WYLY'S WISDOM
page 6
MARCH 30, 2010
Try checking minutes or records of Selden Baptist Church or
Pleasant Hill (Chigger Hill)
Methodist Church south of Stephenville. The Indian Creek cemetery is two cattleguards and pasture
behind the Pleasant Hill Church. By the way, who moved the large flat stone
from the area between the cemetery
fence and the road and the dam on Indian Creek? That stone
coverred the grave of an Indian Scout
who had joined a Train of Fleming, Moxley, Ogan and others who left Missouri
to get away from the contracted "Kansas
Jayhawkers" who were running Confederate reconstruction in
Missouri. This same
Indian had scouted around the area regularly, hunting and scouting for Indian Raiders after the Civil
War. Great Aunt Susie Moxley used to take me and cousin J.B. Moxley from
Fort Worth on a trip or two to
the Indian Creek fishing hole. Some of my family had attended the
Indian Creek Church and school
before it was moved to Selden. Great grandmother Mary Ann Fleming, Moxley's
mother, is buried near one gate two
graves from where a Mrs. Briley is buried. Her son Joe Briley had
attended a 1 room school --
Harmony (also called Greasy) -- between Johnsville and Chalk Mountain. He is now
retired and teaches the "Glory Bound
Class" of senior men in the church we attend in Hewitt.
I am still having problems finding the record of John Houston marrying a Balch. One lady dropped a Balch
family booklet over my shounder
at church but it did not have extensive older generation records. Sam had a dad and a grandad named
John, besides his foster dad, John
Jolly, a Cherokee Chief who was removed to Arkansas Cherokee Reservation. Sam joined him in
Arkansas after resigning from Congress, and John Jolly sent men to help sober him
up before he came to Texas. He had
a very disturbing divorce.
APRIL 1, 2010
I found my copy of a Fort Worth Star Telegram Texas news
article. It lists a McElroy as
a teacher and has several of my and your kin in it, including mom's siblings, Careys,
Baileys, and Copeland? and several others with Stephenville, Huckaby, Oak Dale
, Valley Grove and Selden surnames. This should also be in the Fort Worth Star
Telegram archives which are now
in the Archives of the library of Arlington State University. If you do not find it there, I will try to copy it
and mail it to you. But we have
been busy doing what retired people do. Seems it takes more time to do less. Mom once said that she and
her older sister drove their milk cows from Huckaby to Oak Dale and Valley
Grove. Either the Stephenville Empire or Star Telegram also reported that
one U.S. President had a brother
who was a hobo and had spent some time working in Stephenville before hopping a train for more travel. I
think he was a brother of
President Harry Truman.
I also have letters of Great Aunt
Susie Moxley attending Tartleton and Mary Hardin Baylor before she taught for
several years. She refused a position
as Principal in Bloomington as she did not believe in a woman having authority over a male teacher. She
said that during the Flu Epidemic
of 1917-18 girls at Tarleton were excused from class if they would sit up with dying women .
Doctors were also ill, in both Stephenville
and Waco. I have heard of several who were buried as soon as possible to stop the epidemic. One such
grave was found near the Texas
Ranger hall of Fame in Waco, possibly
buried by the County workers. Do you know anyone in Stephenville who
died from that Flu? I know of none in our family.
APRIL 3, 2010
The Fort Worth Star Telegram archives
are in a library at Arlington State
University. Daily Star Telegrams were delivered to Stephenville and rural routes around it. When
J-Tac at Stephenville and N-Tac at Arlington were sister Junior colleges in
Texas A&M system. John Tarleton State College is now Tarleton State
University, with campuses in Stephenville
and Thurber. Texas A&M has taken over Tarleton's campus in Killeen near Fort Hood. Arlington State is
now part of the University of Texas
with no direct connections to Texas A&M. Stephenville had a weekly Empire Tribune when I attended Tarleton.
Also there used to be stories about
rival football games between Tarleton and Arlington State Junior College. One told about the week before the
Tarleton-Arlington was rather
hetcic. When I started there, we beat steel barrels night and day
for a week before the game, and both
girl and boy students took it in shifts--pushing "The Spirit of Oscar P."
Local high school boys started
some of the excitement. Dad, in ROTC uniform, and several others rode a Pitman Catle Trailer truvk to the
Arlington game, coverred with a canvas
tarp . On the way home the truck stalled and some of the boys in
uniforms hitchhiked back to
Stephenville in family cars. One Arlington State attempt to burn the Tarleton Bonfire
involved two small airplanes. One got to Stephenville and tried to fly
over the bonfire with a torch to
burn it before the pep rally, but a Tarleton football player was on the
water tank tower and threw a
piece of lumber into the propeller of the plane. It chashed and the pilot was caught
and held in an on campus room until
the game was over.
APRIL 5, 2010
I remember several of the names listed
below. The Chalk Mountain Cemetery
I know about is 4 or 5 miles from the County line. It's near the Plainview Church, where several Hatchett
family members are buried. One of my elementary teachers was Clara Stigler
Atkins, a Hatchett grandchild. They came to Chalk Mountain from Tennessee
at contact from a Hatchett
who was a Church of Christ
Elder. He was related to Great Great Grandad, Dr. & Pastor William Pinckney Hatchett
of Pine Mountain (Calloway
Gardens) area in North Georgia.
Some of these from Chalk Mountain left
when unclaimed land became available
near the Red River.
There was also a Methodist
Church between Chalk Mountain and Walnut Springs. This one with a small cemetery was
nearer the County Line and near
the Panther Cave where one of the 3 Stephen brothers lived.
Another Stephen was a founder
of Stephenville [witout an s in the middlel. The third brother ran the Elm Mott Railroad
station in Elm Mott near Waco. The Stephen family who lived in the
cave ran an ox cart freight route from Waco up the Ridge Road and delivered
to soldiers and frontier families
and Fort Graham and Fort Griffin on the Brazos. One stop was near Whitney, Texas at Towash Creek . His
wife had twins while living in the cave, with a cowhide door. One
day her bull dog went wild barking at a panther coming down the tree into the creek
by the cave, and Mrs. Stephen killed
the panther with her rifle. There was once a picnic ground near the cave and the spring with tables,
swings. slide, and some horse driven
merry go round or pony riding circle for the kids. The Flat Top Mountain and ranch were visible from there
towards Walnut Springs. From
the Cave site one can see the old red barn which was once a stagecoach stop for new horses, on the
south edge of the old Chalk Mountain
town pictured on the Town and Country historic bank calendars. If these are not in a local library, they
should be, as each day had events
reported. Dan Young, a teacher, had researched these calendars and left a bibliography of sources inside the
back. Wasn't Jachson Hyles the one who was called Jack Hyles when he
pastored a large independent Baptist
church in Hammond, Indiana???
APRIL 9, 2010
Hwy 67 goes to Dallas. Hwy 377 goes from
Stephenville through Grandbury to Fort Worth. Where we lived on the old dirt
Hwy 67, it was the same distance
to go to Fort Worth Stockyards through Cleburne or through Grandbury. The old Hwy 67 left the Hico
Highway near Valley Grove and followed
fence lines past our house, through the old Johnsville Village, store, gin, Lodge hall and school
to Skipper's Gap. The newer Hwy
67 was under construction when I was born, and Dad drove to get
Dr. Naylor through mud
in construction and low water mud crossings where new bridges were being built. I beat the
Doctor there, and waited in my baby
bed by the wood stove until they got back. The old Johnsville School moved to the Consolidated Three Way
School on newer paved Hwy 67.
Today they rate extremely high on Taks testing.
1.Skipper's Gap faced Johnsville and
Stephenville lower land, a mile or so past the Gap and one of many small
post offices. I remember some of
the Skippers. Then Maratheal's Gap was next, past old Marble (Greasy ) school and a dirt- rocky Bumper
Gate road from Iredell and/or Valley
Mills, staying out of the mud. It was maintained by the County ,
no fences running with the
road- Marble was somewhere near that road or the McKnight-Howell farms. Bill
Rigg's wife was born around the mountain.
Before you reached the Duffau Hico cutoff there was a tall concrete above the ground silo. It was
owned by Dr. Craigwall or Malloy. It was managed by Lee Rice, the only black
man in the three way District. He was raised near Dublin with 2 Anglo boys
and shared the same room .His
mom was their neighbor in Alabama and died, and Lee was adopted by them. He showed up at every Johnsville and
other school picnics and ball
games. He was very well liked.
He gave kids candy at the Johnsville Store when he came to Cotton Gin.
2. There is not a Chalk Mountain
cemetery at the foot of the hill past Chalk Mountain listed on Google
searches.. The Church shown on a Google search looks like the Plainview
Church near Chalk Mountain. Towards Iredell there was also a church a
mile or so from downtown on
Flat Top Ranch and Walnut Springs road, Chalk Mountain-Odom or Oden Methodist. When I taught at Walnut Springs
their members were driving to the
church there, past the Flat Top Mountain and Ranch. The largest cemetery past Chalk Mountain towards Glen
Rose is the Nancy Smith cemetery.
She was the wife of Deaf Smith who was killed in the Alamo. Texas gave land to widows of Texas Rebels
who fought Mexico. Davey Crockett's
wife was buried on the land given by Texas on Hwy 377 towards Grandbury.
APRIL 17, 2010
Seeking info on Barnard families. I have a book called JAKE BELL, RANGE
RIDER, written by Upton
Barnard, dated as a gift, 1954. It refers to many incidents of frontier life for
Range Riders-and frontier living.
It was fiction based on real incidents. He was retired then and ran a small cafe on Fort Worth
Highway across the Bosque near Ray's
Rock Garden and first location of the first Riggs Machine and Welding shop in Stephenville.
Was he connected to George Bernard of
Glen Rose? George ran the Trading House Creek near Waco, and when he married
Juana Cavasos he moved to Glen
Rose and built a Grist mill on the Paluxy River in present city limits of Glen Rose. Clifton-Bosque
County Museum sold the books about
Juana. Some reported the mill to be near Chalk Mountain. I do not
consider over 12 miles as being
nearby. Chalk Mountain once got its mail from Walnut Springs when the Texas
Central, then Katy RR had shops and
a college. Juana was a daughter of a Spanish Land Grant owner near the coast and was captured by Comanche
Indians. She was accepted by them
for several years, then was brought to Trading House Creek and traded for rifles and blankets. Then she
married George.
When Cynthia Ann Parker and her newest
baby were brought to central Texas
by Texas Rangers, they left her and the baby with Juana and
George for a few weeks,
mainly because they both spoke the same Indian language. The Glen Rose Barnard's Mill had
4 foot thick walls on Paluxy River
with a waterwheel for power. It was later a clinic for Glen Rose,
then a Doctor's office, with
added rooms.
AUGUST 30, 2010
There was also a Chidester
(Butterfield?) Stage run--at first it was privately owned. An acestor of "Blackie"
Martin would drive towards El Paso
from Dublin. All drivers would drive all day to a stage
stop with a bunkhouse ,
and fresh horses would take place of the tired ones. The next day the drivers would switch and
return home. See Grady Perry's Grand Ole Erath book or the historic calendars published by
Town and Country Bank
of Stepenville. These calendars had daily history notes and excellent biographies. Chalk Mountain was
one stage stop with a barn to rest
tired horses and send the rested ones out. One trail was from Waco
to Hico then Duffau and Clairette,
Alexander, and Dublin, roughly following
present Texas Hwy 6 as far as it goes. Dublin was a larger town than Stephenville at one time.
SEPTEMBER
19, 2010
Rube Burrow lived near Dublin,
Texas, near his Uncle's farm. Were Burrow and Barrow families connected? Rube and
friends robbed trains--never killed
anyone. Several of his Erath county kin did not carry his Burrow name. Nuf sed.
OCTOBER
18, 2010
Re: Connections of Shaw,
Higdon-Moxley-Fleming-Wyly; before 1900: This was in Indian
Creek Cemetery and school area--Plesant Hill Church (Chigger Hill)....Dan Higdon passed away Sunday.
OCTOBER 23, 2010
Mr. Porter had a garden plant
and supply house on Fort Worth Highway near te Stephenville Country Opry
house, across from where the Australian
Cowboy built the all weather indoor riding arena. Porter tomatoes were as well known as Wolfe
Nursery when they shipped roses to Tyler. Now Tyler nurseries and rose
farms will ship them back to us.
DECEMBER 4, 2010
Esther Miller taught in Johnsville
School, and married Don Wimberly of Johnsville. [The school is] now part
of Three Way Elementary School.) They usually attended Johnsville School Exes and Friends Reunion
in Three Way dining hall, by the
gym.
Dad used to talk to "Odd" ( O.D. ?)
Boucher at Stephenville cattle auctions
and other community events. He and Virgil Underwood may have been in ROTC at Tarleton with him.
Check Tarleton records and annuals.
Now, Dad and Virgil shared a
room in the home of Banker Charles Neblett while attending Tarleton. Were these
Rocky Point-Cedar Point Underwoods part of the Underwood-Wyly connections back
in Georgia? Check these connections
in Sevier Family History book by Cora Bailes Sevier and Nancy Sevier Madden. They had traced
Gov. John Sevier's roots through England into the Xavier-Sevier families in
France and the Xavier castle
in Navarre Castle and visited a monastery library in Pamplona, Spain.. These Basque, like St.
Francis, first spoke Basque language. Some were in [the] Spanish army. Now,
where do you suppose the 4 Bosque Rivers got this name? In Basque the
name meant Brushy or Sticks. Some of
these Spanish-Basque soldiers had
found a tribe near the Great Lakes who spoke some words sounding like the
Basque language. Also, the Red Headed Indians in Mississippi may
have some common roots in Arkansas, where they were shipwrecked on the Arkansas
River on top of the rock they
marked. [They] have been in True West or Frontier Times magazines, when
Dr. Walter Prescott Webb of
University of Texas was on their editorial staff.
DECEMBER 5, 2010
Try archives of Fort Worth Star
Telegram in Arlington State University
for news of the Snow Murder trial. Mr. Snow rented a cabin on Gristy land and he killed a Bernie
Conolly, his mom, and grandmom
and beheaded the boy.
Also see H. Grady Perry's book called
GRAND OLE ERATH for more on this and early post offices like Galconda, Erath
County. Grady and one Texas Governor had married sisters.
My mom, Emma Irene Carey Wyly, and Ida
Head Gristy had served as midwives (delivering some babies in Johnsville area)
in home with no doctors.
I was born before Dr. Naylor got to our house. Was Ida there?
We farmed Ned Gristy's prairie fields
on Hwy 67 in the 1940s between the old Crockett School site and Johnsville (where
Bernie's head was found in a cellar
of a house once occupied by the Riggs family). I have heard Elvis
Riggs tell about finding the
head in a sack in a cellar. Prentice Gristy never married, but moved to
Stephenville with Ida, his mom. One Gristy grandchild used to visit her
grandmother in the summer and when she and her Bailey marriage took place they
moved to Corpus Christi, but moved
back to Stephenville before their triplets were born in Stephenville Hospital. I attend
church with some Head families in Hewitt--one is a Deacon. Connection
not known.
KEITH-- Bro. Howard Keith used to
pastor Pony Creek Baptist Church in the 1940-50's and drove a grocery truck.
The church was one of 17 churches on the Bosque from Valley Mills to Paluxy.
There was once a 2 story church-school
across a dry creek branch from the present Pony Creek Church. At the Centenial Celebration,
Dr. D.D. Tidwell of Baylor and Waco
masonic Lodge read the origional church records [which] show the church had church, baptizing, [and] elected
delegates to Paluxy Southern Baptist
Convention. Great Grandad Dr. & Rev. W. P. Hatchett founded [it] after his contract with Texas
partizan Rangers in Mexico with Taylor's U. S. Army. He did support
Baylor University--primitive Baptist, Methodist, and others rotated Sundays
for church there, across from the
well for the Pony Creek ( Box" ) Church. Great Aunt Susie Moxley taught school
there, and Ben F. Wyly was a member
of the lodge upstairs. He also had a ranch near Head land and a store and bank in Stephenville and was a
Methodist Elder in Box Methodist
Church before his family from Georgia left for oil and
cotton yards from Fort Worth, then
moved towards Houston and Bacliff Marine Supply.
See records in Dublin First Baptist
Church display about the Keith-Turnbow
"Battle" over cattle. The pastor of the church was warned by women and he ran his horse full speed up
the creek between the armed
groups, and called for a peace parley and prayer. All went home
peaceably. The oldest Cemetery of
Evans-Valentine and others is on the ridge in front of the church, where
water runs into Pony Creek and Duffau
Creek on the other side.
DECEMBER 9, 2010
I think the street was first called
Bosque Street--but it was updated
to Tarleton Avenue. Tarleton girs in blue chambary dresses were required to walk to downtown on this
street for security reasons. The college back then was heated by steam
from a Thurber coal burning furnace.
All utilities including water, sewer, and steam were connected to all buildings in a concrete
lined tunnel where all dorm students
went for tornado warnings. After gas lines were installed, they still had some reserve coal in the
boiler room into the late 1940's.
This would not be the James
Hardin family? James taught at Walnut Springs and Meridian. His dad was a pastor of
a church or two.
The Minter house and 2 or 3 others
served lunches to the public from large tables. Grand Juries were
sometimes sequestered there. The Balcony of the courthouse was sometimes used above
the 3rd floor. It was unfinished
and heated in earlier days.
MARCH 8, 2011
Many airports in rural areas are for mostly either crop dusters
or for retired Military pilots
who relax with a little flying, like McGregor or Hillsboro airport. Now,
please someone confirm the identity of a Dublin family for me- I think I know, but
cammot find my records on it. LEE RICE was a Black man who ran the Dr.
Malloy (Or Craigwall?) Ranch in
Chalk Mountain. Coming from Chalk Mountain to Stephenville or Hico there is or was a tall concrete silo
between the road forks on a ranch owned by a Stephenville Doctor. In the
1940's Lee lived in a nicer house than most near the silo, and he hired local
boys to help fill the silo with
feed during the summer. He was always the first one there for emergency livestock illness or injury. Lee
was raised by a White man with
two sons near the age of Lee. Seems the man was leaving Alabama for Dublin, and they visited Lee and his
mom before leaving. She was dying, so, after the burial, they brought Lee with
them to Dublin and the boys shared
a bedroom. Lee used to bring cotton to the Johnsville Gin but refused to gin ahead of a farmer's wife if
she brought cotton to gin. He said it was out of respect for the
foster mother who raised him in the
Dublin area, just across the Comanche County line, which had a racial warning sign. Lee and some school
trustee cooked washpot bar B Q
at school functions and played baseball with us. He also came to night time plays which
raised school money during the
summer.
The first house in Stephenville was
built by a Black man before Mr. Stephen.
Mr. Stephen built near him. Several of us farm families had their beef killed ad packaged in that
area of Stephenville for Stephenville
Locker Boxes before we had deep freezers or electricity.
MAY 3, 2011
According to records in the Sevier Family History book,
Mary Ann Wyly married Judge
William Henderson Underwood in Ga. and died in 1886. She was a daughter of Sarah Hawkins Clark and
Ga. Militia Gen. James Rutherford
Wyly of Toccoa, Ga. See Traveller's Rest Inn, which they bought
from Jesse Walton and enlarged as a 2
story Inn in early 1800's, on a
Google search.
NOW: The Wylys of 1870 came to
Stephenville, Texas area in a 36 wagon train from A.C. and B.F. Wyly 4 story wholesale
in Atlanta, still standing.
QUESTION: Were some Underwoods in that
group? When Dad--Eddie Wyly--and Virgil Underwood of Three Way School
District area of today were roommates
in the Stephenville home of the owner of Farmer's First National Bank when they attended
Tarleton. Dad always enjoyed talking to Forrest Underwood when he delivered our
Conoco Tractor gas. The Underwoods
had built 2 story rock homes overlooking the Paluxy River drainage. One had a Carbide gas
generator buried in the yard and had Acetylene gas lights from the gernator when
they dumped Carbide into the buried
tank.
One Wyly-Underwood connection went to
Kate Smith, the Singer.
THE BLOG ENDS HERE
CHARLES AUGUSTINE WYLY PASSED AWAY DECEMBER 11, 2012
Contents
c2006-2011 Charles Wyly
Format c2006-2011
Tim Seawolf and Barbara Peck
This page last updated on June 5, 2013
DUBLIN,
TEXAS