Leagueville
By: Bob Bowman
Leagueville, an isolated community in eastern Henderson County, owes its beginning to a land certificate that originated in 1850 by Aaron York, surveyor of a league of land west of the Neches River.
The area was referred to “The League” and the “ville” was later added, probably when the community secured a post office in 1889.
By 1855, the Sublett family had gained control of the land around Leagueville and sold it to Matthew Cartwright in 1857. In 1871, B.T. and Annie (Cartwright) Roberts had acquired the property. But when the couple died, the York heirs sued to regain control of the property, but lost on appeal in 1875.
The litigation slowed the development of the area and it really didn´t becomea community until the late 1800s. The community had a school, and a cemetery was established on the school property. The school, however, was consolidated with Brownsboro in 1934.
At its peak, Leagueville had two general stores, its church, two cotton gins, a blacksmith, and a grist mill.
A broken discarded mill stone from the grist mill was placed around a Texas historical marker by the cemetery when it was erected in 2004
The coming of the railroad through Brownsboro in the late 1800s left Leagueville off the beaten path and, with the building of Highway 31 from Tyler to Athens beside the railroad, Leagueville suffered another blow. In the old days, a road running through Leagueville was known as the Athens-to-Tyler road.
Leagueville´s cemetery was once maintained in the way of many old East Texas cemeteries. The grounds were hoed, grass was removed, and the graves were mounded. But because of erosion and the time required to maintain the graveyard, mowing was begun in the 1950s.
Many graves in the cemetery are unmarked and the names of those buried have been lost in the passage of time.
One year, when the cemetery was being expanded, an old dipping vat used to control ticks on cattle was discovered in the ground.
Leagueville´s church, which began as the Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in 1880, remains in its original location and was preceded by churches at Rock Hill and New York.
One of the town´s earliest settlers was Malachiah Reeves, a Civil War veteran, who served as a postmaster in 1906 and 1907. He was licensed to preach at Leagueville and is buried in the local cemetery.
Each second Sunday of June, Leagueville´s former residents and their families come back to the old town for a memorial day.
Bringing Back Cowboy Music
By: Bob Bowman
In Center the other night, an elderly man in the audience was bemoaning the lack of old-fashioned cowboy music in East Texas.
“How old are you?” I asked politely.
“Well, I‘m somewhere between eighty and dead,” he laughed.
That explains the lack of cowboy music. Musicians today seldom play the music older folks remember best.
But, thankfully, I was able to recommend at least one place where the old cowboy music is still played with enthusiasm.
At the Camp Street Cafe and Store in Crockett, brothers Guy and Pipp Gillette perform traditional cowboy songs in a downtown building once owned by their grandfather, rancher Hoyt Porter.
Some of the music they play today originated during the time of the Civil war and blends in songs performed by cowhands and medicine show performers.
When Guy and Pipp are not performing, they‘re running a ranch near Lovelady. The property was also owned by Hoyt Porter and, as youngsters, the Gillettes punched cows on the ranch.
While Guy and Pipp are best known today for their cowboy ballads--and specially for their skill in playing cow bones as an accent sound for their music--they were largely influenced by the Beatles.
The sons of a New York photographer, they saw the Beetles perform on an Ed Sullivan show in the 1960s and knew immediately they wanted to become musicians, too.
So they joined one of Guy‘s classmates at an acting studio and formed a rock and roll band known as the Roadrunners. Their singer was Diane Keaton, the actress.
The Roadrunners played up and down the East Coast for years. But when their grandfather passed away, Guy and Pipp decided to come back to the ranch they loved as young men in 1983.
After the Camp Street building was renovated in 1998 and reopened as the Camp Street Cafe, Guy and Pipp became popular all over Texas as musicians who had a special knack for cowboy songs.
As an early Crockett business, Hoyt Porter‘s Camp Street building housed a variety of businesses, including a cafe, pool hall and cafe.
In the 1940s, a legendary blues musician often came to the cafe to play for tips. His name was Lightin‘ Hopkins. A statue of Lightin‘ stands near the Camp Street Cafe and Store.
When Guy and Pipp decided to reopen the tin building as a music venue, they started with performers they had known on the road. Today, ten years later, the Camp Street Cafe is a popular venue for musicians all over Texas.
But some of the biggest crowds come to Crockett to hear Guy and Pipp bring back the sounds of cowboys on the range.
For a schedule of the Gillettes‘ performances, call 936-544-8656 in Crockett.
A “tough ol´ bird”
By Bob Bowman
By Gertie Lacey´s own description, she is a “tough ol´ bird” who grew up in a family of 15 kids, endured the rough days of the East Texas oil boom, picked cotton, endured crop failures during the Great Depression, and broke her neck in seven places during an automobile accident.
Today, at age 95, Gertie is the Chappell family's favorite storyteller with a memory that reaches back to the turn of the century.
Gertie´s grandfather William Thomas Chappell Sr. served in the Civil War and saw his hat pierced by a Union bullet. Her father, William T. Chappell Jr. a farmer, married Indiana King, raised seven girls and six boys and lost two others.
Coming from Georgia, the family landed at Overton in Rusk County. A man named Florence allowed the family to use use a house, land, a mule and cows in return for farming 80 acres. When a crop failed, the family loaded their possessions in a covered wagon pulled by the mule and headed for West Texas to pick cotton.
When the cotton crop was exhausted, they returned to Overton and Florence sold them the 80 acres without a down payment. By now, they had 15 kids, all living under the same roof and going to school at Leverett´s Chapel.
When oil was discovered in East Texas, Gertie walked from her home to see the Della Crim well, one of the oilfield´s first wells, spew out oil at 3 a.m. one morning.
Luckily, oil was also discovered on the Chappell property. Soon, the family had thirteen oil wells and thirteen kids.
Gertie saw her first automobile, driven by Clarence Christian, in the 1920s. She also saw her first airplane. “It came over our house, and I almost blistered my mouth looking up at it,” she said.
“Then I'll never forget the time my brother Joe had a terrible accident while driving a wagon pulled by mules.” The mules were frightened by a car, and the wagon turned over on Joe. He had to be taken to a Palestine hospital by train.
Gertie--short for Gertrude--survived two husbands, Lonnie McGinty, an oil field worker, who died in 1964, and Lester Lacy, a consultant, who died in 1995.
Gertie has lived most of her latter years in Kilgore, where she owned her own beauty shop for many years.
Looking back on her 95 years, she comments "They´ve been wonderful years, but a little sad, too,”
Patroon´s Story
By: Bob Bowman
It´s a shame that Patroon didn´t last. But in a way, it may have been best. Its stern, no-nonsense college would have never survived in modern times.
Patroon´s Patroon College, remembered today only as a forest intersection in southeastern Shelby County, had one of the shortest academic careers in East Texas (less than four years), but it made a profound impression on its students.
College officials set down a stiff set of rules and expected their pupils to obey.For example
Consider holidays: “We promise none of the following: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year´s Day, Arbor Day, San Jacinto Day. We shall continue our regular school work during Christmas Week, and we trust our patrons will not send for their children to go home during this time. A few days out of school, and especially during Christmas, will have the tendency to demoralize students and make them lose an interest in their studies.”
There was some consultation. Prices were cheap. Students could attend the college for as little as four dollars a month.
The college was founded in 1893 by the Disciples of Christ on a hill overlooking Patroon, a peaceful farming community. But it was gone by 1897, the victim of denominational friction and a lack of money.
The settlement of Patroon, located on the banks of Patroon Creek seventeen miles southeast of Center, reaches back to the 1820s when Dutch settlers from the West Indies settled in what is now New York State, calling the area the New Netherlands.
They supposedly gave the community its name, but another version is that the settlement was named for the Patroon Indians.
The Indians supposedly were known as the Nurschturbie tribe, but became known as the Nurschocogean Indians when they lived on the Mississippi River. There are believed to be at least ten different spellings of the name.
The Patroon community was likely founded just before the Civil War. One of the community´s earliest settlers was James Harrison, a native of New Jersey who came to Texas in 1823 and settled on Patroon Creek.
A post office was established in 1868 at Patroon with William Duffee as the postmaster. In 1884 Patroon had a population of twenty. During the 1890s, however, the farm population in the area increased, and sawmills were established to utilize the abundant timber of the area.
By 1896 the community had a hotel, a sawmill, a grist mill, a cotton gin, several stores, three churches, and Patroon College. At that time the town´s population was estimated at 150.
The establishment of Patroon College in the l890s by D.A. Leak and R.H. Bonham was considered one of the most ambitious efforts in Shelby County. The institution had 300 pupils at one time.
By 1914 Patroon´s population was around 250 but received a surge in its growth with the operation of Pickering Lumber Company at nearby Haslam in the l920s and 1930s.
Remembering Skin Tight
By: Bob Bowman
In the early 1830s, when cattle buyer Henry Reeves and his partner, a man known only as Ball, built a store on the Rusk-Henderson road, visiting customers started calling the settlement “Skin Tight” because they were no match for Reeves´ close trading practices.
Reeves moved to Smith County and, on June 13, 1886, he was shot to death in Troup.
The unflattering town name,”Skin Tight,” was soon changed to Lone Star when a post office was established in 1883, and Lone Star thrived from cotton and tomatoes. At one time, the town had two cotton gins, a grist mill, several physicians, and a number of business establishments, including three saloons.
Shelly Cleaver, who was born at Lone Star, recalls that his father used a Model T “hoopy” to haul tomatoes to market. “He could haul more tomatoes in that ol´ hoopy than anyone else in Lone Star,” said Cleaver.
Cleaver and his family later moved to Jacksonville, but retained the home of his father, Henry Clay Cleaver
During its hey days the town had a Masonic Lodge, Cherokee Lodge 680, which was chartered in 1890 with D.L. Murphey as the Worshipful Master. The lodge was moved to Ponta in 1928 and then to New Summerfield in 1961.
The town also had a two-teacher school which held classes on the second floor of the Masonic Lodge building. A private school, the Lone Star Institute, was established by Colonel Thomas A. Cache and Rev. Angus M. Stewart in 1889.
The Institute soon became so well-known in East Texas that families often moved to Lone Star so their children could attend the school´s classes, which emphasized cultural accomplishments in music and education. But the school lasted only four years.
Another popular lodge, the Woodmen of the World, also stood at Lone Star and met regularly on the second floor of J. West´s store.
By 1890, at least three general stores stood at Lone Star. But in 1893, a fire that began in a doctor´s office destroyed much of Lone Star´s business district. The Tipton Black store and a saloon were the only commercial buildings spared.
At one time, Lone Star had three church denominations--Methodists, the Church of Christ, and Universalists.
The town lost its post office in 1916 when the town began to lose population. When the Texas and New Orleans Railroad bypassed the town in 1903, many of Lone Star´s businessmen moved to newly-established Ponta.
Today, Lone Star is only a ghost town standing about three miles from Lake Striker on Farm Road 35.
But the town site has been marked by a Texas Historical Marker standing on Farm Road 235 about four miles southwest of New Summerfield.
The only remnant from Lone Star´s old days is an abandoned and weathered blacksmith shop once owned by J.B. Cleaver
Laughs with a Lawman
I suspect that the best-read column in the Buffalo Press, a weekly newspaper in East Texas, is Sheriff Ralph Billings´ report on criminal activity in Freestone County.
When the local 911 dispatcher received a call from a young caller, she told her that her five-year-old brother had shot their Dad with a BB gun, killed him “graveyard dead,” and had buried the father in the back yard. The caller wanted someone to come to the home, arrest the five-year-old and dig up Dad.
The 911 dispatcher finally located the boys´ mother and found that Dad didn´t even live in Texas, and there was no homicide.
Billings reported that seven dead hogs were found on U.S. Highway 84 between the Country Club and the Boyd prison unit. He said a Texas Department of Transportation employee was enroute “to perform graveside services.”
Billings also wrote that a young lady reported that her ex-boyfriend called her and wanted to come over. She explained she had company. The ex boyfriend broke her window and fled on his bicycle.
In another report, Billings commented that Oakwood had a goat problem, but noted that it had been alleviated when six or seven goats were found loose in the downtown area and had been were arrested by the chief of police.
In the community of Wortham, a driver took a spin around the local nursing home, ended up crashing through a fence, and was apprehended by the Wortham police department. The man, it turned out, was wanted on a parole violation from Austin.
A police office told 911 he was trying to pull over a woman motorist, but she said she would pull over only when she got to a street light at Streetman. Stopped by another policemen, the womon said she would pull over when she got to a service station. “Heard no more on this,” wrote Billings, “and assumed she eventually stopped somewhere...further assume it was where she wanted to.”
Billings also reported that a lady from Wortham said a possum had gotten into her deep freeze, and wanted to know what to do. Billings advised her to “keep him cold, serve him with potatoes and carrots and onions, cook him at 325 degrees, and serve with cornbread on the side and Blue Bell for dessert.”
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