SIVELLS BEND COMMUNITY HISTORY

                    By Barbara Pybas

            First effort to establish Sivells Bend as a permanent community in Cooke County was defeated by the marauding Indians from the Chickasaw nation north of Red River, and even after the village had been firmly established, the citizens were often plagued by the Indian raids, in one of which 100 horses were taken.

            Simon Sivells, who came to Cooke County with his brother, Bill, from Kentucky town in Grayson County, established a small trading post in a bend of Red River in 1850. The bend of the river and later the village and surrounding community were named for him. However, Sivells was frightened by confrontations with the frequent Indian visitors and he packed up his goods onto his horses and vacated. It was not until 1858 that the first settlers finally arrived.

            That year, W.M. Midkiff, Robert Dillard, Marcus, Sam, Lewis and Rufus Cole, and a Mr. Cohee moved to Sivells Bend and the village had a good start. Mr. Midkiff was made justice of the peace and maintained the post office in his residence.

            By 1860, there were nearly 40 families listed in the census from Fish Creek to the river bottoms of Sivells Bend, Warrens Bend and Blue Hollow. Among them were William Blue, Orastus Blue, Randolf Bateman, Taliferro Green, William Kuykendall, Dr. J.B. Stone, Richard Corn, Thomas Rose, Lankston Pace, D.C. Wheeler, Wm. H. Hobbs, James Potter, Ben Scanland, Garrot Addington, James L. Corbitt, William Simpson and Robert Ragsdale.

            The settlers found good land along the creeks and the river bottoms, which they set about clearing to furnish grain and food for their families. There was an abundance of wild game and fish that helped support them until the crops could be harvested. Many had large families, and they all worked to build their cabins or dugouts or some type of living quarters, to clear the land, plant the crops and home gardens that were so important to their survival.

            One landowner’s description was: “The rich, red lands of these bottoms were covered with a prodigious growth of timber, including hickory, pecan, walnut, cedar, ash, mulberry, hackberry, bay, plum, locust, elm, sycamore and some fifteen to twenty varieties of oak, with large cottonwoods and willows fringing the river. Persimmons, dogwood, black and red haws grew along the grassy glades that intervened. There were also wild grapes, dewberry and blackberry vines.”

            Dr. Samuel S. Ligon arrived at Sivells Bend in May, 1861. The wagon train came with seven wagons, two carriages, his wife and four children and 18 Negro slaves. There was also Dr. Pope Long, his three children and several slaves and a number of single men who had worked as wranglers and wagon hands on the journey from Missouri. The wagons were sent to Jefferson to bring lumber from the pine mills to build a house, quite large and impressive for the area and period of settlement.

            The Ligon family had brought seed, tools, farming implements as well as a large quantity of cloth, household supplies, including a piano, sewing machine, furniture, family portraits and books, bedding and clothing sufficient to supply them for some time. The house was quite a mansion for that time with two twenty foot rooms on either side of the fourteen foot entry hall with shed rooms on the back for dining room, kitchen and a back porch over a big stone walled cellar. It was heated by five stone fireplaces. The Negro cabins, smoke house, loom house and cribs were made of logs.

            Across the river in Indian Territory, lived Col. Jim Gaines, a wealthy and educated Chickasaw Indian. His son-in-law, Ed Burney, for whom Burneyville was named, lived nearby and Judge Love, another wealthy Chickasaw lived on Oil Creek. Charlie Gooding had married an Indian woman and lived directly across the river from Sivells Bend.

            In 1861, Gooding held a “get acquainted” dance during Christmas week. All the Sivells Bend people went, along with the Murells, Manions, and Bourlands from the lower bends east of Sivells Bend, and the Loves, Gaines, Burney, and Overtons from the Chickasaw Nation. Betty Ligon Gunter recalled crossing the river to the Gooding’s, and wrote in 1907, “There were over one hundred people present and the served an elaborate supper to the crowd. The house was a two-room, log affair, with a shed room and puncheon floor. We did not feel the need for more room, for we danced all night.”

            By 1862, the effects of the Civil War were upon this western settled area. In February 1861, a statewide referendum allowed each county to vote for or against secession from the Union. Cooke County voted 221 to 137 against secession. However, they rallied to support the Confederacy, with many serving in the military units. There was some dissension because slave owners or overseers could be exempt from military duty.

            By the fall of 1862, there were many rumors about a secret organization called the Union League, a party supporting the Federal Government from which the south had separated itself. Reports that the group was going to take over the munitions supplies, joining the Union Army, perhaps attacking from Indian Territory to kill heads of households, taking land holding and devastating the families, were among the viscous rumors. Hysteria gripped the county.

            Military units under Capt. James C. Bourland acted in a rapid two day clean-up and arrested about 70 residents of the county if there was any suspicion at all that they might be sympathetic to the secret organization. They were imprisoned in an empty store building on the courthouse square.

            Colonel William C. Young, at home at Walnut Bend, recuperating from the command of the Tenth Cavalry, was ordered to create a Citizens Court to try the accused. He asked his friend, Dr. J.B. Stone of Sivells Bend to serve on a commission of five men to name a jury for the court. As a result, three men from the Sivells Bend area served on that jury, J.P. Long Ben Scanland, and W.J. Simpson.

            Ultimately, at least 42, perhaps as many as 47, men were hanged. Mobs stood outside the jail and the courtroom demanding punishment for the traitors, meanwhile, families knew that men had been unjustly accused and were not sympathizers with the Union cause. The jurors were about ready to release some of the prisoners when news came of the murder of a James Dickson, hunting on Hickory Creek. Colonel Young went to capture the assailants and was also killed. This inflamed the citizenry again as they felt sure the Unionizers had murdered their beloved Colonel.

            The tragedy and sadness permeated the whole county and many of the ones who had served on the jury felt that their safety was tenuous because of the possible revenge for those whom the families felt were unjustly hanged. J.P. Long chose to move from Sivells Bend. (He later married the widow of Colonel Young at Walnut Bend), Daniel Montague, (surveyor for the Sivells Bend acreages), chairman of the jury, left for Mexico, as well as some of the other members, who did not return to Cooke County for several years.

            A company of soldiers, commanded by a Captain Clark was stationed at Sivells Bend, and in the latter years of the conflict, and because of the Indian depredations, some of the people went to stay with relatives in Grayson county or Gainesville.

            Dr. Ligon and Dr. Stone preferred to build stockades or forts for protection. Betty Ligon wrote: “My father forted ups his place and we stayed there safe and comfortable until after the war and the Indians quit raiding and the fort was torn down. The Corbitts and Sam Cole built themselves cabins inside the fort and stayed with us. The fort was made of split logs, twelve to fourteen feet long, stood on end, one end sharpened and driven into the ground as close together as they could stand. It was built around an acre or more of ground.” Portholes were cut on each side of the stockade as well as gun holes to command every approach of the Indians. The Indians never molested them, however, several horses were stolen. “Every morning during the light of the moon, which was their favorite time to raid, we would find moccasin tracks all around the stockade.”

            In 1868, most of the horses of the community were gathered to be driven to the prairie land (The Flats) near Whitesboro where they would be grazed for the fall and winter, until they would be needed for farming in the spring. During the night the Indians stole them all, driving them across the Red River into Indian Territory. More than sixty head were stole. Although the men rode to Fort Sill, asking the Federal Government to retrieve their horses, the Military refused to recapture them from the Indians. They advised Mr. Midkiff to sue the Government for the damages. It took twenty years of litigation to settle the $4,000 for 60 horses.

            About 1869, two brothers, A.Y. and W.W. Gunter settled in Sivells Bend. They acquired about 7000 acres in the area, including 1000 acres in Warrens Bend. Born in North Carolina in 1833 and 1826 of a family of 13 children, they had come to Texas in 1854. Both men were officers in the army of the Confederate States of America. They had been in the merchandising business and A.Y. had studied law. They brought seed from Eastern Texas for grain, cotton and extensive orchards and gardens. They introduced and used the first riding plow, reapers, cultivator and thresher that ever came to Cooke County. With Dr. Ligon, they also constructed a horse-powered cotton gin in Sivells Bend bottom in the early ‘70s, which was used until 1882 when E.H. Giddens came from Grapevine and built a new gin.

            The Gunter brothers married sisters, Miss Bettie and Miss Rosa Ligon. They built a large house that was shared by the two families. They began a sharecrop system and rented the land to many farmers to help clear the land and produce the crops.

            By 1880, Sivells Bend was well populated. The Gunters were responsible for the building of a large two-story building that was used for school and church activities, as well as a Masonic Lodge order on the top floor. This building burned in 1883.

            Some of the early families were Hunter (1870), Baugh (1880), Pybas (1881), Neal (1884), and Langford (1886).

            Other early settlers were: Weaver, Hedges, Thornton, Rufus, and Walter Hickman, Ben and Babe Miller, McSpadden, Stewert, Audd, and Capps.

            In the early days Kirkpatrick and Loss Allen has a small store on the Dillard land near the Red River. Jim Bennett also operated this store.

            In 1882, a Mr. Moss established a small store at Sivells Bend. Rad Perkins bought this store in 1897 and operated it two years. He sold it to Dr. Greever who built a large department store about 1900. This two-story building had the facility for the Woodman of the World Lodge on the second floor. Part of the second story was used by the Home Demonstration Club, which had a kitchen and meeting area. The women of the community, under the direction of Miss Berlie Bolton, the Extension Agent, canned meat and vegetables for their families. Dr. Greever sold the store to M.C. Scott in 1917. The family also operated the cotton gin and blacksmith shop, later sold to R.M. Townsley. Much cotton was produced in the river bottoms and creek bottoms and many families moved in to farm those areas.

            The store burned about 1928. Scott and sons moved a store building from Gainesville, which they operated until 1945. They built on an addition for living quarters and leased it to W.M. Montgomery in 1945. Cloy Mobley bought the store in 1950.  Billie Ward, daughter of Bill Montgomery, married Thurman Ward in 1949.  He is the grandson of the Scott’s.  In 2004, they were married for fifty-five years and still live at Sivells Bend.

            Ed Monroe built and operated a store about 1930 to 1933 at Sivells Bend. He lived at Marietta, crossing each morning on the ferry, returning the same way each evening. He sold it to Vin Morris who moved it to his farm and operated it for two years. Morris hauled cottonseed from the gin to the oil mill in Gainesville, using wagons and teams. He would bring the grocery supplies to Sivells Bend on his return from Gainesville

            Dr. J.B. Stone, one of the earliest settlers, practiced medicine as well as operating a large farm. Other doctors who had medical practices at various times were Dr. Gilcrist, Dr. Harrison, Dr. Greever, Dr. Palmer and Dr. Cunningham.

            The Sivells Bend Methodist Episcopal Church South was organized in 1869. They met in homes until the Gunter’s built a large building for their worship in 1880. When the structure burned they again met in homes until land was given by W.W. Gunter for the present site in 1910. Services are still held first and third Sundays with the minister from Gainesville’s Mission Methodist Church for a 9 a.m. service.

            The Bearhead Baptist Church was organized in 1880, built near the Bearhead Creek, southwest of Sivells Bend. The large structure was moved in 1934 to Sivells Bend, a concerted effort, using teams of horses and timbers, which took several weeks. In 1956 the old church was torn down and a new church built. Mr. Vin Morris deeded the land for the new site at that time. Regular services still continue each Sunday.

            The High Point Church, located in the eastern part of Sivells Bend community, was organized in a Mr. Wood’s home in 1903. Shortly after, the church building was erected next to the Stone Cemetery. Services are no longer held although descendants still maintain the cemetery with a workday each first Saturday in April.