J. L. (Jesse Lloyd) Lester
The old rock school was built over a hundred years ago and the land was given by old man Scott. He was Grandpa Holland's first daddy-in-law. Grandpa's first wife was buried in the Oatmeal cemetery and her brother Lewis Scott is buried to the south of her. He was shot down outside Marble Falls in a fight (with Indians ?). She (Grandpa Holland's first wife was riding her horse back from seeing her parents and they stopped to get a drink at the creek. The horse had its head down in the water and when she pulled the horse back up to go on the reins got tangled up and the horse ran away. She fell and it killed her. And she's buried at the Oatmeal cemetery. Old man Hibler is buried there, and Dr. Vaughan. Old man Scott gave a deed for 15 acres there for a school and church.
When they built the school on my land I gave the land to them. There were 7 of us trustees: Rodney (Roger ?) Lewis was one of them and a Mr. Williams. They wanted to get the furniture from the old Oatmeal school and put it in the new one, but I said I bet they couldn't do it legally and they'd better check up at Burnet. So we got in my T model car and went to see O.D. Zimmerman, county judge. Well he looked up in the records and said we couldn't take anything because Mr. Scott had deeded it for school and church purposes, and they were still using it for church.
I know that old Oatmeal school is way over a hundred years old, older than most people think. My oldest sister is 92 and she went there. Her first school was Hairston but then she went to Oatmeal. When we lived at Hairston that's where I went blind. I was about 1 1/2 years old. Old Dr. Jennings treated me until I got my sight back.
I was plowing cotton for my brother-in-law John ____ ______ who married my oldest sister, when I was about 17 years old. A high wind came up and the dust was blowing in my eyes and I just about lost my sight again then for a while.
There were 8 of us in the family: Clara, Olivia, Walter, myself, Louis and George. Daddy was George Price Lester.
Price Kinser was first cousin to my daddy, so the Price was a family name. Mother was Mary Rebecca Holland. They first lived in the Hill community, then Holland Springs. Daddy came from Tennessee.
I'm Jesse Lloyd Lester, born 2-2-1889 in Llano county at Bluffton. Mother (Mary Rebecca Holland) 11-25-1862 in Burnet County, died 4-12-1956 and buried at Holland cemetery in Burnet County. She married George Price Lester in 1881. G. P. Lester was born 3-27-1862 in Tennessee and died June 2, 1941 and is buried in the Holland cemetery.
Mary Rebecca's mother was Clara Thomas, born Jan. 6, 1937 and died Jan. 8, 1887. Mary Rebecca's father was Samuel Ealy Holland b. 12-5-1825 and died Nov 21, 1917 and is buried in the Holland cemetery. Samuel's father was John and his mother was Mary E. Walker.
George Price Lester's mother was Minerva Caroline Kinser b. 1-4-1847 and died 1-2-1898. G. P.'s father was William Collin Lester born 1843 and died 1903 and he is buried in Tennessee. William Collin's father was Jesse Lester, where J.L got his name, and Minerva's mother was M____ Trent.
My first wife was Lenora M. Fuchs, pronounced Fox. She was born April 26, 1892 in Blanco County at Cypress Mill, Tx. And died Jan 10, 1945 in Burnet County and is buried at Mt. Zion cemetery. We married Nov 17, 1912 in Blanco County. Her mother was Helena Gieger, born July 17, 1870 in Germany and came here when she was 7 years old. She died Feb 2, 1936 in Blanco County. She married Theodore Carl Fuchs in 1877. He was born Dec 21, 1865 in Burnet County and died Nov 30, 1947 in Blanco County. They are buried in the Cypress Mill cemetery. Helena Geiger's mother was Augusta varnHagen, and her father was Joseph Geiger, born in Switzerland.
Theodore Fuchs' mother was Louisa Runeberg from Cypress Mill and his father was William Fuchs, born in Germany. William's father was Wilhelm. The children of J.L. Lester and Lenora Fuchs Lester:
Mildred Florene Lester married J.L. Edwards (Toad).
Helen Marie married Howard B. Smith.
Clayton [not legible] married Pauline Helne;
Rubynell was married to Melvin Hibler and she is deceased.
I lived at Oatmeal, then near Mormon Mill, and moved to Cypress Mill when I was 19. In 1915 I moved to Fairland and bought that Holloway outfit, a gin and mill. I moved there on the day of the bank robbery in Marble Falls. We were coming down the hill into Marble Falls and two men stopped me. They had Winchesters and I asked them what was going on. They asked me if we'd seen anyone on the road and said the bank robbers had killed Robby Heinatz. Well they did find the men, two of them from Lampasas. They had robbed the bank and killed that boy, then went up the river and stole a boat from a man and his wife who were fishing. They took the boat up to Panther Holler, then went on afoot. They were trailed by bloodhounds and were caught and put in the Burnet jail. That was about April 26, in 1915. I think it was the Terry boys, but I'm not sure.
You know Indians used to come in here. Well, there's this dead man's hole across the river from Marble Falls, like you're going to Spicewood, about 2 miles past the bridge you turn left and 400 yards down a fence is where it is. They've dug out the bones of seven men from that place. There's a big live oak tree right over the hole and the men were hung from that tree, then the rope was cut and the men dropped into the hole. The Indians did that. Sheriff Miller and my granddaddy found George Hawkins' overcoat buttons there, and old man Scott's buckles off his shoes were in there. That's how they identified those two men's bones. The Indians used to come around at night and steal horses. One time grandpa shot an old squaw off her horse.
Charlie Holland died in 1900 and he was 6 or 7. Before Charlie died I went to stay with grandpa and aunt Susan and they [their] boys. One day I went with grandpa over to Toby to see old man Clark. On the way back he stopped and said "son I want to tell you something." He said that if I lived to be as old as he was then that the land around would be so thickly settled that people would be living in trees and tents. He said taxes would get too high and the land would all go back to the government. He said he'd been in several wars and I can tell you that some day all the countries of the world are going to be in a revolution and wipe each other out. I asked him how it would be done, and he said manufacturing. Different powerful guns and bombs, he said. And he said people wouldn't want the land because the taxes would be so high you couldn't make a living on the land. And it's happening now.
My daddy bought land down near Smithwick mills for $2 and $2.50 an acre. Some of that land now, on the water, is going for several hundred dollars.
Some of the neighbors of my daddy around Bertram were the Roundtrees, Warnicks, A.H. Smiths, Tom Smith who married Addie Cook, Will Smith who married my mother's sister Kate Holland, Lewis, Thorps, Masseys, Fergusons.-he was a preacher-Gilcreases, Hills, Schooleys, Biggs, Levisons, Sextons, Hiblers, Jacksons, Crawfords, Wilks, Heines, Blackwoods, Bentsens, Singletons, Kincheloes. And this is going down the creek. All these old families are gone. I'm the only one still here that lived there.
Lewis Schooley owned our place before us. We had a barbeque one time, the first time Wallace Riddell ran for sheriff, and there were 3000 people there. Some of the men who have run for sheriff are Wallace's daddy, O. B. Zimmerman, and Mr. Ray (Reyes). We had a ring tournament at that barbeque, where you rode a horse and had to hook those rings on a stick, and gave prizes. A.J. Cotton was master of ceremonies and Gov. O'Daniel spoke. This was 1937. All the local candidates were there.
Ellie Ridgewater was one of my schoolteachers at Oatmeal. I went about 2 years at Mormon Mills and then at Marble Falls. And there was Professor Bush's school in Burnet. At Mormon Mills the teachers were old man Chamberlain & Henry Bound (?). At Marble Falls there was Hardy (?) Connell, Jenny Walker, who married George Askew; Bessie Woods, Professor Tillic (?) and Professor Rogers was superintendent. Iva Hall and I are the only two of my schoolmates still living unless Rankin Johnson is alive.
I have this printed on my tombstone for when I'm buried:
Friends and strangers pass me by; as you are now, once was I.
As I am now you soon will be. Prepare yourself for eternity.
I'll be buried at Mt. Zion.
Some of the old preachers were Billy Peacock, Jay Dodgen. His sister was my aunt. Dodgen was Baptist but I don't know about Peacock. I guess it was a union church where everybody went. Sometimes people would take their dinner to eat after lunch, spread it out on the ground; and if there was enough left they'd have some for supper. Some of the people lived a long way away from the church so they'd make a day of it. We used to have big camp meetings too. Willis Washington, Phil Bates, the Spencers and a bunch of other Negroes used to have big meetings about 4 miles from Bertram, near Jennings creek. Their cemetery is there. Jake Bedicks was another, and Willis Russell. They all owned a little land, and had a church, a cemetery and a school.
Kate Bingham's family lived on the hillside on the creek. Her mother wore glasses and one day she was missing, so they went hunting for her. They crossed the rode [road] coming from Bertram to oatmeal and found her glasses in a long hole of water and her hat lying on the bank. She'd drowned there and that's why they call that part of South Gabriel Creek--they call it Bingham hole.
Then there's Hubbard Falls on Cow Creek. __________ married Lou Hubbard. Old man Hubbard was going to take everybody's money and gold watches and such and put it in the bank in Austin. He was killed there on Cow Creek, and they found his horse and saddle. Finally in a few years when the water went down in the creek they found his body, wrapped in cotton sacks and weighted with some heavy steel, part of a disk plow, and dropped in a hole. Nobody was ever tried for that, because they didn't have much evidence or law officers then.
My daddy and I and some other men once took about 2000 goats to San Angelo to sell, and we drove them there afoot. Just the other side of Marble Falls I stepped on an old grave, right on the bank of the creek. It was the grave of another man who was taking valuables to Austin because the people were just too afraid to keep those things at home, there had been so many raids and robberies.
One night I was sitting up with old man Lewis, Rodney's father, and Dr. Vaughan came in. He said Mr. Lewis probably wouldn't last till the morning and that if I was there when he died, be sure to straighten his legs out while he was still warm. He was a long, tall man and if his legs hadn't been straightened he never would have fit in a coffin.
There was a man one time that lived near the Blackwells who was missing, and they never did find him, but they found his gun in my pasture. It had been leaning up next to a tree, and that tree finally grew around the gun. His bones were found in a dead man's hole on my place, near Oatmeal Creek. One of the Heine boys was hunting with a coon dog and they went into this hole, about 8 feet deep, and they found a big flat rock. He turned the rock over and there was this man lying under it. The Dempseys lived right around there too. The Heine boy took those bones to the printing office in Bertram for people to look at, and then they were buried on my place between where Heine lived and the schoolhouse.
I used to own a cedar yard and I don't know how many posts I bought and sold, but the cedar business got sort of killed out. Mr. Hester bought a lot, and Will Hall bought it by the millions of dollars worth. D. Turner used to haul cedar and he finally put in a yard too. Arthur Wurgeson (?), Mr. McClish and Jack Bradshaw (or Ealy Bradshaw) worked cedar too. Lots of people made their living chopping those cedar stays. Charlie Heine and his whole family used to chop cedar and Jim Bingham and the hills down at Cow Creek, and the Turners all cut cedar. One day two men stopped by my place and said why don't you put in a yard here, save us going that 6 miles to Bertram. So I did, and eventually they were hauling cedar to West Texas from my yard. They'd load 300-400 posts on a truck and send it out here for fence posts. I got 60 or 70 cents for 4 or 5 inch posts that would cost $1.50 now.
I've had cotton picked over there for 25 to 40 cents a hundred. When I was growing up we farmed cotton, wheat, corn, maize and cane. Corn was 25 cents a bushel. At that time people would come rent your place, for one year or maybe two. When they got ready to leave they ha to haul the oats or corn or whatever to market, at Bertram usually. So I got to buying a lot of that corn, baled hay, whatever they had. Then I sold it. I'd sell a bale of hay that weighed 85-90 pounds for 50 cents and that would cost $3.00 a bale now. One day a man came to me and said he had 200 bushels of corn he had to sell and I paid 25 cents a bushel for it; then I sold it for 40 cents. I've sold baled oats for 10 cents a bale when it cost 5 cents to get it baled; it would go for a dollar now.
Hud Gibbs used to do the thrashing all around the country near Bertram. And Perry Massey did some for me. These thrashers were run by horses but the last year or two I was in on it they had a big tractor with a belt on it. One those others [others] they'd have about 8 head or [of] horses pulling the thrasher. I had a 32 inch circle saw to cut wood with and I wold [sold] wood all over this area. Sometimes all I got out of it was my gasoline, though. The saw had a 6 horse engine (Fairbanks Morris engine ?) and you lay the wood up on a table with two men helping you run the saw, then you push the wood through there to cut it. I had an iron-wheeled wagon that the saw was mounted on. Some of the people that I cut wood for were the Hiblers, Morrow, Livingstons, John Rogers, Jerry Stow, George Jackson, all the Hills, Perry Massey, Pete Massey, __________ Wilks, and lots more. We always helped our neighbors cut their feed or bale hay or whatever they needed, everybody helped each other. One time I loaned my disk plow to a man to break up some raw land. After a week he hadn't brought it back and I got ready to break some of my land. I hooked up my 4 big mules to it and pulled that lever and you couldn't do a thing with it. He had used it to drive over some real rocky land with big boulders on it and just ruined it. I went into Bertram to Sam Taylor's hardware store to get some parts for this Oliver tractor and spent 42.00 on new boxes for those discs. Well another time that same man that borrowed my tractor came over an aid he had to get his cotton chopped and needed to borrow one of my hands to help him. But he said he didn't have any and needed me to pay the hand to help, then he'd pay me back later. So I agreed and the next day after they had chopped his cotton, they brought me a note for $21.10 that I owned [owed] them. So I paid them. But that man's dead and buried and his boy is dead and buried, and neither one of them ever gave me a dime of it. There were others too that never paid, but most of them would have if they could, or if they'd lived. Dee Reynolds owed me 50 dollars but he fell off a horse and broke his neck, lived from Thursday to Saturday night and then died. Never was a better boy than that. But lots of people used to get killed by horses. One of Grandma Stribling's boys in Blanco County was killed by a horse in the front yard, right where the highway to Johnson city is, at that 2 story house in Round Mountain. And Alta and Gladys Holland's brother was killed by a horse too, when it ran under a low branch and knocked him off. That was Kyle.
Another boy was delivering a load of lumber jut this side of Granite Mountain going toward Fariland [Fairland]. The lumber began to slip and hit the horses and they broke into a run and he got killed. That was the Clark boy. There were several of the Clarks, and they farmed and worked on the railroad The Mormons used to own that place at Mormon Mill and had a flour mill there. Joshua Moore (Price Kinser's father in law) bought it from Grandpa Holland. Grandpa used to live in a big rock house there. There was once an awful Indian fight there and Grandpa killed an Indian, shot him off his horse. Grandpa was there with two other men and there were 8 Indians, and Grandpa shot this Indian that was in the lead. Well that stopped the others and saved them all.
Those Mormons left because they were run out. I saw two of them once when I went to school there. They had on long black coats and they were walking to Marble Falls, but that's the last we ever aw of them. There are just about 12 or 13 graves in that Mormon Mill cemetery. The flour mill was run by water, and I bet that hole of water is 75 to 100 feet deep.
