of Salado. The first presiding 
 Elder was Rev. Louis Whipple. 
 
 As the country was settling up so fast, it be 
 came expedient for the soldiers to be moved farther 
 west of the line of stations already spoken of. 1 
 think it was in the year of 1850 that they were sta- 
 tioned on a line across the state from Red River to 
 the Rio Grande. That line was called the overland 
 mail road for a long time. At the time that line 
 was established, I was about 18 years old, and start- 
 ing out to do for myself, got employment with Mc- 
 Coy & Dalrymple, who had a contract with the gov- 
 ernment to furnish supplies for the soldiers on that 
 line. We left the farm of Dalrymple near what is 
 now known as the Leon Junction, with teams and 
 wagons loaded with shelled corn, ranging from one 
 hundred to one hundred and twenty-five bushels to 
 the wagon, each wagon drawn by sis yoke of oxen, 
 thus we opened up what is yet called the old Phan- 
 
- 15 - 
 
 tom Hill road. Phantom Hill is on the Clear Pork 
 of the Brazos River. It took just one month to make 
 the round trip to Fort Phantom Hill or Fort Chad- 
 born. Ft. Chadborn was the next station on the line 
 south and Fort Belknap was north of Phantom Hill. 
 We ran this train of wagons to all three of these 
 forts, following this old Phantom Hill trail, until we 
 reached the Little Pecan Creek in the upper Cross 
 Timbers, wdtere we turned to the left for Chadborn. 
 All the small creeks that afforded water enough for 
 camping we honored with names. The Texas map 
 has honored every name we gave except one. After 
 leaving the Tyler and Dalrymple farms, the first 
 creek we called Shale Creek. The second, a little 
 creek which emptied into the Leon River near Straws 
 Mill, we called Turnover, from the fact that one 
 of our wagons was turned over there. And the 
 Texas map has honored those two names. The next 
 watering place a man by the name of Lewis turned 
 his wagon over, so to make a distinction between the 
 places we called this place Lewis Turnover, 
 but it changed afterwards to Blue Creek. So 
 on we went up the divide, between the Leon River 
 and the Cowhouse, keeping on the Leon side of the di- 
 vide in order to get water from its tributaries. The 
 next watering place was a creek running into Leon 
 about 15 miles above Gatesville, this was a regular 
 camping place going and coming on every trip. On 
 this stream was the finest grass I ever had seen. It 
 was a sight to see our teams grazing in those valleys. 
 Think of it, six yoke of oxen to the wagon : — one 
 hundred and twenty head of steers all grazing in a 
 
-16- 
 
 bun eh. This creek was called Honey Creek. The 
 next watering place was a branch heading about 10 
 miles South of Hamilton, from here we took the high 
 divide and while our road was straight the crook of 
 the river threw us to camp next night on the head 
 water of a little stream that emptied into the Cow- 
 house. This was called Little Cowhouse, which name 
 it holds to this day. That camping place was about 
 3 miles below the Hoover Mountains. Those moun- 
 tains took their name from the fact that Hoover and 
 his wife had a fight with a squad of Indians. About 
 ten or twelve Indians charged upon them, the wife 
 was thrown from her horse, and Hoover was wound- 
 ed early in the fight and both of them would have 
 been killed, had it not been for some cow-boys who, 
 hearing the shooting, ran to their relief, — but back 
 to our trail. 
 
 On leaving Little Cow-house Creek, we 
 went right between those two Hoover Mountains. 
 The next watering place was called Warner Creek. 
 This is in the upper edge of Hamilton County. We 
 were then traveling several degrees north of what 
 we had been. The next day we reached South Leon, 
 and crossed it about two miles below where Fleming 
 now is, about twelve miles below where the town of 
 Comanche stands today. The next day we reached 
 a small branch which we called Indian Creek. It 
 empties into the main creek right at Comanche. This 
 place, one mile southwest of the town of Comanche, 
 was a camping place going and coming. The next 
 water was a little stream, we called Sweet Water; it 
 is now called Gidson Creek. Our camping place 
 
—17— 
 
 there was in the edge of a town now called Sidney, 
 but at that time there was not a house but only an 
 open country, post oak timber, and fine mesquite 
 grass. You could see a deer feeding five or six hun- 
 dred yards off. While the oak timber was thick 
 there was no underbrush. This was also a regular 
 camping place in passing either way as long as that 
 road was traveled. After leaving this place our 
 next camping place was twenty miles, which was the 
 longest drive made on the trip, from Fort Gates to 
 Fort Phantom Hill. This camping place was in a 
 flat post oak woods. There was a wide flat branch 
 out on that high divide. It had channel sufficient 
 for a large creek, being a rock bed which had holes 
 in the rock; we herded our steers along the bed of 
 this branch until we got water enough for them. 
 This we called Deer River. I never saw as many 
 deer in my life, in any country. All game for ten 
 miles around had to get water at this place. After 
 leaving Deer River our next camping place was on 
 Little Pecan Creek. Here the roads forked, one run- 
 ning to Chadborn, the other to Phantom Hill. The 
 rest of the camping places on the Phantom Hill road, 
 were little holes of water in prairie branches. It 
 was all a broken country and only a few days’ drive 
 across it. Most of our forage went to Fort Chad- 
 born, and the route to that fort turned to the left at 
 Pecan Creek. The best camping place was on the 
 Pecan Bayou about 35 miles above Brownwood. The 
 next camping place was on a little branch heading 
 up against the mountains just above what is called 
 Tecumpey Peak; this stream had no name. From 
 
— 18 — 
 
 there we went to Elm Creek. That place was a regu- 
 lar camping place. From here we went to Valley 
 Creek, which was the last camping place on the trail. 
 The next day we reached Fort Chadborn, unloaded 
 and got back to Valley Creek. On this Creek Mc- 
 Coy & Gooch, (Dalrymple & McCoy having dissolv- 
 ed partnership; Dalrymple went to Georgetown in 
 Williamson County, and A. J. McCoy took Gooch in 
 as a partner,) continued to furnish the government 
 with supplies, and I stayed with them on the ranch 
 above mentioned, on Valley Creek. This branch is 
 six miles from Fort Chadborn. The Fort is located 
 on Oak Creek. 
 
 I worked on this ranch until I was twenty- 
 one years old, and while there enjoyed life better 
 than any three years of my life. Twice a week I 
 had to kill and deliver a beef at the Fort, and the 
 rest of my time I was on my horse riding over the 
 prairies, watching the beef herd and running wolves. 
 I was out one morning getting up the work steers, 
 and had another boy with me by the name of J. L. 
 Britton, who some fifteen years later, was Sheriff of 
 Williamson county, when we came upon a wild tur- 
 key gobbler, very fat, and set in to catch him on 
 horseback. I had never thought of trying to catch 
 anything that could fly before this time. We took 
 after him, and when we began to crowd upon him 
 he rose and flew about three hundred yards, and 
 when he hit the ground could never rise again, and 
 we ran upon him and picked him up in a few min- 
 utes. After that we would often come upon a bunch 
 of turkeys and put in after them and when they got 
 
— 1 9 — 
 
 tired and hit the ground we could drive them into a 
 pen like cattle or sheep. While out on that ranch 
 we had great sport killing wolves, by getting out 
 about fifty yards from the house and making a blind 
 with two dry beef hides. When we had killed a beef 
 we would take the head and stake it down behind 
 the hides, and set on the other side of the hides and 
 while the wolves were eating on the head we could 
 shoot them. It could only be done by moonlight. 
 Now, this wolf killing story may sound a little bit 
 fishy, but there is living in Comanche today, a man 
 nomed D. P. Pinkard, who was a small boy at that 
 time, who will vouch for the truth of the story. 
 
 The first two years on that ranch we 
 had an old yellow negro woman to cook 
 and wash for the hands. I thought she was the best 
 cook I ever had seen. She would often bake a lot 
 of sweet cakes and put them away and at meal time 
 set a little pan full on the table, though I would 
 sometimes come in between meals, and if she was out 
 after wood or water would fill my pockets with those 
 cakes. So you see I was having a good time for a 
 boy. The old girl discovered that someone was 
 making away with her cakes, and thought she would 
 hide them from the thief. She had an idea it was 
 me and it was not a bad idea either. At one time a 
 young doctor named Owens was up at the ranch on 
 a visit from his home at Georgetown. He and I 
 were down on the creek fishing one day, and while 
 we were out the old darkey cooked up a lot of cakes 
 and hid them as she thought where no one could 
 find them, when we came in, the old girl was down 
 
— 20 — 
 
 at the creek washing, and we began a hunt for the 
 cakes. The house was made of pickets 14x35 feet 
 and covered with ducking and had pole rafters. Dr. 
 Owens began to look in every box and trunk for the 
 cakes. After he had come to the conclusion that he 
 could not find the cakes, he looked over and said to 
 me, “Cross, what are you doing sitting back there 
 and not helping to hunt for them cakes,” and I told 
 him I had found them. He said: “How have you 
 
 found anything sitting there in that chair?” I told 
 him I used to find honey sitting on the ground and 
 watching the bees, and told him if he would look up 
 at that sack tied to the rafter, with the house- 
 flies swarming about it. he might find the cakes were 
 there ; he did so, and we got them down and fill- 
 ed our shot-pouches full of cakes and lit out for the 
 evening. That night the old cook told us if we would 
 let her cakes alone she would give us a pocket full 
 every day, and we compromised with her on her own 
 terms. 
 
 About the time my father moved to Texas, there 
 was a man by the name of Nabors, employed by the 
 government to officiate in a treaty of peace with the 
 Southern Comanche Indians, this treaty had the ef- 
 fect of a friendly feeling for several years. They 
 took the chief of the tribe to Washington City, and 
 while there gave him a photo of the President. This 
 chief’s name was Santa Anna, and while I was on 
 Valley Creek ranch, Colonel Gooch and I were out 
 hunting one evening, and found his grave, we knew 
 it by the photo. While this treaty was being made 
 the government was feeding the Indians and they 
 
21 — 
 
 would come in bunches of from fifty to a hundred at 
 a time, and camp at our ranch. They often had an 
 order from the quartermaster for a beef, so all I had 
 to do was to shoot it down and they would divide it 
 up among themselves. There was an old squaw with 
 them whom they said was the wife of the great 
 Chief Santa Anna, the old Indian that Gooch and 
 myself found the grave of. This old squaw and her 
 squad of some fifty Indians would visit that grave 
 every six months, and just here I can say that I 
 saved the massacre of our boys on that ranch, by 
 knowing the wife of that great chief. They had 
 been at my father’s house in Bell Comity before the 
 County had ten families in it, and my mother gave 
 them a good dinner, so the old woman thought a 
 great deal of me. When they found that the 
 grave of her husband was destroyed, they became 
 hostile about it, and went to the Fort and made com- 
 plaint about it to the commanding officer; he sent 
 a white man who was employed as interpreter to in- 
 vestigate the matter, and the whole squad of Indians 
 came with him. I saw that the Indians were excit- 
 ed. The white man came up to me, and told me 
 what the trouble was. I informed him that I was 
 one of the party that found the grave, and that we 
 had put everything back just as we had found it. 
 Though after it was known that the Great Chief of 
 the Comanche tribe was buried there, the officers and 
 their families came out, and took off some of the 
 silver plates from his regalia, and sent them back to 
 their friends in the old country. So the interpreter 
 told them what I said about it. The wife of the 
 
— 22 — 
 
 buried chief told the squad of Indians that all was 
 right, so I found that my father’s kind treatment to 
 those Indians ten years before had served as a shield 
 to us, even after so long a time, and fulfilled scrip- 
 ture, that bread cast upon the water may be gathered 
 up many days hence. 
 
 While I was employed on this ranch, I wa* 
 often sent down into the settlements after beef 
 cattle to butcher for the soldiers. I usually 
 went down alone, and brought up the cattle, 
 then hired a hand to help drive them back. I gen- 
 erally rode a good horse, and carried two six-shot 
 pistols, one a navy siege, which I belted around me, 
 and the other a dragoon siege that I hung on the 
 horn of my saddle. In those days I could run almost 
 as fast as any saddle-horse. I had my provisions 
 fixed up and got all in shape for an early morning 
 start on one of these trips, when just before sun- 
 down, a posse of Indians came and camped in the 
 valley near by. I knew if I waited until morning 
 and they saw me leave alone some of them might fol- 
 low me up and try to get the mule I was riding, so I 
 left that night about 10 o’clock, and rode about 18 
 or 20 miles and lay down to sleep until day. When 
 I reached Deer River, mentioned before as a camp- 
 ing place, about 9 o’clock the next night, I made my 
 coffee and broiled some meat and proceeded to take 
 a lunch, then after spreading my blankets prepara- 
 tory to taking a nap, gave the mule a little corn on 
 my saddle blanket. I had him tied the full length of 
 my stake rope so he could graze within 6 or 8 feet of 
 where I was lying. The moon had just risen and it 
 
-23 — • 
 
 was a little cloudy, which made the moonlight flicker, 
 the mule discovered an object about thirty steps off 
 and gave a snort, walking back the length of his 
 rope, looked right over where I was lying, and quit 
 eating his corn, would walk back and forth, snort- 
 ing every time he got to the end of his rope. Having 
 seen a smoke that evening just before simset, a few 
 miles from the road, I thought it might be Indians 
 following me up to try to get my mule, and I turned 
 over on my pallet to spy out for them, fearing to get 
 up, which would give them a goot. shot at me. When 
 I turned ovet and looked in the direction the mule 
 was looking, I saw the object that was scaring the 
 mule, and was very sure it was an Indian ; was sure 
 I could see his bow and quiver hanging over his 
 shoulder. I thought as his bow was not strung and 
 in a position for action, I would just lay still and 
 watch him until he came close enough that I could 
 make a sure shot. I had always had a desire to kill 
 an Indian, but just at this time I did not feel so much 
 of the former bravery as I did when there was none 
 in sight There I lay and watched that object for at 
 least 40 minutes The mule was still, snorting and 
 would not eat a bite. Then I thought I would decide 
 this thing at once. I could not go to sleep with that 
 mule snorting and the hair on my head standing as 
 straight as a porcupine’s quills. So I got up, with 
 my army siege six-shooter in my right hand and the 
 navy in the left, and my hair standing straight up, 
 and walked up to the object and punched it with my 
 six-shooter. I was much surprised, and very agree- 
 ably so, to find that it was a post oak stump from 
 
— 24 — 
 
 which Jack Loller and myself had cut the tree off 
 about three feet from the ground, the winter before, 
 for camping wood. 
 
 While I was staying on this ranch, the proprie- 
 tors, McCoy and Gooch, employed old father Watson, 
 who died about 12 years ago, 6 miles below the town 
 of Comanche, to come out and look after the ranch 
 where we kept our cattle, and while he was up there 
 his oldest daughter and I got to be lovers, and finally 
 entered into a marriage contract. I knew a wild 
 country life would not suit me after marriage, and 
 as her father told me that he was going to move to 
 the settlements the next fall, I concluded I would 
 move there also. I procured a one-horse buggy and 
 taking my girl, we set out. The first house on our 
 route was the home of one Jesse Mercer, on what is 
 called Mercer’s Creek, about 8 miles South of where 
 Comanche town is now located. As there were about 
 8 or 10 families living up in that country it was call- 
 ed Mercer’s Colony. Mr. Mercer and Dr. Tuggle be- 
 ing the first families settling there. So my intended 
 and self stopped with Mr. Mercer for the night, and 
 the family arranged for a wedding, while I went 
 about one and a half miles after a preacher, and I 
 got George W. Montgomery, a Christian preacher, to 
 officiate at the ceremony for us. This was the first 
 marriage pulled off in what is now known as Coman- 
 che County. It may seem a little strange to you, but 
 only three days after we were married at Mercer’s 
 that night, we were the first couple married in Cor- 
 yell County. It occurred this way: It w r as the cus- 
 
 tom in this new and unorganized country for a minis- 
 
—25— 
 
 > ter to perform the rights of matrimony and give a 
 certificate to the parties, which would be recorded 
 the same as a regular license. The minister gave me 
 the certificate in this instance, and when we reached 
 Gatesville the county had just been organized, and 
 the County Clerk, a young man and a very wise 
 young fellow, who knew vei'y little law, was afraid 
 to make a record of the matter, so I just had him is- 
 sue a license and we were married again in Gates- 
 ville. So I was the first man married in Comanche 
 County, also the first in Coryell County. From here 
 we went to Bell County. 
 
 While I was out on the frontier at the old fort 
 before mentioned, about three years, Bell County 
 had settled up a great deal. The town of Belton had 
 become quite a village of some ten or fifteen business 
 houses. Right here I will give you a little joke on 
 myself : When the first little store was put up in 
 
 Belton, it being the one that as before stated was 
 moved from the Joel Blair place by John Pain, the 
 postoffice was kept in that store, with Mr. Pain as 
 postmaster. In those days there was no such thing 
 as a postage stamp and all letters were addressed to 
 the place it was to go, and the addressee paid 5 cents 
 for his letter when he got it. My father sent me one 
 day to Belton to mail a letter, and when I got there 
 I just walked in and handed it to Mr. Pain, telling 
 him here w 7 as a letter I wanted mailed, he told me to 
 step out of doors and put it in the box. I stepped 
 out at the door, supposing I would find a little box 
 nailed up against the wall of the house, but could not 
 see any box, I just walked around to the back end 
 
26 — 
 
 and there found a little pine box that looked like it 
 had been used for carrying lime in. I did not think 
 it was the proper place to put the letter in. but was 
 determined not to let anyone know that I was so 
 green. I could not think of asking where the letter 
 box was. so just dropped it in that little box. Then 
 the thought came to me, that if it should rain before 
 the mail was sent off the letter would be ruined, and 
 to prevent this I turned the box over the letter and 
 pulled out for home. But I felt sure that that letter 
 was not at the right place, and was uneasy, day and 
 night. It. was on my mind, yet I would not tell any- 
 one. About ten days later, my father sent me to the 
 store again for some groceries, and while there in the 
 store, a man came in. just, like I had done, and offered 
 Mr. Pain a letter to mail, he instructed him just as 
 he had me, ten days before. “Step out doors and 
 put it in the box.’’ You know I watched that fellow 
 like a hawk would a chicken, he stepped out and 
 asked a man that was standing in the yard, where 
 the letter box was, the man pointed to a little hole in 
 the wall, and told him to slip his letter in there. 
 That the box was in the house but the letter would 
 drop in it. You bet I felt good to know that there 
 was some one as green as I was. You may guess I 
 kept my eye on that little hole until those men went 
 into the house, and then I slipped around to the 
 little lime box where I left my letter and found it all 
 right although it had been there ten days. I took it 
 and slipped it in the little hole in the wall. From 
 that day to this, I have known what a letter box is. 
 
— 27 — 
 
 I will now give you some idea of the value of the 
 unimproved land of Bell County, sixty years ago. 
 The most of the land at the first settling was vacant. 
 A man with a family could pre-empt 640 acres, while 
 a single man could take up 320 acres, but there had 
 been parties through this country and located a con- 
 siderable amount of land, surveys that were called 
 leagues and labores Those lands were cut up and 
 sold in small tracts to the early settlers at 50 cents to 
 one dollar per acre. I have seen as good land as 
 there is in Bell County, sell for one dollar per acre, 
 and to say the least of it, Bell County is one of the 
 best counties in the great State of Texas for farming 
 and I expect today it is one of the wealthiest in the 
 State. A number of men purchased land while it 
 was so cheap, that in 15 years it made them inde- 
 pendent. Dr. Embry, Ramsey Cox, Dred Hill, 0. G. 
 Tiler and many others I could name, bought land 
 while it was so cheap and the advance on the value 
 of land has made some of their posterity independ- 
 ently rich. Ed Good, who has been mentioned in a 
 previous chapter of this book as a school teacher, in 
 Bell County, bought land enough on Dain ’s Creek to 
 make all his children and grandchildren rich, at 
 present prices, which he paid only one dollar per 
 acre for at that time. After I left the ranch on the 
 frontier where I had spent the last three years of my 
 single life, and came back to Bell Comity, I rented a 
 small piece of land from my father eight miles above 
 the town of Belton, on Noland Creek. There I made 
 a crop of corn, and in the fall moved to Mercer’s 
 Colony in Comanche County. 
 
 
CORYELL COUNTY. 
 
 As to Lampasas, Coryell and Hamilton Counties. 
 I can only give you a slight sketch of them, as there 
 were no white men living in them at the time of my 
 first trip through. Those counties were settled and 
 organized while I was out on the frontier ranch near 
 Fort Chadborn. Coryell County was very well di- 
 vided as to timber and prairie, having the Leon 
 River, Owl Creek and Cowhouse, running through 
 it. On all those streams was good timber. Owl 
 Creek had fine large cedar-brakes on it that were 
 very valuable, as wire and planks for fencing was 
 not known or even thought of in that day. 
 
 Coryell county was a very good farming country. 
 The lands, all except the mountains, w r as rich. The 
 river valley was fine and the timber bottoms very 
 rich. The high prairie was a deep black soil, fine 
 for corn, cotton and small grain. In the early set- 
 tling of Coryell County there was one Mr. Murrell 
 who settled on Clear Creek, twelve miles above 
 Gatesville. He had several negroes and he put into 
 cultivation about one hundred acres of land, and 
 made a dam on the creek and irrigated that farm. 
 He was well-to-do before the war came up between 
 the states. The first mill put up in Coryell County 
 was at Gatesville and was erected by a man named 
 Grant. This man did more for the town of Gates- 
 ville than any one of the first settlers. There were 
 a few settlers in the lower edge of Coryell County 
 before the County was organized. 0. T. Tiler, be- 
 fore mentioned, was one of them. 
 
—29— 
 
 When I was engaged in hauling supplies to Fort 
 Gates, my father had three wagons and teams; I 
 drove one and one Thomas Deaton another. I was 
 but a boy, living with my father in Bell County, and 
 Tom Deaton being a young man, was boss of the 
 train. One day Deaton told me that the settlers had 
 decided to put a ferry boat on the Leon River, so 
 when the river was up and not fordable, we could 
 cross on the boat, and told me he had contracted to 
 get out the gunnels for the boat, and deliver them 
 where the boat was to be built. The logs used for 
 making the boat gunnels being very long and heavy 
 we would have to load by the use of skid-poles, plac- 
 ing one end of each pole on the wagon, and the other 
 end resting on the ground, ten or twelve feet from 
 the wagon. The front and hind wheels being about 
 twenty feet apart, our coupling pole to the wagon 
 was made of a small pecan sapling 20 feet long. We 
 got chains enough to reach from the log to the other 
 side of the wagon. Then hitched two yoke of cattle 
 to each end of the log and pulled it right onto the 
 wagon. We would hook up 10 yoke of steers to a 
 wagon and haul them to the place where they were 
 building the boat. The place would now be called 
 a dock yards. This was the first boat ever christen- 
 ed for service on the Leon River, and I do not re- 
 member that there was any champagne broken on 
 this boat at its launching. It was put into service 
 between old Fort Gates and where Gatesville now is. 
 
— 30 - 
 
 LAMP ASAS COUNTY. 
 
 Lampasas County was settled and organized be- 
 fore Hamilton County because of the sulphur water 
 at that place, which was first discovered in the early 
 settling of that part of the country. Those springs 
 have been a great pleasure resort ever since. I have 
 seen as much as 20 acres of ground solidly covered 
 at one time with tents in the day of their discovery, 
 especially during the summer season. It is a great 
 pleasure, as well as health resort, at this time for 
 afflicted people. In fact the sulphur water has 
 made Lampasas what she is today, and will always 
 keep it a good towm. 
 
 This county has not as much good farming land 
 as either Bell or Coryell County, but is better adapt- 
 ed to stock raising. I expect there are more cattle 
 raised in Lampasas County than in any county east 
 of here and probably many of the western counties 
 except in the extreme west, which are given over al- 
 most entirely to stock-raising. Lampasas has a great 
 many flocks of sheep in it. Among the first stock- 
 men, were Uncle Charley Mullins and his boys. 
 Those men were large owners of stock, both cattle 
 and horses. They were not only good stockmen but 
 good Indian fighters. To say the least of it they did 
 as much towards building up Lampasas County as 
 any other family that ever lived in it. Old Uncle 
 Charley Mullins died long years ago at Thrifty, in 
 Brown County. His oldest son, Ike, died before his 
 father; his death occurred at Eureka Springs, Ar- 
 kansas. Uncle Bill Mullins still lives in Lampasas 
 
— 31 - 
 
 County, but when I last heard from him he was very 
 feeble .Uncle John is living at Thrifty, in Brown 
 County. Aunt Jane Cross, the oldest child of Unele 
 Charley, is still living at or near the little town of 
 Thrifty, in Brown County. 
 
 HAMILTON COUNTY. 
 
 Hamilton County has some fine lands in it, also 
 has some very rough country. The farming laud is 
 rich and fertile. Portions of Hamilton County were 
 very broken and caused the early settlers a great 
 deal of trouble, it afforded such good hiding place 
 for the Indians. They could hide in those rough 
 mountains and depredate on the settlers for a long 
 time without being discovered. The North Leon 
 river runs right through the center of the county and 
 the little streams that emptied into the Leon River 
 wei'e lined with timber, this made the river very 
 rough. One of the first settlers in this part of the 
 country was a man by the name of Fuaqua; 
 he lived about twelve miles above where Ham- 
 ilton now stands and that settlement is yet 
 known by the name of Fuaqua Settlement. 
 There was another old man in that neigh- 
 borhood by the name of Fred Gentry, who was 
 a great help to that country in its early settling, and 
 let me say just here that that part of Hamilton 
 
- 32 - 
 
 County suffered as much from Indian depredations as 
 any community in the State. There was George 
 Gentry, Marion Graves, Elick Powers, Wm. Hanson 
 and a man by the name of Manning, all from that 
 neighborhood who were in the Civil War together 
 and while out on a scout on the mountains of Jim 
 Ned Creek they got into a hand to hand fight with a 
 posse of Indians, and two of the boys got wounded, 
 George Gentry and Elick Powers. Powers was shot 
 Wth an arrow through the foot. He was on the 
 ground and struck a bush, breaking the arrow off, 
 leaving the spike in his foot, from about eleven 
 o’clock until sunset that evening. Gentry was shot 
 with an arrow which struck him in the stomach but 
 it was at a long distance and the arrow was shot at 
 high elevation and was coming almost straight down 
 when it hit him, it just went a little under the skin, 
 and did not hurt him. I am unable to say whether 
 those boys are all yet living or not' as I have not 
 heard from them in many years. George Gentry 
 was living in the town of Dublin not many years ago. 
 Marion Graves was living in Hamilton some years 
 back, and I suppose he is there yet, if living. The 
 rest of the boys that were with me in the war, from 
 Hamilton, I cannot tell their whereabouts, I suppose 
 many of them are dead, as I have not heard of them 
 in a long time. They were older men than I. Those 
 boys had a hot time with the Indians. It was in this 
 settlement just after the war, that the young lady 
 school teacher was killed by the Indians, and Mr. 
 Manning, whom I have mentioned in a previous 
 chapter as being with me in the war, was a patron of 
 
— 33 — 
 
 that school. The Willbarger History of Indian Dep- 
 redations in Texas, has given this killing correctly, 
 but as there are some young people grown up that 
 probably have never seen that history, I thought I 
 would give it to the readers of this book. 
 
 This young lady school teacher was a Miss Whit- 
 ney. I knew her from- the early settling of Bell 
 County, though I have forgotten her given name. 
 The school house where the killing of Miss Whitney 
 took place was situated right on the edge of the Leon 
 River bottom and in front for five or six hundred 
 yards, was an open valley. Her pupils were all 
 small children. One of the children looking out at 
 the door saw the Indians just as they were coming 
 into the clearing at the further edge of the broad val- 
 ley. To be sure that she was right she stepped to 
 the door and taking a careful look at them was satis- 
 fied that they were Indians and turned back to the 
 teacher and said to her: “There are Indians com- 
 
 ing and they are coming straight here.” But there 
 having been no Indian troubles for a long time, and 
 the country full of cow hunters, she thought the 
 child was mistaken, and without looking told the 
 child to get her lesson, that it was just some cow- 
 boys. She never went to the door to look, as she 
 was so sure it w r as cowboys, but the little girl kept 
 watching them, and at last she jumped up and said: 
 “It is Indians, for I see their bows and they have 
 got them in their hands.” At this earnest suggestion 
 the teacher stepped to the door and saw the Indians 
 o about one hundred yards of the house. She was 
 satisfied from their actions that they meant to kill 
 
• 34 — 
 
 them, and got some of the children out of the house, 
 and told them to run down into the bottom. The 
 rest were little fellows and she put them under the 
 floor and told them not to make any noise. By this 
 time the Indians were all around the house. In 
 watching through the cracks of the house she discov- 
 ered that the Indians had located the children’s 
 whereabouts and saw that they had caught one of 
 Mr. Manning’s little boys , .A big Indian was hold- 
 ing him by the hand. At this time some of the In- 
 dians were shooting arrows through the cracks of 
 the house at Miss Whitney, while others were at 
 work bursting the door down. Soon they were in 
 the house sticking spears and arrows in the body of 
 that noble-hearted woman, who, with the blood 
 streaming from her body, begged the Indians to kill 
 her but not to hurt the children. Thus that beloved 
 girl sank down in death. Miss Whitney was a sister 
 of Ed Whitney, who died in Comanche County a few 
 years ago. The little son of Mr. Manning was re- 
 captured b}^ white men and brought home. 
 
 I have in a previous chapter stated that Coryell, 
 Hamilton and Lampasas Counties were all organized 
 while I was out on the ranch at Port Chadborn. I 
 cannot give all the particulars of their organization, 
 as I was not living in them at the time, but ask you 
 to pardon me for dropping back from other parts of 
 my writing to tell of things which occurred while I 
 was passing through them. After living in Coman- 
 che, Brown and Navarro Counties, I dropped back 
 into Bell County .This move was after the Civil 
 War. 
 
—35— 
 
 Lampasas had settled up considerably at this 
 time. There were several business houses in it. In 
 the year 1872 a waterspout burst on the valley above 
 town, which being near the river, in a low valley, 
 was overflowed. There was a slough and higher 
 ground between it and the river, on which. several 
 houses had been built. Some of them were washed 
 away. One of them was occupied by a man by the 
 name of Garison. ITe and all of his family were 
 drowned. The slough ran through between those 
 houses and cut the parties off from the main part of 
 town. It was past fording before any houses were 
 in danger on the high ground. There was one fel- 
 low that stayed in his house until the water came up 
 in his floor and then got out to climb on top of the 
 house, but when he stepped out into the yard the 
 water was stronger than he thought and carried him 
 down ten or fifteen steps, where he caught on a 
 pecan bush. There he was, with the water rising at 
 the rate of three inches a minute. He could not 
 turn loose from the bush as he could not swim a 
 lick; so he began to try to make peace with his 
 Creator. He had never tried to pray before in all 
 his life, but the time had come that he felt like try- 
 ing, and in trying to think of what to say, his fath- 
 er’s old grace came to his mind, and he cried out: 
 ‘‘0 Lord, make us thankful for what we are about to 
 receive.” Just as the water was getting up to the 
 chin of the praying man it stopped rising and soon 
 began to fall, so the poor fellow was saved from 
 drowning. Whether or not he was saved by his 
 prayers, is yet to be decided. The writer has many 
 
—36 
 
 friends who lived in Lampasas County ; some of whom 
 have passed over the Jordan of death, and some are 
 still living. 
 
 I was on a trip to Bell county, about two months 
 ago and in passing through Lampasas town, had the 
 pleasure of shaking hands with some of them. Mr. 
 Browning, Fulton John Nickels, who was a soldier 
 mate in time of the war. I will tell a little joke on 
 John. Two Indians passed our camp one time at 
 Colorado Post. They had six head of stolen horses 
 and were passing near where our horses were being 
 herded. The man on guard ran into camp and re- 
 ported, there were about thirty men in camp and 
 had been detailed to go out on a scout, we all mount- 
 ed our horses, and lit out after those two Indians, 
 and after about twelve miles’ chase we came in sight 
 of them ; every man put spurs to his horse and the 
 best horse got there first. Luther Allen, who was 
 County Clerk of Coryell County for several years 
 after the war, was the first to catch up with the In- 
 dians, and he shot and killed one of them. By this 
 time five or six of us had reached the battle ground. 
 When this Indian was killed the other one ran on 
 about three hundred yards to an elm grove. He was 
 trying to reach a grove of post oak timber that lay 
 North of Coleman about three miles, but he saw we 
 would get him before he could reach there and he 
 left his horse, taking it on foot, thinking with the 
 advantage of those elm saplings he might stand us 
 off. There was a post oak thicket of about one-half 
 of an acre in size right south of the grove the Indian 
 was making for he ran and got in that thicket; (Cap- 
 
• 37 - 
 
 tain Tom Wright, who is now living in Temple, was 
 at that time a lieutenant in our company, and in 
 command of this scout) by this time there were ten 
 or twelve men there. Some left their horses, which 
 had given out, and came on afoot. We were all dry 
 for water, and there was a branch about three hun- 
 dred yards off, so Lieutenant Wright put a guard 
 around the thicket the Indian was in, and let the 
 men go, four at a time, to get water. When all had 
 gotten water, I think we had increased to fourteen in 
 number, our lieutenant said: “Now boys, we have 
 
 got one of the bougers killed, and the other where 
 he can’t get away, and let us not get anyone hurt; 
 we can get him without it.” So he detailed four 
 men to surround the thicket while the other ten made 
 a drive through. When they came out they had a 
 Yankee blue roundabout and his moccasins that he 
 had shedded, but did not see the Indian ; he had 
 snaked across the glade and got into some high shin- 
 oaks right up against a prairie bluff. The brush 
 was so thick we could not see him and he could not 
 use his bow in there, so we got right up around the 
 little thicket, shooting in at random. Some one got 
 a bullet into him and he came out with his bow 
 strung — and here is the joke I have on John Nick- 
 els: He was standing right in front of the Indian, 
 putting a cap on his gun, and I am sure the Indian 
 though John was the man that had shot him in the 
 thicket, for he sent every arrow right at him, and 
 John fell down in the high grass and crawled down 
 the hillside to dodge those arrows. Tom Wright 
 shot and cut the Indian’s bow in two in the middle 
 
— 38 — 
 
 with his rifle. More than twenty shots hit that In- 
 dian in a moment and yet he got back into that 
 thicket before he fell, and when we got in to where 
 lie was he was nearly stiff. He had been shot so 
 much his hide was not fit for shoestrings. A boy 
 about sixteen years old by the name of Sincler shot 
 that Indian just as he came out of the thicket and 
 hollered out: “There, I shot him right in the 
 
 mouth,” and when we examined him we found that 
 the boy had hit him right in the corner of the mouth ; 
 the shot tore all the flesh off of that side of his face. 
 The pistol was one of those old holster pistols, and he 
 had just loaded it, and the boy being excited had 
 filled it about five inches with powder. It was six- 
 teen inches long in the barrel; when he shot the In- 
 dian in the mouth the barrel burst for about four 
 inches. In those days boys were about the best 
 Indian fighters we had, for they never thought of 
 danger. 
 
 Now I will get back to the first year of my mar- 
 ried life which was spent in Bell County. As before 
 stated, the county was sparsely settled, though the 
 people were more social than they are now days, and 
 had more confidence in each other than at the pres- 
 ent time. I well remember the first money I ever 
 borrowed in my life. When I was married at Mr. 
 Mercer’s, as stated in a previous chapter of this book, 
 I left the buggy at Mercer’s. It belonged to Parson 
 Montgomery, the preacher who officiated at my first 
 marriage ceremony. I also left my horse with him. 
 He agreeing to bring the horse to me when he came 
 down to Belton after supplies in the spring, and I 
 
—39 
 
 hired a man by the name of Ekles to take us on to 
 Bell County. In the spring Montgomery came down 
 and brought my horse as he had agreed to. I met 
 with him eight miles west of Belton. He had stop- 
 ped for noon. I lived one mile from there, and hav- 
 ing just fitted up for house-keeping, was out of 
 money, but asked him what I was due him for the 
 feed and care of my horse. He said five dollars. I 
 told him I would have his money there by the time 
 he was through with dinner. I saw a little new 
 house up in the cove of the mountain and rode up 
 to the house and called at the yard gate. A man 
 came out and asked me to alight and come in. 1 
 told him I did not have time, that I lived about one 
 and a half miles down on the creek, and had met a 
 man out there on the road that I owed $5.00 and 
 wanted to borrow that amount of mony for a short 
 time, and without asking my name, just walked back 
 into the house and came out with a five-dollar gold 
 piece in his hand and gave it to me. I then asked 
 him his name and he said Northcut. but said they us- 
 ually called him Hoge. It was the same Hoge 
 Northcut that afterward moved and settled in 
 Comanche county, and has children and grandchil- 
 dren now living in that county. 
 
 In those days men had confidence in each other, 
 but those days of confidence have all passed. I 
 would like to see the face of a stranger, at this time, 
 that could borrow $5.00 from a man he had never 
 seen or heard of before without giving a gilt-edged 
 security. 
 
 
- 40 - 
 
 Now reader I want to say that during the first 
 settling of this country, some fifty years ago, people 
 were more kind-hearted, generous and benevolent 
 than in these later years, while there are some men 
 who have followed up the footsteps of their fore- 
 fathers, they are very few and far between. 
 
 I have known men whose fathers came to Texas 
 when they were boys from the Northern states, and 
 those boys had fine schools to start into and get a 
 good education, while their fathers had the fat of 
 the country to make money out of. I have seen 
 those kind of men standing on the streets of our 
 cities with a ten-cent cigar in their mouth talking 
 about the old pioneers, saying if they had had any 
 sense they could have been rich. I will tell you why 
 those old early settlers are not millionaires and why 
 those who came later are. In the first place, those 
 early settlers had no free schools and the country 
 was so thinly settled it was a hard proposition to 
 even get up a little subscription school, the teach- 
 ers were mostly women, as the men had to be at 
 work improving, and those good women had about 
 enough education to get into one of our colleges of 
 today, if you were to blindfold them and back them 
 in like getting a horse out of a fire ; these schools 
 were taught by such teachex*s as the one before men- 
 tioned in this book, who was killed by Indians. So 
 you can see why the old settlei-s’ children and grand 
 children grew up without education. Those who 
 have grown up in later days of peace and pleixty, 
 do not realize what the first settlers had to con- 
 tend with. This is why so many of the old fellows 
 
- 41 - 
 
 are so illiterate today, as you have no doubt already 
 discovered of your humble servant. I will give you 
 a few reasons why there are no very wealthy men 
 among the early settlers. We had no railroads to 
 bring farming machinery or to transport our pro- 
 ducts to market, or to bring building material, but 
 we cultivated our farms with plows made out and 
 out — lock, stock and barrel, by a wood and black- 
 smith. All wood, but a point and land bar, with a 
 wood mouldboard ; now-a-days called the wing of 
 the plow, using oxen for teams and a boy to engi- 
 neer them, and a good days’ work was to sod one- 
 half of an acre. After the land was turned we had 
 to pulverize it with a large wood harrow. Plows 
 used in cultivating were either a straight shovel or 
 bull tongue. We made the stock out of wood, some- 
 thing similar in shape to the Georgia stock, these 
 plows were pulled by a yoke of oxen. I am now 
 seventy-five years old and I never saw a double- 
 shovel until I was forty years old ; that is, in this 
 part of the state. When we raised wheat we had to 
 clean off a place on the ground and spread wagon 
 sheets down, laying the bundles around in a circle 
 some thirty feet in diameter with the head up and 
 towards the center of the circle and put boys on 
 horses and go round and round and tramp out the 
 grain. This process must have been taken from the 
 Scriptures where the angel was seen over the thresh- 
 ing floor of Oman, the Nebuzite. The wheat was 
 cut with a cradle, or reap hooks, and bound in bun- 
 dles by hand with a little wisp of the straw. We 
 could not raise stock to accumulate wealth as the In- 
 
— 42 — 
 
 dians would steal and drive them off faster than we 
 could raise them. 
 
 Those circumstances account for there being 
 no very wealthy men among the older settlers, most 
 of whom are passing away, leaving no legacy for 
 their children, and while they ought to have the 
 honor and credit of doing something for this country 
 they are looked upon and referred to as a very com- 
 mon class of people. Not having a finished educa- 
 tion and wealth, they are classed as mossbacks or 
 hayseeds by the aristocracy of the present day. I 
 can tell you why the rising generations and later 
 emigrants to this country are, some of them, wealthy, 
 and a few, millionaires. When they began to come 
 to this country, they had nothing to do but just start 
 right into making money. The old pioneers had 
 driven the Indians out and the country was civilized 
 and Christianized and capital from the old states be- 
 gan to come into this country and railroads came in, 
 bringing farming implements and machinery and 
 creating a market for the products of labor and land, 
 also material to build with; in fact everything need- 
 ed for improving, was at hand. Thirty years ago 
 land was selling at from one to two dollars per acre, 
 that is, good farming land. Pasture land from fifty 
 to seventy-five cents per acre. There were men that 
 came into this country in those days who bought up 
 large tracts of land that is now worth from twenty- 
 five to fifty dollars per acre — the advance in prices 
 on the land has made them rich. 
 
—43— 
 
 COMANCHE COUNTY. 
 
 In the fall of 1855 I moved up to Comanche 
 County and settled about three miles from where 
 Newburg now is, on Mountain Creek. There were 
 at that time about twenty-five or thirty families in 
 that country, yet the county was not organized. They 
 had an election of officers before I reached there. I 
 think this was done to start the organization of the 
 county. They had selected old Cora, as the place 
 for the county seat, twelve miles east of where the 
 town of Comanche now is. Soon after I got there 
 they had an election in which Jim Martin was elect- 
 ed Sheriff and Frank Collier first County Clerk. I 
 will not try to give all of the County officers, as I do 
 not remember all of them, but all county business 
 was transacted at the town of Old Cora for some 
 years before the county lines were established. The 
 first District Judge to hold court in Comanche Coun- 
 ty was N. AY. Battler of AVaco, and McCall I think 
 was the first District Attorney. The first criminal 
 case of note tried was old Billy Tatum, better known 
 as old Bud Tatum. He was tried for the killing of 
 AYylie Baggett, and the writer was a witness in the 
 case, the defendant’s counsel was Col. Norris of 
 AVaco, after about three trials Tatum was acquitted. 
 The next murder case tried at Cora, was Ace Reade. 
 He was charged with being an accessory to the kill- 
 ing of a man by the name of Foreman. This killing 
 was done a little while before the first case tried. 
 The man that killed Foreman was Joe Reade. He 
 was never caught, and his father, though implicated 
 in the killing, was cleared. 
 
By this time our new county began to think of 
 getting down to business in a business way as there 
 were many new comers settling in it, and they had 
 the surveyor, Mr. Lon Price, to run out the county 
 lines. Finding Old Cora to be in the extreme lower 
 edge of the county, the commissioners moved the 
 county seat to where it now is, and gave it the same 
 name as the county. 
 
 When I settled on Mountain Creek, four families 
 lived on that creek. James Cunningham, better 
 known as Captain Cunningham ; Charlie Campbell, 
 Thomas Dunlap, Jonathan Watson, all of them as 
 good neighbors as I ever lived by in my life. I will 
 tell you something of two of those neighbors, and I 
 assure you I am not flattering them to their off- 
 spring who may read this book. It is likely, at least 
 I think so, that any of the rest of those neighbors 
 would have been just of the same good principles if 
 they had had the same opportunities. Campbell and 
 Cunningham each had a small stock of cattle and 
 when the new-comers would settle around them they 
 would go to them, and if they wanted cows to milk, 
 would tell them to make themselves cowpens and 
 would pen them all the cows they needed to milk, 
 and when either of those two men killed a beef they 
 would just send a man to all of the neighbors, tell- 
 ing them to come over and get all the beef they 
 wanted. They never asked a cent of pay for it, and 
 this was done every two or three weeks during the 
 summer season. Those were two of the best-to-do 
 men in that country at that time. Now reader, if 
 you will show me two of the wealthiest men of your 
 
- 45 - 
 
 country today that have that kind of sympathy for 
 the poor class of people, I will show you a black bird 
 as white as a snowball. 
 
 There was also Jessie Mercer, Dr. Tuggle, and 
 Joseph Hicks, who were in very good circumstances, 
 and I think were very kind to their neighbors when 
 in needy circumstances. To say the least of it the 
 early settlers of Comanche County had hearts in 
 them like unto an ox. 
 
 When Comanche County first began to settle up 
 I thought it was the finest country I had ever seen, 
 and it was a sight to look upon those fine valleys of 
 grass, and beautiful post oak timber and to add to 
 the benefit of those early settlers the country was 
 full of game, deer, turkey, antelope and occasionally 
 a bear. The first bear I saw in this country was af- 
 ter the country was organized; George W. Montgom- 
 ery, Nat Dawson and I were appointed to survey or 
 rather review a road from Old Cora to the Lam- 
 pasas County line, crossing the Cowhouse Creek near 
 the head of it. Soon after the road was reviewed, 
 there were six or eight hands sent out to open up 
 the road and just before we got to Cowhouse Creek 
 out on the high prairie we met a large bear. It was 
 in the summer season and the beast was trying to 
 cross the divide and get over on the Leon where it 
 could find the rough brakes. We put out after him, 
 some on horseback and some on foot, and those on 
 horseback would head the bear off and hold him up 
 until those on foot got up. The first timber we 
 reached was in about three hundred yards of old man 
 Albin’s house. He lived right where the town of 
 
— 46 - 
 
 Energy now is. The bear climbed up the first tree 
 he came to, and Mr. Albin went to the house and got 
 his rifle. He brought one of his little boys with him, 
 and in order to have it said that his little boy killed 
 the first bear in the county, his father taking aim on 
 the bear’s head let the boy pull the trigger. At the 
 crack of the gun the bear fell out. I think it was 
 Pate Albin that killed the first bear. This is my 
 recollection, but it lias been so long ago I may mis- 
 take some events as to dates, and just how certain 
 things occurred, yet they are only slight errors and 
 have the same meaning. I am glad to know that 
 there are enough old settlers yet living in each coun- 
 ty that I am writing about to verify and correct any- 
 thing I may say about the country. 
 
 My father opened the first store in Comanche 
 County but in twelve months or less, Uncle Dick 
 Carnes and his brother, Ship, came in from Georg 1 ' a 
 and put up another store. About that time J. M. 
 Cross and Jesse Mercer put in a steam saw and grist 
 mill. This was at Old Cora, which at that time was 
 the county seat of Comanche County. So I left 
 Mountain Creek, and moved down to town in order 
 to help build and run that mill. When I moved to 
 Cora the inhabitants of the town were my father, J. 
 M. Cross, T. J. Nabors, Samuel Steel, James Jeffrey, 
 Richard Carnes, Tom Mathas, Frank Collier and Jas. 
 Martin. Those employed in getting timber for the 
 frame work of that first mill were T. J. Nabors, Sam 
 Steel, Ike Jeffrey, myself and a young man by the 
 name of Andrew Stewart. We went to North Leon 
 River to cut and haul those timbers, for the framing 
 
— 47 — 
 
 of the mill building. (I will say right here that this 
 young man Stewart, before mentioned in this book, 
 was the father of Terry, Billy and Lee Stewart; all 
 of these brothers are living in this county.) We 
 had not been long at work on the mill building when 
 some more families came into the county. Old man 
 Huckaby, who has a son now living near Blanket; 
 Peter Gates, John Malone and Eliek Piper, all of 
 whom were employed and added to our force in 
 building the mill house, and by the time the machin- 
 ery got there we were ready for putting it in place. 
 They hired a man at Georgetown who was an engi- 
 neer, to put the machinery in and run the engine for 
 some time ; his name was Robert Brooks. After this 
 mill was put up I ran it as long as it was kept at this 
 place. The owners found that it was too costly ma- 
 chinery for such a thinly settled country and moved 
 it to Bell County. During the two years it was op- 
 erated in this county it cut several thousand feet of 
 oak and cottonwood lumber. When we got walnut 
 or sycamore logs we cut them into scantling and sold 
 it for making furniture, to Mr. Matthews, who was 
 running a wood shop at that place at the time. 
 
 By this time there were quite a number of peo- 
 ple moved and settled in Cora and the surrounding 
 country, and by the way, there were some of them 
 religious. The first sermon preached in the county 
 was delivered by one of two men, I cannot now say 
 which, but it was either Mance Coker or old Brother 
 Childress. They were both local preachers and old 
 pioneers of this country and as good men, I think, as 
 ever lived. The first Methodist minister that was 
 
— 48 — 
 
 termed a circuit rider in this county was a Mr. Kidd, 
 and the first presiding Elder was Rev. Louis W. Na- 
 pels. I shall never forget the first conference held 
 in the county. There was an old brother by the name 
 of Stedham Nealey, usually called Uncle Zack. He 
 had got on a little “whiz,” as they called it in those 
 days, and old Uncle Peter Gates, having a strong 
 dislike for whiskey, reported the old brother to the 
 conference. The quarterly conference was held in a 
 little board house that we had for a court house, and 
 when the question was asked, “Are there any com- 
 plaints,” the pastor answered, “Yes,” and handed 
 him a paper on which was the bill of charges, and the 
 Elder read the charges out as follows: “Brother 
 
 Stedham, we are told that you have taken too much 
 of the intoxicates and likewise as to this question do 
 you answer guilty or not guilty?” To this Mr. Sted- 
 ham answered: “Brother Whippels, I can’t say 
 
 that I have, though I must confess that I was up here 
 at Mr. Martin’s grocery the other day and I took it 
 a little too fast.” They pardoned the old brother. 
 
 I want to give you another joke we got on an- 
 other one of our old boys. He was a very good man. 
 This was Tom Dunlap He and Tom Deaton, before 
 mentioned in this book, were running for the office 
 of sheriff, it being the second race for that office in 
 Comanche county and the candidates were doing 
 their best electioneering. There was a man by the 
 name of Dawson living on Little Mountain Creek. 
 Dunlap was so sure that Dawson would vote for him 
 that he told him one day just before the election that 
 he wanted him to be on hand on election day, but 
 
—49 — 
 
 Dawson said he had no shoes fit to wear to town. 
 Dunlap said he would send him a pair, and did, — 
 sent his wife’s shoes to Dawson, and when he got to 
 town on election day Dawson rooted for the other 
 man, and Tom Deaton was elected. If Dunlap had 
 not made the mistake, but had sent his OAvn shoes in- 
 stead of his wife’s, he would have been one vote, if 
 no more, nearer to Deaton. This was the second 
 sheriff’s race while Old Cora was the county seat. 
 
 A man by the name of Kingsberry put up a store 
 in Cora and did business there some time after the 
 town was moved to Comanche. This man Kings- 
 berry and Frank Collier, Uncle Dick Carnes, Sam 
 Steele, James Jeffrey, Tom Matthews, old man Huck- 
 aby and myself still stayed at Old Cora until the war 
 of ’61. This country settled up faster than any coun- 
 try in this belt of Texas. Jesse Mercer, Mr. Cooper, 
 John McGuier, IJoge Northcut and Ed Whitney all 
 came to this country from Bell County. There was 
 also a family by the name of McKinzie, the old man 
 and some married sons. The old man settled a place 
 on Durby Creek and lived and died and was buried 
 on that place. This place was called the Watson 
 place for a long time. It was on that place that 
 Watson died and a man named Pinkerd now owns 
 the place. The old man McKinzie, who was laid to 
 rest on the place, was killed by the Indians. One of 
 his sons, Kinith McKinzie, was aftei’wards killed at 
 Comanche in an Indian fight. At the time this oc- 
 curred there were only a few houses in the town. 
 Late one evening a report reached there that there 
 were Indians in the settlement but by the time the 
 
— 50 - 
 
 men of the town could get together, get their horses 
 and get out after them, it was night. The men had 
 only gotten about two hundred yards from the pub- 
 lic square when they met a posse of Indians in a 
 grove of scattering oak timber which ran right up 
 into the town. When they saw the Indians they first 
 thought them to be a party of white men coming to 
 join them and had not so much as drawn their arms 
 or made any preparation for fight, until they were 
 right together and the Indians were shooting arrows 
 into them. In this fight McKinzie was killed. The 
 fight took place west of the public square in what is 
 now the thickest settled part of town. I am very 
 sure that the fight in Comanche that night saved me 
 from getting shot from the brush the next day. I 
 was out at Charlie Campbell’s place planting corn 
 for him, working a yoke of steers that were very 
 gentle and a very fine plow team, and late in the 
 evening I was plowing in rows about a hundred and 
 fifty yards in length, the rows running right up to 
 the fence, which was right close to a bluff on Moun- 
 tain Creek. Just room for a wagon road between 
 the fence and the bank of the creek and there was a 
 trail leading down the bank into the bed of the 
 creek. So late that evening I was turning at that 
 end of my row and just as the steers turned around 
 they threw up their heads and jerked the plow-han- 
 dles out of my hands and ran about half way back 
 towards the other end of the rows before I could 
 stop them. I thought of going back and coming 
 down the rows right, but just at that time Campbell 
 rode up to the house. He had been to Comanche 
 
— 51 — 
 
 that evening and got the news of the fight in town 
 and was sitting on his horse, with his hat in his hand, 
 talking to his wife and children, and I knew from his 
 appearance that there was something wrong and just 
 dropped my team loose and went to the house. It 
 was just about sunset. Campbell told me about the 
 fight in town the night before and said to me that 
 we had better get up our horses and tie them in the 
 yard, which we did before dark. Just after dark 
 awhile I got to thinking about how my steers had 
 acted when I turned them at the end of the rows. 
 They had never done such a thing before, and I told 
 Mr. Campbell about it. He said it was a lucky thing 
 for me that the steers ran away, that there were In- 
 dians hidden under the creek bank, and if I had gone 
 back there again they would have shot me in the 
 back as I turned. So the next morning Sol Beard 
 and myself went out to see what sign we could find, 
 and sure enough there had been two Indians lying 
 right up to the edge of the bank. Plain prints of 
 their moccasins in the sand where they had sat for 
 me. The steers had smelled them and ran or they 
 would have gotten me that time. During that raid 
 the people had to be on the watch for several days 
 and nights. They stayed in that time longer than 
 usual, as there were but few people in the country, 
 and when we got a scout out after the Indians it 
 took all the rest of the men left to guard our families 
 and what few horses were left. 
 
 I will here relate a little joke on two of the boys 
 who were left to guard the families and stock. They 
 were rather good boys, brave enough, I had in time 
 
-52- 
 
 passed, freighted with one of them, and know he was 
 not a coward, but somehow the sight of a red man 
 excited the boys. It was at George Montgomery’s 
 they had to guard the horses. Aston Montgomery 
 and Dave Parker were the boys left on guard, and 
 when night came on they tied the horses to oak 
 trees which stood in the yard. G. W. Montgomery 
 lived about six hundred yards south of where New- 
 burg now is, and his house stood inside the field, the 
 fence running just back of the house. He told the 
 boys they could watch the horses until midnight and 
 ho would watch the latter part of the night. To this 
 the boys readily agreed, and taking their shotguns 
 they sat on the inside of the fence, the shadow of 
 which hid them from view of anyone on the outside. 
 About 9 o’clock the boys noticed the horses looking 
 right up the string of fence, which caused them to 
 look up the outside, and they saw an Indian coming 
 right down the string of fence on the outside, with 
 his bow hanging on his shoulder, they just stuck the 
 muzzles of their guns through the cracks of the fence 
 and when the Indian got right opposite the boys he 
 stopped and straightened up, looking right over the 
 boys at the horses. Just at this time the boys fired 
 both barrels of their guns, but the Indian ran off un- 
 hurt. The next day Campbell and myself were over 
 there trailing around after the Indian to see if we 
 could find any blood on the trail. Parker told me 
 he could see the Indian ’s eyes when he shot, but after 
 failing to find any blood, we came back and found 
 that they had shot twigs off of trees fifteen feet 
 above the ground in about thirty yards of where 
 they were standing. 
 
— 53 — 
 
 When this country was first settling up a good 
 many went into the hog-raising business, as they did 
 not think the Indians would steal them, and further, 
 it required so little capital to start with. There 
 were Hamsley, Wilson, Parker. Davis and Henderson 
 and many others too numerous to mention who 
 bought up a few hogs and went into the hog-raising 
 business, and it was but a little while until the woods 
 were full of hogs. It is strange that now we hardly 
 ever see a good acorn mast. In those days the tim- 
 ber was always full of acorns, and we killed our hogs 
 fattened on the mast, which made good bacon. Af- 
 ter a year or two the country got full of hogs, and 
 there came a dry summer and the post oak mast fell 
 short, and the hogs began to drift down Hamsley ’s 
 Creek and other little streams running into North 
 Leon river. At that time there was a blackjack 
 thicket on the north side of the river, about two 
 miles wide and three miles long, running up and 
 down the river, the hogs would drift from the south 
 side to the north side of the river and would land in 
 that blackjack rough. There they found acorns 
 which had fallen off the year before, enough to fat- 
 ten them so as to make fairly good pork, but by the 
 time they got fat they would be as wild as deer and 
 could not be handled at all. I learned that winter 
 that pork was a fine price down at Belton and con- 
 tracted with the hog men to kill those wild hogs and 
 dress them on the shares. They all were glad to give 
 me one-half the pork to kill and deliver their part 
 at Old Cora. So I hired old man Huckaby, John 
 Tridel and John Blevens to help me ; got a good hog- 
 
- 54 - 
 
 dog, a wagon and yoke of steers and pulled out to 
 North Leon river. We struck camp on the north 
 side in the edge of the bottom ; made a log-heap fire ; 
 cleared off the snow and dried a place to stretch our 
 tent. We would get up before daylight and have 
 breakfast over and by daylight be in that rough on a 
 hog trail. When the dog would get up with the 
 hogs, if they were not too wild they would rally and 
 fight the dog, and we could kill the whole bunch in 
 a pile; but sometimes we would strike a bunch that 
 were so wild they would not rally, but keep running 
 and the dog would catch one and we would shoot 
 him, our dog would then lite out for another and keep 
 this up until we got most of the bunch, then we 
 would send one man back to camp after the wagon 
 and the other two would proceed to collect our dead 
 hogs together by tying a rope to our saddle horns 
 and fastening the other end to a hog and take him to 
 a loading place. By the time the wagon arrived we 
 would have them all in a pile and would load up and 
 return to camp. Old man Huckaby being the older 
 man, was always left at camp to do our cooking 
 and have hot rocks to heat water for scalding the 
 hogs. I do not remember just how long we were 
 camped in that place killing hogs, but it was some 
 time, and we killed about one thousand pounds of 
 dressed pork a day on an average. My part of the 
 pork that I killed that winter, after paying the three 
 hands I had to help me at one dollar a day, and the 
 expense of delivering the pork at Belton, cleared me 
 $200 for the four or five weeks’ work. 
 
—55— 
 
 One night while out on this hog-killing expe- 
 dition, we got in late with a big load of hogs and by 
 the time we could get water hot and ready for clean- 
 ing the hogs it was dark and when we were through 
 and had the hogs hung on poles it was near mid- 
 night ; Huckaby, John Tridel and I had to take the 
 entrails out. While we were doing this, John Blev- 
 ins cleared off the platform on which we had scrap- 
 ed the hogs. It was about eighteen inches high all 
 around, but the water and hog hair made a slop 
 about six inches deep. When he got the platform 
 cleared off he lay down on the edge of it and soon 
 was fast asleep. John Tridel said, “Now we will 
 have some fun.” He and Blevins had been sleeping 
 together all the winter, and when one would want 
 the other to turn over he would say “spoon.” Tri- 
 del got right close to him and called out loud, “John, 
 spoon,” and Blevins, fast asleep, whirled over clear 
 off the platform down into the hog hair and water. 
 He was a sight to look at. It took him two hours to 
 dry his clothes enough to go to bed. In those days 
 people never got mad at such pranks, and after he 
 got his clothes warm and dry enough to sleep in he 
 enjoyed the joke as much as any of us. 
 
 In the years 1857 and ’58 this county was be- 
 coming pretty thickly settled, with, I think, the most 
 noble-hearted people I ever saw in any country. If 
 one man in the settlement had plenty he saw to it 
 that his neighbors did not suffer. In the two years I 
 have mentioned the Indians were worse than they 
 had ever before been, while some of our citizens were, 
 trying to farm and others trying to raise stock we 
 
—56— 
 
 had a pretty hard time. The only way we had to 
 protect ourselves was to organize minute companies 
 in each settlement and when Indians were reported 
 in the country would fly to our arms and horses and 
 get in after them. The company I belonged to was 
 that of Captain Jas. Cunningham. He had three 
 boys old enough to fight Indians, and they were boys 
 who were always at the right place when there was 
 any scrapping to do. Their names were Aaron, 
 Dave and Dick .They are all living yet in Comanche 
 County. Now reader don’t think I am flattering 
 those boys or that I am any way partial to them. I 
 am sure we had just as brave, honorable and high- 
 minded boys all over the country as they were, but I 
 was closely associated with them, not only in this 
 ranger company, but during the first year of the 
 Civil War, when we were mess-mates in the army, 
 and if there is anything short in a man you will find 
 it out in a year in a soldier camp. 
 
 During the years 1857 and 1858 the Indians 
 gave Comanche County a great deal of trouble. 
 They seemed to be bent on the murder of the 
 whites more than on stealing horses. There was 
 a man by the name of Ed Forman who lived in North 
 Leon bottom about 5 miles from Cora. He came to 
 town one evening after some coffee, and left the town 
 late in the evening. He was afoot, and when about 
 half way home was attacked by a body of Indians. 
 He was killed and scalped, and from the sign of horse 
 tracks it was supposed there were about fifteen In- 
 dians in the bunch. He had evidently seen them 
 eoming in full speed on their horses and he being 
 
— 57 — 
 
 afoot ran to a thicket, but before he reached it the 
 Indians had shot so many arrows into him that he 
 fell before getting far into the thicket. The next 
 morning there was a party of men out on search for 
 the missing man. Indians having been seen in the 
 country the day before. Every man that could leave 
 home was out on search for the Indians, some of 
 them struck the trail, and in a short time came onto 
 where they had been running and shooting Forman, 
 and trailed him by his own blood until they found 
 him. I do not remember just who were in the crowd 
 that found him. I was not in that bunch, though I 
 got in home that night just before they brought the 
 dead man in. I remember one man who was in the 
 party that found him, it was Mr. Jess Cook, who had 
 a party of men with him, they lived in Bell County, 
 and had been following a trail of the Indians from 
 Bell County, with stolen horses; and were on their 
 return home when they fell in with our boys on this 
 trail. They were with them when they found the 
 dead man, and the boys began to pull the arrows out 
 of his body, one was shot into the back and several 
 of the men tried to pull it out but failed, and this 
 man Cook, from Belton, a very stout man weighing 
 175 pounds, told me the next day that he had to set 
 one foot on the man to hold him on the ground be- 
 fore he could pull the arrow out. The next day after 
 this man Forman was buried the writer went and 
 brought his wife and children to his home and kept 
 them until they could be sent to their people in Bos- 
 que County. 
 
—58— 
 
 John Baggett was living on a little creek just 
 below the junction of the South and North Leon 
 Rivers. This was the next killing done by the In* 
 dians. I don’t remember just how long it was after 
 the killing of Forman, that the killing of the Baggett 
 children took place, but it was only a short time. Mr. 
 Baggett had gone to Bosqueville, to mill ; he had left 
 his wife and children at home and had carried the 
 only gun on the place with him. It took about three 
 days to make the trip to the mill and back. One day 
 while he was gone two of the children were out play- 
 ing in the shade of a large live oak tree, some 100 
 yards from the house, when a party of Indians rode 
 up around them. They shot and killed the boy. 
 who was about 12 years old, and then just rode 
 around the little girl and stuck the points of their 
 arrows into her flesh. The mother called to her to 
 run to the house, which she did, coming to the front 
 door. Her mother told her to run around to the back 
 door as the Indians were trying to shoot in at the 
 front door. So when she got the little girl in and 
 closed the back door, the Indians not knowing but 
 what she had a gun in the house, left. Mrs. Baggett 
 had to go out and get her little dead boy and stay 
 with him until about 9 o’clock in the night. Just 
 think what that poor old mother had to endure. Her 
 husband out and she not knowing but what he was 
 killed also until he got home ; and think what a sad 
 thing it must have been to Mr. Baggett to find his 
 little boy a corpse, the little girl with thirteen arrow 
 wounds in her, and her clothes soaked in her own 
 blood, and the mother grieving over her dead and 
 wounded children. 
 
—59— 
 
 There was an old man by the name of Hicks, 
 who lived in our settlement. We always called him 
 Uncle Joe. He has a son named Franklin Hicks in 
 this county. The old man had a negro man that was 
 a carpenter. That negro hewed out all the frame 
 timbers for the first Methodist Church house in Co- 
 manche County. I do not know whether the darkey 
 was coming to work on the house or not, but rather 
 think the house was finished before the negro was 
 killed. Anyway, Hicks had sent the negro or start- 
 ed him to town for something and when the negro 
 had gotten in one and a half or two miles of Coman- 
 ehe town he was attacked by a party of Indians, he 
 ran from them, trying to save his life, but the In- 
 dians caught and killed and scalped him. This, I 
 think, was about the last murder committed by the 
 Indians up to the beginning of the war. 
 
 Now after telling of some of the Indian killings, 
 I will tell you of some of the trouble the old set- 
 tlers had with the negroes in this country. This 
 trouble began just after the war of 1861, those things 
 that occurred after the war are not given of my own 
 knowledge, but I feel that I have it correct as I got it 
 from men who were eye-witnesses and if I should 
 make any mistake, it will be so near correct that it 
 will amount to the same thing in effect and there 
 are plenty of people yet living in Comanche county 
 who can testify to this part of my little history. 
 
 T. J. Nabors was one of the first to settle in the 
 town of Comanche. He has three sons living in this 
 county yet and tw T o daughters, to-wit : Dora Green 
 
 and Francis Vernon; had also one other daughter 
 
— 60 — 
 
 whose whereabouts I do not know just at this time. 
 
 Uncle Jack Nabors, as he was usually called, 
 built a frame house on a lot one block south of the 
 public square and was running it as a hotel, this 
 was the first of its kind kept in the town. His boys 
 were not large enough yet to do the work that he 
 had to have done, so he hired a mulatto negro to do 
 the work around the place, his name was Mose, and 
 I think he belonged to Ship Carnes before the war. 
 That trifling negro from some cause, I never could 
 learn what, but guess it was just because he had got- 
 ten his freedom, and wanted to do some mean act, 
 waited one night until the family and all the board- 
 ers wore fast asleep, then got the oil can and threw 
 oil all over the outside of the house and set it on fire. 
 There was a well right in the “ell” of the house 
 where the cook room ell-ed off from the main 
 building; there were two buckets to draw water 
 with, and to keep the family from being able to put 
 out the fire in case they should wake up, the negro 
 cut the rope and let each bucket, rope and all, down 
 into the well before he fired the house, and after fir- 
 ing the house he went through a room where two of 
 the little boys were sleeping, and with a knife cut 
 each of the boys’ throats, then lit out for the woods. 
 Some of the family and one of the boarders were 
 awakened by the rays of the burning house and rais- 
 ed the alarm in time for all that were alive to get out 
 and save their lives, and they succeeded in getting 
 the two boys out that had been killed before the fire 
 reached them. When daylight came the whole town 
 was out and searching the country in every direction 
 
— 61 — 
 
 for the negro. They knew he had done the killing 
 and burning, by his being absent from his place of 
 work in the morning. I think the party that found 
 the negro was composed of Riley Huffman, Andy 
 Stewart, Hade Carnes and perhaps one or two more. 
 They came up with him about six miles below Co- 
 manche, on the east side of Indian Creek, and order- 
 ed him to stand until they tied his hands. One of 
 the boys got a rein off of his bridle and Andy Stew- 
 art,, I think it was, started to walk up to him with 
 the strap in his hand, when the negro saw he was go- 
 ing to be tied he drew a big knife and made for the 
 man with the tie strap in his hand, and they said the 
 negro would have killed him had not one of the boys, 
 I think it was Hade Carnes, shot him down in his 
 tracks. Afterwards they sent men down where the 
 negro was killed and dug a hole and rolled him in 
 and covered him up. The land is in cultivation 
 where he was buried; I think it is in the northeast 
 corner of George Watson’s farm. This was the first 
 killing of a white person by a negro in Comanche 
 County. 
 
 The whites still put up with a few negroes in this 
 county, hoping that old Mose was the only real mean 
 one they had, but still the colored race kept emigrat- 
 ing until there was a considerable settlement of 
 negroes settled in the northeast corner of the county, 
 also there were several white people living up in that 
 part of the county, and one day one of the white men 
 came to town to get some farm implements; I can’t 
 give that man’s name, though there are plenty of 
 men in the county who knew him well ; anyway, 
 
• 62 — 
 
 when he left home his wife was at the wash place 
 washing her clothes, and while there washing, a 
 negro man came along and began to curse and abuse 
 her and finally killed her with a shotgun. In a few 
 hours the news reached her husband in Comanche. 
 Then as fast as the men in town could get their 
 horses saddled, three and four at a time left at full 
 speed for where this woman was murdered, some 
 fifteen or eighteen miles from the town. The news 
 soon reached all over the county and every man who 
 could leave home or get a horse to ride was in the 
 woods hunting for the negro. Finally one of the 
 scouts struck his trail and stayed with it until they 
 found the negro. I was not in this county when 
 those negro crimes were committed. I can’t tell just 
 how long it was from the time the negro killed the 
 lady, I think it was two days, at any rate the crowd 
 who were hunting him soon got together. Now 
 reader I am not certain of the fact but I think the 
 one Who gave me the particulars said the crowd gave 
 the husband of the murdered woman the right to say 
 what sort of death the negro should die. They soon 
 had that part of the business settled, and about that 
 time the sheriff and a deputy or two rode up to see 
 What to do with the negro but they soon found they 
 had nothing to do with him. So they rode off and 
 the crowd hung him to a limb. After the negro was 
 hung one man caught the attention of the crowd and 
 made a short speech as follows: “Boys, this is the 
 
 second killing of white people by the negroes and it 
 is more than the people of Comanche will put up 
 with, so I propose that we give the colored race a 
 
— 63 - 
 
 reason able time to get out of the country, never to re- 
 turn, and that we never allow one of the color to 
 settle in the county.” After having made his talk 
 he just stepped forward and called out : ‘ ‘Every man 
 who favors this proposition form on my right,” and 
 it was only a few seconds until they were all in a 
 line. They decided at once on the number of days 
 they would allow the negroes to wind up their busi- 
 ness and get out. I don’t know just how many days 
 they gave them, but was told that some of them 
 didn’t claim more than half of the allotted time. So 
 I can say until the present time that Comanche Coun- 
 ty is the home of white people strictly, and always 
 will be, and the rising generation has just as great a 
 dislike for the negroes as the old settlers who drove 
 them out. 
 
 Comanche Comity has a great deal of good farm- 
 ing land in it and fine water and timber. This is 
 one cause of land being so high and another cause is 
 that it is a white man’s country strictly, and always 
 will be. There is a kind of malaria in this county 
 that affects the negro so suddenly that he can’t stay 
 over very long at a time. However, I don’t think 
 that any race of people ought to be mistreated on ac- 
 count of their color, but when they are guilty of such 
 crimes as they were in this county they deserved to 
 be driven out and kept out. 
 
 When I first settled on Mountain Creek, near 
 Newberg, I did not try to farm as I had no family but 
 my wife and self, so I would split rails for those who 
 were putting in farms through the fall and winter, 
 and in the spring run cattle for the cattle men. I 
 
—64— 
 
 remember one winter old man Watson, my wife’s 
 father, and myself split rails about three weeks in 
 post oak timber. Watson cut the timber and I split 
 the rails and the two of us made some 600 rails a day 
 the week round. This may sound like a heap of rails 
 for two men to make in a day, but there are yet wit- 
 nesses in Comanche County that will tell you that we 
 did the work. In the Spring when cow hunting be- 
 gan, I got a job, the two years I lived on Mountain 
 Creek, with Charley Campbell. We used to have a 
 great deal of fun on our cow hunts. About as funny 
 a thing as I found on a cow hunt took place on Logan 
 Creek about a mile from where Joel Nabors now 
 lives. A man by the name of Allsup, who was about 
 40 years of age, had just come from the state of Mis- 
 souri, and had been here but a short time till he mar- 
 ried a Miss Chison, who was about 30 years old. 
 After getting married, having a little money, $400 or 
 $500, and cattle being cheap those days, he thought 
 he would invest in cattle. He bought about 85 head. 
 When cow hunting began in the spring the cow men 
 would always get together when they went on a five 
 or six days’ hunt. So this man Allsup was a kind of 
 a fine haired man and just married, also fresh from 
 the old states, could not think of setting down 
 around a camp fire and broiling meat and eating like 
 the other cowboys, had his wife to bake him two 
 large round pones of lightbread and grind up a lit- 
 tle coffee and put in a little sack of sugar to sweeten 
 his coffee, and boil a ham. He could not think of 
 carrying his grub in a little old black, greasy wallet, 
 like the rest of us did, so having a pair of old-time 
 
- 65 - 
 
 saddle pockets that he had brought with him from 
 Missouri, he put the two pones of lightbread in one 
 end of his saddle pockets and a boiled ham in the 
 other end of the pockets and stuffed his sugar and 
 coffee in the corners. When we stopped for dinner 
 we all threw our saddles off and made a fire, cut 
 sticks and began to broil meat. Down on the ground 
 we sat with our meat and cold biscuit and black cof- 
 fee and began eating. Some one had missed Allsup, 
 and looking around they saw him about thirty steps 
 off in the shade of a tree, eating his dinner. That 
 night we penned the cattle rounded up during the 
 day in Mr. Logan’s pen and went down on the creek 
 a little ways and camped for the night. Allsup 
 still ate off to himself. We had two boys with us, 
 and they were mischievous you need not doubt it; 
 those boys were Lee Ruberth and Bob Tompstley. 
 Lee Ruberth is, or was a short time back, living in 
 Coryell County. Those boys decided that night that 
 they would have a little fun at Allsup’s expense. So 
 they got up the next morning before daylight and 
 cut two small forks and stack them in the ground 
 and then they made a crank of a bent stick, like a 
 grindstone crank, and got one of Allsup’s pones of 
 lightbread out of his saddle pocket, cut a hole 
 through the center of it, and hung it like a grind- 
 stone. AVhen daylight came and the crowd began to 
 get up, these two boys were standing out a little to 
 one side grinding their knives on Allsup’s pone of 
 lightbread. Had it ground about half aw r ay. Of 
 course everybody began to laugh and holler at the 
 sight, but Mr. Allsup began to rave and curse and 
 
said that he would whip them both. But Campbell 
 interfered and stopped him by telling him he could 
 not hurt those boys, that if he wanted to raise cattle 
 and have the help of other cow men, he must learn 
 when in Rome he must do as the Romans do. So 
 Allsup got quiet over the matter and before we got 
 off that trip he would eat a piece of broiled beef at 
 the camp fire as well as any of the boys. 
 
 After the town of Comanche was located, and 
 the business of the county was moved from Cora, the 
 old county seat, John McGuyer was elected sheriff. 
 He was the third elected sheriff of the county. Be- 
 fore that other sheriffs had no use for a deputy. 
 There were so few people in the county that the 
 sheriff could do all the business himself, but by this 
 time the county had a considerable settlement In it 
 and John McGuyer wanted a deputy, and he asked 
 me if I would serve as a deputy. At that time I was 
 living down at Old Cora. So I gave a $150 bond 
 with Charley Campbell and Ship Carnes on my bond, 
 Sam Steele, who lived at Cora, was Justice of the 
 Peace in that beat, that portion being the thickest 
 settled part of the county, it gave Steele and myself 
 quite a lot of business, and at the time I did not know 
 any of the duties of the sheriff’s office. But like 
 old David Crockett, I was determined to know that I 
 was right and then go ahead. At that time there 
 was nothing like a printed form for any kind of 
 business. So I went to T. C. Frost, a friend of mine, 
 a young lawyer, and he to'ld me he would write a 
 form for me any time anything came into my hand 
 that I did not understand. The first papers that 
 
— 67 — 
 
 came to me were a lot of citations. Of course I had 
 nothing to do but hunt up the parties and serve the 
 papers and make my returns on the same ; how and 
 when I had served them. Soon I had a lot of notes 
 sent to me for collection, so I went to see all the 
 parties and some of them paid their notes off and 
 others I had to sue. One of those notes was on a 
 man by the name of Tinker and in favor of old Un- 
 cle Dick Carnes. Tinker had left the county and 
 was living in McLennan County. So I was up against 
 it, now I could not get him by publication, for there 
 was not a paper published in a hundred miles of me. 
 I studied out this problem myself. I had Justice 
 Steele to issue a citation for Tinker and I mailed it 
 to the sheriff of McLennan County. When the day 
 of trial came the defendant was not there, so the 
 magistrate had to render a judgment in favor of 
 plaintiff. The next thing was an execution to levy 
 on the property, and sell same until the debt was 
 paid. I knew that Tinker had nothing but a house 
 and lot in the town of Cora. He had a wood shop on 
 the same lot. I knew that he could hold that as a 
 homestead. So I told Carnes that he would have to 
 point out property, that I could find nothing but his 
 homestead. So he said I could sell it, and also said I 
 point it out to you, and order you to levy on and sell 
 the same. I said alright Uncle Dick I will attend to 
 it at once. So I mounted my horse early next morn- 
 ing and lit out to Comanche, went into T. C. Frost’s 
 office and made my troubles known to him. He said 
 I could sell the homestead, by having Carnes to sign 
 an indemnity bond. I didn’t know any more what 
 
- 68 - 
 
 kind of an instrument that was than a goose. I said 
 to Frost: “What kind of a critter is that?” After 
 
 a big laugh he wrote forms for all kinds of business 
 that was likelyto come into my hands while discharg- 
 ing my duties as deputy sheriff. When I asked 
 Carnes to sign this bond he did not want to do it. 
 But I told him that I would not sell the property un- 
 less he did so ; he was somewhat bothered as well as 
 I had been, though thinking that Tinker would per- 
 haps not come back he signed the bond and I adver- 
 tised and sold the property. 
 
 When Tinker came home he came to me to know 
 how I had sold him out, so I showed him the bond I 
 had Carnes to sign and then he asked me how to pro- 
 ceed, how to get his home back. By this time I had 
 learned more about law and business than I had ever 
 known or perhaps ever would have known, if I had 
 not taken the deputyship as sheriff ; so I told Tinker 
 to go to Bany Ellis and file suit against Carnes for 
 damages, and he did so, and in a few#, days a citation 
 to Richard Carnes came to me and as I lived in three 
 hundred yards of Carnes, I just walked up to his 
 house and showed him the papers. He was surpris- 
 ed. He said: “ Cross, that house and lot and every- 
 
 thing on it isn’t worth $150, and he has sued for 
 $500 damages.” I told him that he was in the hole; 
 that if I had sold that house and lot like lie wanted 
 me to, it would have had me in the hole. I told him 
 there was only one way to get out of it, and that was 
 to compromise with Tinker before the day of trial. 
 He said the old man is mad now and I can’t do any- 
 thing with him. I said, “Uncle Dick, tell me what 
 
—69— 
 
 yo» are willing to do and I will try to get him to 
 compromise.” The debt that Tinker owed Carnes 
 was $40.00, and when I sold the house and lot it 
 brought $75.00. It paid the debt -and cost of suit, 
 leaving $23.00 that I had placed in the hands of Un- 
 cle Dick Tomksley, who was the first County Treas- 
 urer of this County. Mr. Carnes said, ‘‘I am willing 
 to give him what he is due me ($40.00) and turn his 
 stuff all back to him.” I told him that I knew that 
 Tinker would not pay the cost. Carnes then agreed 
 to settle the cost also. So I went and told Mr. Tinker 
 what Carnes had promised to do, and advised him to 
 accept it. He, Tinker, was a little stubborn about it, 
 but when I told him that when it came into court the 
 property would not be valued at one-fourth what he 
 had sued for, and there were some chances for him to 
 have to pay some of the cost ; he decided to compro- 
 mise. Uncle Dick Carnes was sure he would get the 
 place back for $75.00, as it was his son-in-law that 
 bought it at the sheriff’s sale, but I was told that his 
 son-in-law, Tom Matthews, made him pay him $20.00 
 before he would give up the house and lot, after pav- 
 ing his purchase money back. 
 
 Now reader you will pardon me for giving an ac- 
 count of my official duties in those days. I only write 
 it in defense of the early settlers of Comanche Coun- 
 ty, for the people of this county are now, and always 
 have been, a law-abiding people. The reason why I 
 give this sketch is to publicly answer private ques- 
 tions that have been asked me of men who came into 
 this county in later days. Those questions are as 
 follows: Did you not often take the law into your 
 
— 70 - 
 
 own hands in those early days, such as having vigil- 
 ant committees and organized mobs? To this I an- 
 swer: Nay. True I am frank to admit that owing 
 
 to the blackness and awfulness of a few crimes com- 
 mitted in the country, the good people of the county 
 were forced to reach out a little beyond the limits of 
 the law, however, those cases were mostly among the 
 colored race and have been spoken of before in this 
 book. 
 
 The first year of the Civil War the Comanche 
 boys, or at least some of us, joined a regiment of 
 State soldiers. Col. Norris of Waco got a notice from 
 the governor to get up a regiment for frontier pro- 
 tection. One company was made up of men from 
 Lampasas, Coryell and Comanche Counties, with a 
 few men from Hamilton County. We all came to- 
 gether in the upper part of Hamilton County and 
 there elected our officers from Captain down to Cor- 
 poral. Prank Collier of Comanche Comity was elect- 
 ed captain of the company. William Roag of Lam- 
 pasas was elected first lieutenant; William Perry- 
 man, second lieutenant; Dr. Robinson of Comanche 
 County, third lieutenant; and below are the names of 
 the boys who went out in this regiment from Co- 
 manche County. It has been so long I may have for- 
 gotten some, though I think I can name the most of 
 them. They were Prank Collier, Aaron Cunning- 
 ham, Grandville Hachworth, William Watson, James 
 Sanderford, Chas. Isharn, David Carnes, Leonard 
 Coker, Alec Tuggle, Dr. Robinson, James Baggett, 
 Jack Wright, T. C. Wright, T. M. Cross, Levi Tug- 
 gle and Bob Marshall. This last man on the list was 
 
— 71 — 
 
 nick-named while in the army. He was so dirty with 
 his cooking that the boys called him Hog Marshall, 
 and he went by that name a long time after the war. 
 He was a noble-hearted, good boy, though, and when 
 it came to fighting Indians he was always at his 
 place, as cool and as brave a man as Comanche ever 
 sent out. Some of the boys returned after the 
 twelve months were out, and some went into Col. Mc- 
 Cord’s regiment of Confederate soldiers. Low Tug- 
 gle died while in the army, of winter fever, and 
 James Baggett, while on a scout, got after a wild tur- 
 key ; he ran up to the turkey and the horse got to 
 pitching and threw him off and his gun, which was 
 hanging to the horn of his saddle, went off, sending 
 the bullet through his head, killing him instantly. 
 So he and Low Tuggle are two of Comanche’s brave 
 boys that are today sleeping in the quiet tombs at old 
 Camp Colorado, in the east edge of Coleman County. 
 Low Tuggle has one brother and one sister yet living 
 in Comanche County. Thomas Tuggle and Mrs. 
 Criswell, if any of James Baggett’s family are living, 
 I don’t know anything of them, he was a brother to 
 the little Baggett boy that was killed by the Indians 
 on Leon River, which circumstance has already been 
 given in this book. 
 
 I have written something about the first settlers 
 of this country and their hardships. I will now give 
 a short sketch of some of their enjoyments and 
 amusements. I will begin with Uncle Ship Carnes. 
 He was a great fellow for hunting and killing deer 
 and turkeys and while he lived at Cora he killed a 
 great many deer. In the summer season the deer 
 
- 72 - 
 
 left the timber and gathered in small bunches out on 
 the prairie between the Leon and Cowhouse so a man 
 could not slip up on them to get within rifle-shot. 
 They could see a man a mile and a half in every di- 
 rection. So Uncle Ship studied up a plan to get 
 close enough to kill them. He got a large beef-hide 
 and stretched it tight and dried it until it was a flint 
 hide. Then he got a set of plow harness and a single- 
 tree and hitched his old grey horse to the beef hide 
 and he would go out to the Cowhouse prairie and 
 when he saw a bunch of deer he would hitch his old 
 grey horse to the hide, put a small bell on the horse 
 and sit down on the hide and with his rope line he 
 would drive the horse up within a few hundred yards 
 of the deer, then just sit there on the hide with his 
 gun in his hand and let the horse graze around and 
 the deer hearing the bell and seeing the horse would 
 let them come up within gunshot and Carnes would 
 kill one. He seldom failed to get a deer when he 
 Avent out on his beef hide. 
 
 After Comanche became a right smart little town 
 old Uncle Ship Carnes thought he would try the mill- 
 ing and distilling business a while, so he went over on 
 Rush Creek, north of Comanche, and put up his little 
 business and began work. He had a span of mules 
 which he thought a great deal of, to do his hauling 
 around the place. Those mules were a very fine 
 span for those days. Stock at that time were not 
 graded up as they are now. About the same time 
 Ship’s brother, Clate Carnes, then a young, able- 
 bodied man, settled a place not far off and put in a 
 nice little farm and raised as fine corn as you ever 
 
— 73 - 
 
 saw. Ship Carnes had let his mules out oh the range 
 for a while, having no use for them. and oft# day 
 date found Ship’s mules in his corn held when the 
 earn was in full roasting ears. Cl ate drove the 
 mules to his brother and told him he would have to 
 keep them up, that he had a good fence and they 
 would just break over anywhere they they came to 
 it. His brother, Ship, said he would try to keep 
 them out. but the next morning date found the 
 mules in his corn again. He took them back to his 
 brother the second time and still when he went to 
 his field he found the mules in his corn again, date 
 Carnes was always a man of a smooth temper, and 
 easy to get along with, but by this time he was some- 
 what stirred up. So. finding them in his corn about 
 the third time, he carried rails from the ontside and 
 built a square pen right in the middle of the corn 
 field and put the mules in it. When he had built it 
 so high that the mules could not get their heads to 
 the top, he carried heavy rails and locked the corners 
 good and went on about his business. So in five or 
 six days Ship Carnes wanted his mules to haul some- 
 thing, he went out on the range and could uot find 
 them. After hunting about two days he thought 
 perhaps they had gotten into date’s field again, so 
 he went to the field and looked all around the fence 
 for their tracks. He could not see any sign of them, 
 but just before be left he heard one of the mules bray 
 right in the middle of the field, so he hitched his 
 horse and went into the field afoot; and after hunt- 
 ing a good while he came onto them in the high pen. 
 He just took his mules home and never said a word 
 
— 74 — 
 
 to Clate about it, neither did his mules ever get into 
 date’s field any more. Somehow they got tired of 
 that field. 
 
 When the war was over and I came back to 
 Comanche County I bought a place of one hundred 
 and sixty acres of land from Dave Carnes. It lay 
 on South Leon about three miles above Newberg. 
 This was as fine a piece of land as there was in Co- 
 manche County. It is right in the center of the big 
 farm known as the old Cox place. When I bought 
 that place it had a house on it and a dug well in the 
 yard and ten acres of land in cultivation. I bought 
 it for three hundred dollars, and every foot was first- 
 class land. In the spring, after I had planted that 
 little field in corn and it was up big enough to plow, 
 I took a notion to go down in Navarro County and 
 haul freight that summer as there was good money in 
 freighting .So I let a negro fellow have the corn to 
 cultivate and gather on the halves. The day before 
 I left Dave Carnes was over to see me and told me if 
 I would come over to Comanche before I left he and 
 his wife would sign a deed to the land, but I wanted 
 to get off and told him that we could attend to that 
 in the fall when I got back. So just went on without 
 the deed. 
 
 I found Navarro County a fine farming country 
 and a good place to make money, and I stayed down 
 there four years. However, the winter after I left 
 my place in Comanche County I was going down to 
 Bryant Station after a load of freight for Spring Hill 
 and on the way down I met Joel Nabors. Dick Key- 
 ser and Bob Marshall all loaded with freight for Co- 
 
■75— 
 
 manche. As it was about dark when we met, we 
 camped together for the night and 1 made Keyser 
 agent for my place in Comanche county, as lie lived 
 close by. I told him to rent it for me and look after 
 my place till I came back; which he agreed to do. 
 He asked me what he should do with the rent corn 
 that was then on the place. I told him to sell it and 
 pay the money to Dave Carnes. He said there was 
 about $50.00 worth of corn and as he had to buy corn 
 he would take it and pay the money to Carnes. I 
 told him to just run the place that way until 1 moved 
 back. I remained in Navarro County four years, 
 thinking what a nice place I had in Comanche 
 County. 
 
 About this time I got a letter from my father in 
 Bell County, telling me that he had a good stock of 
 cattle and was getting too old to run after them ; that 
 if 1 would come down there and take charge of the 
 cattle he would give me a half interest in the stock. 
 I knew that was a good lay, so went down to Bell 
 County and engaged in the stock business. When I 
 reached Bell County and got things shaped up 
 all right I went up to Comanche intending to fix up 
 my land deed and to try to lease the place to some 
 one for about three years. I found, however, that 
 Dave Carnes’ wife had died and the deed was in a 
 little girl who had grown up to womanhood; the 
 place that I had lost by a little negligence was then 
 worth a thousand dollars. Today it is worth six or 
 seven thousand dollars. 
 
 There are also six acres of land lying in the cen- 
 ter of Alvin’s farm at Old Cora, just east of the pub- 
 
76 - 
 
 lie well, that .justly belongs to me. I bought it from 
 T. C. Frost and paid him the money for it. I had a 
 deed to that place, although I had not put it on re- 
 cord. Also my father had about thirty-three acres 
 of land where the first steam mill in the county was 
 built. It lay on each side of the river. If he ever 
 sold that place I have no knowledge of it, although 
 he may have sold it in the time of the war, but 
 the record doesn’t show any deed from J. M. Cross 
 to anyone for that land. So you see what a little 
 carelessness does for a man. I have no kick coming, 
 however, it was all my own fault. If there is any- 
 thing that I hate to hear, it is a chronic growler. It 
 is all gone and I am still living and as happy as a 
 big sunflower. 
 
 Now reader allow me to write a page or two on 
 corrections of a few things I have written in giving 
 the early history of Comanche County. One of these 
 mistakes was in the write-up of the negro burning 
 Nabors’ house. Joel Nabors tells me that the negro 
 also killed two colored girls in the house and the 
 building burned down on them. I had heard that 
 before, although I had not put it in the first write-up. 
 Also that it was George McCarney and Guy Carnes 
 who were with Hod Carnes when the negro was kill- 
 ed. These are the men instead of Andrew Stewart 
 and Riley Huffman., as I had first given it. Also in 
 the case of the negro killing the white lady in the 
 county up north of Comanche, Joel Nabors told m« 
 that her husband was named Williams. After seeing 
 Nabors I met another man who told me that the man 
 was named Stevens and he affirmed it by saying that 
 
— 77 — 
 
 he knew what he was talking about for he was at the 
 hanging of the negro; so I just gave it as I got it. 
 They both agreed on the lady being the daughter ®f 
 Mr. Hulsey, who is yet living in this county. 
 
 Now to the people of Comanche County who 
 may read this book. I will just say that I have only 
 written of the early settling of the county and given 
 a description of the county, the early prices of laud 
 and the wonderful supply of wild game and the In- 
 dian troubles that occurred while I was living in the 
 County. So I will now ring off for a while, as I want 
 to write up the early history of Brown County. I 
 will have to speak of some things that oceured in 
 Comanche County while writing up other counties. 
 If any of the old settlers of Comanche County Ind 
 any errors in the record of facts given, they wiM 
 know it is an honest mistake, as it amounts t© the 
 same in substance. 
 
 BROWN COUNTY. 
 
 I will now try to give you some of the ♦arly hap- 
 penings of Brown County. I have written mp the 
 early days of Milam, Bell, Lampasas, Coryell, Ham- 
 ilton and Comanche counties and can say of a truth 
 that Milam County was the only one of the group 
 mentioned that was organized or had aayeat Mwing 
 
- 78 - 
 
 in it when I first came. Brown County had a few 
 families to settle there while I was living in Coman- 
 che, although I had scouted the country over before 
 a white man ever settled in that section. So I think 
 I can give a very correct history of its early days. 
 
 The first parties to settle on the Bayou, near 
 where Brownwood now is, were Judge Fisk, Col. 
 Adams and Welcome Chandler. Chandler lived on 
 the east side of the Bayou on what is now known as 
 the Swinden Farm. Fisk and Adams lived on the 
 west side of the Bayou. The town now covers each 
 of their places. When Judge Fisk was building his 
 roek house in time of the war someone asked him 
 why did he cover one side of the house with pine 
 shingles. He said because he wanted to see which 
 would last the longest, so he would know which to 
 use in the future. He was then seventy years old ; 
 he was always a lively and good humored old man. 
 The old stone building is still standing and I suppose 
 the shingles are alright yet. 
 
 The first hotel in Brownwood was erected and 
 kept by one Mr. Hodge. He was the husband of 
 Grandma Hodge, who is still living in Brownwood. 
 The house had the name of the Star Hotel. Mrs. 
 Hodge is still enjoying reasonably good health, and is 
 very interesting to anyone when talking of the early 
 days. She is loved by every one who knows her; 
 and just here I want to say that the ladies of the 
 early settling of our country deserve as much credit 
 for their heroism as the men, for they really had the 
 hardest cross to bear, to stay at home and take care 
 of things while the men were after the Indians. 
 
- 79 - 
 
 Brown County was partly organized three years 
 before the war began though it was not completed 
 until after the close of the war. I know the first 
 District Court that was held after the war was three 
 miles below where the town now is. The county 
 seat was first located down there on old Uncle Billy 
 Connell’s place. It was there that the first District 
 Court was held and at the time I was living on the 
 Jim Ned, near Thrifty. Mr. McCulloch and myself 
 were summoned on the Petit Jury. So when the 
 Court convened we were there. The Court House 
 was a little log cabin about three hundred yards from 
 Billy Connell’s house. After the Judge had charged 
 the Grand Jury he called up the Petit Jury and 
 called over the list and we all answered to our names, 
 then the court adjourned until nine o’clock next 
 morning. The judge and the attorney and lawyers 
 all went out to Mr. Connell’s for the night, and the 
 rest of us who were summoned to attend court just 
 camped at the court house. We took our horses 
 across a slough and hobbled them in a low valley. 
 We thought we had them hidden from the Indians, 
 but were mistaken, for the next morning we found 
 that the Indians had been among them and had stolen 
 my horse and Mr. McCulloch’s. Those two horses 
 had gotten out on the high ground. They did not 
 find the rest of the horses. So Mack and I borrowed 
 horses from Brooks Lee and Dan Moseley and David 
 Lee went with us .We hit their trail and found that 
 they had crossed the Bayou and were making down 
 the divide between Indian Creek and the Bayou. 
 After about six miles the trail turned east, we then 
 
— 86 — 
 
 k®ew that. they were going down the country to steal 
 m*r* horses. So we kept the trail and it went right 
 «4own that high bluff by Dick Grady’s house. We 
 fallowed the trail on below where Goldthwaite now 
 is. Dan Mosley was almost equal to a bloodhound 
 oh a trail, though here they began to scatter, so we 
 oeuld not trail them any further. We then notified 
 the few settlers that we saw that the Indians were 
 ija the country, and turned back for home. On our 
 way back we struck another trail going out from the 
 settlements and followed it until we came to where 
 the Indians camped all night. There we found that 
 we were on a cold trail, so turned back. We were 
 then up on Clear Creek. When we got back to the 
 Mullens ranch, what is now called Thrifty, McCul - 
 loeh and myself stopped at home and sent our borrow- 
 ed horses home by Moseley and Lee. I have never 
 heard from that term of District Court from the day 
 I left until now. If I was fined for my non-attend- 
 anee the next morning I have not yet been notified 
 ef the fact. 
 
 In the winter of 1861 my father, Kingsbury and 
 myself, all then living in Comanche County, thought 
 we would buy a drove of hogs and fatten them for 
 the market, after driving them to Chappel Hill, in 
 Washington County. So Ave went up in BroAvn 
 County to buy the hogs. There we made headquar- 
 ters at Mr. Chandler’s, about a mile Bast of Avhere 
 Browmvood. now is, on the east side of the Bayou. 
 Chandler had a stock field, and when we bought a 
 bunch of hogs Ave had them delivered in that field. 
 We got about a hundred and fifty head and drove 
 
— 81 - 
 
 them down to old Uncle Billy Brown’s and penned 
 there the first night, going from there on to Chappel 
 Hill. I only speak of this hog business that the 
 reader may know that I was here and that I knew 
 who else was here at that time. I bought hogs from 
 every man on the Bayou, who were as follows : 
 Chandler, Adams, Harris, Clemons, Boberts, Baugh, 
 Anderson and Press Brewer. Those are the men we 
 saw on that trip. There were a few more families 
 above and below on the Bayou, also some settlers out 
 on small creeks in the country. Before the country 
 was settled up the Pecau Bayou valley was the most 
 beautiful scene I ever saw. There was no brush on 
 it. You could see a turkey as far as your eyes could 
 tell what it was. After the country had begun to 
 settle and the fire was kept out, we did not have the 
 prairie grass burned off. It was then that the mes- 
 quite timber began to grow up. In a few years the 
 Bayou valley was a solid mesquite growth large 
 enough to make fence posts. There is nothing in the 
 way of land marks in the country today that looks 
 anything like what they used to except the little 
 round mountain and the bluff with those little red 
 sand rocks on them. 
 
 The first Indian fight that occurred in Brown 
 County after it was organized was in the valley 
 south of Welcome Chandler’s. The place is now 
 called the Swinden farm. One of Mr. Chandler’s 
 negroes saw the Indians rounding up the horses in 
 the valley and gave the alarm. There was Sut. Har- 
 ris and three or four other men at the house, but 
 
— 82 — 
 
 they had nothing besides their side arms, no long- 
 range guns. They went out to attack the Indians, 
 but they were too strong for them, and soon forced 
 them to get back to the house. The Indians took the 
 horses and went up the Bayou on the east side, going 
 in the direction of Delaware. After they had gone 
 six or seven miles they came across Capt. John Con- 
 nor and two other men, who were traveling a trail 
 leading from Comanche to Old Colorado Post. The 
 Indians charged them, and shot one of Conner’s men, 
 badly wounding him. At the first of the fight the 
 other man, 1 think his name was Williams, in order 
 to defend his wounded companion, dismounted and 
 killed one Indian. The Indians succeeded in getting 
 his horse, and then left them. The wounded man 
 was taken to Chandler’s house, where he lay about 
 three months before he recovered. I was traveling 
 that trail a few days after the fight and found some 
 of Capt. Conner’s papers scattered on the battle 
 ground. 
 
 The first trouble that occurred among the early 
 settlers of this country, in which firearms were used, 
 was between Sut Harris and Bural Roberts, which 
 ended in Harris shooting and killing Roberts, and a 
 man by the name of Anderson shot Harris, inflicting 
 a wound from which he died in a few days. Ander- 
 son seemed not to be concerned in the difficulty ; why 
 he shot Harris no one could tell. Anderson left the 
 country and has never been heard of since. The 
 next killing, to the best of my recollection, was 
 Clements and Isaacs. This took place on the Bayou 
 
at Clements’ house, . a boat oae and one-half miles 
 above Brownwood. I think Isaacs was a brother to 
 Clements' wife. I never knew what brought up the 
 difficulty, though Isaacs had been living with Clem- 
 ents for a long time and was an old bachelor. The 
 difficulty arose at the dinner table, they both sprang 
 tip from the table with knives in their hands, and cut 
 each other to death, both dying at once. 
 
 Brown County was settled up as a general thing 
 by a high-minded class of citizenship, and at this 
 writing, with its vastly increased population, they 
 are still considered a law-abiding people. The 
 county officers always used their best endeavors to 
 try to keep down crime, but for a few years, be- 
 tween 18S0 and 1887. there was considerable trouble 
 between the stockmen and the. farmers, mostly caus- 
 ed by the country being fenced up with barbed wire. 
 It resulted in the death of several men. and a long 
 law suit for many others. I shall not try to give any 
 of the particulars of this trouble for two reasons ; 
 first, that 1 was living in Bell County at that time, 
 and only got what I know from heresay. The news- 
 papers did not say much about it. This is my reason 
 for not giving any names or particulars. My other 
 reason is that these old troubles have passed away, 
 the tomahawk buried, doth rest in the ground, and 
 peace and good will prevail among the people; so I 
 leave everything quiet as it is. 
 
 Now as to the spiritual interests of Brown Coun- 
 ty in its early days: The first Methodist preacher 
 
 was called Brother H. Childress ; he was sent to the 
 
extreme frontier, and was better known in those days 
 as the “bear hunter preacher.’’ His appointments 
 on the circuit were as follows: First at the Beazley 
 
 crossing on the Colorado River; from there down the 
 river to Hanna Valley, what is now called Regency ; 
 then down to a private house near the old Williams 
 ranch; from there around by Blanket Springs; then 
 up the Bayou by Clements’ house, above Brown- 
 wood; and from there to his last appointment at John 
 Mullens’ ranch near Thrifty. At this place the first 
 Methodist church in Brown County was organized. 
 There are five of those old members yet living, to- 
 wit: , Mrs. Mullens, the wife of Uncle Billie Mullens, 
 of Lampasas County; Jane Cross, wife of R. Y. Cross, 
 who lives with Neal Shore three miles above Thrifty ; 
 John Mullens and wife living near Thrifty, and my- 
 self. living at Blanket. I am glad to say that those 
 old members all have a bright hope of a very near 
 future. 
 
 Just after the close of the war I went with Bro. 
 Childress the whole round on his circuit, as the In- 
 dians were often passing through the country and 
 everybody had to carry arms. This old preacher al- 
 ways carried a shotgun and a six-shooter. I saw him 
 often go into the house where he was to preach on 
 Sunday and set his gun up against the wall and lay 
 his six-shooter down under the table, get out his book 
 and go to preaching. It did not seem to embarras 
 him in any way. 
 
 The first camp meeting held in the county was 
 on Jim Ned Creek about one and a half miles above 
 Thrifty. It was conducted by Elder Johnson, of 
 
- 85 - 
 
 Meridian, and Rev. Groves, of Comanche. Johnson 
 was the first elder that presided in the county. Un- 
 cle Charley Mullins, who is the father of John Mul- 
 lins, of Thrifty, was at that meeting. He had been 
 blind for years, but was full of life and enjoyed the 
 meeting as well as any of the young people. This 
 camp meeting took place during the first year after 
 the war. 
 
 Now after having given this sketch history of 
 seven comities, beginning at Milam and closing with 
 Brown County, the rest of this book will be of inci- 
 dents I did not get as I first wrote up the counties. 
 Those things that have come to my mind since I be- 
 gan the work. 1 will also tell some things that oc- 
 curred in the time of, and just after the war, though 
 the facts will all be connected with these counties, 
 and will be as interesting as any other part of the 
 book. 
 
 Every history and sketch that I have ever 
 seen have given great honor to the old men who came 
 to Texas in the early days, drove the Indians out of 
 the country and brought about civilization, opening 
 up the way for those who came later on and for the 
 rising generation of the grand State of Texas. Yet 
 I have never seen a word of credit spoken for the 
 women of the early settlers, who, I think, are entitled 
 to as much honor and credit as the men, if not more. 
 Now I want to say just here, that the old settlers’ 
 wives and daughters had just as hard a time as the 
 men. There was Miss Whitney, the young lady who 
 was murdered in the school house in Hamilton Coun- 
 ty. She could have left the house and taken shelter 
 
- 86 - 
 
 in the bottoms and thickets on the creek. She would 
 rant leave the small children to be killed, but sent the 
 larger children to the brush and stayed and sacrificed 
 her own life for the little children. No man ever 
 made a greater sacrifice than she did. Another inci- 
 dent was that of Mrs. Taylor, of Bell County; when 
 the Indians were all around trying to get to the door 
 and break into the house and Mr. Taylor and the 
 boys watching at the port holes with their guns 
 standing the Indians off as best they could, this Mrs. 
 Taylor was moulding bullets for the old man and 
 boys, and when the Indians fired the east end of the 
 building and it burned to the little ball between there 
 and the room they were in, Mrs. Taylor lay her bul- 
 let moulds down and drew the dining table up in the 
 corner; standing on the table she opened a hole 
 through the roof and had the children hand her what 
 water they had ; when the water gave out she called 
 for all the milk they had in the house and with that 
 she put the fire out, so saving the whole family from 
 perishing in the flames. Just think of that old lady 
 standing on the table with her head and shoulders 
 above the roof and the Indians shooting arrows at 
 her all the time she was putting out the fire. No 
 man ever had more presence of mind or took more 
 desperate chances than that old woman. 
 
 I have just taken those two circumstances the 
 second time in order to illustrate what I have to say 
 of the women. All the incidents in this chapter are 
 things that happened right along in the counties I 
 am giving the history of. There never was a time 
 when the Indians made a raid on the settlements that 
 
—87— 
 
 the women did not suffer as much as the men, if not 
 from loss of blood, it was from loss of sleep and un- 
 easiness. Just think of the old lady Baggett, of Co- 
 manche County, standing watch over her murdered 
 boy for several hours before she had anyone to help 
 her bear her burden. I honestly believe, from what 
 I have read in the history of the Indian Depredations 
 in Texas, that there has been as much suffering 
 among the women as there was among the men. 
 
 In the year 1866 I moved from Brown to Na- 
 varro County. In the fall of 1871 I moved back to 
 Bell County. By this time it was a considerable 
 farming country. The greater part, of the county 
 was yet open and free to stock. For about four years 
 I was in the cattle business. My wife became afflict- 
 ed with a trouble which ran into consumption. I 
 knew she could not last long and I could not look 
 after my cattle and wait on her, so I sold out my en- 
 tire stock to a party of northern men. I trusted 
 them for eight thousand dollars which they complete- 
 ly beat me out of, leaving me flat broke, still by good 
 management I have held my own ever since. In the 
 winter of 1875, having lost my wife and being in a 
 pretty hard shape, financially. I came back to Brown 
 County and worked that winter and the next spring 
 for my brother, W. B. Cross. His oldest son, J. R. 
 Cross, came with me from Bell County. My brother 
 had not yet moved his family from Bell County J. 
 R. and myself improved his place. It is the place 
 that J. R. Cross now lives on. While up there that 
 year I got acquainted with several people who had 
 come in after I had left there. At this place my 
 
- 88 - 
 
 brother, W. B. Cross, had bought 2,500 acres of land 
 from Judge Fisk. His son-in-law, Dr. Lane, purchas- 
 ed a little place on the same tract of land. lie had 
 built a little log house on this place and moved his 
 family up there. J. R. Cross and myself boarded 
 with him while we were at work for my brother. At 
 that time the citizens living in that community were 
 as follows : Dr. Lane, Mick Stover, Ike Stover, Joe 
 Rennick and old Uncle Van. I have forgotten his 
 given name. On McAnnally Creek was old Capt. 
 Woods, W. M. Bratton, Thomas Inman, Louis Mc- 
 Cord, and Sam Hodge. Between this settlement and 
 Brownwood was one house, that was where Dan 
 Mosely lived. Just about the time I left R. D. For- 
 sythe moved into this settlement and settled the 
 place he is now on. Forsythe was one of the best 
 financiers that ever struck this country. When 
 he landed here he was comparatively a poor man, 
 but being strictly honest in his dealings with every- 
 body was soon in good circumstances. Should 
 he or any of his offspring read this book I 
 don’t want them to think that I am writing this as 
 flattery. I know just what I am writing. There 
 never was a man that was trying to live right, I care 
 not what his troubles were, if he went to R. D. For- 
 sythe he got the help he wanted. 
 
 Now as I am writing up Brown County, and 
 have before said that everything in this book would 
 be of my own personal knowledge, I will state here 
 that the last desperate murdering by the Indians that 
 took place in Brown County before the war, has been 
 written up for a Brownwood paper by a friend and 
 
—89— 
 
 Brownwood man, Mr. Henry Ford, (whose death 
 occurred on the 10th of March of this year) and as I 
 was at that time in Comanche County, I feel assured 
 that Mr. Ford has it more correct than I can give it. 
 Having a copy of this paper before me, I will give 
 the story just as he gave it, knowing it to be correct: 
 
 THE MURDER OF THE JACKSON FAMILY. 
 
 “In the early part of the year 1858 a man by the 
 name of Jackson, with his family, settled at what was 
 afterwards known as the Jackson Springs, then in 
 Brown County, now in Mills. The family consisted 
 of himself, his wife, one daughter 18 years of age, 
 and three small children, ranging in ages from 7 to 
 12 years. Late in the fall of that year, Mr. Jackson 
 took his family out pecan hunting, intending to go to 
 a place on the Bayou where A1 Jay and Chas. Kirk- 
 patrick were getting out board timber. They had 
 reached the middle of the Jackson valley, about two 
 and a half miles from home, when they were surpris- 
 ed by a band of Indians, who brutally murdered the 
 father, mother, daughter and youngest child, and 
 carried off the older children, a boy and a girl. When 
 the victims were discovered soon after by the Kirk- 
 patricks their mutilated bodies presented a ghastly 
 spectacle. The young lady had been treated with 
 horrible, fiendish cruelty and was found a short dis- 
 tance from the others with her throat cut. The 
 
- 90 - 
 
 alarm was given and a runner sent to Camp Colo- 
 rado to notify the soldiers who were stationed there. 
 They immediately responded, and Sergeant Alby, 
 with fifteen men, started out to take the trail ; the 
 scattered neighbors gathered to perform the sad task 
 of burying the dead. Wrapped in blankets the 
 bodies were buried where they fell ; the father and 
 mother in one grave and the two others in another. 
 These lonely graves are still to be seen in the Jack- 
 son valley — mute witnesses of the danger which be- 
 set the path of the early settlers. 
 
 The Indians continued their raid into Coryell 
 County stealing horses and on their way back cross- 
 ed the mountains near Mercer’s Gap into Brown 
 County. Late in the evening of the day they crossed 
 the mountains the mail carrier between Meridian 
 and Brownwood, passing through Mercer’s Gap, saw 
 them. He turned back to Elijah Barcroft’s place on 
 Mercer’s Creek and gave the alarm. The next day 
 Mr. Barcroft, Jas. Barcroft, Dan Cox, (who was af- 
 terwards killed in the Dove Creek fight) Thos. Dea- 
 ton. Win. Clements, Jesse Bonds, John Carnes, Jas. 
 Holmsley, Sim Welch, Frank Collins, Lon Price and 
 two other men whose names we have been unable to 
 obtain, all from Comanche County, took the trail in 
 the middle of the afternoon. They decided that six 
 of their number go to Salt Gap, which was then a 
 noted Indian pass-way, in hope of intercepting them. 
 The other seven men followed the trail. When near 
 Salt Gap the six men saw the Indians going into 
 Camp on the bank of a Creek at a Spring. The 
 whites dropped back out of sight into a ravine which 
 
91 — 
 
 they followed until close to the Indians. There they 
 remained until everything was silent in the Indian 
 camp, when they took a survey of the situation, and 
 in doing so ran into the Indians’ horse herd, thirty in 
 number, which were quietly grazed out of hearing of 
 the sleeping Indians; they drove them back to 
 Blanket Creek, left them there and returned to the 
 ravine. At day-break they charged the Indians who 
 were up and getting breakfast. The Indians were 
 taken completely by surprise. Don Cox killed one, 
 who fell dead in the creek. The others succeeded in 
 gaining the shelter of a near-by thicket, except one 
 who faced the whites, and standing over the dead 
 body of his comrade discharged arrows so fast and 
 with such accuracy of aim that the whites were forc- 
 ed to take to the shelter of trees. He put eighteen 
 arrows into a tree behind which Wm. Clements was 
 standing, and one through his clothes. Tom Deaton 
 also had one shot through his clothes. Jesse Bonds 
 was shot in the breast The arrow coming out 
 through his back. Bonds, though desperately wound- 
 ed, finally recovered. The Indian’s supply of arrows 
 was soon exhausted, and he then made a dash for the 
 thicket, badly wounded. The whites withdrew and 
 not having tasted food since leaving home, they 
 started back on the trail. At Cox’s Gap they met 
 about thirty men from Coryell County, who were 
 following the trail. From these men they learned 
 that the Jackson family had been murdered, also that 
 the Indians had divided near Cox’s Gap, a part of the 
 band diverging a little to the south. It was then 
 decided that the children must be with the Indians 
 
— 92 — 
 
 who went in the southerly direction, as they were not 
 seen during the fight. The Coryell men being well 
 supplied with provisions, rested long enough to eat a 
 hasty meal and went back to where the fight took 
 place, incidentally to look up the dead Indians and 
 see if any more had been killed. From there they 
 went south down Salt Creek until they found the 
 other trail, followed it about two miles and found 
 where they had camped the night before. The camp 
 showed evidences of having been hastily abandoned. 
 They then scattered out, following the general direc- 
 tion of the trail. A short distance further one of the 
 men thought he saw a human face peering from a 
 thicket. This he communicated to the others, the 
 thicket was at once surrounded but no signs if life 
 could be seen. Two men were detailed to crawl into 
 the thicket. They had not gone far when they dis- 
 covered the two children trying to cover themselves 
 with leaves. The children were overjoyed at finding 
 themselves among white men and the pathetic scene 
 that followed was one never to be forgotten by the 
 men who were present. The children were worn out 
 with their terrible experience and the exhausting 
 trip they had made. The little girl’s back was cov- 
 ered with freshly made scars where she had been 
 prodded with arrows to make her keep up. From 
 the boy it was learned that when the fight com- 
 menced with the other band of Indians the shooting 
 could be plainly heard and the Indians they were 
 with became very much excited and hastily broke 
 camp, leaving them there. The boy and his sister 
 sought the shelter of the thicket in which they were 
 
•93— 
 
 found, crawled into it and fell asleep. Being awak- 
 ened by the noise of the passing horsemen, the boy 
 peered out, and thinking that the Indians were com- 
 ing back for them they undertook to cover them- 
 selves with leaves. The two children having been re- 
 covered, the whole party returned home. Soon after 
 a married brother came after the children and took 
 them to his home near Round Rock.” 
 
 THE MURDER OF OLD UNCLE PETER JOHN- 
 SON OF COMANCHE COUNTY. 
 
 In the year 1858 old Uncle Peter Johnson, who 
 was a very early settler in Comanche County, was on 
 his way to mill (he had to go to Meridian Mills, in 
 Bosque County) to have some wheat ground, having 
 to camp out several nights on the trip, he took his 
 little boy with him. The boy was eleven years old. 
 His name was Peter also — named for his father. Just 
 as they were passing a little round mountain between 
 Leon and Bosque Creeks, a party of Indians charged 
 on them and killed the old man. He was working a 
 yoke of oxen. The Indians shot one of the steers in 
 order to stop the wagon, so they could kill and scalp 
 the old man. (I will state just here that this killing 
 of Mr. Johnson is what gave name to the mountain of 
 Johnson Peak.) After killing and scalping the old 
 man, they took Peter, junior, the eleven-year-old boy 
 and carried him off. I think it was about ten days 
 
— 94 — 
 
 that the boy was out. He wandered around in the 
 woods until he was very nearly starved. The In- 
 dians tried to make him eat raw meat like they did, 
 but he would not eat it. It is supposed they turned 
 him loose when they saw that they could not make 
 an Indian of him. When they turned him loose they 
 gave him a piece of an old dirty blanket. The 
 weather was very cold, the little fellow knew not 
 which way to go to find a house. One day he heard 
 a bell and went to it, the bell was on a cow, there 
 were a few head of cattle there. The boy had heard 
 his father say that if anyone was lost and would fol- 
 low a milk cow that she would take him to a house, 
 So he started the cattle and was trying to keep after 
 them, but being so weak and worn out, he could not 
 keep up with the cattle .There were three or four 
 men out on a cow hunt one day after all hope of ever 
 hearing of the little fellow was given up. The cow 
 hunters saw at a distance an object moving around 
 and it attrcated their attention. They turned and 
 made to it and found it was the little boy the In- 
 dians had captured. He was so weak and so near 
 starved to death that he did not seem to know any- 
 thing. One of the men took the boy and set him in 
 the front part of his saddle, so he could hold him on 
 the horse and they carried him to Stephenville, which 
 was about ten or twelve miles. They had some cold 
 biscuits in their provision wallets. They gave him 
 one when they found him ; he ate on it all the way to 
 Stephenville and had not gotten it all eaten when 
 they reached the town. He was so weak he could not 
 hold his head up. There was a good man there, I 
 
— 95 — 
 
 wish I could give his name, though not knowing him 
 personally I have forgotten it, that cared for the boy, 
 had a doctor to treat him until he regained his 
 strength and got alright. His mind also got alright 
 as his strength returned. This boy grew up to man- 
 hood and made a good citizen of Comanche County, 
 die died near Gustine, in this County, eight months 
 ago. He had one brother older than himself, Rev. 
 Jesse Johnson, now living near Gustine. A white 
 man and a negro were killed about ten miles below 
 Johnson Peak, on the north side of Leon River, the 
 same day that the subject of this sketch was killed. 
 This murder was supposed to have been done by the 
 same party of Indians. 
 
 THE KILLING OF MRS. WILLIAMS. 
 
 In the year 1873 a family by the name of Wil- 
 liams was living on Sand Creek about three miles 
 southwest of Thrifty. Early one morning while the 
 men-folks were up on the creek after a load of raft- 
 ers Mrs. Williams was out at the cow lot milking the 
 cows. She took with her a little girl about seven 
 years old. and the baby, about ten months old. The 
 morning being rather cold she made a little brush 
 fire for the children to sit by, and while at the cow 
 lot was surprised by a party of Indians, who shot 
 her full of arrows. When they though she was dead 
 they took the baby and dragged it through the fire, 
 burning it until they thought it would die, then left, 
 
- 96 - 
 
 taking the little girl away with them. The place 
 where this tragedy occurred was known as the hog 
 ranch of W. N. and Zack Adams, but is now known as 
 the Baker place. After the Indians had left, Mrs. Wil- 
 liams yet had life enough to dress the little baby that 
 was so badly burned, but she died in a few minutes 
 after. In a short time her son came home and found 
 his mother murdered and the litle baby badly burn- 
 ed. The baby was taken to John Mullins’ and kept 
 for about ten days, when it died and was buried with 
 its mother. 
 
 R. Y. Cross, W. N. Adams and about fifteen oth- 
 er men whose names I cannot recall just now, headed 
 by R. Y. Cross, took the Indian trail and followed 
 them several days, though they never overtook them. 
 The little girl that the Indians carried off was found 
 hanging to a limb of a tree on Double Mountain Fork 
 of the Brazos River, two hundred miles northwest of 
 Brownwood. The little girl’s grave is near the pres- 
 ent town of Clarmont. This was among the last of 
 the Indian troubles in this part of the country. 
 
 SALT CREEK FIGHT— 1859 OR ’60. 
 
 Someone from the Newburg Settlement was out 
 southwest from Newburg, close to the mountains, 
 and discovered three Indians driving a bunch of 
 horses, twenty-five or thirty head, (which were stolen 
 in Hamilton County.) He ran to Cunningham’s 
 ranch and gave the alarm. Old Capt. Cunningham, 
 
—97— 
 
 who was ever ready for any emergency, summoned a 
 squad of men, six besides himself, named as follows : 
 Aaron Cunningham, David Cunningham, R. T. Cun- 
 ningham, J. V. Cunningham, Alex Tuggle and Jay 
 Hugh Chism. This party took their trail and follow- 
 ed it until night overtook them near Logan’s Gap. 
 They camped near where Whitville is now. In some 
 way they got ahead of the Indians. Some time in 
 the morning, probably about 4 o’clock, the Indians 
 came by the camp. David Cunningham was on horse 
 guard and hearing them pass, quietly drove the 
 horses back to camp and woke the men. They sad- 
 dled their horses and waited for daylight, then 
 went out to where he had heard them pass and took 
 the trail, and following it about three miles came 
 up with them, eating breakfast near Salt Mountain. 
 It being a dark, foggy morning they got very elose 
 before the Indians discovered them. Two of the In- 
 dians ran and bridled a horse and made their escape; 
 the third Indian bridled an iron-gray mare, which 
 was a lady’s saddle animal. He mounted her bare- 
 back but she threw him off; he mounted her aga : n 
 and she threw him off the second time. By this time 
 David Cunningham got within very elose range and 
 shot him down. After wounding him three or four 
 times, Aaron C. gave him the death shot, but had a 
 close call himself, for the Indian was within a few 
 feet of him with his arrow drawn. Aaron said it 
 was a matter of compulsion with him — he had it to 
 do. They recovered all the horses except the one the 
 two Indians rode off, and would have gotten it also 
 had it not been for the fog. 
 
" # 8 — 
 
 BROWN’S CREEK FIGHT. 
 
 Along in the year 1866 or 1867 the Indians came 
 into the town of Comanche after horses. They were 
 first discovered in the lot of Fletcher Neeley, trying 
 to catch a pair of mules. An Indian got on one of 
 the mules and it threw him off. The noise the In- 
 dian and mules made awakened Bill Cunningham, 
 who was boarding with Mr. Neeley. He rushed out 
 and exclaimed: “Look out for your horses; the In- 
 
 dians are getting ours.” Then he ran down to Un- 
 cle Jack Nabors’ and told them. Uncle Jack’s 
 daughters, Mary Ann and Fanny, got up and pre- 
 pared breakfast. All the Indian fighters in town 
 moulded bullets and got their horses ready for the 
 early morning fight. At daylight twelve men found 
 the trail at or near the place where Hilton Burk’s 
 new house has just been finished. The trail led out 
 southwest, past where Wm. Reese’s residence 
 now stands, it crossed Indian Creek just west of 
 the Brownwood Bridge, and crossed Dry Hollow a 
 quarter of a mile above where John Farmer now 
 lives. They then crossed Mercer Creek where 
 Brushy Gap road now crosses, and went on south in 
 the direction of Potato Hill Mountain. The twelve 
 men waited at this mountain for five more men and a 
 pack of bloodhounds that were coming from Capt. 
 James Cunningham’s ranch. After traveling about 
 one-half mile up the San Saba road the men struck 
 the Indians’ trail and put the dogs on it. On the 
 trail the Indians had killed a mare belonging to Dick 
 Kiser, further on they killed a beef and took what 
 
—99— 
 
 they wanted for dinner. One of the hounds got too 
 far ahead and flustrated the end. They left their 
 tempting dinner of roast beef scattered about four 
 miles from there. The squad came up with them at 
 Brown Creek, in Mills County. The fight opened at 
 two o ’clock and lasted until dark. During the fight 
 three Indians were shot down, but other Indians 
 came in and carried them off on horses. The fourth 
 and last Indian was killed by Dave Cunningham 
 breaking his back from a distance of eighty yards. 
 The scout camped here for the night. This com- 
 pany was commanded by Capt. James Cunningham, 
 and consisted of seventeen men, namely: David Cun- 
 ningham, Aaron Cunningham, Bill and Jim Cunning- 
 ham, Arthur, James and Robert Marshall, R. Kiser, 
 T. D. Cargill, Tom Wright, B. S. Hornsley, Joel Na- 
 bors and four others whose names I have forgotten. 
 Their losses were one dog and one horse killed, and 
 Capt. Cunningham was shot in the finger. The In- 
 dians numbered some seventeen or eighteen. 
 
 SANTA ANNA MOUNTAINS. 
 
 These mountains, a few miles south of old Camp 
 Colorado post, were used by the soldiers that were 
 first stationed at Camp Colorado, for spy mountains. 
 This was a noted place for Indians to pass as long 
 as they depradated in this country. In 1863 a 
 company of Confederate soldiers were stationed at 
 
— 100 - 
 
 Colorado Post; this was the company to which I be- 
 longed, and when the Indians would slip down in the 
 settlements and steal horses the people would send a 
 runner to our camp and we would send a party out 
 to those mountains to spy out for them. We would 
 always station the men at a secreted place as near the 
 mountain as possible, and then place a spy on top of 
 the mountain to watch for the Indians. A man on 
 one of those mountains could see a bunch of horse- 
 men a long way off. When the man on the moun- 
 tain discovered Indians coming he would watch them 
 until he could tell which side of the mountain they 
 were going on, then he would go down to the other 
 men and tell them which side of the mountains the 
 Indians were starting for, and the whites knew just 
 how and where to make the fight. The Indians hard- 
 ly ever passed those mountains without losing all the 
 stock they had stolen except the horses they were 
 riding. Often Indians were shot and badly wounded 
 but very few were ever killed outright at or near 
 Santa Anna Mountain. The only reason I can give 
 for their lucky escape, is that they would always, 
 when passing out with stolen horses, ride the very 
 best horses they had in the herd, and just outride the 
 white men I remember one fight that Lieutenant 
 Chandler, of Capt. J. J. Cullen’s company, had at 
 Santa Anna Mountain. Chandler had about six men 
 with him, he was not spying from the mountain but 
 when just passing by and near the mountain ran 
 right into a bunch of Comanches. Neither party had 
 seen the other until they were right in gun-shot. The 
 Indians outnumbered the whites about two to one. 
 
— 101 — 
 
 This was one of the best fights our boys ever made. 
 They re-captured all the stolen horses, about thirty 
 head, and wounded several Indians, two of which 
 were afterwards found buried on the trail. The 
 whites never got a man wounded, only two of their 
 horses got arrows shot into them and they were not 
 badly hurt. 
 
 Salt Mountain is a little mountain on the east 
 side of Brown County, about five miles from the up- 
 per line of Comanche Comity. It was the most noted 
 place for Indian fighting of any in the state. From 
 the time this country began to settle, until the In- 
 dians were driven out entirely, there were several 
 fights and a number of them were killed at or near 
 this Salt Mountain. I have never seen any account 
 of the first killing on this noted battle ground and as 
 my object in writing this book is to give the very 
 earliest happenings of our country, I will tell of the 
 first Indian fight near this place. 
 
 In the first settling of Lampasas County there 
 was a family living in the community of the town of 
 Lampasas by the name of Mullins. Old Uncle Char- 
 ley Mullins had three boys, who have been spoken of 
 previously in this book, whose names were Ike, Bill 
 and John. John is the only one of the boys now liv- 
 ing. In about the year 1854, as well as I can re- 
 member, they moved their cattle and horses out on 
 the head of Brown’s Creek, near where the town of 
 Mullin is now, in Mills County. There they built a 
 cabin and made stock pens some forty miles above 
 all settlements. Having the largest stock of horses, 
 they were visited by the Indians more frequently 
 
— 102 — 
 
 than the smaller ranches further down the country. 
 They only kept three or four hands to look after and 
 attend to both horses and cattle. The Indians came 
 in one night, rounded up a few head of their horses, 
 and got off with them just before day-light. When 
 the boys saw where they had started with the 
 horses they saddled some others and took the trail. 
 Being well mounted they soon came in sight of the 
 Indians. There were only three of the Indkns and 
 when they saw the boys after them they left the 
 stolen horses, all but those they were riding, and 
 pulled for the thickets around Salt Mountain, where 
 the boys ran onto them. The Indians dismounted 
 and took to the brush. Ike Mullins found one of 
 them hidden behind a big rock ; the Indian saw he 
 was discovered and sprang up to shoot at Mullins, 
 but Uncle Ike got in his work with a six-shooter 
 first, killing the Indian dead. This was the first In- 
 dian killed at Salt Mountain by a white man that we 
 have any account of. 
 
 THE HOG CREEK FIGHT IN 1869 OR 1870. 
 
 Colonel Wm. Stone and Capt. James Homesley 
 started a couple of wagons loaded with wheat to San 
 Saba Mills. The wagons were driven by F. M. 
 Brown and Geo. Wallace, accompanied by Bush Gris- 
 som, leaving Comanche and traveling until near sun- 
 down they came to the Mustang Water Hole on 
 
— 103 - 
 
 Mountain Creek. There they met John Roach and 
 stopped for a few minutes’ talk, as men always did 
 in those days, and while they were engaged in their 
 conversation, being near the foot of a mountain, they 
 were surrounded by a band of forty or fifty redskins. 
 Capt. Roach, who was a Confederate soldier and used 
 to warfare, had the wagons corralled as quickly as 
 possible. Then he began cutting the horses loose 
 from the wagons, and moving the drivers, telling 
 them to get away. The horse Capt. Roach was rid- 
 ing was about ridden down, so he took a little mule 
 from one of the wagons, and proceeded to make his 
 escape. One Indian followed him for one-half a mile 
 shooting both Roach and the mule. During the 
 fight at the wagons Frank Brown killed one Indian 
 and Brown was slightly wounded in the face and 
 arm; Geo. Wallace received a slight wound in the 
 arm. Roach’s mule carried him about four miles 
 from the wagons to the Watson Spring, and while 
 stopping there for water the mule died. Roach walk- 
 ed two miles further to the Campbell ranch with an 
 arrow in his left lung. He was so weak from loss of 
 blood when he reached the creek bank near the ranch 
 house he could go no further. A negro living at the 
 ranch heard Roach groaning, and went and carried 
 him to the house. Wallace, Grissom and Brown ar- 
 rived at Comanche that night and spread the alarm. 
 A company of twelve men were on the warpath next 
 morning, starting a scout, meaning to intercept the 
 Indians at the mountains, but failed to do so and re- 
 turned to where the fight at the wagons occurred. 
 When they arrived at the wagons they found Dave 
 
■104— 
 
 Cunningham and five others; he and his five men 
 having followed the Indians that morning and had 
 come up with them on the head of Pompey Creek, 
 bxxt the Indians were too much for them and they had 
 returned to carry the wagons back to the ranch and 
 get the bloodhounds arid more men. The next morn- 
 ing about 4 o’clock the trail was again taken up. 
 After following the trail for fifteen miles they found 
 where the Indians had camped, and buried one of 
 their number. Passing this up they followed the 
 trail some fifteen miles further and came upon the 
 Indians in camp on Hog Creek, in Brown County. 
 The dogs had been taken from the trail a few miles 
 back, as the men could run the trail without them, 
 so no noise was being made. Leaving the mountain 
 and getting down on smooth ground Capt. Dave 
 Cunningham had his men form a line and charge be- 
 fore the Indians hardly knew they were there. The 
 Indians scatered in every direction, some mounting 
 and some going afoot. There were seven Indians 
 killed in this fight and the company’s loss was one 
 man killed and one horse. Freeman Clark was kill- 
 ed and Joel Nabors got his horse killed and one of 
 the blood hounds was killed. This scout was com- 
 manded by Capt. Dave Cunningham, with nineteen 
 men, as follows: S. H. Powers, J. J. Johnson, John 
 
 Albin, W. Cox, Ed. Roach, John Stevens, Bill Ross, 
 James Tunnell, Tom Jones, Lark Stone, Jeff Nabors, 
 Bill Cunningham, Joe Cunningham, J. M. Millican, 
 Freeman Clark, Joe Gurley, Ike Ward, D. P. Pinkard 
 and one whose name I have forgotten. 
 
 Everything the Indians had was captured by the 
 scout, also eight head of horses. 
 
-105- 
 
 In the early spring of 1870 the Indians made a 
 stealing raid in Bell County in the neighborhood of 
 Young’s Fort. There were four Indians in the bunch 
 and they secured fourteen head of saddle horses, or 
 thirteen horses and one mule ; killed one mare be- 
 longing to Uncle Dee Lane, being unable to either 
 catch or drive her, they shot her and left her lying 
 with the arrow in her within five hundred yards of 
 the house. They got the mule out of old Parson 
 Henry Casper’s lot. It was locked by a chain around 
 its neck and the other end around a snag of a limb 
 which had been blown off some three or four feet 
 above where it forked from the tree, they slipped the 
 loop up until they pushed it over the end of the snag 
 and got off with the mule. Its mate was locked 
 around the body of the tree and they could not get 
 it. When the news got out next morning a posse of 
 eleven men got together to follow the Indians. These 
 were Mr. Tumbaugh, Will Cathey, Milt Parker, Don 
 Tankersley, Tuck Boone, Jake Casper, Jack Wilcox, 
 Abe Ray, Dock Casper, Hiram Teague and my broth- 
 er, G. B. Cross of Brownwood. These men got 
 mounts and started about 11 o’clock in the morning, 
 but the Indians had evidently scattered out some 
 yards apart in order to avoid being trailed, and it 
 was impossible to make any headway following them. 
 So the men decided they would ride straight ahead 
 for fifteen or twenty miles and probably would find 
 where they had gathered more horses and could trail 
 them better. When they reached where Coperas 
 Cove now is, finding no sign on the north side of the 
 mountains they returned and went due south through 
 
— 106 — 
 
 the gap. When on the south side of the range of 
 mountains they struck the trail of the Indians, evi- 
 dently driving the horses, as some ropes were drag- 
 ging. The Indians were at that time only about one 
 mile from them, on the mountain, where they had re- 
 mained all day, waiting to make another haul when 
 night came on, as there was a thick settlement a few 
 miles away, on the Lampasas Kiver. Having a spy , 
 on the edge of the mountain they discovered our men 
 had struck their trail and would soon be on them ; 
 pulled up camp and left in a full run. When down 
 in the level prairie the wily Indians scattered out 
 some yards apart, leading or riding all the horses, 
 and the grass being high and dry it was impossible to 
 trail faster than a walk; the Indians running and 
 having at least three-fourths of an hour the start, it 
 was useless to follow their trail. Brother and some 
 others in the crowd having followed the Indian trails 
 out before, knew the route they would go for twenty 
 miles or more, and they decided to make a straight 
 run for points twenty miles ahead. In so doing they 
 frequently came onto the trail. Jake Casper was 
 riding the mate to the mule the Indians had stolen ; 
 this animal, when it came to its mate’s trail, would 
 put its nose to the ground and follow like a dog for 
 some distance, then raise his head and bray. This 
 twenty-mile run was through practically open coun- 
 try, with scattering small hills and groves here and 
 there. They reached a chain of mountains and stay- 
 ed close to it, keeping on the north side. The boys 
 reached those mountains about half an hour before 
 sundown and where the Indians had crossed one of 
 
— 107 — 
 
 those little streams running down from the mountain 
 the bank was so wet it look as if they had not been 
 gone ten minutes. Two of the boys’ horses gave out 
 at this point, and one man was suffering witn a pain 
 in his side, so they had to leave them. These were 
 Mr. Tumbaugh, Will Cathey and Abel Ray. The 
 other eight began to crowd their horses to the limit, 
 knowing that what they did must be done in the next 
 hour, as it would be dark by that time, and the men 
 had no provisions for themselves or food for their 
 horses, and there was nobody living within miles 
 that they knew of. During the next four or five 
 miles of the run four more horses Avere failing and 
 the other four had to leave them. This left only 
 Jack Wilcox. Dock Casper, Hiram Teague and G. B. 
 Cross .They whipped through some four miles fur- 
 ther. when tAvo of their horses gave out, leaAdng only 
 Hiram Teague and my brother in the chase. By the 
 time the large stars were showing these tAvo caught a 
 glimpse through the scattering timber of what they 
 made sure Avere the Indians, and made a hard run 
 across a post oak flat to the open prairie, when they 
 reached it, however, nothing was in sight for a mile 
 ahead. It Avas bright moonlight and they Avere satis- 
 fied the Indians had seen they Avere gaining fast and 
 had taken to the roughs of the mountains Avhich lay 
 just on the left. The two Avaited a few minutes, 
 when they were joined by Dock Casper and Jack 
 Wilcox, and a little later the other four, that had 
 last dropped out, came up. Teague and my brother 
 told the boys what they had seen and they also be- 
 lieved the Indians had taken to the mountains, Jack 
 
— 108 — 
 
 Pht^per said: “We’ll see if we are right or not,” 
 
 and began to ride old Pete around and in a few min- 
 utes Pete put his head to the ground and started 
 right up the mountain, braying; so all were satisfied 
 that the Indians had seen us following and had avoid- 
 ed our seeing them by keeping some little mound or 
 3 grove of timber between them and us. Being with- 
 out forage for our horses or anything to eat our- 
 selves and knowing the Indians would get a long 
 start of us, we turned back for home, traveling un- 
 til ten o’clock in the night before we found any house 
 where we could get feed for our horses and some- 
 thing to eat. 
 
 This was about the last stealing raid made by 
 the Indians into Bell County, and occurred about the 
 last of February or the first of March, 1870. 
 
 My brother says that he was born in January, 
 1849, in Bell County, which was then the frontier of 
 Texas, and had lived on the extreme frontier all his 
 life, where Indians were common visitors every full 
 moon up to this time, and that he had always had a 
 great desire to get in a scrap with them, and thought 
 sure he was going to have the fun that evening; but 
 dark came too quick. Now he is 61 years old and 
 more considerate, and is feeling glad be did not catch 
 up with the red rascals. This bit of history I glean 
 from some of those that were in the chase and many 
 of them are yet living who can vouch for the story. 
 Dan Tankersley lives at Killeen, Bell County; Jake 
 Casper at Young’s Fort, same county; Tuck Boone 
 lives in South Texas, I think in Blanco County; G. 
 B. Cross in Brownwood, and Will Cathey I think is 
 in Bell County near Young’s Fort. 
 
— 109 — 
 
 THE DOTE CREEK FIGHT. 
 
 This fight took place ©a Dove Greek near the 
 month of South Concho River, iter ween about four 
 hundred Kick a poo Indians and a like number of 
 whites. It was particularly notable from the fact 
 that the attack was made by the whites on friendly 
 Indians. The shedding of blood on that occasion was 
 an unfortunate mistake and entirely unnecessary. 
 The whites had been driven almost beyond endurance 
 by the many outrages committed by the Indians on 
 the frontier, and were in a measure excusable for not 
 exercising that common judgment which no doubt 
 would have prevented the light and its serious con- 
 sequences. 
 
 In order to keep from taking part in the Civil 
 War those Kickapoos still living in the Indian Terri- 
 tory decided to move to Mexico, and started thorugh 
 Texas with their families to the Rio Grande. They 
 were followed from the Clear Fork of the Brazos 
 River by Confederate Soldiers who were reinforced 
 by detachments of home guards from Brown and 
 other counties. 
 
 During the Civil War the remote frontier coun- 
 ties were exempt from service in the Confederate 
 army in order that the men might remain at home to 
 protect the frontier against Indians. Brown County 
 was one of this class of counties and in line with the 
 others, organized a company with D. H. Moseley as 
 captain and Adison Martin as lieutenant. When re- 
 enforcements were asked for on this occasion Brown 
 County was drawn on for fourteen men and the fol- 
 
— 110 — 
 
 lowing named persons were sent under command of 
 Lieutenant Martin: B. W. Lee, G. H. Adams, A. E. 
 Adams, John P. Brown, James G. Connell, R. M. 
 Hanna, Sam Hanna, Isaac Bradshaw, P. R. Clark, T. 
 D. Haines, W. B. Chandler, E. D. Carmack, J. Bal- 
 linger, and Henry Jones. 
 
 On January 7th, in the year 1865, it 
 was reported to Captain Taton, who was 
 in command of the combined forces, that the 
 Indians were in camp on Dove Creek, in a dense 
 thicket, and he decided that night that the attack 
 should take place the following morning. B. W. Lee 
 and James Mulkey, who were Lieutenants in. Cap- 
 tain Fossett’s Company at Camp Colorado, both of 
 whom had considerable knowledge of Indians’ hab- 
 its. reconnoitered the Indian Camp on their own ac- 
 count the night before the fight, and on their return 
 reported to the officers that unmistakable indications 
 pointed to a camp of friendly Indians and advised in- 
 vestigation. To this there was no attention paid. 
 The attack was made next morning in a pell-mell but 
 desperate charge which was repeated time and again, 
 with heavy loss, but they could not dislodge the In- 
 dians from the thicket. The fight continued the 
 greater part of the day. Late in the evening the 
 whites were forced to withdraw with the loss of 
 about twenty men killed and several others wounded, 
 some of whom died on the way home. The Indian 
 loss was fourteen killed. The wounded were all 
 carried off. When the fight commenced Martin was 
 ordered by Captain Fossett to take his men and cap- 
 
— Ill— 
 
 ture the Indians’ horses, about 450 head. This was 
 accomplished with a rush and with the horses an old 
 Indian and two Indian boys, about 12 and 13 years 
 of age, were taken. Soon after the capture was made 
 one of the officers and some of the men rode up and 
 gave orders that Indians must not be taken alive. 
 The old Indian was immediately shot to death and 
 the two boys would have shared the same fate had it 
 not been that one of the men interfered with a posi- 
 tiveness that left no room for misunderstanding, and 
 told the officer that he would not permit the murder 
 of these boys. The little Indian boys understood the 
 situation and they clung to this man until he saw a 
 chance for them to escape. Under his direction they 
 made a dash for liberty, and when last seen were en- 
 tering the Indian lines. The whites camped that 
 night about two miles from the battle ground, leav- 
 ing their dead on the battle ground. A very heavy 
 snow fell that night and it continued to snow all the 
 next day, the weather was intensely cold, causing 
 great suffering among the wounded. The second 
 day the camp was moved a short distance and some 
 of the men went back to bury the dead. The Indians 
 left soon after the fight was over, leaving all their 
 equipage. I don’t know how many of our brave 
 boys are resting under the sod near the Dove Creek 
 battle ground. Comanche men went out and brought 
 their dead to Comanche and buried them, two as 
 good and as brave men as Comanche ever lost in any 
 battle. They were Mr. Don Cox and Mr. Parker. 
 Our company that was at Camp Colorado lost one 
 
— 112 - 
 
 young man by the name of Wiley. He was the 
 last man killed. The whites had left the battle 
 ground and were pulling back for the place where 
 they had camped the night before. When this young 
 man Wiley, and two other boys that had lost their 
 horses in the fight, and were on foot, sat down to rest 
 a while at a distance of four or five hundred yards 
 from the enemy, the Indians fired a volley at the 
 whites as they left with their long range guns and a 
 bullet passed through Mr. Wiley’s head, killing him 
 instantly. 
 
 There was a man living at Camp Colorado by 
 the name of Joe Byers, a bachelor, who stayed the 
 most of his time with Mart Childress. lie had no 
 hair on his head — had lost his hair from some cause 
 when he was young, but he wore a wig that looked 
 like a fine head of hair. He was killed in this fight 
 and when they went back to bury the dead they 
 found Joe Byers with his head cut off, laying eight 
 or ten feet from his body. I suppose having no scalp 
 for them they thought they would cut his head off. 
 
 The country suffered more from Indians after 
 the war, until they were entirely driven out, than it 
 did from 1846 up to the war. The cause of the red 
 men doing so much more depredating and being 
 more hostile was due to the fact that they had so 
 many white men with them to encourage and plan 
 for them. During the war a great many emigrants 
 from the old states came to Texas from both north 
 and south in order to keep out of the war and finding 
 the frostier of Texas with so few men to protect it, 
 
1 13 — 
 
 and so much stock, and so many families with no men 
 folks large enough to protect them, those Jay-hawk- 
 ers as they were called, could not stand the tempta- 
 tion, so they began to fall in with the Indians and 
 furnish them arms and ammunition. These bad 
 white men would come right into the settlements 
 and spy out the best place to make their raid and 
 then fall back to the Indian camp and instruct them 
 just how to make the round and not be seen. So the 
 Indians would get a bunch of horsse and get out 
 often without being discovered. Those white men 
 would lay out until the Indians got the stolen horses 
 far enough away for there to be no possible chance to 
 be overtaken, and then take the horses on to Mexico 
 and sell them and buy ammunition and supplies, and 
 thus furnish the Indians with equipment for another 
 raid. 
 
 Now this may seem like a supposition of the 
 writer, about how this Jay-hawking was managed, 
 but men who were on the frontier of this state in 
 those days know it to be a fact. Before the war five 
 men could face thirty Indians and put them to flight, 
 they had nothing but bows and arrows to use in bat- 
 tle. but after the war they were as well armed as the 
 whites. This is one evidence that the white thieves 
 worked with them, but a more positive evidence is 
 that on several occasions white men had been seen 
 with them. 
 
114 — 
 
 THE QUANTRELL GANGS. 
 
 The Quantrell men, who made several raids into 
 Texas about the close of the war, were parties who 
 had left the old states and drifted onto the frontier. 
 They were in most eases deserters from the army 
 and were led by a man by the name of Quantrell. In 
 Arkansas they made up a considerable company, 
 picking up all the hard customers they met who want- 
 ed to get over into Mexico. When they reached the 
 Texas line they divided up into squads, ten or fifteen 
 in a bunch, going through the Western part of the 
 state. They knew that the men were about all away 
 with the army and that they could pick up all the 
 good horses they could find on the way, and get 
 through to the border without being disturbed in the 
 transaction. They would have a good stake when 
 they landed in Mexico and sold the horses they had 
 gathered up, as they never took anything but the 
 very best animals. 
 
 One small bunch of these men came through Co- 
 manche County and passed Mr. Watson’s place about 
 ten miles west of the town. They took the best 
 horses lie had and went from there over into San 
 Saba County, and were traveling up the San Saba 
 River when they saw a small bunch of good horses 
 grazing out in the valley, about three hundred yards 
 from a house. They made a round-up and began to 
 rope them in. The owner, who was sick in bed, sent 
 his little boy out to see what they meant. The little 
 boy told them that they were his father’s horses and 
 to let them alone; they asked him his father’s name 
 
— 115 — 
 
 and he told them it was Ketchup. They replied with 
 an oath that he would never ketch-up with his horses, 
 and just led them off. 
 
 Some time after that another squad of these 
 Quantrell men, some eighteen in number, passed 
 through the country, following much the same trail. 
 They had about gotten through the settlements when 
 they were seen by a man in the upper edge of Bur- 
 net County. lie sent a runner to Camp San Saba, 
 and Capt. Cook sent a scout out who struck the trail 
 of the gang in the upper edge of Llano County, and 
 followed it on to old Port McKavett, where they 
 caught up with them. It was just at sundown and 
 they had made camp. They all sprang to their feet 
 and ordered the scout to halt, which they did at a 
 distance of about eighty yards. The eighteen men 
 faced thirty of the soldiers and asked them what they 
 wanted. The officer answered : “We are a scout of 
 
 soldiers and have been on your trail three days; we 
 want to investigate your business in this country;” 
 at the same time ordering them to stack their arms. 
 The leader of the gang stepped in front of his men 
 and said: “If you are Confederate authority, we 
 
 will surrender, but if your are militia we will die at 
 the breech of our guns.” So our lieutenant made 
 out that he was a Confederate officer, and that if 
 they could satisfy Capt. Cook that they were alright, 
 they would be turned loose. They then surrendered 
 as prisoners and were brought back to Camp San 
 Saba and kept under guard for eight days. They 
 soon discovered after getting into camp that they 
 would be sent to Austin and turned over to the au- 
 
• 116 — 
 
 thorities, but on the night before they were to start, 
 having gotten chummy with some of the boys who 
 were detailed to act as guard, they escaped with 
 their help and reached the Mexican border, having 
 had several hours the start of the soldiers who 
 were in pursuit. This was the last time these Quan- 
 trell men were ever heard of in Texas and it was the 
 last that was ever heard of the tw r o soldiers who w«nt 
 with them. 
 
 SOME TROUBLES IN EARLY DAYS. 
 
 Soon after the settling of Old Cora, in Comanche 
 County, the news reached there that a Ranger Com- 
 pany was being organized in Palo Pinto County, 
 and four of our boys, John Triddle, Thos. Jeffers, 
 Andrew Steward and another whose name I have 
 forgotten, decided they would go up and join that 
 Company. About the time they were ready to 
 start two men came to Old Cora from Williamson 
 County, one named Anderson Kisor and another by 
 the name of Talley, who said they were on their way 
 up to Palo Pinto to have a man arrested and take 
 him back to Williamson County for some crime he 
 had committed down there. The boys told these 
 men of their intention of going up to join the Ran- 
 ger Company, and they suggested that as the coun- 
 try was practically unsettled and there was constant 
 danger from the Indians, that they all go together. 
 
117 — 
 
 The following day they got together at Comanche 
 and started for Palo Pinto. When they got to with- 
 in three or four miles of the town they passed a 
 house where Kisor and Talley said they thought 
 the man they wanted lived, and they suggested it 
 would be better to stop and get dinner as there was 
 good water and grass, as nearer to town the grass 
 would not be so good for their horses. The place 
 where they stopped was about two hundred yards 
 from the house they had just passed and the two men 
 said that they would walk up there and ascertain 
 if the party they wanted lived there, or if not, where 
 he did live. So the boys made camp and had begun 
 preparations for dinner when they heard three gun 
 shots in the direction of the house and looking up 
 saw Kisor and Talley coming towards them in a run. 
 This excited the boys in camp and they asked the 
 two men when they reached them what was the 
 trouble, they replied that they had killed that old 
 scoundrel up at the house and that they had better 
 get away from there without delay. The boys re- 
 plied that they had not killed anyone and had no 
 reason to run off, as if they did. they would be 
 implicated in the murder. So Kisor and Talley left 
 the boys to hold the sack and no one has ever heard 
 of either of these two men since. 
 
 The four boys went on towards town, intending 
 to report the circumstance, but a runner had already 
 been there and gotten the sheriff and a posse to- 
 gether, these met the boys as soon as they arrived 
 and arrested them and took their arms from them. 
 The boys told their story, where they were from and 
 
—118 
 
 all they knew of the two men who had joined them, 
 giving the facts of the whole matter, but they were 
 young and had never before been in any such 
 trouble, and having no friends in the country they 
 failed to satisfy the sheriff, and he took them and 
 put them all in jail. 
 
 The boys then wrote their friends in Comanche 
 County of their trouble and the sheriff mailed the 
 letter for them to Comanche. When the letter ar- 
 rived, Mr. Mercer, J. T. Neighbors, Hiram Barbee, 
 and my father, J. M. Cross, went up to help the boys 
 out of their trouble. On reaching Palo Pinto they 
 found that the sheriff and some of the other County 
 Officials were Free Masons, and they soon became 
 fraternally known ; Barbee, Mercer and my father 
 being Masons. This fraternal influence was a great 
 help in getting the boys an immediate trial before 
 the Justice of the Peace, when they were at once 
 acquitted and returned home with their friends. 
 
 A younger brother of the writer’s, 0. B. Cross, 
 now residing in Brownwood, has since told me that 
 what my father said upon his return, of the influ- 
 ence that Masonry had in getting these boys out of 
 jail, made a great impression on him even though 
 he was but a very small boy at the time. 
 

 
Date Due 
 

 976.4 
 
 Cross 
 
 C951S 461102 
 
 f 
 
 A short 
 
 sketch-history from 
 
 
 ■personal 
 
 reminicences 
 
 
 DATE 
 
 ISSUED TO 
 
 976.4 
 
 C951S 
 
 431102